History is important - it's how we learn! I really enjoyed reading about their eureka moments for things we just assume everyone knows these days, like decarbing for example. It's not about the who did what, it's about what they did. Ice water hash, for example. It's great to see how things have changed over the years.
Anyways - ice-less extraction notes
-4 Celsius, or about 4 degrees below freezing for you non-Metricites (metrices?). A bunch of trim into a 5 gallon bucket, with 4 gallons of not frozen water. A long stirring spoon from a brewing shop and stir, stir, stir. It took a good 4 or 5 rotations before the slurry would start to spin - in future I might want to do this with a larger water:herb ratio. Anyways, a bunch of back and forth, not to violently, just to make it all whirly, and then switch direction.
So after a couple of minutes ice started forming around the sides of the bucket, meaning lots of scraping and then swirling. It started to get chunky to I thought it best to pour. I had 220 and 190 in one bucket, and everything else in another. Dunno why, but it seemed to make sense at the time.
Yields looked good, but scooping them out I realized there was a lot of ice in there. Still, easily scooped and dumped on glass. I really regret not using the pressing cloth, as the next day the Pyrex was more water than herb. I syringed a bunch out, being as careful as possible. It's dry now, and has been sieved a few times and looks good. Will take some for a test drive soon. Yield could have been better. I thought it was really good, til I found out that was ice...
Next time
- wrap the bucket with insulation to keep it from freezing, or wait til it's just above freezing, and experiment again. Today it's +4, for example...
- Let bags warm up a little in the garage to let the ice get out
- Hand the bags outside until the pucks freeze, then bring them inside and sieve. If it's cold enough...
I didn't use the 220 work bag again. I might try it again, just because, in theory at least, it seems to make sense. If I was working with perfect bud I would probably avoid it, but for trim I'm thinking it might be handy. But more playing required...
EDIT - so here's a hypothesis - in this weather, at these temps, I should just be able to put a bunch of trim in a container with water, let it sit around freezing for 'awhile', with very little agitation (a couple of light swirls maybe?), and then let it settle for awhile, wouldn't all the heads be on the bottom?
One could, in theory, valve the bottom and drain that directly into bags, or just save it, dry it, and hash it. It's trim, right? Or maybe a slotted cooking spoon to skim all the trim bumpf from the bucket. Anyways, work bag is going to be used for trim going forward, just to keep it tidy. But, on the other hand, will be treated with more decorum...
But using the same valve on the bottom of the bucket idea couldn't you drain right into the bags, avoiding pulling all together? I saw something kinda like that on a vid last year called Ice Water Hack or some such. Anyways, they let the water sit in a monster barrel. and kept siphoning off plant water, replacing it with clean water (slowly) and when the water was nice and clean you could see all the heads on the bottom of the clean water. That, along with reading about it again in the 1971 book about ice water, made me think that all my outdoor water is close to ice right now... Soon, I suspect, an experiment with some actual real good quality buds might start happening... Heck, in this weather I could be doing this in a glass water pitcher and filming in slomo... barely agitated, vibrating sander under the container perhaps? Maybe just the occasional swipe with the big spoon - just to make the water move a little, and let the cold water do it's work... This is kinda exciting - new ideas for Xmas
PS - Happy X!