So my crew and I are looking at ways to more efficiently use our Cannabis in Extraction, and currently when we mill and produce a bunch of Kief, the milling crew packs it almost entirely into one extraction bag. To note, we are using the CUP 15 and CUP 30 from Delta Separations for our Extraction Process. Now the extraction bag with almost all the Kief does have regular milled flower in it as well, and we haven’t noticed it clumping up too much (likely due to the way the CUP agitation cycle works). I know online it is recommended to use a Rosin Press, but my supervisor says that, in his experience, what they push out isn’t great or isn’t efficient (it was an electric one, I am not sure if a Pneumatic one would work better). Would it work better to use the Rosin Press, would it be better to spread the Kief among different Extraction Bags, or would a double pass of fresh Ethanol in the CUPs be best for this? Or are there other ways that would work better?
The boss has it right.
If you’re making “kief” by milling flower, it is low quality and not at all worth squishing. 50% or more powdered plant vs actual trichome heads at a guess.
The first broken CUP I ran into was bent by overloading. You can get 40+ LB of hammermilled (looks a lot like kief) material in a CUP 30. They don’t like it.
How much more than your average bag does the kief augmented bag weigh?
Do you have in-house analytics? They make answering questions like “wtf are my cannabinoids now” sooo much easier…
If you want to know if you’re getting the goods out, you’re going to have to test input vs output. Even if it’s something as rudimentary as comparing the weight adjusted raw yield of a CUP-full to a kief enhanced CUP-full.
I deleted my reply half way through reading this. I had analytics first. 
Right back atcha! 
The kief bag isn’t actually higher weight overall. It’s just a regular CUP 15 bag that is primarily Kief. However, I will suggest the possibility of keeping the stuff from the mainly Kief bag separate for our next Extraction run in an attempt to get that data, see if there is a significant dive in yield. I was already considering putting forward an experiment about running the Kief through pure Ethanol twice to see if we are missing much, if anything.
However, it IS good to know that the Kief from milling is actually low quality in the long run. While it may have plenty of THC in it, to know that overall it is too low quality to consider a Rosin Press.
I’d put it at or below machine trimmer kief, which makes terrible (black) squish in my experience. Makes nasty etoh extracts too.
Do you have any idea what your current extraction efficiency is (What percentage of input cannabinoids end up in your extract)?
Knowing that, and monitoring it, is an important part of optimizing your process.
How anyone gets through processing without analytics is completely mind blowing to me.
I dont drive to work with my eyes closed… why would I would i do the same all day at work.
If your build out sheet from a consultant doesnt include some sort of analytics, you picked the wrong consultant!
Dunk it in cryo ethanol, Quick wash and dunk it again warm etho til satified all is out.
Do kief/thc-a capsules.
I would just make it to distillate and extract with heptane and do a water wash
You could Also process the kief down further by buying silk pressing screens. They are cheap, they come in decent sizes to be able to work the kief with a card, stack them like bubble bags and work your way down to the bottom screen, filter until you got clean heads, and then wash on all your remaining microns
Yeah, I would have to look at it, but we do keep track of the potency of the flower, but I am not sure if we track the potency of the extract once it’s been filtered and evaporated. We tend to track the potency of the flower at the beginning and the potency of the final distillate.
So the miller kief tends to leave a black sludge? We have noticed that, when the evaporated tincture has been left to sit overnight before we polish off the last of the Ethanol, that there is a black sludge that tends to settle at the bottom of the container holding it, but it never shows up when we extract using whole flower, so that’s good to know.
press it into rosin then decarb and use in edibles or just fill syringes with the rosin and dose like rso. doesn’t have to be light colored either way, use a 37 or 72 micron bag tho
I used to use all my di shaken or bubble hash for rosin pressing. It was all from my t4 twister (machine trim). I got decent light color.
Separating larger amounts of kief in bubble bags with water does not work well, clogs and cloggedy clog!
Not really optimizing their current ethanol extraction => distillate pipeline, but a valid use for machine trimmer “kief” if OP is in the business of giving away meds to those in need.
Very good info to know, and if my experiments turn out the way I imagine they will, I will bring it up to my boss and see what he says.
Yeah, and you can throw dry ice in your ethanol without downstream consequences too.
I dunno why you’re special.
I just accept it 
I wasn’t running the trimmer, and don’t know what model. I did attempt both squish and eho. Both were best described as black, although it was a very green lookin black.
If its freshly harvested it should yield a light colour milled or no milled kief I would guess keeping it in 25-37micron or even both backs same time, however a single pass over silk screens would properly clean the color alot fresh or not, should be frozen right after drying or get a trip in a freeze dryer.
Just a wee old kief will always be dark.
Dry sift and bubblehash (small amounts, otherwise like said above: clogs) are the only low-tech solutions I can think of, and both would be mediocre at best if material isn’t fresh.
well then…
Ye very small amounts at a time I learned haha, keeping the kief in the water, and keeping it cold for a while will also clean up the colour a bit, pour clean water over until clear. Water cure, but would be best to dry freeze then or loose some effectiveness in the drying process.
That if if succeed in water filtration i did not haahah worst shit I ever get me into just wanting to go to bed throw it out of 2nd floor