Considerations and Procedures for Fresh Frozen

Greetings from Bear Extraction House, where we specialize in fresh frozen extraction! We wanted to take a moment to discuss some points on fresh frozen and share these with you, the cultivators, to help in elevating the return on your harvest. Fresh frozen extracts provide an unparalleled consumer experience with a high-potency, favorful concentrate product. Please take a moment to review this document, and if there are any questions, please reach out, we are here to help. We at Bear, wish you the most successful 2021 harvest season!

■ Choose strains with high terpene profles

Strains that meet this profle create beautiful extracts and the market for these is in high demand. Fruity, tropical, or exotic profles are perfect, while gassy strains are less desirable, unless a high terpene profle is present. Extracts will highlight the strain, so if it is pleasant as a fower, then the resulting extract should show well.

■ Pay attention to batch sizes

The testing that is required for extraction is rigorous, multiple strains will need to be tested individually, this can decrease your bottom line. We prefer to keep the batch size at a minimum of 200 wet pounds, per strain. If you end up with several smaller batches, we might consider combining the strains if we see potential for a good fnal product. Please let us know, when a sample is taken if this is a possibility, and we can make assessments during the micro-extraction. For a general rule, wet weight is about 4.5- 5 times the amount of dry weight.

■ Maximize your profts by diversifying your harvest

Flower is KING! It is hard to compete with a robust fower market, so we suggest taking frst and second cuts for the fower market, and use the remaining material for fresh frozen. This will help you in a few ways: You will have fat, easy to trim fowers that will look fantastic in the bag, and won't have to bother trimming the smalls, and lower level material. As a reminder here at Bear we ofer a full service processing center as well as a prolifc fower sales team. ■ Pest Control & Environment

Please be aware of what you use on your plants and remember that extraction is concentration. This means that if you use something on your plants, then the resulting extraction will potentially highlight that. One item that is commonly used is Sulphur, and plants treated with this material, can result in the material not being acceptable for extraction. Sulphur is not lab tested, so we have developed a way to test for its presence at the micro-extraction level. We are working to develop a remediation plan for sulphur, but do not have one in place that is cost efective. Last year we endured a fre season, and this is another factor to consider when thinking about extraction. The presence of smoke flled air for lengths of time can become quite a strong odor for extracted material.

■ Fresh Frozen: The Savior

Fresh Frozen is best for salvaging the material that might be unsuitable for the Flower market. If your plants are poorly shaped, airey, have mold, fungus, seeds, or insects, frozen might just solve your problem. Extraction is blind to these issues, and can still turn that material into a high value product. Don't have drying space for all that you have grown? Freeze it!

When considering harvesting cannabis for fresh frozen extraction, detailed attention to harvest procedure is the critical frst step to creating the highest quality concentrates. Time is of the essence in this process; freezing the biomass quickly is essential. “Slow-freezing” by simply placing the harvest in a standard freezer, or packing bags too large, allows moisture accumulation, and the eventual development of ice. The presence of ice impedes the extraction by shielding the material from the solvent during extraction. Freezing the harvest as quickly as possible allows the full spectrum of fresh cannabis compounds (cannabinoids, THC, terpenes, etc.) to be properly preserved, and prevents unwanted degradation of the plant material.

■ Plan your harvest date! Two weeks before your planned harvest, a Bear representative will need to come to your property to take a sample of the harvest. Bear requires a sample between 380-454g to complete a microextraction. We will bring all the tools we need to take a proper sample. Samples are taken from various locations to ensure we get a good representation of the material. Once the sample has been extracted, we will provide a yield percentage and an estimate can be obtained. Please note, that the sample yield percentage will simply be an estimate, in fact, mostly it will determine if we recommend this process for your material. We also take this opportunity to send out the sample extraction for testing for both heavy metals, pesticides and sulphur.

■ Tests are Clean!! The next conversation will take place when we have the microextraction completed and the test results are in. Once we have clean test results we can send you an estimate of what the harvest value is. If you agree that fresh frozen is the right direction for your harvest, we can then work on setting up a schedule for harvest or pickup.

● Preharvest Prep Prior to the scheduled harvest, remove excess big leaves and trellis material. This will speed up the harvest process, and help eliminate paying taxes for material that does not yield.

● Harvesting/Processing Break down stalks of individual plants and begin remove the remaining big leafs; Either by hand or with a big leaf fan blade trimming machine, tabletop trimmer like a trimpro.

● Buck fower of of stem We have purchased, used and tried several bucking machines, and while they are fne to use, they are not necessary. What we found is a simple solution that you most likely have on your farm already. The black and yellow totes can be used for this task. Simply drill a variety of holes in the side of a tote, and pull the material through!

● Bag & Tag Collect the bucked fower from the tote into a bag (we prefer a food saver bag, but not vacuumed). The bag of bucked fower should not exceed 3 lbs of wet weight. Keeping the bags small assists in freezing time, and makes the material easier to crush for extraction. Bags should be labeled with Farm name, strain, and weight. Please use the same bags for the entire harvest, and if harvesting yourself, ensure that we get a sample of the bag at pickup.