Im a week away from harvest,dreading the trimming.I understand you dont need to dry the product you freeze it is this true?
Ill be shopping for bags this week,I read some of you only use certain ones/sizes.Im sure ill have more questions ,ive just started watching videos.
Half truth. Only certain bags will give good quality product, others will be trash, and others will be cooking grade. I run an 8 bag and use all 8 bags. Using every bag is key to getting the coveted full-melt/"Ice-wax"
Keep in mind, different strains have different sized resin glands. So while the "money bag/full-melt" on one strain will be the 90µ, on another strain it might be the 73µ strain. I've had some batches where the 120µ is the full-melt.
220 is your work bag.
190 is typically trash.
160 is cooking grade.
120 is not quite full melt, but definitely better than cooking grade. Will be full-melt with some strains.
90 or 73 will typically be your full melt. Whichever of the two doesn't produce full melt will typically be a step above the 120 bag.
45 is just a step above cooking grade. Smokeable, and with decent flavor even, but not quite as good as your 73-120µ bags.
25 is mostly dirt, but with enough resin glands in it to warrant cooking with it.
I typically combine the 25, 45, and 160µ hash and use it for edibles, tinctures, topicals, etc.
The 73, 90, and 120 is what's worth all the time and effort.
I mostly run hash now due to the same thing you pointed out, trimming sucks. One thing when I was just in a tent only trimming 1-2lbs every harvest. Trimming outdoor harvests of 15+ lbs? I'm never doing that shit again. Only dry/trim the best and easiest nugs and I turn the rest into hash.
If you're running trim from trimming your buds, then yes you'll have to throw the trim into bags (I use trash bags) and freeze them.
The idea behind freezing your material is two-fold: first its to make the resin glands more "brittle" and secondly its to freeze the chlorophyll so as to avoid contamination.
However, I run fresh buds so its a little different for me. After removing fan leaves from the entire plant, I remove each branch one by one. Buds, sugar leaf, and all get tossed into my work bag until its full. Then I agitate. If you run the material immediately upon harvesting, the chlorophyll will still be alive, so it won't end up in your final product and therefore won't need to freeze. Because of this, you can be a little more aggressive with your agitation process
Running fresh also provides the best quality flavor. The hash itself will be dried and cured, so doing so with the bud is a bit redundant.
Have a pump sprayer filled with ice water handy, spray each bag before spooning out the hash. Sometimes things don't go all the way through the screen. You don't want 120µ in your 90 or 73µ hash, or you won't get full melt.
I agitate and dump into the bags 4-5 times, breaking apart the buds in between each wash to ensure I extract as much as possible.
When finished, I dump the contents of the work bag into 1g ice cream tubs and use Everclear to get anything left over. Little extra cooking grade out of the deal. Waste not, want not.
I let the material sit in the bucket for a few days to ensure all the alcohol has evaporated, then dump into the compost pile.
I'll be doing this with 20g bags and trash cans next year. Total pain in the ass doing this in small batches, but sure beats trimming!
And besides, with how amazing full-melt from living soil is I just can't go back to flower. The flavor is extraordinary.