10 Ways to Increase your Rosin Yield

Increasing your yield is not a one-stop solution, instead it’s all about the quality and methods you follow to ensure that the yield is, in turn, increased.

For instance, ensuring you’re beginning the process with a quality product and take the time to reduce the buds to an appropriate size, along with following the right pressing temperature guidelines is all paramount too a yield that is worth all of that effort!

Ten steps to increasing your rosin yield

Let’s look at a breakdown of ten of the most efficient ways to both increase the efficiency of your pressing process, and result in a yield that is more like what you’re expecting!

1. Your Starting Material

The quality of your bid will make a huge difference to your overall yield results. Flowers that have been cultivated to the full potential are going to perform much better than those that are poorly grown. On top of this, you also need to think about the strain of flower that you press, as this will also make a difference, Some strains perform better than others, this is because they contain more oil-producing trichomes to start with.

While the type of bud that you use is going to make a difference, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the most expensive is going to be the best product for you to use. If you are continuously getting poor results, or just aren’t hitting the mark, then chances are, you need a better flower.

When it comes to the rosin pressing process, the most important thing for you to consider is the quality of the flower you are using. I may take trial and error, and a bit of research to get it just right, but practice makes perfect, and you will soon find a flower that you work with often because of the yield potential. Remember the better the flower you start with the better chance of you increasing yield.

2. Freshness Of Your Material

When you are aiming to increase your rosin yield, as well as looking closely at the quality of your starting material you also need to pay close attention to the freshness.

This is one of, if not the most important thing for you to look at when trying to gain your maximum yielding potential. The freshness is often key. It’s as simple as, old bud produces less oil than the fresher flowers. If you’re struggling to get the yield that you need or want then it worth going the extra mile to ensure you are sourcing the freshest bud that you can. It will certainly pay dividends to do so.

As above, we mentioned that quality is important in order to get a fantastic rosin yield, quality is very closely related to the freshness of your materials.

You will often see your best-performing yield when you use your rosin press on flowers as soon as they are cured and dried. No hanging around. You will find that the longer you wait for, the darker you yield will be. This makes it essential for you to press the buds when they are at their freshest.

3. Your Research

As with most things in life, research is often the key to success. This definitely applies to when you want to increase your rosin yield. Without research on press types and pressing techniques, you may as well accept the yield that you are already achieving.

Unfortunately, although there are some simple fixes such as getting the best quality flowers and ensuring you press when it’s fresh. You still need to make sure you are researching each of these areas in-depth.

Join forums, make use of advice available online, and complete a diary of things that have worked well for you and what hasn’t. You also need to understand that your research is going to continue, things are often changing.

Your stock availability may change, prices may alter, etc. As long as you know where to look and how to adapt you should be able to ensure your yield is better than good.

4. Think About The Humidity

Another crucial factor that affects the yield of your rosin is the relative humidity of your flower. Having too dry of a flower will lead to the material acting like a sponge and absorbing oil back onto itself. This is an obvious factor that will reduce your yield.

If you want to remedy the issues, you need to make sure you follow recommendations and aim for your bud to have a relative humidity of 55 to 62 percent before pressing.

You are able to test the humidity of your bid by using a hygrometer, you have the choice to use pre-set humidity pack, that will help to ensure the perfect level of moisture for your flower. This is definitely not an aspect of rosin pressing to overlook. Relative humidity can have a significant effect on your overall yield, so investing in a humidity pack or hydrometer is definitely worth it.

It is worth noting that although the above is recommended levels, there are other factors that could contribute to the humidity of your flowers such as your set-up and working environment. This is where again, an element of trial and error comes in, as you will need to find the ideal humidity percentage for your own working environment.

5. Break Your Bud Into Smaller Pieces

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t be grinding your flyer before you plan to press it. However, trying to press large pieces of bud isn’t going to help you achieve the best yield. It makes sit more difficult to manage, as well as making the amount of oil released considerably less, this is because of some of the pressure from pressing is lost.

It is recommended that you break the pieces of bud into smaller, more manageable pieces before you move onto the pressing. This will help to achieve a successful and boost your rosin yield.

Always make sure you prevent damage by taking care and handling your buds gently. It’s a good idea to have a look at the types of tools that will help you so this without causing damage and cutting them the correct size.

Make sure you do some research as to what size is ideal as cutting to small or grinding won’t lead to an increase in yield either, there needs to be some substance to your buds but not excessive.

