Press Rosin Like a Pro

Recently we sat down with Eric Vlosky, Director of Marketing at PurePressure, the leading solventless rosin press experts in the industry, to get answers to some of the most frequently asked questions we hear from our clients. Additionally, we took some live questions and went on some interesting tangents. 

The below question and answer is a transcript version of our GreenBrozLIVE interview that took place on our Instagram live, which records new episodes every Wednesday. If you’re ready to learn all the tricks and tips on how to incorporate rosin pressing into your business, or just want to perfect your concentrate craft, give this a read and you'll be on your way to becoming an expert!

Q:     How much do you know about rosin?

Eric Vlosky:     I've pressed a lot more rosin than people expect. And overall, the trade shows we've been doing for almost the last four or five years, we used to press a lot at the shows. People would be surprised to hear that I've probably personally pressed what amounts to pounds and pounds of rosin. So I have a lot of personal experience in labs and processing operations. I've seen it all for sure.

Q:     So what’s PurePressure's up to these days?

Eric Vlosky:     For anyone who doesn't know us, PurePressure is a solvent-less equipment manufacturer here in the United States. We’re proud to make our gear in the States, just like GreenBroz, which is absolutely awesome. And we're really focused on making everything that anyone needs to make solvent-less concentrates: so, rosin, ice water hash, working with GreenBroz for sift, and all the accessories that come along with that.

We've been around since 2014. We got really official in 2015, and now we're largely seen as the technology leader in the industry. Many of the very best concentrates made in the entire world are made on our equipment - literally from Australia to Spain, and obviously North America where we do most of our business. We have a pretty large footprint, and we've been up to a lot of really cool stuff lately and getting new products out the door.
As you know, the cannabis industry's evolving super quickly. So we're always talking about new products both for end-users at home as well as business operations big and small. We're trying to cover a pretty large product development suite.

Q:     And GreenBroz has been working as partners with PurePressure for a while. One of the things people don't know about GreenBroz is if we can't figure out how to do something or we know someone's already doing it better, we try to partner with them to bring those solutions to our clients. Because we want to make sure that they're using the best. You can go to greenbroz.com and find the Longs Peak and Pikes Peak Rosin Presses online. But, that's just the tip of the iceberg of what these guys do.

In fact, you PurePressure just released a home-use unit, correct?

Eric Vlosky:     Yeah, absolutely. Actually, Tim (from GreenBroz) and I did a video the year before where we pressed some CBD rosin on the Helix rosin press. Pressing rosin at home is literally the everyman's way to make a concentrate. You're not blasting anything with butane. It's by far the safest way.

We have been thinking for a long time about what would be involved to create a home unit that would be at a lower price point than what our Helix units start at, which is about $2,995 right now. Depending on your perspective that’s either not very much for what you get with it, or out of your price range - because people might be looking for more something in the sub-thousand-dollar range. So it really depends on what bucket you might fall into and what your budget is.

Unfortunately, what we discovered is that it just wasn't possible to keep our quality standards and keep manufacturing that kind of product here in the States. So it is something that we're still thinking about, it's something that we've been investigating, but we haven't really found a way to come up with a truly premium quality home rosin press that's going to get the kind of results that our other presses do, without going overseas and without cutting some corners.

With that being said, the Helix is the most precise rosin press for variable control in the whole world. It's even more precise than some of our commercial units. And it just depends if it's the kind of product that you're willing to make an investment in. Because they're designed to last long and press more rosin than you'll ever need to.

With that being said, if the Helix isn't something that's in your price range, we're pro solvent-less no matter what product you use, even if you're using a hair straightener and squishing some nuggets at home. Whatever rosin press you use, whether it's ours or someone else, we're here to support you because we think that we're all on the same team, and we offer all kinds of products as well. All the accessories, you can get those through GreenBroz. I mean there's all kinds of opportunities for home users.

Q:     How are your clients further processing rosin into vape cartridges? Is that a thing? Can you explain that?

