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4 Tips for Profitable Solventless Extraction

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Solventless extraction can be a profitable and attractive option for cannabis processors, especially when they avoid common pitfalls.

For someone looking to launch a new extraction facility, the equipment, setup and buildout are significantly less expensive for solventless than other extraction methods, according to Ben Britton, founder and CEO of PurePressure, a solventless extraction equipment manufacturer. While solvent-based extraction equipment requires special ventilation considerations, for example, this isn’t the case with solventless, so the upfront cost of the facility buildout and equipment is generally lower. 

In addition, solventless products typically sell for a premium and are popular with connoisseurs at dispensaries, Britton says.

“It also opens you up to the ability to make quality product, something that is unadulterated and hasn’t been modified by chemicals,” he says.

Here, Britton outlines his top advice for launching a profitable solventless extraction business, from acquiring high-quality raw material to establishing efficient processes.

1. Control your raw material.

Two common roadblocks for anyone processing cannabis are quality and yield, Britton says.

“At the end of the day, everybody wants the highest-quality product, and they want the most of it so that they can be profitable,” he says.

Solventless extractors use mechanical methods to separate the resin glands from the plant, and Britton says this must be a meticulous process to ensure that no particulates are lost.

Controlling the raw material is one way that processors can ensure that they have a consistent supply of high-quality cannabis that can be easily separated, Britton says.

“Time and time again, we see that the most successful businesses have really great relationships with their grow, or they’re vertically integrated, meaning that they have a grow under their umbrella,” he says. “If you can properly grow cannabis, that means that you’re properly growing good trichome heads, and that’s ultimately what we’re harvesting here. A good grow creates consistent, large, nice, bulbous trichome heads that we can then separate from the plant and collect for processing.”

For those who aren’t cultivating, creating relationships with grow wholesalers to provide great cannabis for solventless is crucial, Britton adds.

2. Start with high-quality material.

While low yield is often a common complaint with solventless extraction, Britton says this can be avoided by using high-quality material with high oil content.

“We want to make sure that we have high-quality material to start with,” he says. “You can’t extract oil that isn’t there to begin with. The maximum yield is only whatever is on that plant when you start the process.”

Yields are typically measured relative to the weight of the raw material, but if a processor knows the oil or resin content, then yields should ideally be measured against those metrics to ensure that most, if not all, of that oil is extracted, Britton says.

“That’s kind of a good way to think about things: let’s see what’s available to extract and start with something that’s as potent as possible.”

3. Handle the raw material and equipment properly.

Solventless extraction often involves fresh frozen material—a live cannabis plant that is frozen within 30 minutes of cutting and stored in a vacuum-sealed container to ensure that it has the highest terpene retention. If fresh frozen resin glands are exposed to higher-than-ideal temperatures, which exceed 40 degrees Fahrenheit, they can easily transfer, melt or be lost entirely, Britton says, so it is critical to handle and store the material properly throughout the extraction process.

If a processing facility does not have its own grow attached, vendors should maintain the fresh frozen flower at freezing temperatures during transit, and this should be maintained within the extraction lab until it is processed.

“We just see those steps being overlooked,” Britton says. “A lot of people are excited to get the new extraction equipment that they know is going to produce the oil, but maybe look over some of the finer details in between.”

When the material is ready to be processed, extractors must ensure that their equipment, such as rosin presses and hash washing gear, is in proper working order to maximize yield, he adds.

“When we’re going through the filtration process with ice water extraction, we’re typically filtering micron-sized particles anywhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 160 microns in diameter, and we’re straining that out of, say, 65 gallons of water,” Britton says. “You’ve always got the opportunity for that particulate to be lost if, let’s say, your filtration media has a hole in it, or you have a leak somewhere.”

Therefore, processors must be meticulous, ensuring that their filtration media is inspected and that all gaskets are in place before use.

“These are simple things that sound trivial, but it ends up having a pretty dramatic impact,” Britton says. “Make sure that before you start washing to make ice water hash, that your water and your vessels and all of your fittings have actually come to temperature at about 32 to 33 degrees Fahrenheit. You don’t want that material to come into contact with a warm vessel wall, or it is going to stick to that vessel.”

4. Lay out an efficient extraction process.

Extractors should have a clear and defined processing schedule for their facilities to ensure that material moves smoothly through the process, Britton says. This is especially important for processors who use solventless extraction, as they often deal with fresh frozen material that must be handled properly throughout the process to avoid damage and loss.

“Having a good extraction process laid out will help you with your efficiency and making sure that when the product finishes from one process, you’re ready for it to move on to the next process, or you at least have a way to store that material,” Britton says. “We’ve seen issues where people just kind of go in gung-ho and start producing, but they don’t have all their subsequent processes lined up or timed properly. It’s the equivalent of having the turkey on Thanksgiving come out at noon and everything else is ready at 4 in the afternoon—it’s not going to work out so well.” 

Britton encourages those looking to launch or optimize their solventless extraction operations to contact PurePressure for additional information.

3 Questions Every Processor Should Ask Before Pursuing Solventless Extraction

by

Solventless extraction can be a profitable and attractive option for cannabis processors, especially when they avoid common pitfalls.

For someone looking to launch a new extraction facility, the equipment, setup and buildout are significantly less expensive for solventless than other extraction methods, according to Ben Britton, founder and CEO of PurePressure, a solventless extraction equipment manufacturer. While solvent-based extraction equipment requires special ventilation considerations, for example, this isn’t the case with solventless, so the upfront cost of the facility buildout and equipment is generally lower. 

In addition, solventless products typically sell for a premium and are popular with connoisseurs at dispensaries, Britton says.

“It also opens you up to the ability to make quality product, something that is unadulterated and hasn’t been modified by chemicals,” he says.

Here, Britton outlines his top advice for launching a profitable solventless extraction business, from acquiring high-quality raw material to establishing efficient processes.