6. Micron Filter Size

It is highly recommended that you utilize filter bags when pressing your flowers. And, when doing so you need to make sure you pay close attention to the micron reading of your bag. This is going to affect your return when pressing.

Generally, you will find that the larger the size of the filter, the more material will be allowed to pass through. This will inevitably increase your yield.

However, this could have a significant impact on the quality of your yield, as lower grade particles are also allowed through and make their way into your end product. This means that when choosing your micron filter size it’s often weighing up the difference between the yield and the quality, and deciding which is of more importance.

The range of micron ratings for flower rosin ranges from 90 to 50 microns, most will aim to around 115 as the best range. However, as mentioned previously, trial and error are needed to find the perfect filter size. Try swapping and changing the filter sizes and completing some quality checks.

You may find that a slight change with a higher yield doesn’t affect the overall quality. Once you get to a noticeable change you may want to reconsider going back to a smaller size.

Usually, you would avoid using anything over 150-micron width, this is where you would usually see the biggest drop in quality. The relationship between material and micron type is essential because higher micron count means the porous the mesh filter will be.

7. Using Mesh Materials

If you are using a bag for pressing, it is also recommended that you use a monofilament filter mesh made of 100% polyester. This will usually give you the best result and is the most advantageous for yields. It is also the best food-grade fabric recommended by the FDA. If you use stainless steel screens scratch plates, reduce yields, and silkscreens it will make it tough to measure your pressure metrics accurately because of extended stretching.

Finding the right press bags will help you to clean impurities. Bagging also prevents rosin from sticking which can have a detrimental effect on your yield percentage.

8. Pressure

Although increasing the plate pressure will ultimately squeeze more rosin out of your flower, it will only do it up to a certain point. This is because too much pressure can force unwanted plant materials through the process and into your rosin. This leads to a reduced quality to your rosin yield. If you are wise about it though, you can use pressure to your advantage.

Once your rosin press is at the optimal pressure, the oil will quickly begin to seep out quite quickly to start with. Shortly, this flow will start to slow, and at this point, you need to start incrementally increasing the pressure between 5 to 10 psi at a time. This will help to enable a little extra rosin to be released with each bump in pressure.

You can do this a fair few times in order to squeeze out the maximum. However, you need to be careful that you don’t overdo it, as this is likely to lead to contamination or your yield or a blowout.

9. Temperature And Time

Correct time and temperature settings can have a massive impact on both quality and yield. Unfortunately, there aren’t any figures that are available to give you an instant improvement in your yield.

Experienced rosin makers will be extremely aware that the different strains, or even sometimes to the same strain grown by different cultivators can react completely differently in the same settings.

You will quickly learn that each type of cannabis that you press, will need to have its own unique time and temperature settings. Each one is unique so therefore to get the best yield you need to enable the settings to be able to extract the most from it.

To begin, you should make sure you research the best way to correctly set the time and temperature. This process is likely to be extremely trial and error, much like other areas in this field.

You need to bear in mind that the most popular rosin pressing temperatures are going to vary depending on the press that you use and the strain that you choose to work with. However, it is generally believed that the true hot-spot to work with is between 200-220 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thought the optimal temperature can vary from strain to strain when pressing and from press to press, many pressers have reported this to be the sweet-spot temperature.

When you’re using a hair iron or smaller rosin presser, make sure to listen out for the sizzle ot crackling sound. This indicates when your product is ready. This is a great method that enables you to judge when sublimation has developed. However, if you are using a commercial press, you don’t need to worry about this step yourself as it will indicate it for you.

10. Make Sure You Always Test

As with any product that enters the market, it is imperative that it put through testing. The best way for you to ensure you get the prime result is to experiment until it’s where it both needs to be and where you want it to be.

Rosin pressing is still very much in the developing stages and is considered to be a brand new technology. Therefore, you need to expect there to be constant changes and different methods and machines introduced. This also means that it essential for you to complete multiple tests to ensure your project is optimized to its maximum potential.

By doing this you will be able to ensure an increase in your rosin yield, and you will also be able to find the best press method for each individual flower that you use. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to make sure you are keeping up to date with any new releases of information, advice, and new technology that could result in higher yields.

Conclusion

This guide has covered some of the more popular ways to ensure that you have a refined and optimised rosin pressing process in place.

Just remember to take your time and that even seasoned pressing pros don’t get it right every time, so try not to get disheartened if your initial yields don’t bear the fruit you were expecting!