Eric Vlosky:     This is a question that we get a ton, and unfortunately I do not have the authority to give you the secret sauce on exactly how that process really happens down to the nuts and bolts. What I can tell you is how pretty much every business out there that is coming out with a true solvent-less cartridge, and I mean one that's not cut with distillate or cut with other non-single-source solvent-less derived terpenes, is doing it through a mechanical separation process that's very well-known.

It’s taking ice water hash or very premium sift and then cutting that by pressing it in a variety of different ways to separate off the terpenes, so you can literally take the terpenes and straight separate them on a rosin press, if your material's high quality enough and you have enough of it, then pressing out your THCA, and then there is a recombination process. So, there is some post-processing involved, but this is becoming pretty much the number one most luxury, accessible cannabis product in the world right now.

But these labs are spending an enormous amount of money and time doing research and development to get those mechanical separations and then recombining them properly to make these solvent-less cartridges. There's a ton of businesses out there that are doing it. I think a lot of people are ... Dablogic is really the first business to have come out with the solvent-less cart, and now you've got companies all over the place doing it, from Blue River Terps to Camp down in Nevada. There are a number of businesses that are doing this. But it does require some research and development. You've got to be willing to throw down some hash or some sift to get your process right. But that's the future of luxury cannabis products right there, for sure.

Q:     And now let's get to chlorine as a solvent. I know obviously PurePressure's all about solvent-less extraction. Can you explain what other options are out there in terms of solvents, and then maybe why solvent-less is the way to go over those?

Eric Vlosky:     There are a variety of different solvents that can be used. And I think one important distinction for anyone, like what makes a solvent-less product versus a solvent-derived one is that, when you're using a solvent, whether it's butane, hexane, CO2, alcohol, it doesn't matter what it is - it’s actually what it's doing that is a big difference, it's taking your trichome head and it's dissolving it into the resin, and everything else that's coming along with it. So it's actually a process of dissolution. Whereas with a solvent-less process what you're getting is an isolation. So you're taking the trichome head, you're separating it from the stalk, but then you're trying to preserve that into your sift or your ice water hash or whatever you're doing, to either be pressed or sold as a standalone product.

We see that there's always going to be a place in the market for all kinds of different products, either solvent-based or solvent-less, obviously with solvent-less being the highest quality opportunity because you know that a solvent has never touched it in the first place and that it didn't need to have any remediation. If you've got a product that needs to have some stuff blasted out of it, you simply do not have to do that with solvent-less.

For chlorine specifically, I have actually never heard of anybody using chlorine as a solvent to perform the extraction. And I feel like I'm pretty tapped in, but I think given its association as a general pool cleaner, I wouldn't be surprised if some people were experimenting with it. Because solvent-based extraction like butane comes from the perfume industry and agriculture, so cannabis is working to adopt these kinds of extraction methods.

Q:     For those just starting out and looking into the future, what sort of solvent-less rosin press would you recommend? Where would be a good place to start out for a non-home grow, but maybe a medium-sized or small-sized grow?

Eric Vlosky:      Yeah, I would absolutely recommend getting in touch with GreenBroz about picking up one of our commercial units. Because we have two different lines of our rosin presses. One is called our Artisan Series, which are our smaller hand-twists. That's the Helix and Helix Pro. Those are really meant for home growers and labs that are doing smaller throughput but still are in-demand for new products. Whereas with our commercial series, the Pikes Peak V2 and the Longs Peak, those are going to be your higher output, commercial-driven systems that are going to help. Really, they're positioned towards businesses so that they can really crank through a lot of material day in and day out. They're meant to be total workhorses that you can run all day every day.

Q:     What separates your presses from other presses? What do you need to create a great product? Other than the product you're putting in, what parts of the machine are factoring into this? You guys approach it from a really unique space and a unique design, and I know that you've done so much R&D into this process. So could you break down what your presses are doing that others in the industry maybe aren’t?

