The Ultimate Solventless Rosin Pressing Resource
Single Source vs. Commercial Living Soil - The Whys & Why Nots
Living soil epitomizes the cleanest, most sustainable, and purest way to grow cannabis. Living soil is the most natural and holistic substrate available, abundant in organic elements, minerals from the earth, and various compounds that allow microorganisms to thrive. Inside living soil is an entire universe of all kinds of minute life forms.
This fertile environment, bustling with microbes, holds immense potential for enhancing cannabis cultivation. Within living soil, cannabis roots can efficiently uptake essential nutrients vital not only for robust growth but also for yielding
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Why Press Your Resin By Frenchy Cannoli
When I decided to approach the legal side of cannabis as a California registered patient a few years back, my first step was to educate myself on the legality of my decision before anything. I also wanted to know the history of the movement that gave me such an amazing gift as an expression of my reconnaissance, and respect. But most importantly, I was looking for the science, if any, behind everything I had experienced with local associations while traveling in producing countries
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What Are Charas & How To Make Charas Like A Pro
Charas is the oldest form of cannabis concentrate - the original solventless. Not only is it the oldest, it’s the simplest to produce, requiring only the flowering cannabis plant and a pair of human hands. Making charas involves a very intimate experience with cannabis, in which the hash maker literally rubs fresh resin right from the trichomes onto their hands. The resin accumulates into a blackish layer across the palms and fingers, then peels off like a second skin.
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How To Make Solventless Pectin Gummies
Pectin is a plant-based gelling agent, commonly used in jams, jellies, and fruit preserves. It’s similar to gelatin, but unlike gelatin, pectin is vegan and found naturally in just about every fruit and vegetable. Typically made from apples (apple pectin) or citrus peels (citrus pectin), pectin is a great choice as thickener and stabilizer for making solventless gummies. When heated with sugar and acid, pectin forms a kind of mesh that traps liquid and then sets as it cools.
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The Benefits of Using Stainless Steel Screens for Pressing Rosin
High-quality nylon has been the material of choice for rosin press bags since the beginning of squishing solventless concentrates (remember the days of pressing cannabis flowers with a hair straightener?). Nylon that’s food-grade, boil-resistant, and tough enough to withstand the extreme pressure of solventless extraction has always been welcome in reputable labs, and for good reason. Rosin filter bags like those from The Press Club have helped some of the best extractors in the world
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The Lost Art of the Hashishin: Pressing, Curing, and Aging
From Afghanistan to Morocco, you will commonly find local hashish smokers actively pressing resin glands before smoking. The various pressing techniques applied around the world are all focused on enhancing as much as preserving potency, original aromas, original aromas and flavors. Hashish quality has been defined by its smell and tastes since the dawn of time and science is discovering today, the importance of terpenes, the medical value of terpenes, and aromatherapy is well documented. But the terpenes of the cannabis plants were not scientifically studied until it was found that terpene profiles
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All Mesh vs Canvas Bubble Bags: The Pros and Cons
Bubble bags are specialized filtration bags that hash makers use in the ice water extraction process for collecting loose resin from cannabis material. The process involves mixing together cannabis flowers and trichome-coated trim leaves with ice-cold water, then running this mixture through a series of bubble bags to catch the trichome heads and leave everything else behind. These trichome heads, also called loose resin, form the basis of solventless concentrates like bubble hash, temple balls, and rosin.
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Advanced Dry Static Sifting 101
Rosin, bubble hash, and dry sift comprise the trifecta of solventless cannabis concentrates. Like its counterparts, dry sift delivers the unadulterated expression of what cannabis is all about: that sweet sweet resin. Packed inside the bulbous heads of sugar-like trichomes, this oily resin contains high concentrations of cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids, compounds which are responsible for the therapeutic value that people seek from cannabis. Dry sift is essentially just a concentration of the trichome heads, isolated and collected without the use of any solvents.
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How To Process Hash Rosin Using The Centrifuge Technique
A centrifuge is a device that spins around an axis at high speeds in order to apply constant force on an object. This force, known as centrifugal force, is directed radially away from the axis of rotation, meaning that it moves outward from the center. Centrifuges, which are specialty pieces of equipment commonly used in scientific labs, work by spinning an object at high speeds within a container, causing fluids of different densities to separate out from the object. Less dense components are displaced and move to the center, while more dense components are spun to the outside
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How To Make Cold Cured Hash
Thanks to Marcos Dosal for this week's article on how to make cold cure hash. Marcos' years of experience with solventless extracts shines through in this tutorial, and we're grateful for his willingness to share with The Press Club community. Enjoy!
Material Requirements:Loose Resin - Choose resin that is relatively free of contaminants for best results. You do not need ‘full melt’ for this process to work, but the cleaner your input is, the better the end result will be. Greasier resin is more forgiving.
