A clean, rich concentrate has so many fantastic benefits. It’s almost impossible to explain them all in words! And words are a problem when you’re talking
about the cleanest type of naturally-made extractions, because there are so
many different phrases used to describe the same thing.
People can’t agree on whether to call it bubble, ice-resin, ice-water resin, full melt, water-extracted resin, ice
resin, cold water extraction resin, or whatever comes to mind.
Pure water extracted resin has all of the benefits of a concentrate and it doesn’t
contain solvents or other chemicals that you may find in butane, isopropyl
and other forms of solvent-made concentrates.
This is about resin made by placing dried
flowers and plant clippings in iced water and “washing” the material to gather high potency resin glands for use as a
concentrate.
When you isolate resin glands from other
material plants produce, you get the purest dose of high quality resin that can
be derived without using solvent-assisted extraction.
Here we see the Resinator XL rotating in a ICE-H2O extraction.
When you use iced water to make bubble, you’re
using temperature, stirring, and wet sifting to isolate the resin glands.There’s
no butane, C02, or alcohol solvents to worry about…and no explosions either.
Most people who’ve heard of water-made
ice-resin are familiar with resin bags and bubble.
Long ago a bubble-making methodology was
popularized involving micron bags that have different micron sizes of screens.
The bubble production process involves putting
plant material in a “work bag” along with plenty of ice, then stirring and
settling the mixture for a period of time.
After that, you’re gently squeezing the mixture
through screen built into the working bag so a slurry of icewater and resin
glands travel through the screen and into a stacked set of other bags that have
different sized, progressively smaller screens.
After you’ve squeezed all the water and resin
glands from the working bag, you discard the plant material in it, although
some resin makers will rewash or rescreen that material to get as much out of
it as they can.
Then you work through each remaining bag or
screen size, squeezing, or in our case tumbling, and the water-resin slurries
out so it goes into the bags from out of our Resinator Chamber.
Depending on the type of material you’re working
with and the type of materials you used, each screen size will have varying
amounts of resin glands on its screen after you have squeezed the water out of
the bag.
This happens because resin glands come in
different sizes. Some glands will make it through bags with 150, 100, or 75
micron screen pore size, others will not.
Most resin connoisseurs believe that resin
glands that gather on the bottom of the smaller pore size bags 75, 50 and 25
microns are the highest quality resin glands.
Try for your self to determine your favorite.
In reality, the types and sizes of resin glands
you collect depends on the material and genetics you’re producing, and on the
material you’ve chosen to use.
For example, if you use all plant clippings as
your starter material, the resin gland ratios and sizes, and the potency of
your material, will be different than if you use all premium flowers as your
starter material.
Every batch you make will be slightly
different.
There are several resin-making branded bags and
products in the marketplace, and you could make good resin concentrates from
all of them.
Every resin bag manufacturer has a slightly
different approach to where, how and with what materials they manufacture their
screens.
But why should you even go through the work of
making water-extracted resin?
One main benefit is ice-resin is it’s a
concentrated, pure resin product that includes very little plant material. If
smoked, for example, you aren’t inhaling smoke. It’s more like a vapor, which
is nicer for your lungs.
Not only that, but by utilizing a resin-derived
material composed of only resin glands, you get a stronger dose, with far less
of the combustion byproducts you get when smoking whole flowers.
You find that the beneficial effects you get
from concentrates are more stimulating and game-changing than the effects you
get from smoking whole flowers.
For farmers, making ice-resin is a way to get
value from leaves and inferior flowers that would otherwise be discarded.
You’d be surprised how many resin glands are on
leaves that get manicured off and thrown away. Water extraction is a way of
getting more usable product from every harvest.
As an added benefit, water-washing removes
contaminants and other materials that can affect your health. Because of this
washing effect, ice-resin doesn’t have much, if any, taste or smell.
Resin is compact and concentrated, and doesn’t
look like bulk flowers. This is a huge benefit when you’re traveling, and need
to carry small amounts.
Icewater extraction takes a couple of hours, some
preparation, ice made from pure water, and multiple steps.
And after you’ve done the bag work and gathered
resin glands from each size micron screen they’ve accumulated on, you have
several grades of ice-resin.
The glands and other material caught by the
larger screen sizes (200 and 150 micron sizes for example) aren’t usually
considered premium resin; this stuff is often thrown away.
The remaining resin glands are carefully
removed from each screen smaller than 150, water is pressed out of them, and then
the materials are left to dry.
The process takes practice before you get it
just right, but it’s fun, and the end product is amazingly potent and
desirable.
When you get pure, well-made ice-resin, it
gives you a different feeling than whole flowers.
Effects are more immediate, acute and
uplifting. Your lungs aren’t choked as much. You have less burn-out. Effects
lasts longer.
If you love resin and other extracts and want
to get the most direct, concentrated and healthful dose of them, ice-resin is a
joy.
This is a post-harvest activity you can really
enjoy. Once you start using bubble, you are likely to never go back.