Eric Vlosky:     What we have really focused on throughout the entire evolution of our rosin presses and our products is variable control with our equipment. Because as a producer, whether you're making products to be sold in a store or you're making things that you want for yourself at home, being able to control your temperature, your pressure, the time, setting recipes that can then be repeated, are critical elements. And what our equipment does better than any other rosin presses out there is give you scientific-level variable control over your process so that you can dial in your rosin press and your solvent-less extraction in a way that no other rosin presses are really capable of.

We are pretty much the first company to have come up with a rosin-specific press very early on. Now I'm not going to stand here and say that we were literally the first, but we were among the very first companies to be doing that. And since then, we've taken a very customer-centric approach, which is what has allowed us to continue to evolve our rosin presses and are equipment, that we are constantly listening to our customers to make improvements to our gear.

Really, what you need to create a great product, outside of having that immense amount of variable control, is really understanding how to do it consistently. Because consumers are always looking for a consistent experience with whatever they buy, which is like if you buy a latte from Starbucks on the West Coast you're pretty much going to get the same thing if you buy it in New York, so customers who are buying your rosin are going to be looking for the same thing.

And some of the other things about us that are a little different is that we are really focused. We make all of our equipment here in the States. We source the vast majority of the components for our equipment here in the States. We have a stellar engineering team that is focused on the highest quality components possible. We really have a lot of talent and brainpower on our team to continue evolving. We haven't just put out a single press, like many of our competitors have and have just ridden that for a long time. We're always making changes.

Most importantly of all, whenever we make changes and make improvements, it's always backward compatible. So the press that someone bought from us at the very beginning is a fair bit different than the press that you would buy from us today, but even our first batch of customers from 2015 have still made purchases with us to upgrade their presses to the fully automatic versions with the digital touch screen display, with recipes. So we don't take the Apple model with our presses, which is where every year it's something new and you've got to pony up and buy the next greatest thing. We're super, super focused on making sure that our presses will last for literally the long term, and making sure that any improvements that we make to those presses are always backward compatible so that people can upgrade to the latest and greatest without having to buy a new machine.

Q:     Can you explain the automated regulator and how that works?

Eric Vlosky:     One of the coolest things that we've done over the last couple of years is come out with the automated version of our commercial rosin presses: the Pikes Peak and the Longs Peak. People are still starting to really realize how powerful this technology is. But the automated regulator takes the control of your pressure from a manual process. And a lot of people who are familiar with having a hydraulic press at home or even using our dual pressure version, there's a manual adjustment component to changing your pressure. And as people who are pressing sift, pressing hash, even flower, know, pressure control is really everything so you're not getting a blowout—you’re getting a full extraction and you're making that premium product that rosin is capable of. The automated pressure takes all of the pressure control and makes it a completely digital process so that you can actually architect your pressure graph for how you're increasing your pressure completely digitally. And then again you can recreate those results perfectly every single time because it's always being digitally controlled.

If you're pressing some really premium Sour Diesel sift that you just made in your Alchemist 215 or something, you can set up exactly how you want that press to go, down to the bag size. I mean it's the size of the bag, it's the temperature, it's the time. And then the pressure control, you can bake all of that into a repeatable recipe, and then literally all you have to do is press one single button, and you put the bag in and the press will do everything.

Again, people that are familiar with rosin pressing will know that it can be a pretty manual process with some of the other units. But with the automated ones, it comes with a bunch of recipes to get you started, and all you need is a 115 power connection, standard voltage, an air compressor, and it's pretty much one touch and you go. So we've got some cool videos on our YouTube channel.  And one of those videos is called “World's First Automated Rosin Presser,” and you can see us pressing what amounts to literally thousands and thousands of dollars of hash in a bag with one touch, and just walking away. And we've got customers who are doing more than that.

We have a customer here in the States who, unfortunately, I cannot name them, but you could probably go figure it out who it is - will press upwards of $10,000 worth of hash in a single bag, and do it away from the press. They have their recipe set up so well that they'll just start that press, walk away and go do other things. The auto systems are really next level.