1. Control your raw material.

Two common roadblocks for anyone processing cannabis are quality and yield, Britton says.

“At the end of the day, everybody wants the highest-quality product, and they want the most of it so that they can be profitable,” he says.

Solventless extractors use mechanical methods to separate the resin glands from the plant, and Britton says this must be a meticulous process to ensure that no particulates are lost.

Controlling the raw material is one way that processors can ensure that they have a consistent supply of high-quality cannabis that can be easily separated, Britton says.

“Time and time again, we see that the most successful businesses have really great relationships with their grow, or they’re vertically integrated, meaning that they have a grow under their umbrella,” he says. “If you can properly grow cannabis, that means that you’re properly growing good trichome heads, and that’s ultimately what we’re harvesting here. A good grow creates consistent, large, nice, bulbous trichome heads that we can then separate from the plant and collect for processing.”

For those who aren’t cultivating, creating relationships with grow wholesalers to provide great cannabis for solventless is crucial, Britton adds.

2. Start with high-quality material.

While low yield is often a common complaint with solventless extraction, Britton says this can be avoided by using high-quality material with high oil content.

“We want to make sure that we have high-quality material to start with,” he says. “You can’t extract oil that isn’t there to begin with. The maximum yield is only whatever is on that plant when you start the process.”

Yields are typically measured relative to the weight of the raw material, but if a processor knows the oil or resin content, then yields should ideally be measured against those metrics to ensure that most, if not all, of that oil is extracted, Britton says.

“That’s kind of a good way to think about things: let’s see what’s available to extract and start with something that’s as potent as possible.”

3. Handle the raw material and equipment properly.

Solventless extraction often involves fresh frozen material—a live cannabis plant that is frozen within 30 minutes of cutting and stored in a vacuum-sealed container to ensure that it has the highest terpene retention. If fresh frozen resin glands are exposed to higher-than-ideal temperatures, which exceed 40 degrees Fahrenheit, they can easily transfer, melt or be lost entirely, Britton says, so it is critical to handle and store the material properly throughout the extraction process.

If a processing facility does not have its own grow attached, vendors should maintain the fresh frozen flower at freezing temperatures during transit, and this should be maintained within the extraction lab until it is processed.

“We just see those steps being overlooked,” Britton says. “A lot of people are excited to get the new extraction equipment that they know is going to produce the oil, but maybe look over some of the finer details in between.”

When the material is ready to be processed, extractors must ensure that their equipment, such as rosin presses and hash washing gear, is in proper working order to maximize yield, he adds.

“When we’re going through the filtration process with ice water extraction, we’re typically filtering micron-sized particles anywhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 160 microns in diameter, and we’re straining that out of, say, 65 gallons of water,” Britton says. “You’ve always got the opportunity for that particulate to be lost if, let’s say, your filtration media has a hole in it, or you have a leak somewhere.”

Therefore, processors must be meticulous, ensuring that their filtration media is inspected and that all gaskets are in place before use.

“These are simple things that sound trivial, but it ends up having a pretty dramatic impact,” Britton says. “Make sure that before you start washing to make ice water hash, that your water and your vessels and all of your fittings have actually come to temperature at about 32 to 33 degrees Fahrenheit. You don’t want that material to come into contact with a warm vessel wall, or it is going to stick to that vessel.”

4. Lay out an efficient extraction process.

Extractors should have a clear and defined processing schedule for their facilities to ensure that material moves smoothly through the process, Britton says. This is especially important for processors who use solventless extraction, as they often deal with fresh frozen material that must be handled properly throughout the process to avoid damage and loss.

“Having a good extraction process laid out will help you with your efficiency and making sure that when the product finishes from one process, you’re ready for it to move on to the next process, or you at least have a way to store that material,” Britton says. “We’ve seen issues where people just kind of go in gung-ho and start producing, but they don’t have all their subsequent processes lined up or timed properly. It’s the equivalent of having the turkey on Thanksgiving come out at noon and everything else is ready at 4 in the afternoon—it’s not going to work out so well.” 

Britton encourages those looking to launch or optimize their solventless extraction operations to contact PurePressure for additional information.

Will Insurance Soon Be Available for Medical Cannabis Patients?

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With president-elect Joe Biden soon to take office in January 2021, and reportedly planning to make changes to national healthcare, this could have significant implications for the medical cannabis industry and for patients. Making matters even more interesting is the fact that the House of Representatives passed a bill that would decriminalize cannabis nationwide. Even though the bill likely won’t pass the Republican-led Congress, it’s still a positive development. With other policy changes in the cannabis industry this election cycle, what implications could  this have for medical insurance?

The difficulty with furthering patient access to medical cannabis and having insurance cover it is that regulations are different in every state. Currently, there are no federal provisions for insurance paying for medical cannabis due to prohibition. Health insurance covering medical cannabis does exist but only for medicines approved by the Food and Drug Administration (so far, that’s just for a few synthetic medications and for Epidiolex®). And all patients know far too well how costly medical cannabis can be.

A brand called Deuces22, run by former NBA star John Salley, aims to help expand financial access to medical cannabis. Salley echoes a sentiment of many cannabis advocates, that plant medicine is an overall part of a healthy lifestyle. If the advancements in legalization are any indication, this overall concept should change the way insurance providers view cannabis–as a medicine that should be covered under prescription plans.

With the future of medical cannabis coverage for insurance purposes looking bright, at the very least, patients shouldn’t be penalized for consuming cannabis. For example, policyholders who use tobacco are often penalized by their providers and must pay a higher premium than those who don’t use tobacco. Hopefully, as we progress the medical cannabis industry forward, we will see these advancements accelerate.

