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im confused you say 4 hours freeze 12 hours dry but u say it takes 24 hours? What have you found by now to be the best settings?
It was taking 24hrs to get it done before I set my parameters correctly. Now it takes about 16 hrs to finish up, and the shelf temp has been lowered as well.
If youre having issues with getting your patties to be dry in time, I would try to thin the patty out more/make more even on the pan.
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Freeze dryers work through sublimation. I usually like to have this process occur at least twice during the freeze drying process. With the Scientific/pharmaceutical freeze dryer you can adjust time and temps fairly easily and the process can be done in less than 24 hours.
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If @Hashoholic or @BananaBannabis were willing to share their parameters, I think we would all benefit from your experiences!
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I would suggest a gauge capable of measuring vacuum levels down to 1um, and would expect that you’d want to stay above 2mm (total guess) if you want to retain any chance of squishing.
At a given tray temp, the vacuum level can tell you how “done” you are.
If I want a vessel dry, I suck on it till 50um. It’s empty!
Do that to your Ice water hash, and you won’t be happy about it.
BYour cannabinoids will still be there, but the solvents the plant used to make them readily available to you is now gone, so is the water I suspect is important to getting optimal yield.
I know water content is critical for every other form of extraction, including flower rosin, so I assume removing too much water has similar effects to removing terpenes.
Certainly my best guess for what’s going on over here: Why wont my ice water hash yield any oil after pressing?
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It is really not anything special. Some material gets done quicker than others, and you definitely have to gauge it per strain and load size to get it right. If the freeze drier is full it will take longer to complete the small batch cycles it has programmed in. As far as the hash becoming TOO DRY, like @cyclopath said, I have never noticed. You will lose terpenes in water when you wash always, there are ways though to recover those terpenes and having a vacuum gauge and controller will greatly assist with that process, so if it is in the budget for you and you have the space in your lab it would be well worth it.
Shelf temp is usually 30-45F for our runs, I have dropped the temp lower as well and gone longer. Lower and longer seems to get better results overall/more terpy results. However the weird thing is that we have seen the same press returns from the same strain, except the strains were done at different shelf temps. Never had any testing done though on the same strain/different temperature, but it would be awesome to see.
The harvest right machine does have an “automated sensor” that tells you when it should be mostly done. In my experience this sensor never indicates when my hash is dry enough. I always time 2-6 hrs after small batch cycles finish as to when to pull out the hash, that our “optimal range.” I have rarely had to go beyond 24 hrs now that I have my parameters down, but I can say when I do I think I have started to see a change in quality of the hash from being too dry, but again, its very minor and seems to not express itself greatly in the press %.
I cannot stress this enough, thin out your damn patties. I see tons of people on insta with huge globs going into the freeze drier. If you have to leave a little water in it to get to spread easier, thats OK. The freeze drier will take you home. Another reason to have even patties is so the hash at the edges doesnt get crispy!
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I second the flat patties. If you leave it thick in areas you’ll be left with ice pockets. I remove my trays and place them on dry ice in a yeti then sift it and if I didn’t run it long enough I’ll find those pieces of ice. The trays on dry ice prevent those ice pockets from melting and setting you back on creating nice sand piles.
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Here is a tip to do away with the dry ice!
Let the freeze drier cycle finish, then let the air in, then wait 30 min for the freeze drier to rechill the trays. Works everytime for us. We pull each tray out as we go and its all like sand!
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I think @BananaBannabis has the Harvest Right freeze dryer you are trying to reference, and gave a some pretty good pointers. As for my exact parameters they changed varied on strain. Like i said the pharmaceutical and scientific ones give you more control over the parameters and I would create a profile and save it for each strain after R&D with different temps and times of sublimation. I was using torr so on my gauge so the numbers would translate a little different, and I don’t have them off the top of my head. A moisture meter or water activity meter might aid you along in this process as well as other water content measuring devices. The Wetness of the hash should only be noticeable after the hash has reached close to room temp and the terpenes or cannabinoids cause it to grease while other combinations make for more stable hash. Either way you can brick it up after minimal heat applied, if washed correctly, and squish. As for guys hash not squishing I can say with 99.9% certainty its not because he over vacuumed or dried his hash. @cyclopath
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Yeah, I’m not really convinced either way.
You got any better ideas?
I can certainly deliberately strip terps from biomass under vac. Without terpenes, the cannabinoids should absolutely be harder to retrieve without adding back a solvent.
Not something I’ve tried, just where logic lands me…
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@cyclopath The cell wall that holds the cannabinoids within the trichome will release (When getting Squishy) with only maybe 7 degree F maximum differentiation between another strain more abundant in terps. I saw that thread when it was still new… Let me re read his specific situation and Il come up with another hypothesis.
It was definitely because he had hash full of stalks and not hash 
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No Trichome Heads=No essential oils to squish out
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wow. yeah apparently!
I was also going to suggest a 'scope, but there was hash to be made…didn’t check back before linking the two threads.
Just ordered a Medium Harvest Right… looking forward to seeing how it functions.
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Hash Rules Everything Around Me. Gonna have to share hashes some day.
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My 4 test came out nice finally 9 hr frezze 5 hr next frezze 20 hrs final dry try 4 different times this one came out good same material
Freeze dried for 24 hours at 50. Sometimes like previously stated I have to throw it back in if I find ice in a bigger patty usually another 8-12 hours then is ready to go.
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