The whole debate on fresh frozen vs cured material, but from a different angle, not about yields and efficiency, or about adjustments to processing or post-processing, but instead about…
Flavor and Nose baby!
I was just saying in another thread, and have said it many times before, I’m a big fan of running cured, or at least slightly aged, trim because I feel like it’s an overall more enjoyable experience.
My basis for this argument isn’t really rooted in analytical tests, but I’d love to see some true comparisons between ff and cured to that degree. I’m basing this off my personal experiences with the two separate products.
I find ff and live resins all seems to have the same strong peppery note, where with cured material I find a wide, and I mean WIDE, range of flavors and smells… which I personally prefer.
I attribute this whole thing to the same reason we don’t cut branches, dry them as fast as possible and start smoking uncured flower… the flower just hasn’t developed and is sharp and rough. So, if we wouldn’t smoke fresh flower, why are we making and smoking fresh extracts?
Well in my opinion because we can selectively extract the desired compounds with fresh frozen material when making hash, can’t really do that smoking flower one has to dry/cure it. This means that inarguably you will be lacking some of the terpenes present at harvest, when compared to a 10 day dry and several week/month cure this flower would surely be missing some of the terpenes present in fresh frozen. I love live resin, and don’t have a hard time tasting huge differences between strains. Flower will always be the bottom bitch, but live resin is just dandy with me
So then the reason to go ff is more about preserving the nose the plant had during the end of its grow it sounds like. I haven’t done a lot of growing personally, and do like what I’ve smelt of other grows, from the growers out there… are you guys noting a difference between the odor of your grow vs the odor of your cured material?
Anyone got some comparisons of terpene profiles from before and after?
Sounds like maybe you have only smoked some bunk FF or live resin or maybe you were lied to about it being FF.
Never ever had peppery FF and I have run quite a few strains. My most recent Jelly Pie is my fav and taste/smells just like the flower only stronger. I wish I could make cologne out of it. IMHO no comparison between cured and FF. I am a terp whore and when you dry/cure you lose too many valuable terps. I read you lose like 30 or 35% terps just during drying.
I only run crc, so my fresh frozen runs, while rare, come out a bit different than what I’m describing. As does @Hansel and I think even you do at this point. I’m really talking about all the shit that’s going into legal dispos being heavy on pepper notes, and a bunch of cdts I’ve encountered from ff too. So yeah, we’re losing terpenes and others are reacting to make new compounds, but what I’m suggesting is all those monoterpenes and terpenoids with low vapor pressure we’re losing we wanted to lose all along.
If I had to guess maybe 20 or so. I don’t use CRC but I do throw a small amount(1/3-2/3 cup) of Media Bros CRX powder between my filter plates. I use it right below by dewax column to help catch any fats/waxes but never anything in there. My freezer goes down to -86c and I freeze as I chop.
Maybe try some DE in a fats catcher style set up, instead of the crx. Wax plug showed some pictures of how well those things work on some other threads
The media bro’s products in small quantities seem to not do much. In larger quantities they work great.
So it’s probably pulling off some of your monoterpenes. Even in small amounts these medias can have a pretty profound affect on end product, and not necessarily on appearance.
I have personally just started using Grove Bags after hearing great things about them on the internet. Do you guys have any experience curing with their bags???
