Ed Rosenthal and Greg Baughman: You're Still Growing Cannabis Wrong

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Greg Baughman: He says, "This is Ed Rosenthal." And I'm like, "Oh, Ed, oh my god. Hey, can we somehow get you samples?" He said, "I don't want samples, I want to see the COAs." Bryan Fields: Greg, should cannabis be treated like produce? Greg Baughman: It should, it should. I believe cannabis definitely has a shelf life. That's something we really need to study and look into more. Personally, my mark is kind of that 60-day mark. I think right at that 60-day mark after it's been brought down out of a dry room is at its pivotal point where things take a turn — you start losing terpenes, you start getting degraded cannabinoids, and it's just less of a product than what it was at, say, the 30-day mark. Bryan Fields: Is it treated like produce today, and what is that normal time frame for a consumer who walks into a dispensary and purchases a product? Is there some rough estimate to see the comparative differences? Greg Baughman: It's very difficult right now. If you walk into a dispensary and say, "Hey, can you tell me what is the freshest cannabis you have?" a lot of people won't know. A lot of the budtenders aren't educated. But I like to tell my friends and people I encounter, hey, take a look at the tag, look at the harvest date, see how long it took them to get it to testing, and see how long it took to get to packaging. Those are all big indicators of how fresh the cannabis is. Bryan Fields: So then most consumers, Ed, when they go to a dispensary, are not purchasing fresh flower? Ed Rosenthal: You know, I don't know that what Greg says is totally correct. I think a lot of it depends upon the temperature and the methods in which it's stored. And I think it can actually be kept indefinitely at certain temperatures, especially below freezing, where there'll be very little degradation of both terpenes and THC. Greg Baughman: I agree — freshness is something that's relative. What you mean is how close it is to being what it was when it was first dried. Ed Rosenthal: Right, correct. It can remain fresh indefinitely at freezing temperatures. Bryan Fields: But a lot of that is outside the consumer's hands, right? It's about the type of care and process that comes post-harvest, and a consumer who walks into a dispensary — even though the tag shows a harvest date that might be the initial indicator for freshness — that might not actually reflect how fresh it quote-unquote is. Correct? Ed Rosenthal: Well, you were talking about produce. You think when you buy an apple in the store that it was just picked from the tree. It might have been in storage for months, but if it's stored correctly, it's fresh, right? Bryan Fields: So then what can consumers do to try to acquire a product that fits that quote-unquote freshness? Is there a better way to describe the characteristics of the flower we're illustrating? Ed Rosenthal: Oh, I think any good grower, anybody who's ever grown cannabis, knows when the product is at its best. It's really difficult because certain operations have procedures in place to actually deliver it in a timely manner to the consumer and be consistent. Greg Baughman: A lot of these places produce every 30 days, and it takes them 30 to 60 days to get it to the dispensary. Well, how long does it sit at the dispensary after that? That's where I believe a lot of these brand inconsistencies come from — you'll go one time and it'll be great, you'll go back two weeks later and, because of the way it was packaged or stored at the dispensary, it's not the same. Being able to have better control of your distribution channels, and not overdistributing product so it sits at the dispensary level, is probably one good factor in eliminating that inconsistency. Bryan Fields: Sure, inventory control is definitely important and an issue there. But aren't there additional regulations and challenges some of these companies face — waiting on a lab result, then shipping it off? Are some of those just, by design, problematic for operators trying to produce a consistent, clean product? Ed Rosenthal: At my local shopping center there's a dispensary with a hundred different pre-rolls. So even if it does brisk business and orders ten of each of those hundred, that's a thousand pre-rolls. Some of those might sit in the store for a couple months. It might have been delivered fresh, but if it wasn't stored cold, it's losing quality — and that's a big problem, especially for consistency. Bryan Fields: And what I'm hearing, Greg, is that it's not even the brand that produced the product — it's the way it's stored at the dispensary too. Is that potentially a problem? Greg Baughman: Yes. Just think of it as a fruit market. Ed Rosenthal: I'm often amazed by how a fruit market judges how much fruit it should buy. What happens to the fruit that's not sold? It gets disposed of. But of course, with a piece of fruit you can see whether it's fresh, and you may not be able to distinguish that with cannabis. Greg Baughman: I have some markers on that — if I crack a bud open and it's beige or brown inside, or it smells like a basement... Ed Rosenthal: I know, you can't do that when you're buying — you can't crack it open till you buy it. Greg Baughman: Right, but if I bought it and that happened, I'm not going back and I'm not buying that brand. Ed Rosenthal: You're talking about really drastic deterioration — not the deterioration that's harder to see. Greg Baughman: That's true. But it's less of a product once it's reached that point. Bryan