Q: What would you say to someone who’s picking up a Helix so they can press rosin at home?

Eric Vlosky:     Hit up GreenBroz, I'm sure they'd be happy to help you. If you have any questions, we’re also here. We're super focused on end-user support. And we also have real solvent-less experts on our team. Our customer service liaison, her name is Jessica, she made award-winning hash at the Prepper Extracts in Denver before coming and working with us. So the people on our team are not just randos. We have a lot of talent on our team and we're all solvent-less experts and we're here to help anyone with any questions they got.

Q:     Does the temperature determine the color of the rosin, or is it the product you're putting in, you know, the flower or the extract?

Eric Vlosky:     Yeah, that is a question that we get all the time. And there's no real easy answer. What the color comes down to is a combination of a couple things. First and foremost it comes down to how mature your trichomes were when you harvested your plant. As people know, your trichomes will go from clear to opaque to a dark amber as the plant continues to flower and mature. So if you pull your plants a little early and your trichomes in your resin have those clearer trichome heads, that’s going to give you more clarity in your product. Whereas if you pull at a later stage, like a really long-flowering sativa plant goes into that 9, 10, 11, 12-week range, and you've got more of your darker trichomes, they become more amber; that’s naturally going to give you darker products. So that's one component of it.

Another component of it is how fresh your material is, because your resin and your trichomes are going to oxidize over time. So if it's not stored properly or if it's been sitting around for a long time, weeks or months before you press it, that's going to darken your material.

And then of course, just like you asked here, the third and final component to the clarity of your material when it comes out the other end is your temperature. Typically, higher temperatures do tend to create a darker rosin. But, what we have definitely found over time is that there is really no one temperature or even a range, other than a pretty large band, that is going to give you the best color possible. Because I’ve pressed flower rosin at 220 degrees Fahrenheit, which a lot of people would consider very warm or even hot to be pressing at, and it's come out golden and light and beautiful. I've also pressed hash at 120 degrees and it took 10 minutes and it came out almost white. So there's a big range here.

Hopefully that answers your question. There's a lot of factors. It really just comes down to experimenting with the material. But if there's anything that I could suggest for anyone tuned in right now to get the best color of rosin possible, it's that you need to press it early, as soon as you possibly can, so that it's fresh. Try and figure out what the lowest temperature you can get away with to get the full yield that you're looking for. Because if you press it early at a low temperature you might get a lower yield than you're expecting, so you've got to experiment with that. Then finally, if you have access to it, try doing fresh-frozen in a hash water process, or doing your trim, your sift, and doing that quickly...You don't want your trim to sit around in your closet for two months before you go around and throw it in your Alchemist. It needs to be as soon as it is dried, and maybe slightly cured. So, fresher is better. You've just got to experiment.

Q:     A lot of people don't understand this, but you can actually create more products for your business. For instance, if you use a dry trimmer or you hand trim and you take that trim material and then you, instead of throwing it away or just throwing it into some other process, you throw it into the Alchemist 215 or the Alchemist 420 and you sift out the keif from that. Then you can press rosin with that keif and you've created a new product that is going to be a high-quality product you can take to market, rather than something that some people just dump trim, throw it away, blast it, whatever, you're creating a higher-value product. So that's one of the reasons we've partnered with PurePressure, is just the ability to take these machines, combine them and create more products for your business.

Eric Vlosky:     Yeah, well before we get into our next question, something that I'd like to touch on around the whole point that you just made is that a lot of growers out there and people that are processing are doing exactly what you just described. They're taking their trim and they're either sending it to someone else to process—typically a butane or CO2 extraction, sometimes ethanol. And typically they either, you know, got to pay a fee to have that processing done or give a cut of your crop away. People have all kinds of arrangements set up, different percentages of what you get, what they get. But what a lot of people are missing here is that solvent-less presents a unique opportunity; businesses can take their trim and make a solvent-less oil that they might not put in a gram on the shelf, but that they can put into topicals, edibles, all kinds of these different food-grade quality rosins that are making some of the best products in those categories, period. These are selling way more than anyone realizes.