Image Credit: Karolina Gtarabowska

Image Source:

https://www.pexels.com/photo/medical-stethoscope-with-red-paper-heart-on-white-surface-4386467/



Columbia Care Acquires California’s Project Cannabis

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Trimming is a crucial step in the post-harvest process and one that can directly impact the value of a grower’s products. An over-trimmed bud might have bag appeal, but the loss of valuable biomass to trim can hurt a grower’s potential revenue. Meanwhile, an under-trimmed bud can look sloppy and unappealing to consumers.

Given the balancing act cannabis cultivators must perform, it’s no wonder that 74% of participants in Cannabis Business Times’ Cannabis Post-Harvest Report mentioned hand-trimming as their greatest post-harvest challenge, with trimming efficiency (29%), consistency (22%) and quality (12%) being among the top issues.

So, what exactly makes a good trim?

To answer that, Cannabis Business Times and Hemp Grower interviewed Sara Morse, lead trimmer for LOWD Cannabis in Portland, Ore., who shares her trimming philosophy, how LOWD trims its high-end line of Smoke Like a Grower (SLAG) bud using stick trimming, how she keeps her 7-person trim team motivated to repeatedly produce high-quality work, and more in this interview.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity.

Brian MacIver: What’s your personal philosophy when it comes to trimming? Or, in other words, what effect should a good trim have on the product?

Sara Morse: We spend months growing these buds and the trim team is kind of the last line of defense in really making sure that we’re letting the truest expression of that genome, of that … strain, really express itself and make sure that we’re leaving all the little beautiful little nuances of different strains intact.

When we’re approaching a different strain or when I have a new trimmer that hasn’t worked with a strain that we grow before, I encourage them to take a little piece of a branch with a couple of buds on it, or cola, and kind of hold it at arm’s length and look at that bud objectively and be like, “What on this bud would I want to smoke and what on this bud am I going to want to take off before I smoke?”

BM: LOWD treats its SLAG products to a stick trim. How is stick trimming done and what are its benefits?

SM: Our guy that leads up our operations team, one of our head growers, he will take some of the plants that got especially nice and hang those to the side as we’re harvesting. Then me and Jesce, our CEO, will go into the dry room and we spend half the day just going through all of the curtains of our cured product and picking out our favorite branches, the branches of the plants that have just the most beautiful buds. We’ll get maybe one or two buds that actually meet SLAG bud standards from each branch. It takes us quite a while to really make sure that we really feel like we’re getting the very best buds of our whole harvest to be able to stick trim.

I have myself and my two top trimmers in the trim room for that process. We’ll take a whole branch and we hold it by the bottom of the stick, so we don’t ever actually touch the bud. We’re not handling them anymore than we have to, and that’s to be able to really preserve as much [of] those trichomes. They can shake off and they stick to your fingers every time you touch the bud. We hold them at the stick and then just use the very tip of our scissors to clip the stems of the little leaves that we want to clip out, making sure that we’re not even getting anywhere near those little hairs, those little trichomes so that they all stay on there. We just clip it straight into the jar.

 

READ ALSO: The Interview: Jesce Horton Shares the Story of LOWD

 

BM: How do you train a new trim team member to quickly get them up to speed on what you expect?

SM: That can definitely be tough. I have high enough standards in my trim room that it’s been really difficult for us to be able to give the opportunity to somebody who doesn’t have any trim experience at all to be able to have a shot in our trim room just because, in order to be able to be on schedule, to be able to keep up with the rotation of the plants, we all have to be able to trim a pound a day.

The way that I’ve tried to approach it, when I am bringing a new person into the trim team, or making sure that everyone’s on the same page, is I will seat them in our trim room in between a couple of my more experienced, faster trimmers. And I’ll encourage both of them to be keeping an eye on the pace that the prospective new trimmer is working at, and then every half an hour or so I’ll peek in at their pool and see how they’re doing, and then sometimes we’ll sit down and we’ll trim together and I’ll kind of be helping, giving pointers about organization.

A lot of maintaining quality while still trimming a pound a day has to do with organization at your trim station and making sure you’re cutting down on any kind of superfluous motions with your scissors or with supplies at the table. If you’re trimming a pound a day, that’s many, many buds. So, every little motion that you make with every trimmed bud really adds up.

BM: How do you keep a trim team motivated to do such a repetitive task over an eight-hour shift?

SM: That can be tricky. There are a lot of kind of social and environmental factors right now that have led most of the people on my team to have some perspective about how amazing it is to have a job where we work full-time and very much enjoy the company of our coworkers and have great bosses and have a great job because that definitely feels like it’s a little bit of a luxury in today’s world.

I also have been working on building an incentives program, which Jesce has been very receptive to. So, we track what everybody trims every day, and then we tally those up by the week. At the end of each harvest, we have an average of how many grams everybody trimmed each day [relative to] how many hours everyone was there to come up with an average of what everyone’s trimming per hour. Halfway through the harvest, we’ll buy a bunch of gift cards from a local coffee shop, or there’s also a little grocery store a half-block away from work that some of us go to, to pick up lunch and stuff like that. And so sometimes they’ll get a gift card for that, and I’ll get like a little handheld back massager.

BM: What tips do you have to offer on increasing the quality of the hand trim?

SM: Make sure that your team is very clear on how it is that you want your buds to look by the time it’s done being trimmed. In my experience, a lot what helps people be able to pick up their efficiency and pick up their speed and their numbers and still have a really good looking trim at the end of the day definitely has to do with making sure that each individual person feels confident in how it is that the trim leader or the grower expects their finished product to look.

BM: What tips do you have to increase trimmer efficiency?