Fields: The point is proven, right? If Greg has an off-putting experience, he's likely assuming the brand was the problem. And when he goes back to the dispensary and sees a hundred different pre-rolls, he's probably only selecting from ninety-nine because the one he had a bad experience with is out. Ed Rosenthal: Well, there are so many brands and styles — let's talk about pre-rolls again. How does a store even know what's good and what isn't? Bryan Fields: By sales? Ed Rosenthal: Maybe, over the long run, but you don't expect the owner to test each one, right? Bryan Fields: Sure, but I don't think the owner is that involved, and each market has its own uniqueness — some states are more fragmented with fewer select brands, and over time survival of the fittest means the top brands rise, determined by quality and price point. It's a balancing act; some brands try to sit at a premium level. Ed Rosenthal: And that's where the nuance is — you go into the store and say, "What's good?" and the budtender might have been told to sell a brand because it has a higher markup. You don't really know you're getting good advice. And if there are a hundred different choices, how does a budtender know what's good? Has he tested all of them? Has he tested the new batches? How do you do that? Bryan Fields: That would be pretty awesome to do on a daily basis. So what can the industry do internally, post-harvest, to have a better grip on ensuring consistent, high-quality product further into the cycle? It doesn't seem like we can fix the time delay between producing a product and getting it through stores given all the variables. Is there something operators can do today to do a better job, Greg? Greg Baughman: Absolutely. Our customer in Canada is an outdoor farmer. They have a SKU releasing around May 5th or 8th in Quebec stores — outdoor flower. He has zero dry space but tons of freezer space. We installed one of our large, high-capacity machines, and he delivers a consistent product weekly to the store — about 60 kilos a week, a one-ounce, $100-ounce product. Canada now allows open panel viewing, so you can see the flower. There are only three other brands in that SKU. He harvests in early September because it's very far north with an early season, but he can still deliver that product fresh all year round. Bryan Fields: What makes it unique? Why would they choose that versus a traditional method? Walk me through the post-harvest process for someone newer to this. Greg Baughman: In a CryoCure situation, our customers chop the plant down, buck it on site, defan it, and freeze the whole flower, which leaves a fluffier flower. If people have had freeze-dried flower before, sometimes it's not done well — inferior equipment gives a drier texture. We aim for a perfect moisture content: we can hit 16% moisture content with a .04 water activity, deactivating surface water molecules at a cellular level and creating a more shelf-stable product. It's more of a spongy flower that doesn't shrink or degrade — still bright and vivid, and almost twice the volume customers are used to in an eighth or ounce. The real secret of our recipe is preserving terpenes — operating at low temperatures and low pressures lets us preserve terpenes and pull water off before the small monoterpenes that normally evaporate in hang-dry rooms are lost. We save those and put them back into the flower, so the smell is very appealing when consumers open the bag. Bryan Fields: I want to dive deeper, Greg, but before we do, Ed, I have a question for you — you attached your name to this project. Were you skeptical upfront, and what made you feel differently after experiencing it? Ed Rosenthal: I experienced it before I met Greg and Tracy. I ran an experiment — it was costly. I put a glass plate with a bud on it into the freezer, and a week later pulled the bud out and tried it. That was the first freeze-dried bud I experienced. Bryan Fields: And Ed planted that seed in his book 10, 20 years ago, and that's how Greg and Tracy got into it. Was that based on an idea at the time, or were you just thinking there had to be a better way? Do you remember what sparked it? Ed Rosenthal: Well, you're going to tell me. Have you ever experienced freeze-dried food? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I've had some very off-putting freeze-dried food. Ed Rosenthal: Freeze-dried fruit, for instance? Bryan Fields: Yes, perhaps. Ed Rosenthal: So might you have a curiosity — what would happen if you took a bud and put it in the freezer? Bryan Fields: Sure, but then there's all the moisture concerns. Ed Rosenthal: Do you know the difference between a modern freezer and one from fifty years ago? Bryan Fields: Well, freezers fifty years ago, you had to defrost because there'd be ice buildup. Ed Rosenthal: Right, they changed the way freezers are built so they create a vacuum — that's why there isn't ice buildup anymore. It's drawing humidity out. If it didn't, there'd be a buildup of ice. Bryan Fields: Right, correct. My own experience — I've had a compressor fail or struggle, and I've seen ice buildup and felt inconsistent cold spots. Ed Rosenthal: I'm talking about a compressor that isn't struggling — let's just talk about machines functioning correctly. Bryan Fields: Okay, sure. Ed Rosenthal: We've already thrown out the struggling compressor — it's in the junk pile. Bryan Fields: Okay, but you asked about my experience, so I had to share. Ed Rosenthal: That's not really a real answer — you're bringing up something that's not functioning. Bryan Fields: I have a car that isn't functioning and