There are lots of topics I want to write about on this blog, but it will take a little time to cover all of them individually. In the meantime, I put together an overview of some of the things we do behind the scenes that other extractors either aren’t doing at all, or are not devoting nearly the amount of energy or resources that we are. The sentences with an *asterisk* I definitely plan to write more in-depth entries. As always, if there are questions you have, leave them in the comments!
- We’re fanatics about testing everything for pesticides as it comes into our facility
- many people claim to have 100% organic products, but analytical labs report finding banned pesticides in many products on the shelf (between 40-80% in WA and 20-30% in OR have some sort of detected banned pesticide!*)
- this comes at considerable cost to us, as each test is over $300. When I discuss results with the scientists at the analytical labs, they tell me they don’t have other extract labs testing their trim material.
- The only chemicals in our extract and process labs (aside from organic cannabis) are:
- pure CO2 carbon dioxide (comes in pressurized tanks)
- Food-grade ethanol (fancy talk for highly pure EverclearTM)
- Purified reverse-osmosis water
- Solid CO2 (carbon dioxide) + rubbing alcohol (for our cold traps, does not contact product)
–we don’t use cutting agents like PG, VG, artificial flavors* or other fillers.
3. We carefully keep each harvested strain as a separate batch*
- Sometimes we get a large batch, sometimes we get a small batch – that’s part of being reliant on a perishable/seasonal feedstock! To ensure the finished oil smells, tastes and experiences as close to the actual flower as possible, we don’t mix strains in our extractors. That means our finished batch sizes are variable and it’s not always possible to find the exact same product month after month in your favorite retailer.
4. We enhance our finished oil with the full spectrum of terpenes collected in-house from each batch
- A previous blog post was written about terpenes, but the summary is: most companies who claim to have “terpene-enhanced” product are not getting them from cannabis and most folks have no idea where the source of these additives might be coming from*…..
5. We spend more than most companies in research and development (R&D) of our procedure, tracking the cannabinoids and terpenes, fine-tuning our processing steps to optimize and improve the overall product.
- We have a full-time PhD chemist leading our scientific team
- We don’t currently have the expensive in-house analytical equipment, so it’s necessary to partner with outside analytical labs, which comes at no small cost to us, but it’s important to us that we feel confident we’re offering a clean and safe product*.
6. Multi-point quality control checkpoints integrated along the process line*
- I already discussed the additional pesticide screening before extraction above. We also check each batch for:
- viscosity (how “thick” the oil is – for example, honey is very viscous, while water is much less)
- color/clarity on visual standard scale
- cartridge performance and reliability*: we have personal relationships with the overseas manufacturers of the cartridges and have been testing out many different iterations to ensure they have a smooth product delivery each time.
As you can see, we utilize top-level science and clean, organic processes to create a premium product for our customers and patients.
Avitas Cannabis 