SM: If the trimmer is confident in what they’re doing, then they can kind of zone in. It’s confidence that the job that you’re doing is exactly what is required that helps you to really be able to move faster. If you’re not fully confident on how to handle it, you’re just really not going to be able to move fast because you don’t want to screw it up. It’s a fact that sometimes buds get over-trimmed; sometimes you’ve got a newer person that’s not super sure what they’re doing and they trim for an hour, and they were just shaving everything and then you can’t use those buds. Then that definitely puts into the trimmer’s mind that, ‘I just ruined all these beautiful buds,’ and that takes away all their confidence. I get them more confident by encouraging them and the things that they are doing correctly.

Another tip on efficiency would be making sure that you’re very organized. I have a method that I have everybody use, no matter how much trim experience at other places that they’ve had or ways they’ve tackled it before: We take our trim tray and then we put all of the buds that we’re about to trim in the top part of the tray. As we’re trimming, we’re pulling any little sticks out of the tray, putting those separate as we go. We’re taking any smaller “B-buds” that we don’t necessarily want in our nice big half-ounce jars out as we go.  We’re making sure that we’re not wasting any time trimming “B-buds” when we’re actually going for the “A-buds.”

Edibles Are Now Available in Florida’s Medicinal Cannabis Program

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To the delight of both businesses and medical cannabis patients in Florida, medicinal edibles are now legal within the state.

In 2016, citizens of the Sunshine State voted to add an amendment to its constitution that would allow for the consumption of medicinal cannabis. However, not all forms of cannabis were initially available. It was only in 2019 that flower was deemed legal to smoke, when Governor Ron DeSantis voted to repeal a law banning this form of consumption.

And although legalized in 2017, edibles hadn’t hit the shelves of dispensaries until late summer 2020 because the Florida Office of Medical Marijuana Use (OMMU) had not released the necessary regulations to guide the manufacture, sale, and consumption of this form of cannabis.

The rules laid out by the OMMU are sensible, not overly burdensome, and seek to keep the public, especially children, safe. For example, edibles that resemble candies currently available on the market are banned under the new regulations. Additionally, OMMU regulations also stipulate “edibles shall be produced in a manner to minimize color intensity and other color and visual characteristics attractive to children.”

The OMMU also released specific potency rules. No single edible serving can have more than 10mg of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). And a product that contains multiple servings shall not have more than 200mg.

Other notable restrictions include banning colorants, natural or artificial, prohibition on the use of icing, sprinkles, and toppings, and a ban on the addition of fish, meat, or poultry.

Per the regulations, consumers have the option of choosing edibles in the following forms:

  • Lozenges
  • Gelatins
  • Baked goods
  • Chocolates
  • Drink powders

Some analysts believe that the addition of edibles to the medical cannabis market could add over $200 million in revenue to the sector.

Image Credit: Alesia Kozik

Image Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-and-black-chocolate-cake-on-white-ceramic-plate-6072104/

Attorney General William Barr Resigns

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Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice

President Donald Trump announced the resignation of Attorney General William Barr Dec. 14, while simultaneously announcing that Barr’s current deputy attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, will become acting attorney general when Barr officially steps down next week.

“Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family,” Trump tweeted Monday night. “Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all!”

Although Trump’s message implied that Barr left amicably, CNN reported that the president has been considering firing the attorney general, although aides have discouraged Trump from doing so over the past several months.

A White House official told the news outlet that Barr was neither forced out nor fired.

Barr’s impact on the cannabis industry during his time as attorney general is largely reflected in his antitrust investigations into cannabis mergers.

In June, John Elias, a career employee at the Department of Justice, alleged that the probes, which accounted for 29% of the Antitrust Division’s total merger investigations in 2019, were not bona fide antitrust investigations, as they did not meet the standard internal requirements for proceeding with a Second Request subpoena, which the DOJ must file to formally object to a merger. Instead, Elias said in his testimony that Barr was motivated by his personal dislike of the cannabis industry when he launched investigations into nearly a dozen cannabis deals last year.

RELATED: 10 Notable M&A Deals That Happened (and Didn’t) in 2020

Upon Barr’s departure next week, Rosen will fill the role of attorney general until President-Elect Joe Biden is sworn into office Jan. 20. Biden has not yet chosen an attorney general, according to an Independent report.

Rosen previously served under Elaine Chao as Deputy Transportation Secretary before his appointment to the DOJ, where he replaced Rod Rosenstein as then-deputy attorney general, according to the Independent.

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Verano Holdings Enters Into an Agreement for a Go-Public Transaction in Conjunction with AltMed Merger

by

Trimming is a crucial step in the post-harvest process and one that can directly impact the value of a grower’s products. An over-trimmed bud might have bag appeal, but the loss of valuable biomass to trim can hurt a grower’s potential revenue. Meanwhile, an under-trimmed bud can look sloppy and unappealing to consumers.

Given the balancing act cannabis cultivators must perform, it’s no wonder that 74% of participants in Cannabis Business Times’ Cannabis Post-Harvest Report mentioned hand-trimming as their greatest post-harvest challenge, with trimming efficiency (29%), consistency (22%) and quality (12%) being among the top issues.

So, what exactly makes a good trim?

To answer that, Cannabis Business Times and Hemp Grower interviewed Sara Morse, lead trimmer for LOWD Cannabis in Portland, Ore., who shares her trimming philosophy, how LOWD trims its high-end line of Smoke Like a Grower (SLAG) bud using stick trimming, how she keeps her 7-person trim team motivated to repeatedly produce high-quality work, and more in this interview.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity.

Brian MacIver: What’s your personal philosophy when it comes to trimming? Or, in other words, what effect should a good trim have on the product?

Sara Morse: We spend months growing these buds and the trim team is kind of the last line of defense in really making sure that we’re letting the truest expression of that genome, of that … strain, really express itself and make sure that we’re leaving all the little beautiful little nuances of different strains intact.

When we’re approaching a different strain or when I have a new trimmer that hasn’t worked with a strain that we grow before, I encourage them to take a little piece of a branch with a couple of buds on it, or cola, and kind of hold it at arm’s length and look at that bud objectively and be like, “What on this bud would I want to smoke and what on this bud am I going to want to take off before I smoke?”

