Wash time and intensity Discussion
So today, I would like to discuss wash time and intensity. It's a commonly discussed topic I see on forums. I recently saw it explained like this:
The point of starting with shorter wash times, is to obtain the best quality from those first washes
The increase of time and intensity is simply to allow you to do less washes
Imagine an apple tree. You do a first shake really gently. All the fallen fruits will be the more ripe of the tree.
Second shake you go a little harder and longer. The fruit that will fall will still be ripe but a bit less so.
Third shake fruit starts to be less ripe now and you also have branches and leaves and sticks that fall with the fruits. And so on, so each time you shake you have fruits less and less ripe and more and more leaves and branches etc.
So to move the analogy over to the case of making hash, the more washes you do, you have the less and less ripe trichomes falling, as well as some of the cystolith hairs some of the capitate stalks, some of the pistils and other plant matter and dust and things that have been pulverized and are small enough to now fit through the micron screens
As far as I can see it, this is another great argument for spending at least a decent amount of money on your bag set. I haven't personally done these experiments, but I have heard from people who have and say that their cheaper bag sets mesh tends to stretch and deform over time allowing more contaminant into their product. As well as sometimes having incorrect micron sizes or mesh that is inconsistently sized across the screen or sidewall.
My limited personal experience with this would tend to corroborate that, because I did one time make hash with cheap bags (someone else's bags) from material that I know usually produces a little cleaner hash when I use my original bubblebag set. It wasn't a drastic difference but it did seem like the hash didn't come out quite as clean.
So as I tend to machine wash, I'll discuss that first. When machine washing, especially material that I don't know what it's going to produce, something I've never run before, I will generally do a first wash of 3 to 7 minutes. Although more likely 5 to 7 minutes, 3 minutes would be either material I know for sure will dump or that I strongly suspect is going to. 5 minutes if I suspect it'll do well but I'm not super certain that it's going to dump. And if I think it's just going to be some fairly average yielding material, I'm going to go ahead and run it that whole 7 minutes.
After that I gradually ramp up the time. So if I started with a 6 minute first wash, I'll do an 8 minute second wash, 10 minute third, 12 on the fourth and if I felt it a fifth was warranted go the whole 15 minutes on my timer and switch it from gentle to standard wash on the last few minutes of that final cycle.
When machine washing, always use the gentle cycle if your machine has one with the exception of the last few minutes of the final wash. The standard cycle just beats up your material too much if you're going for good melt. If melt and quality are the most important thing to you, you might want to consider hand stirring if your machine doesn't have a gentle cycle. But I have heard a person say they used a voltage regulator to create a gentle cycle on a single cycle machine. So if you're dead set on the machine but also dead set on quality that may be another option to look into.
I've seen other people saying that when they know the material they're running, sometimes they like to do a longer first wash with the theory that they want to get what they know will release cleanly and easily all grouped in the same wash and then do shorter washes to go easier on the material as it gets more broken up.
Any other preferences or tips in regards to wash time and intensity I'm missing here?