So you can really take your trim and, with minimal investment compared to other extraction technologies, make a food-grade quality oil—even if your trim is not producing golden blond sift. You can make a really premium product out the other end. We're seeing that solvent-less topicals and solvent-less edibles tend to retail from anywhere from 20-30% more than their solvent-based competitors. And, it's a really easy way to add some products to your lineup. Just something that's cheap and easy to do—there’s not a big learning curve. It's a very simple system. And we're starting to see more people take advantage of that now.

Q:     If you go the solvent route, do you have to get special licensing or permitting? Because now you're bringing in butane to your facility. I'm assuming that the machines to operate these things are a lot more expensive than the rosin presses you're doing. And it seems like there's probably more safety and more paperwork that needs to be involved, right?

Eric Vlosky:     We always try and be as open and transparent as possible. And when it comes to doing butane especially or just light hydrocarbon in general types of extraction, really any high-pressure solvent, those are being done safely in commercial facilities. But, it does come with an enormous amount of cost, compliance and regulations that you have to follow. So that is an extremely expensive route to take, especially if you're an upstart business that doesn't have a lot of capital to throw down. You're looking at having what's called a C1D1 room, which literally means that it's explosion-proof. And those do not come cheap. Those are difficult and expensive to install in a facility.

So with solvent-less, sift, rosin, and all of those in between, not only are they easier to perform and easier to learn, but they don't come along with a lot of those regulatory hurdles for a business that the solvent-based extraction does. So what we're seeing is that a lot of the newer operations that are trying to get off the ground, that are not the mega-well-funded companies of the world, are really tending to go towards solvent-less because it's so much less expensive to get started. And on top of that, they can come out with a premium product right out the gate. So we feel that there's a place for all the different extraction methods in the market.

But if there's one thing that I can stress is that you do not have a premium extraction brand if you do not have a solvent-less product, period. You might do the bulk of your sales doing light hydrocarbon or CO2 or some of these other methods. But, if you're not sifting your trim into rosin, if you're not making ice water hash, if you're not doing something to make a solvent-less product, you do not have a premium extraction brand. Because that is what the influencers, that is what the true tastemakers in cannabis are looking for in just about anything, whether it's their edibles, whether it's their vape cartridge, dabs, full-melt hash, or premium sift; they’re looking for solvent-less products. Those are the people that are going to rep your brand. Really, solvent-less is the big brand-builder here. So, a little bit of a tangent there but hopefully that's some good info for everyone tuned in.

Q:     Aside from using good tech and quality material, what are the main factors that determine hash rosin clarity? So if you're going for clarity, is it genetics, time of the harvest, or overall plant health?

Eric Vlosky:     All of those things. Every couple of months we're learning more about how the best hash rosins are being made by the premier hash makers across the world. We learn that your genetic selection has so, so, so much to do with what's going on. Not only just from a yield perspective, but how rich your terpene profile is, how large your yield is, but also what kind of pull-down date that you can do. Earlier, we were talking about pulling plants down and how your trichrome color changes as the plant matures the flowers. That makes a big difference.

But one thing that's important to know here is that you can have a really, really premium hash rosin product or sift rosin product that isn't white beach sand. The color can have an effect and often does psychologically for people when they're going to make a purchase. We have a lot of customers in our labs and our groves that pull their plants early and they press it super low temperatures because they understand that bag appeal can make the difference between a sale or not.

But for a lot of the real connoisseurs and experts out there, color can have a little bit less of a factor than you might imagine. Especially because sometimes you really need your plant to get to that full maturation period, and your trichomes might be a little darker than completely clear when you actually pull it down and finish up your hash and press your rosin.