BM: LOWD treats its SLAG products to a stick trim. How is stick trimming done and what are its benefits?

SM: Our guy that leads up our operations team, one of our head growers, he will take some of the plants that got especially nice and hang those to the side as we’re harvesting. Then me and Jesce, our CEO, will go into the dry room and we spend half the day just going through all of the curtains of our cured product and picking out our favorite branches, the branches of the plants that have just the most beautiful buds. We’ll get maybe one or two buds that actually meet SLAG bud standards from each branch. It takes us quite a while to really make sure that we really feel like we’re getting the very best buds of our whole harvest to be able to stick trim.

I have myself and my two top trimmers in the trim room for that process. We’ll take a whole branch and we hold it by the bottom of the stick, so we don’t ever actually touch the bud. We’re not handling them anymore than we have to, and that’s to be able to really preserve as much [of] those trichomes. They can shake off and they stick to your fingers every time you touch the bud. We hold them at the stick and then just use the very tip of our scissors to clip the stems of the little leaves that we want to clip out, making sure that we’re not even getting anywhere near those little hairs, those little trichomes so that they all stay on there. We just clip it straight into the jar.

 

READ ALSO: The Interview: Jesce Horton Shares the Story of LOWD

 

BM: How do you train a new trim team member to quickly get them up to speed on what you expect?

SM: That can definitely be tough. I have high enough standards in my trim room that it’s been really difficult for us to be able to give the opportunity to somebody who doesn’t have any trim experience at all to be able to have a shot in our trim room just because, in order to be able to be on schedule, to be able to keep up with the rotation of the plants, we all have to be able to trim a pound a day.

The way that I’ve tried to approach it, when I am bringing a new person into the trim team, or making sure that everyone’s on the same page, is I will seat them in our trim room in between a couple of my more experienced, faster trimmers. And I’ll encourage both of them to be keeping an eye on the pace that the prospective new trimmer is working at, and then every half an hour or so I’ll peek in at their pool and see how they’re doing, and then sometimes we’ll sit down and we’ll trim together and I’ll kind of be helping, giving pointers about organization.

A lot of maintaining quality while still trimming a pound a day has to do with organization at your trim station and making sure you’re cutting down on any kind of superfluous motions with your scissors or with supplies at the table. If you’re trimming a pound a day, that’s many, many buds. So, every little motion that you make with every trimmed bud really adds up.

BM: How do you keep a trim team motivated to do such a repetitive task over an eight-hour shift?

SM: That can be tricky. There are a lot of kind of social and environmental factors right now that have led most of the people on my team to have some perspective about how amazing it is to have a job where we work full-time and very much enjoy the company of our coworkers and have great bosses and have a great job because that definitely feels like it’s a little bit of a luxury in today’s world.

I also have been working on building an incentives program, which Jesce has been very receptive to. So, we track what everybody trims every day, and then we tally those up by the week. At the end of each harvest, we have an average of how many grams everybody trimmed each day [relative to] how many hours everyone was there to come up with an average of what everyone’s trimming per hour. Halfway through the harvest, we’ll buy a bunch of gift cards from a local coffee shop, or there’s also a little grocery store a half-block away from work that some of us go to, to pick up lunch and stuff like that. And so sometimes they’ll get a gift card for that, and I’ll get like a little handheld back massager.

BM: What tips do you have to offer on increasing the quality of the hand trim?

SM: Make sure that your team is very clear on how it is that you want your buds to look by the time it’s done being trimmed. In my experience, a lot what helps people be able to pick up their efficiency and pick up their speed and their numbers and still have a really good looking trim at the end of the day definitely has to do with making sure that each individual person feels confident in how it is that the trim leader or the grower expects their finished product to look.

BM: What tips do you have to increase trimmer efficiency?

SM: If the trimmer is confident in what they’re doing, then they can kind of zone in. It’s confidence that the job that you’re doing is exactly what is required that helps you to really be able to move faster. If you’re not fully confident on how to handle it, you’re just really not going to be able to move fast because you don’t want to screw it up. It’s a fact that sometimes buds get over-trimmed; sometimes you’ve got a newer person that’s not super sure what they’re doing and they trim for an hour, and they were just shaving everything and then you can’t use those buds. Then that definitely puts into the trimmer’s mind that, ‘I just ruined all these beautiful buds,’ and that takes away all their confidence. I get them more confident by encouraging them and the things that they are doing correctly.

Another tip on efficiency would be making sure that you’re very organized. I have a method that I have everybody use, no matter how much trim experience at other places that they’ve had or ways they’ve tackled it before: We take our trim tray and then we put all of the buds that we’re about to trim in the top part of the tray. As we’re trimming, we’re pulling any little sticks out of the tray, putting those separate as we go. We’re taking any smaller “B-buds” that we don’t necessarily want in our nice big half-ounce jars out as we go.  We’re making sure that we’re not wasting any time trimming “B-buds” when we’re actually going for the “A-buds.”

New Jersey Senate Committee Advances Cannabis Legalization Legislation

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Trimming is a crucial step in the post-harvest process and one that can directly impact the value of a grower’s products. An over-trimmed bud might have bag appeal, but the loss of valuable biomass to trim can hurt a grower’s potential revenue. Meanwhile, an under-trimmed bud can look sloppy and unappealing to consumers.

Given the balancing act cannabis cultivators must perform, it’s no wonder that 74% of participants in Cannabis Business Times’ Cannabis Post-Harvest Report mentioned hand-trimming as their greatest post-harvest challenge, with trimming efficiency (29%), consistency (22%) and quality (12%) being among the top issues.

So, what exactly makes a good trim?

