So I went and did a few test runs of dry ice sift with the bubble buckets today. For pressing rosin, I wasn't super impressed. I used 4 different sifts of varying quality and age, all about a half oz. One was a "miscellaneous" bag of past buds from retail and the medical market, thrown in a ziploc in the freezer from the past 6 months. Another was some retail MAC and Phog (Face Off OG x Freeze), about 4 months old. Third was some Double Grape from my first grow, and then last was the retail Platinum OG, which had just cured and hit the shelves at 61% RH.
First, my yields were shit. So shit, I didn't measure them. I got as expected yields for the sift in the first and second screens (around 25-30% from shaking 90 sec for the 120 screen, then 90 sec for 160 screen), but yields coming off the press were terrible, to where I got no where near even a gram and a half off any of the 4. I'm sure most of this was user error, these being my first ever sift presses (all at 160, 45 sec warm up, 2-2.5 min slow press to 400, then scrape and a second press at 180 to 500+, in 37u bags). I wasn't sure how to pre-pack the bags, so I filled them tightish, cut excess bag and folded over, and then pressed them in the pre-press not too hard before putting in the parchment.
For a baseline, last night I did a test flower squish of the Platinum OG (POG), and got 25% return of really nice flower rosin. .45 first press, .05ish second press off a 2 gram tester. The second press was darker/greener, and shatterier. All of the presses today resembled that second press in that they were darker and shatterier than the one first flower test press. Not sure if the dry ice fries the resin, or I just went too hard on the pressure or cured it wrong, but with yields being what they were I'm more inclined now to focus on solving how to dry water hash/ice wax without oxidation, i.e. super blonde and squishable.
Below are the four. What I found interesting is that color was a function of age. The oldest bud's rosin is the darkest, and the newest the lightest, arranged in order. I'm putting the miscellaneous rosin in the edibles bin for later along with the used pouches and pucks, but the rest of the rosin smells great and smokes well enough, but has more particulate in it than I'd hoped for, enough to notice it in taste. Learning! Hopefully someone benefits from this - nothing groundbreaking but if you're gonna squish, use bud that's as fresh as possible, and avoid the dry ice sift, apparently.