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Flavorants and the Science of Terpenes in Cannabis
As our understanding of the cannabis plant has evolved, new science around terpenes is emerging. And with it, a new category of beneficial compounds comes to light.
Terpenes are naturally occurring compounds found in a variety of plants, particularly conifers. But they’re also key components of the cannabis experience, major contributors to the alluring aroma of cannabis flowers. Solventless extractors go to great lengths to preserve terpenes throughout the entire extraction process, showcasing the full glory of the resin for the consumer.
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How To Properly Use A Freeze Dryer For Hash 101
Freeze drying, also known as lyophilization, is a low temperature dehydration process that involves freezing the loose resin and lowering pressure, removing the ice by sublimation. Sublimation is better than regular dehydration or air drying, because it does a better job of preserving terpenes and reducing oxidation.
While it’s possible to make excellent hash with the air drying method, freeze dryers offer indisputable advantages for extractors processing loose resin at scale.
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How To Run A Profitable Solventless Lab Guide 101
The end of a calendar year marks an opportune time to review the previous year’s financials and plan the year ahead. As we approach the end of 2023, now is your chance to assess your lab’s profitability and put some strategies in place to make 2024 your most profitable year yet. It’s not just about creating the highest-quality products, although that’s always a worthy goal. How you structure your operation, the best practices you put in place, and the little things your team does (or doesn’t do) day in and day out ultimately determine the viability of your business.
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How To Tell if Your Cannabis Seeds Are Good or Bad
Breeders work hard to create optimal cannabis cultivars for growers and solventless extractors. The true value of their work is contained within the seeds, which carry the healing powers of the cannabis plant. Farmers and extraction artists bring it forth. Starting with high quality seeds is a vital first step.
When we talk about the importance of using good seeds, we’re addressing the physical condition of the seeds, not the genetics they hold. Fortunately, visual inspection can give us clues as to the viability of cannabis seeds
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Top 5 Key Considerations on How To Choose A Solventless System
Building out a quality ice water extraction system represents a significant capital expense. When it comes to investments, few things in your operation will deliver the returns that a hash washing set up is capable of delivering. But getting it right requires some key considerations.
The process of collecting loose resin has gone through several iterations over the decades. And the equipment that hash makers use to build out their labs have kept up. In fact, sometimes the equipment itself drives the innovations in hash making.
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Cannabis Flower 101: How To Tell Good Flower From Bad Flower For Washing
Not all high quality cannabis flowers produce exceptional bubble hash. Even with the best equipment, process, and a knowledgeable artist’s touch, cannabis that may deliver a superior smoke can still lead to disappointment in the hash maker’s lab. Sourcing material that has qualities specifically suited to ice water extraction is essential to finishing with loose resin that’s worth the while. Otherwise, good flower goes to waste while money and time slip down the drain.
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Post Harvest 101: How To Prepare Your Farm For Your Next Grow
Preparation is the key to success. Every aspect of running a thriving cannabis operation, from procuring supplies to managing a team, building an extraction lab, or ramping up for harvest season benefits from careful planning and proper preparation. With the time for harvest quickly approaching outdoor grows, this is a great time to review how growers can prepare the farm for the next growing season, even before this year's crop is chopped.
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How To Rinse & Clean Your Indoor & Outdoor Grow Buds For Contaminants Before Hash Washing
Over the course of a grow cycle, whether indoors or outdoors, tiny pieces of debris make their way onto the sticky trichomes of your cannabis flowers. It seems like no matter how hard you try to keep a clean environment, resin grabs and holds contaminants like flies to honey. While it’s much easier to control an indoor environment than the outdoors, some unwanted particles of various compositions undoubtedly dirty your precious resin in any type of grow.
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How Does A Closed Loop Recirculation System Work?
As the name suggests, a closed loop recirculation system is a configuration that lets hash makers recirculate and thereby reuse water during the Ice Water Extraction process of collecting loose resin, or bubble hash. The traditional approach to Ice Water Extraction does not involve recirculating water through the system, rather extractors dispose of the drainage water after it’s mixed with starting material and passes through the sieving bags.
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Hash Contaminants & How To Keep Trichomes Clean
Sometimes, contamination in the form of bugs, dust, sand, and even pesticides can get caught in the sieving bags along with the resin. And contamination in the bags can easily lead to contamination in the final product. Therefore, the goal is to minimize all contaminants on the starting material as much as possible before starting the Ice Water Extraction process.
While there will always be some level of contamination, even if it’s extremely limited, there are things that hash makers can do to keep trichomes clean during the growth, harvesting, and preparation phases leading up to extraction.
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What is Toll Processing & Split Processing in Solventless & What's Right For Me?
Partnerships and collaborations are powerful in any industry, but they’re especially meaningful in solventless cannabis extraction. A strategic partnership enables cannabis businesses to create unique synergy and deliver more value to the market than either party could offer independently.
As collaborators find creative ways to combine their complementary expertise, new opportunities emerge for both businesses.
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