To answer that, Cannabis Business Times and Hemp Grower interviewed Sara Morse, lead trimmer for LOWD Cannabis in Portland, Ore., who shares her trimming philosophy, how LOWD trims its high-end line of Smoke Like a Grower (SLAG) bud using stick trimming, how she keeps her 7-person trim team motivated to repeatedly produce high-quality work, and more in this interview.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity.

Brian MacIver: What’s your personal philosophy when it comes to trimming? Or, in other words, what effect should a good trim have on the product?

Sara Morse: We spend months growing these buds and the trim team is kind of the last line of defense in really making sure that we’re letting the truest expression of that genome, of that … strain, really express itself and make sure that we’re leaving all the little beautiful little nuances of different strains intact.

When we’re approaching a different strain or when I have a new trimmer that hasn’t worked with a strain that we grow before, I encourage them to take a little piece of a branch with a couple of buds on it, or cola, and kind of hold it at arm’s length and look at that bud objectively and be like, “What on this bud would I want to smoke and what on this bud am I going to want to take off before I smoke?”

BM: LOWD treats its SLAG products to a stick trim. How is stick trimming done and what are its benefits?

SM: Our guy that leads up our operations team, one of our head growers, he will take some of the plants that got especially nice and hang those to the side as we’re harvesting. Then me and Jesce, our CEO, will go into the dry room and we spend half the day just going through all of the curtains of our cured product and picking out our favorite branches, the branches of the plants that have just the most beautiful buds. We’ll get maybe one or two buds that actually meet SLAG bud standards from each branch. It takes us quite a while to really make sure that we really feel like we’re getting the very best buds of our whole harvest to be able to stick trim.

I have myself and my two top trimmers in the trim room for that process. We’ll take a whole branch and we hold it by the bottom of the stick, so we don’t ever actually touch the bud. We’re not handling them anymore than we have to, and that’s to be able to really preserve as much [of] those trichomes. They can shake off and they stick to your fingers every time you touch the bud. We hold them at the stick and then just use the very tip of our scissors to clip the stems of the little leaves that we want to clip out, making sure that we’re not even getting anywhere near those little hairs, those little trichomes so that they all stay on there. We just clip it straight into the jar.

 

READ ALSO: The Interview: Jesce Horton Shares the Story of LOWD

 

BM: How do you train a new trim team member to quickly get them up to speed on what you expect?

SM: That can definitely be tough. I have high enough standards in my trim room that it’s been really difficult for us to be able to give the opportunity to somebody who doesn’t have any trim experience at all to be able to have a shot in our trim room just because, in order to be able to be on schedule, to be able to keep up with the rotation of the plants, we all have to be able to trim a pound a day.

The way that I’ve tried to approach it, when I am bringing a new person into the trim team, or making sure that everyone’s on the same page, is I will seat them in our trim room in between a couple of my more experienced, faster trimmers. And I’ll encourage both of them to be keeping an eye on the pace that the prospective new trimmer is working at, and then every half an hour or so I’ll peek in at their pool and see how they’re doing, and then sometimes we’ll sit down and we’ll trim together and I’ll kind of be helping, giving pointers about organization.

A lot of maintaining quality while still trimming a pound a day has to do with organization at your trim station and making sure you’re cutting down on any kind of superfluous motions with your scissors or with supplies at the table. If you’re trimming a pound a day, that’s many, many buds. So, every little motion that you make with every trimmed bud really adds up.

BM: How do you keep a trim team motivated to do such a repetitive task over an eight-hour shift?

SM: That can be tricky. There are a lot of kind of social and environmental factors right now that have led most of the people on my team to have some perspective about how amazing it is to have a job where we work full-time and very much enjoy the company of our coworkers and have great bosses and have a great job because that definitely feels like it’s a little bit of a luxury in today’s world.

I also have been working on building an incentives program, which Jesce has been very receptive to. So, we track what everybody trims every day, and then we tally those up by the week. At the end of each harvest, we have an average of how many grams everybody trimmed each day [relative to] how many hours everyone was there to come up with an average of what everyone’s trimming per hour. Halfway through the harvest, we’ll buy a bunch of gift cards from a local coffee shop, or there’s also a little grocery store a half-block away from work that some of us go to, to pick up lunch and stuff like that. And so sometimes they’ll get a gift card for that, and I’ll get like a little handheld back massager.

BM: What tips do you have to offer on increasing the quality of the hand trim?

SM: Make sure that your team is very clear on how it is that you want your buds to look by the time it’s done being trimmed. In my experience, a lot what helps people be able to pick up their efficiency and pick up their speed and their numbers and still have a really good looking trim at the end of the day definitely has to do with making sure that each individual person feels confident in how it is that the trim leader or the grower expects their finished product to look.

BM: What tips do you have to increase trimmer efficiency?

SM: If the trimmer is confident in what they’re doing, then they can kind of zone in. It’s confidence that the job that you’re doing is exactly what is required that helps you to really be able to move faster. If you’re not fully confident on how to handle it, you’re just really not going to be able to move fast because you don’t want to screw it up. It’s a fact that sometimes buds get over-trimmed; sometimes you’ve got a newer person that’s not super sure what they’re doing and they trim for an hour, and they were just shaving everything and then you can’t use those buds. Then that definitely puts into the trimmer’s mind that, ‘I just ruined all these beautiful buds,’ and that takes away all their confidence. I get them more confident by encouraging them and the things that they are doing correctly.

Another tip on efficiency would be making sure that you’re very organized. I have a method that I have everybody use, no matter how much trim experience at other places that they’ve had or ways they’ve tackled it before: We take our trim tray and then we put all of the buds that we’re about to trim in the top part of the tray. As we’re trimming, we’re pulling any little sticks out of the tray, putting those separate as we go. We’re taking any smaller “B-buds” that we don’t necessarily want in our nice big half-ounce jars out as we go.  We’re making sure that we’re not wasting any time trimming “B-buds” when we’re actually going for the “A-buds.”

