Rosin Extraction. Video Tutorial

Transcript of ROSIN Extraction video tutorial :

Today we’re going to teach you how to go from plant material to cannabis concentrates like this, using the Rosin technique.

Before starting to press, we have to prepare the material. So, we take a quantity of weed, we already know more or less how much we need in each press, in our case, the plates aren’t huge, and we’ll use 7 grams of flowers.

What we’ll do is prepare it beforehand, with this artifact called a pre-press, which will help us to compress the flowers, via an initial manual press, into a small brick which we’ll put on the big press later.

In this case we’re going to use 7 grams of buds, this is cured, but we could fresher weed, right?

DANI  - Yes. Yes, in fact the best results are when the grass has been dried for 5 or 6 days. Because it retains some humidity and the return is greater.

What I'm going to do is remove any branches, basically leaving the plant material, or rather the buds, the flowers…

DANI - Discarding the stems, right?

Get rid of the stems, because they are no use for anything. They only…

DANI - …they only get in the way!

They’re annoying, get in the way, add more weight and serve no real purpose.

DANI - So you’re breaking it up, right? Breaking it up really well, from what I can see.

Exactly, That’s what I'm doing. Cutting, sorting and leaving only the part that interests us, which is the most resinous, and in this case, we’ll weigh it until we reach the 7 grams we want. I turn on the scale, press the reset…

DANI - Which variety are we working with, Txus?

We’re working with Juanita la Lagrimosa from Reggae Seeds, I imagine you already know this variety, because it’s one of the precursors of CBD (cannabidiol) and is very productive and resinous. It'll be perfect.

DANI - And these 7 grams, I suppose that you say that because of the pre-press and the press that we have, no?

Yes, the type of press we have has a capacity and 7 grams is perfect to put it first in the pre-press, and then squish on the big press.

DANI - Ok, it’s ready, no?

Yes. Now let's see how we prepare the parchment paper so that it doesn’t stick, and how we prepare the pre-press. Let's go!

DANI - Excellent.

What we need to do is prepare 3 pieces of parchment: 2 little ones that we’re going to use with the pre-press, which more or less are the measurements of this pre-press, no Dani?

DANI - Yes, the interior. They’re the inside measurements that we worked out in a previous test.

Aha! And for the big press, the Rosin press, we’re going to fold it like this and the measurement is this.

DANI - Exactly.

So we’re going to cut…

DANI - And from that we’ll get two pieces for the big press.

Perfect. Now we’ve got two the same as the template.

DANI - And now for the small ones…

Now the little ones. We’re going to prepare the parchment that will go in the Rosin press and hold the pre-pressed flowers, which will be more or less this size. So what we’re making is really an envelope, more or less this, the flowers go here, and the rosin will flow out of this side when we press. You’ll see!

So, we fold it more or less like this, and crease it. Perfect, and then we also do the sides. We’re going to make “turn-ups", as if it were a pair of jeans, to make the…

DANI - That way nothing escapes, right?

Exactly. We are going to make an envelope, closed on 3 sides and open on the other, where the concentrate will flow, the resin!

DANI - The concentrate.

Exactly, this is what we’ll put into the press.

DANI - And we can have as many envelopes as presses we intend to carry out.

Of course. An envelope for each press, one for each press…

DANI - Perfect. Ready. Let’s go.

We’re going to prepare the brick of plant material in the pre-press, into which we place the base, which is this. We put one of the small papers that we cut earlier, and with a little bit of skill, using the finger, ensure that the frame holds the paper…

DANI - Really, the idea is that the weed doesn’t stick to the metal.

Exactly. Perfect, well the base is ready now. Next we take the vegetable material, the flowers, then we place it in this type of box called the pre-press. In fact, that’s what they call it in the US, because here we’d say: "pre-press".

DANI - Basically it’s to compress the vegetable material.

So that the final Rosin press is much more effective and doesn’t have to work so much.

DANI - Let’s go.

Exactly, well that’s it. The weed is in there…

DANI - Wait, wait, wait Txus. You’ve got to put the other bit of parchment in there, so it won’t stick to the metal…

Ah... correct!

DANI - Okay, do it. Now.

Now yes. Now there, holding it firmly and now we can apply pressure…

DANI - Now what we’ll do is move it and give it more pressure with your foot…

Yes, because this presses, but not much…

DANI - No, no. It needs to be very, very, very well pressed, ok?

With the full weight of the law?

DANI - With all the weight of the law...

Blimey!

DANI - …on the weed. Incredible, I grew this so you could step on it.

Hahahaha. Come on.

DANI - There.

Centred

DANI - On top. Support yourself there on the table, exactly, and give it some.

Moving up and down.

DANI - Yes, try with the heel. I use my heel too, it’s good… there. You’ll see what a great brick it’ll be.

It’s Juanita, not Cheese, right? I’m saying because of my foot…

DANI - Hahahahaha

Take care eh! The next step is to put the plant material in a Rosin mesh bag, in this case 160 microns. There are smaller, larger, smaller in micron size.

The micron (the number) is the measurement of the hole through which the resin will escape.

DANI - It’s the mesh size, no?

The mesh, exactly. I don’t know if you can see, but it’s like an envelope…

DANI - It’s very small.