But short summary to your question is: great genetics, making sure that you're not pulling your plants too late, washing in very cold temperatures to preserve the clarity of your hash all the way through, and then pressing as low of a temperature as you can get away with. As long as you're following those guidelines and doing your experimentation you're going to come out with some pretty Instagram-worthy hash, I'm sure.

Q:     What do you know about curing rosin or jar tech, and does rosin cure after pressing if it was fresh frozen?

Eric Vlosky:     Yeah, great question. I think first we need to touch a little bit on what curing actually means. Because the word cure in the cannabis nomenclature and space typically means when you're curing dried flower material. And what's happening is that there's a very complex biological process where different terpenes are changing and chlorophyll is being broken down. Growers know what happens during the curing process makes or breaks what your final process is.

Now when you're curing rosin it's a little bit different. Because what you're seeing is chemical changes, but not quite on such a dramatic level. When you're curing rosin there's a bunch of different ways that it can be done, and this all falls into the bucket of post-processing with rosin, and whether you're doing sift rosin or hash, those are typically the two things that need to be cured. But some hash makers swear by a cold cure. Some to get a jar tech method typically are going to warm up their hash rosin for a little while, anywhere from a week to longer. And what we tend to see is a separation of the terpenes naturally occurs, so that some of the terpenes tend to sweat out. And you can almost get a layer on top where it almost looks like oil on water where you've got your terpenes that have naturally separated and then your hash down below.

Now if you want to see some really, really interesting results on this, I'd recommend everyone go follow @rosin.ryan on Instagram. He had some test results come back from some jar tech experiments that he did, where his total terpene content rose pretty dramatically after doing a warm post-process cure. Now, we've got customers who do the cold cure where they put it in the fridge in an airtight container and whip to introduce some air to it. It's really a preference thing. I don't think that there's one right way to do it, again, whether you're using a great sift rosin or a hash rosin. But the traditional jar tech method is being done with heat, very gentle heat in a jar over a week or two's time, depending on what you're going for.

Q:     Are solvent-less extracts the most terpene-rich extractions you've encountered?

Eric Vlosky:     We really have to look at the test results. And the test results for solvent-less tend to be pretty comparable with hydrocarbon. I can't get up here and say that every single time solvent-less is going to yield a more terpene-rich product because we have to use the data that's available to us, and when we do, we see that sometimes a live rosin product contains more terpenes that a comparable solvents product, or the other way around.

What I definitely know for sure is that, for medicinal patients, the anecdotal evidence is pretty overwhelming that solvent-less products tend to yield better feelings and better outcomes. And what a lot of people are realizing now after seeing test results is that the potency of solvent-less concentrates is equivalent to, or can be equivalent to, hydrocarbon and other methods, as are the terpene results which can often be higher too—just because if you've got a great-quality plant, you've got a lot of resin, you're not going to be losing a bunch of terpenes doing a solvent-less extraction process. They are very equivalent. But because it's done on a case-by-case and a batch-by-batch basis, there's no peer-reviewed study that's compared a thousand samples of solvent-less hash rosin to a thousand samples of live resin and seen if there is a major difference in the terpene results yet. But hopefully, someday some universities will start picking up this kind of work and give us some more data.

Q:     Do you have to cure rosin to get the taste?

Eric Vlosky:     No, definitely not. That's one of the biggest advantages of making rosin, whether it's for yourself or it's in business, is that you can choose to post-process and cure it if you're looking for some of the more exotic products out there—sauce, diamond, cartridges and all these different kinds of textures. But one of the greatest advantages of solvent-less is that as soon as you press it, it's ready to go. And you've got a terrific product right off the press. There's really not much more you'd need to do to it at all to enjoy it, unless again you're trying to go for one of these super high-end luxury SKUs.

Q:    You guys introduced a new product this year or last year called the Bruteless. And you've gotten into ice water hash. Can you explain that? Most people know you for the rosin presses themselves, but you've ventured out into other avenues. So what does that product do?