6 Trimming Questions with Sara Morse

by

Trimming is a crucial step in the post-harvest process and one that can directly impact the value of a grower’s products. An over-trimmed bud might have bag appeal, but the loss of valuable biomass to trim can hurt a grower’s potential revenue. Meanwhile, an under-trimmed bud can look sloppy and unappealing to consumers.

Given the balancing act cannabis cultivators must perform, it’s no wonder that 74% of participants in Cannabis Business Times’ Cannabis Post-Harvest Report mentioned hand-trimming as their greatest post-harvest challenge, with trimming efficiency (29%), consistency (22%) and quality (12%) being among the top issues.

So, what exactly makes a good trim?

To answer that, Cannabis Business Times and Hemp Grower interviewed Sara Morse, lead trimmer for LOWD Cannabis in Portland, Ore., who shares her trimming philosophy, how LOWD trims its high-end line of Smoke Like a Grower (SLAG) bud using stick trimming, how she keeps her 7-person trim team motivated to repeatedly produce high-quality work, and more in this interview.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity.

Brian MacIver: What’s your personal philosophy when it comes to trimming? Or, in other words, what effect should a good trim have on the product?

Sara Morse: We spend months growing these buds and the trim team is kind of the last line of defense in really making sure that we’re letting the truest expression of that genome, of that … strain, really express itself and make sure that we’re leaving all the little beautiful little nuances of different strains intact.

When we’re approaching a different strain or when I have a new trimmer that hasn’t worked with a strain that we grow before, I encourage them to take a little piece of a branch with a couple of buds on it, or cola, and kind of hold it at arm’s length and look at that bud objectively and be like, “What on this bud would I want to smoke and what on this bud am I going to want to take off before I smoke?”

BM: LOWD treats its SLAG products to a stick trim. How is stick trimming done and what are its benefits?

SM: Our guy that leads up our operations team, one of our head growers, he will take some of the plants that got especially nice and hang those to the side as we’re harvesting. Then me and Jesce, our CEO, will go into the dry room and we spend half the day just going through all of the curtains of our cured product and picking out our favorite branches, the branches of the plants that have just the most beautiful buds. We’ll get maybe one or two buds that actually meet SLAG bud standards from each branch. It takes us quite a while to really make sure that we really feel like we’re getting the very best buds of our whole harvest to be able to stick trim.

I have myself and my two top trimmers in the trim room for that process. We’ll take a whole branch and we hold it by the bottom of the stick, so we don’t ever actually touch the bud. We’re not handling them anymore than we have to, and that’s to be able to really preserve as much [of] those trichomes. They can shake off and they stick to your fingers every time you touch the bud. We hold them at the stick and then just use the very tip of our scissors to clip the stems of the little leaves that we want to clip out, making sure that we’re not even getting anywhere near those little hairs, those little trichomes so that they all stay on there. We just clip it straight into the jar.

 

READ ALSO: The Interview: Jesce Horton Shares the Story of LOWD

 

BM: How do you train a new trim team member to quickly get them up to speed on what you expect?

SM: That can definitely be tough. I have high enough standards in my trim room that it’s been really difficult for us to be able to give the opportunity to somebody who doesn’t have any trim experience at all to be able to have a shot in our trim room just because, in order to be able to be on schedule, to be able to keep up with the rotation of the plants, we all have to be able to trim a pound a day.

The way that I’ve tried to approach it, when I am bringing a new person into the trim team, or making sure that everyone’s on the same page, is I will seat them in our trim room in between a couple of my more experienced, faster trimmers. And I’ll encourage both of them to be keeping an eye on the pace that the prospective new trimmer is working at, and then every half an hour or so I’ll peek in at their pool and see how they’re doing, and then sometimes we’ll sit down and we’ll trim together and I’ll kind of be helping, giving pointers about organization.

A lot of maintaining quality while still trimming a pound a day has to do with organization at your trim station and making sure you’re cutting down on any kind of superfluous motions with your scissors or with supplies at the table. If you’re trimming a pound a day, that’s many, many buds. So, every little motion that you make with every trimmed bud really adds up.

BM: How do you keep a trim team motivated to do such a repetitive task over an eight-hour shift?

SM: That can be tricky. There are a lot of kind of social and environmental factors right now that have led most of the people on my team to have some perspective about how amazing it is to have a job where we work full-time and very much enjoy the company of our coworkers and have great bosses and have a great job because that definitely feels like it’s a little bit of a luxury in today’s world.

I also have been working on building an incentives program, which Jesce has been very receptive to. So, we track what everybody trims every day, and then we tally those up by the week. At the end of each harvest, we have an average of how many grams everybody trimmed each day [relative to] how many hours everyone was there to come up with an average of what everyone’s trimming per hour. Halfway through the harvest, we’ll buy a bunch of gift cards from a local coffee shop, or there’s also a little grocery store a half-block away from work that some of us go to, to pick up lunch and stuff like that. And so sometimes they’ll get a gift card for that, and I’ll get like a little handheld back massager.

BM: What tips do you have to offer on increasing the quality of the hand trim?

SM: Make sure that your team is very clear on how it is that you want your buds to look by the time it’s done being trimmed. In my experience, a lot what helps people be able to pick up their efficiency and pick up their speed and their numbers and still have a really good looking trim at the end of the day definitely has to do with making sure that each individual person feels confident in how it is that the trim leader or the grower expects their finished product to look.

BM: What tips do you have to increase trimmer efficiency?

