• Different strains require different freeze drying recipes

• Will mostly impact dry times and shelf temps

• Batch size probably has a much bigger overall impact

Your delicious resin has a protective shield around it called the cuticle — which can be strong or weak.

Some strains have really delicate terps. Other ones not so much. Many people tend to gravitate towards the ones that are difficult to farm and preserve.

(and under vacuum like in your freeze dryer, these boiling points get wayyyy lower)

So it's really important to understand how these different types of resin behave in your freeze dryer.

One thing that I was really confused about when we first started, was how terps could escape through he trichome cuticle.

• Cuticles are semi-permeable, which means that terps can escape through them over time

• Freezing too quickly, applying too much shelf heat, and drying too long can all compromise your cuticles, potentially leading to more terp loss

This is why you should look at all of your batches differently.

Different strains tolerate different settings.

Many people select for thinner cuticles because they make better full melt/higher hash to rosin yields, but those might be more susceptible to terp loss.

Here's an example of how this might play out in the lab.

You're running Hashy #1 and Hashy #2 — two different phenos with very similar terp profiles.

One has a very sandy resin and the other is very oily.

• For full melt, you may still want thinner cuticle

• For rosin, thicker cuticle might actually preserve more terps and come out as better final product

Understanding the relationship between cuticle strength, terpene volatility, and your freeze dryer is far more valuable than memorizing recipes and settings.

Most people don't want to do it, because it's boring and tedious.

But we're trying to make it easier.

Most hash makers we know are running diverse gardens. They're not running the same type of material over and over.

So it's really really important to develop an understanding of how different types of trichomes want to be dried. You can apply those heuristics to future batches and in-the-field decision making.

It's also interesting to think about how different terp content may ultimately change on its way to final product. What you smell in the garden/smoke in the flower may not translate.

Playing with things like cuticle thickness during breeding may be a way to influence these factors. Messing with your freeze dryer recipe may also be a way to impact this.

We're getting into pretty out there territory and there's not a lot of data. If you're interested in this stuff and want to help us take a data-driven approach to figuring out what's going on here, get in contact with us.

Our dream is to have recipes that update dynamically according to your unique resin. Not what some guy ran in a lab 4,000 miles away from yours with completely different starting material.