Dakota Mendez

In this area we use a ETS MeP extraction machine extracting only fresh frozen cannabis with butane at -60 C with 3 extraction column’s. Having 3 columns is useful because you can hotswap your socks keeping your extraction process fluid, once one sock is done you start the next bleed off the last and can safely change socks. On the expansion side you can control how much air flow can get to the pump. The pump helps rapidly cool the excess butane back into a liquid back into the main supply keeping it a closed loop system. Once your run is done you can fine tune the solvent to oil ratio to get a nice soft budder, sugar, crumble, or shatter but I won’t give out all the secrets there. From this point you just use the vacuum ovens to help drive off the residual butane without burning off terpenes. So far this is my favorite process.

There’s alot I can say about this one. It’s in the process of becoming my baby as far as progress goes with it. But we’re developing a solid SOP to go by given it’s still new. I would say when done right ethyl quick wash can give you something that has a more broad spectrum of the entourage effects than other solvents. But to achieve such a goal you have to have a person that can keep track of data, and avoid over-washing. Of course a vacuum oven for the further processing. If you don’t wash properly you can easily have a return that’s filled with chlorophyll from the plant. However if your goal is to shoot for distillate fast which would remove that chlorophyll you would need a lot of alcohol. You can wash faster than you can return. Just seems to be the nature of the beast. I got hands on training with the man who designed these machines and I got to hand it to him he was a great hand at giving us variables, it’s just left to us to find our perimeters that fit our needs. He’s designed a product that can streamline a beautiful return and as far as simplistic goes it’s got to be one of the simpler methods I would say as easy as washing clothes you just really need to be competent and passionate for the process. Like I said the goal is fast, with dry product your wash time needs to be in the 7 minute range to avoid over washing at -25. So when you get down to the set point of -35 you given yourself more like 10 minutes. colder climate increases your time for washing. You’ll do 3 or 4 cycles depending on preference. Personally I’ve been washing at -44 for the first run because the initial first transfer you lose some temperature, after that I keep shooting for -42. If you have fresh frozen though, you have more time from the start because it’s already cold. -35 is more than enough time for that. But you only want one cycle.

When I first got to this side of the job my mind was absolutely blown! There is so much involved and you need to be very mindful of the equipment. Using CO2 as a solvent is considered to be a lot safer than other traditional methods. It’s also cheaper and recyclable. Using a closed loop system saves alot of it so you can keep using it for as long as you can. CO2 also kills any microbial bacteria, mold, or mildew that could be in the cannabis. The run time is alittle longer than other methods and it pulls fats from the plant using this method which is then filtered out, but could honestly be harvest and made into salves or balms. We pull terpenes first using subcritical extraction, essentially a lower cooler temperature and lower pressure. Then we derive all the oil after we decarb the material just ran using what’s called supercritical extraction. Higher pressure, higher temperature creating a supercritical fluid that strips the oils from the plant. Supercritical CO2 is a fluid state of carbon dioxide where it is held at or above its critical temperature and critical pressure. Carbon dioxide usually behaves as a gas in air at standard temperature and pressure, or as a solid called dry ice when cooled but when it’s past its critical point it adopts properties between them. CO2 leaves virtually no waste. After everything is harvested we mix it with ethanol to separate the fats from the oil and it gets filtered 3 times, the last time we use a 1 micron stainless steel screen. We isolate the Ethanol which can also be reused and then your final product can be distilled for vape carts, edibles, or FSHO. We’ve got two machines the little one with two 10L vessels holding up to almost 9 pounds of product. Then we’ve got the big machine with two 50L vessels holding up to 44 pounds.

Making cannabis distillate is pretty straight forward if you have a basic understanding of the chemistry that makes up a concentrate and what a VTA can achieve. In short you’re using a deep vacuum, heat, and subzero cold temperatures to isolate specific compounds within your crude oil. We use a thin film wipe, within the main “action zone” you have a wiper that spreads a thin layer of oil across a very hot column, within this column you also have a very cold condenser coil as well. The clash of the two is really what does your main work. First pass you’ll isolate your terpenes. Subsequently, depending on your material and how it was prepared and extracted also your vacuum’s health. You may or may not have to do 2 passes on this side. Personally I think one and done does the trick too many passes over heat you’ll start introducing your oil into degraded cannabinoids from the heat it’ll show in your labs. CBN is a product of degradation both naturally (possible starting material) or too much time with too much heat. I’ll also note CBN isn’t really a bad thing but it does come with a sedative feeling. It’s a good sleep aid. Paired with some nice indica terpenes you’ll be couch locked. You’ll do another pass with different heat and different chilling temperatures to separate the main body you’re after. THC I would call this the second pass but this will give you your distillate. From here you could do a third pass for purity over 90+ .From what I gather with this machine and the trainer we had along with the opinion of the actual in house chemist we have you can’t really isolate much of the paired cannabinoids with it. The temps to boil them off separately just overlap too much. However what you can make is an incredible product you can uniquely tailor to your needs.

Got hands on experience cooking gummies for a commercial level with natural ingredients, along with the ability to run the machinery. Cooking with the girls is such a blast and very very precise work is needed. They are incredible! You’ve got to make sure all the ingredients get added in down to the grain or it could easily just go down the drain. Not to mention if you do get all the ingredients down you have to get the brix right which is essentially the viscosity of the gummy. You use a refractometer to measure brix, it uses light that bounces off of your solution and the sugar content creates a bend in the prism. However it’s a very touchy instrument that needs to be calibrated with distilled water at a certain temperature. It’s very temperament. You’ve also got a instrument to check the pH level that also needs to stay calibrated. Using a solution with a pH of 4.0 then a rinse and a solution of 7.0 and 10 if wanted but not really needed. But if you have a solid team like we have the end product is one of the softest gummies I’ve ever had! Firm once cured. But the texture inside is just incredible.

This was my door into the community. It’s honestly one of the most therapeutic places to be and when I get the chance to go back, I always do. Even if it’s just a few hours! The people made it such a home for me. I caught on pretty fast to how things should be but i was also a avid connoisseur of sorts for a good chunk of my life. Some people don’t catch on so easily and it can be overwhelming to see all of it on your tray but I loved walking anyone through it when I could. After some time you pick up on the different bud structures. Some strains may produce dense thick buds, while others genetically produce airy fox-tailed buds that are rich in tricombs. Some have similarities you could almost group together but still see the differences. Not to mention the vast amounts of smells you pick up ranging from citrus, pine, pepper, or something mossy. Before you know it you can smell a room and know what was in it.

Debud was my absolute favorite department, something about it gave me a sense of home just the funny conversations in a circle throwing stems into a bin in the middle reminded me of all the nights I’d spend out camping by a fire laughing with friends and smoking. But it really gifted me with a different sense of light and I’m really good at it. Checking the moisture levels in the plant to see if it’s good to do for the day or give it another day is something you have to pick up along with looking for mold and bud rot, not something we want our customers to have and naturally occurs from time to time but we’ve got a solid team that can spot what’s not suppose to be before it even reaches trim. You also pick up on the bud structure but even more so than you did in trim, because in debud you get to see the entire plant. You get to see if it’s a tall one or if they’re short, some are more clustered and have buds that stay constricted, and then you have some that get just perfect ideal buds. You’ll learn that naturally some of these are just because of there genotypes. Genetically you’ll learn what a strain should look like. But other times you can tell the phenotypes are different. Meaning you can have the same plant but one look drastically different. For instance if you have a strain that gets around another it can start to grow a similar structure and it becomes evident what it might have even been or you can identify them by their smell.