Eric Vlosky:     Yeah, so we've gotten a lot of demand from people saying, "Man, your guys' equipment is really the best. Can you start getting into ice water hash, too?" Because it's a form of extraction that goes back some of the furthest in time. And a lot of old heads are familiar with Moroccan hash, old school bubble hash from the 90s and 80s. So the Bruteless series are stainless steel, sanitary-welded, really food-grade-focused ice water hash washing vessel equipment. So that's the realm that we've been pushing a lot of our research and development in; we’ve really nailed what a rosin press needs to be, and we're always making improvements there, but now we're also trying to bring a lot of innovation to the ice water hash industry.

But just as a quick aside, sift is not something that we have taken on, which is why we partner with GreenBroz to use their sifters and work with other companies that want to make a sift product. So we're focused on developing ice water hash washing solutions, but that's also why we work with GreenBroz, to offer a full suite of solutions. Because you can make hash rosin, you can make sift rosin, or you can make flower rosin and a bunch of stuff in between. So really trying to bring the best quality products and innovation into the ice water hash washing space. And just so you know, GreenBroz sales reps also sell the Bruteless equipment too, so if you've got any questions and you want to really dig in and see what we've got there, we work with GreenBroz very closely, and they also retail all of that stuff too. We've got a lot of cool videos on our YouTube channel. I encourage everyone to check it out. GoPurePressure on YouTube. A ton of good details on why our ice water hash washing here really stands above the rest.

Q:     Is ice water hash different from bubble hash?

Eric Vlosky:     Nope, they are the same thing. And because the USDA or the FDA has not outlined exactly what things need to be called in the cannabis industry, most people are going to be familiar with bubble hash as a term because of Marc Bubbleman. He's the guy that really was the face of making bubble hash a while ago and has continued to be a very innovative and forward-looking influencer in the cannabis industry. And we work very closely with Bubbleman himself. I would absolutely consider him a friend. We dabbed together up in Canada where he resides.

So, bubble hash, ice water hash, same thing. The reason you're going to hear people call it ice water hash or ice oil or some of these other terms instead of bubble hash sometimes, is because people are trying to take bubble hash and make it their own thing. Because bubble hash comes from Bubbleman, so there's a bit of a brand association there that some companies are trying to have a more neutral term. But for our purposes, same product, same process.

Q:     Are there any tips to get a higher percentage yield when doing that process?

Eric Vlosky:     Yeah, absolutely. Couple quick tips to get a good yield with bubble hash is, before you commit to a full wash of a bunch of material, put it under a microscope. Put some in a jar and shake it up and see what kind of trichomes you're getting settling at the bottom of your jar. Because not all strains are going to wash the same. It's like if you've got an orange that doesn't have a lot of juice in it and you go squeeze it, you're not going to get a lot of orange juice. The same goes for a lot of solvent-less extraction—and specifically ice water hash. You need a very resinous plant to be able to get a good yield, like some of the very wispy sativas, some CBD strains that have very tiny trichomes, they don't tend to yield as well.

Also, a super, super ice-cold environment and very cold water and lots of ice make a big difference for your trichome isolation. Use RO water only; do not use distilled water because distilled water can actually concentrate the number and the number of pesticides that could be present in your water. It's like if you're trying to make the world's best pizza you got to have the best flour, you've got to have the best water. Same when you're making ice water hash, you have to have great water. It needs to be very cold. And you need to have a good product going in.

Just one last thing I'll put on this, where a lot of people get confused with the yields with ice water hash is that typically what you want to do is: do your primo grade stuff, and then do whatever you're going to do with it, whether it's a full melt or press it into your top-shelf hash rosin. But then you've got all these other grades of your hash that can be turned into a food-grade product. You can press it multiple times. A lot of people get confused because they will only filter off their top-shelf trichomes, and they say, "Oh man, my yield sucks." But it's because they're not correctly using the rest of their trichomes to make topicals, to make edibles, to make a second press...You've really got to use all parts of the buffalo when it comes to solvent-less extraction, whether you're doing sift or hash.