Yes, it is very small. So, when the mesh is smaller (with the smallest number of microns), less plant material will come out, so the concentrate will be much purer…

DANI - But we’ll have lower returns.

Less return, exactly.

DANI - It all depends. To the taste of each consumer.

A rule of three, exactly. Well let’s get on with it…

DANI - Let’s see how that brick has come out after stepping on it…

Let’s see… here with the finger, as it’s got a bit stuck on the side.

DANI - Around the edge.

Exactly, it’s come out fairly clean… look. Look how nicely it came out!

DANI - Let’s see, bring it closer, so we can have a good look. There, perfect. It’s like a tablet…

Exactly.

DANI - …of vegetable material. And now we’ll put it in the bag.

Exactly.

DANI - In this case it’s 160 microns, a size that I like, in terms of return and quality. It depends on your personal taste, you can experiment with different sizes and see for yourself.

…and see which you like best, if it’s more pure, more quantity, or less. Let’s start putting it inside.

DANI - It’s sticking a little, eh. It’s normal.

Yes, yes, it’s normal, as there's resin. Exactly, there it is, perfect. And we fold it a little here, like a bed sheet and we put it inside the envelope. And just like that is how we're going to put it in the press.

DANI - Of course, we can prepare all the envelopes and have a production line.

Yes, if we’ve got lots of buds and enough envelopes prepared, we’ll get pressing, of course.

DANI - Perfect. Now it’s time for the most interesting part of the video, squishing.

Let’s see it!

This is our Rosin press. There are many types, many sizes, many shapes... but basically they all do 2 things: firstly exerting pressure through a piston, and secondly heating the plates, in this case there are 2.

The temperature, you will see to my right (or to your left), is set with this controller. This applies the heat to the 2 plates, and the pressure is exerted by the piston that, using this pump, via this hose, will give the necessary pressure to carry out the Rosin process.

DANI - And a manual pump. On the market you can also find…

With electric compressor.ç

DANI - ...with electric compressor. You can also find hand pumps, small, large, industrial, depending on your requirements you can use one press or another.

Well let’s get to it. We’ll put our prepared envelope in now.

DANI - The position of the envelope is important…

Like that, right?

DANI - Yes.

We’ll put it here, between the plates.

DANI - It must be centred between the plates.

And it’s now ready. We close the valve and can now give it pressure. You can see that we’ve set the temp to 98, to 95, to 97ºC, which is what we would need to press. Now we’re going to put start pumping and begin squishing Rosin. When we reach the desired pressure, we’ll time about 5 minutes with our timer. When you have the press, for the first few days you can experiment, testing micronsize, type of plant material, temperatures, pressures and times.

DANI - Correct. Exactly. Its trial and error.

Exactly.

DANI - In this case, we’ve calculated that 95ºC and 5 minutes pressing will give a pretty good result and get a return of nearly 15% of the vegetable matter that we’ve used.

Well that’s very good.

DANI - Yes, it’s really good.

Let’s do it! We are going to apply pressure… we see how the plates are closing with the piston and the pressure gauge will show the pressure we’re giving.

DANI - I’m starting to see… starting to see the oil in there.

This is the pressure we’ll maintain during the 5 minutes that the extraction lasts. Let me say that it’s important to note that we’re making this type of concentrate without using any solvent. We haven't used gas, alcohol, or anything… simply pressure and temperature, so that what comes out of there will be completely clean.

Open the envelope, let's see the Rosin that’s come out onto the parchment. Next we’ll put this Rosin in the fridge so that it cools and then we can collect it more easily. As for the rest of the plant, we can see that it still has resin left. We could do several things, one would be for example to make a 2nd pressing, or discard it (but it’s best to make use of it), or for example we can macerate it in extra virgin olive oil, which will give us a rich and tasty cannabis oil.

After leaving it a couple of hours in the fridge, we can already pick up the Rosin that’s on the paper. With a Dabber like this, or maybe one that’s a little wider could work better, we’re collecting it, and as it’s a bit cold, it sticks very well. We put it in the little pot and keep scraping…

DANI - A dabber is better than a knife, because the knife could stick into the paper and cause problems.

No, and a knife can collect paper residue, because it cuts a lot, the Dabber is perfect. But hey, if it's a bit wider, it’s not a problem, but this isn’t bad either.

Let's go back and forth picking our Rosin up bit by bit, patiently, and we place it in our glass jar. You will see that it is a bit sticky, don’t close the lid when you finish, let it sit a while. If we put it, for example, on top of the press where the heating plates are, little by little, with the heat, it will melt and drip to the bottom of the glass jar, okay? That’s the process, collecting it up.

DANI - If you closed it now the lid would get stuck, right?

Exactly, because as you can see, there’s resin around the rim. So if we let it sit…

DANI - Then the heat will take it down...

Exactly.

DANI - And what about the return? Depending on the variety.

Here I think we’ve got around 15% from this variety.

DANI - Between 10% and15%. I think with this variety…

Yes, it’s Juanita.

DANI - …but well, it also depends on the degree of humidity that the flowers have and the variety itself, of course.

And the micron size, the time, the pressure… a bit of everything.

DANI -You can get between 15%, 20%, up to 25%. It depends.

As we’ve said before, it’s a matter of testing with each variety and in each press and seeing how it works best for you.