SM: If the trimmer is confident in what they’re doing, then they can kind of zone in. It’s confidence that the job that you’re doing is exactly what is required that helps you to really be able to move faster. If you’re not fully confident on how to handle it, you’re just really not going to be able to move fast because you don’t want to screw it up. It’s a fact that sometimes buds get over-trimmed; sometimes you’ve got a newer person that’s not super sure what they’re doing and they trim for an hour, and they were just shaving everything and then you can’t use those buds. Then that definitely puts into the trimmer’s mind that, ‘I just ruined all these beautiful buds,’ and that takes away all their confidence. I get them more confident by encouraging them and the things that they are doing correctly.

Another tip on efficiency would be making sure that you’re very organized. I have a method that I have everybody use, no matter how much trim experience at other places that they’ve had or ways they’ve tackled it before: We take our trim tray and then we put all of the buds that we’re about to trim in the top part of the tray. As we’re trimming, we’re pulling any little sticks out of the tray, putting those separate as we go. We’re taking any smaller “B-buds” that we don’t necessarily want in our nice big half-ounce jars out as we go.  We’re making sure that we’re not wasting any time trimming “B-buds” when we’re actually going for the “A-buds.”

A Close Look at the MORE Act’s Shortcomings on Social Equity

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Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives made history with the passing of the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. The bill removes cannabis from the DEA’s Controlled Substances Act schedule, effectively decriminalizing it nationally and allowing individual states to regulate their own markets. It also calls for the reinvestment of tax money from cannabis into community grants for job training, youth recreation and other programs in areas hit hardest by prohibition.

And while the passing of the bill was lauded by many cannabis advocates and executives, others feel it doesn’t go far enough in creating a fair industry for everyone. Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary spoke to leadership figures in the cannabis equity movement to learn about the specific issues with the MORE Act.    

Breaking Down the MORE Act’s Shortcomings

Although the bill represents a significant step in federal cannabis legislation, experts identified four specific points where its provisions fall short of establishing an industry accessible to everyone: 

Felony exclusions 

A late-added provision in the bill would prevent anyone with even a pending felony charge from getting a license in the cannabis industry. Cannabis equity advocates in Congress, such as Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), expressed displeasure at the last-minute addition, but stopped short of pulling the bill from a full floor vote.

Amber Littlejohn, executive director of the Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA), said the organization was able to ensure this add-on would not be present in the final version of the bill that is passed by both chambers of Congress.

“At the last moment, MCBA was able to work with House leadership to get their commitment to ensuring the exclusion would not stand and impacted communities would remain at the forefront of any future legislation,” Littlejohn wrote in an email to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary.

Dasheeda Dawson, cannabis program supervisor for the city of Portland, Ore., agreed. “Over the past few years, the definition of cannabis equity has centered on providing opportunities to those most adversely harmed,” she said via email. “Undoubtedly this starts with those who were previously arrested or incarcerated for cannabis.”

Payments to law enforcement

Another problematic provision in the MORE Act involves payments made directly to law enforcement. 

A full 60% of the bill’s “Opportunity Trust Fund” is devoted to helping the U.S. Attorney General carry out a program that offers grants to local police departments. Many believe this represents a missed opportunity for allocation of those funds.

“I would argue that our investment in law enforcement has proven to be disproportionate to the need and this is likely the best place to start shifting the spending,” said Dawson. “For example, the DEA spends millions per year on the Cannabis Eradication and Suppression program, but those millions could be used instead for creating a cannabis expungement and re-education program.”

No mandatory expungement

The “E” in “MORE” stands for one of its key provisions, the expungement of previous marijuana-related convictions. The ACLU estimates that 88% of the 8.2 million Americans who were arrested for cannabis between 2001 and 2010 were charged with possession. Arrest rates also indicate that African-Americans are arrested nearly four times as often as whites, despite similar usage rates. 

And while the bill does offer an opportunity for expungement on a national level, advocates believe that isn’t enough.

“This bill only does part of the job with automatic federal expungement. It fails to include a mandate for states to do the same, which leaves the vast majority of people in limbo still struggling to clear their records,” said Dawson. “There are also a few states that will absolutely only expunge records if required by a federal mandate.”

By and large, the MORE Act leaves decisions like this to the states, essentially legitimizing much of the regulatory power structure in cannabis presently. 

Even where federal and state-level expungement pathways are offered, the process can be confusing and unclear. It also varies on a state-by-state basis—the lack of a strong federal mandate for expungement means these provisions won’t have as much of an impact as they could.

Federal fees in licensing

Right now, states are managing the process for cannabis licensing and regulation. Under the MORE Act, federal licensing would be required for most of the main varieties of cannabis businesses. 

Experts believe these extra layers of regulation will ultimately translate into additional fees that would shut out small businesses and help large multi-state operators with the cash to spend on acquiring licenses.

“Adding an additional layer of licensing regulation is unnecessary, especially for small, local cannabis businesses and it creates additional costs, favoring big tobacco, pharmaceutical and retail companies,” said Dawson. States like Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois have already taken steps to help mitigate the costs of cannabis licenses. 

“Coupling decriminalization with a regulatory framework that lacks an accompanying expanse of economic opportunity is like a double negative,” added Dr. Rachel Knox, an endocannabinologist who chairs the Oregon Cannabis Commission and sits on the board of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation.

MORE Act’s Murky Future

Problems with the bill may lead to disagreements within the cannabis industry—but under current Republican leadership, it’s not likely to receive a hearing in the U.S. Senate, meaning it will remain in limbo well into the new year. Georgia’s January runoffs will determine control of the Senate, which will in turn determine whether or not the bill has any chance of a hearing in the next session of the upper chamber.

Whatever the future holds, the passing of the MORE Act and the election of a Democratic administration makes it clear that cannabis is set to take a much larger role in the next legislative session. Advocates have promised to continue fighting to ensure the forming industry is accessible to everyone, especially those harmed most by prohibition.

“Despite its issues, the MORE Act sent a clear message to lawmakers and the cannabis industry that equity will be a cornerstone of federal cannabis policy,” Littlejohn said.