I can't drive it — so what? Ed Rosenthal: But cars do drive when they're functioning. Do you know how your freezer works? Bryan Fields: From your illustration, I get the concept. Ed Rosenthal: How does your car work? Bryan Fields: You press a button or turn the key and the engine starts, something like that. Ed Rosenthal: And how does the freezer work? Bryan Fields: You plug it in and set the temperature you want, and that's how it works. Ed Rosenthal: So let's go beyond the mechanics and just say it works the way you'd expect. If you take your bud and put it in a working freezer, it will dry — not in 24 hours, but in about a week or so. Bryan Fields: Is it fair to say there were differences in the testing process to figure out the correct temperature and time? Ed Rosenthal: Oh yeah, that was part of the process — you can perfect that. But as it turned out, even at the ordinary, higher temperature of a regular freezer — much higher than what we use in the CryoCure process — it still worked, just slower. It wasn't exacting, but it proved the point, which is all I wanted. I wasn't trying to perfect the technique, just to see whether the system worked, and it was for somebody else to perfect it. I'm just a person with a lot of curiosity, especially if I can get other people to do the experiments for me. Benjamin Franklin never actually flew that kite himself, you know — some guy in France flew the kite that proved lightning was electric. Bryan Fields: Point well taken. You had an idea, tested it, and realized, "Aha, this has legs." Greg, take us through how you dialed in the science and testing process to make it repeatable, not a one-off. Greg Baughman: Absolutely. Reading that in Ed's book, it was like, okay, let's mess with this. We bought a harvest and got their scientific model freeze dryer, which had about five temperature/stage settings. We started messing around — I can't tell you how much cannabis we destroyed. It looked beautiful, same as what I do now, but the actual quality and smoothness of smoke and terpene retention wasn't there yet. We did comparative tests against traditional drying, and once we got it right, it was a no-brainer, an aha moment. We took it to Danny Danko first, and he asked if Ed had seen it — I said no, and he said Ed needed to see this. So Ed calls us — he says, "This is Ed Rosenthal," and I'm like, oh my god, can we get you samples? He said, "I don't want samples, I want to see the COAs." We sent them, met up with him, got his blessing, and started our journey seven years ago. We've learned a lot along the way about freeze dryers, the importance of the right manufacturer and components, controlling vacuum pressure, and keeping temperature within 0.1 degree constantly — because freeze dryers are essentially large, low-temperature short-path distillation systems. My experience with short-path extraction helped me dial in the recipe for the best product. Bryan Fields: I'm fascinated by the testing process — testing variables like time in the freezer, since time itself is another variable. Greg Baughman: It was everything from rapid freezing with CO2 and liquid nitrogen to using lower temperatures. I did a lot of hydrocarbon extraction and realized I was freezing product too deeply, breaking down the cellular structure and getting chlorophyll bleed — everything I ruined came out green in the closed loop. When I started freezing at higher temperatures, I got a more consistent product, closer to the smoke people are used to. There were a lot of variables — probably at least a year's worth of testing. Bryan Fields: Help me understand the scale — how big are these freezers, and what are the options? Greg Baughman: We have machines as small as 5 pounds per batch, up to machines that do 250 pounds at a time, with cycles around 12 hours. Bryan Fields: Was there any limitation scaling up — did you need to check more things as the freezer got bigger? Greg Baughman: Absolutely, but as long as the process stays the same — this is why the machine is great for anyone considering the GMP route. Our machines perform the same operation whether small or large; the parameters and recipe are held, and you get the same data. If there's variation, we work with customers to dial it in. Basically you program the strain, put it in the machine, press the button, and it runs. Bryan Fields: Is this what you'd foreseen early on, Ed — that the industry would gradually adopt it into their process? Ed Rosenthal: I think for high-end product, yes. It also has other uses — for making certain concentrates and extractions where you want near-zero water content, this is a great way to get it totally dry. I think on the gross level, it'll be used a lot for that — preserving the chemistry the bud contains. Greg Baughman: One of our customers uses it strictly for live resin production. You get live resin without dewaxers and chillers, and about a 500% return improvement — using fresh, wet-frozen material, you normally get a 4-5% return on wet weight; we're getting almost 80% more volume than wet weight and a 25% return. No big chillers, no mess on the floor, and we're getting almost 99% solvent return while still getting live resin at 25% returns. It's amazing. Bryan Fields: It's interesting because we talk about input quality mattering so much for extraction output. Growers take such care growing these plants, but it feels like that care doesn't always carry through post-harvest. Why does it get lost in the process — is that systemic right now? Greg Baughman: There are a lot of different methodologies and people stick to theirs. We don't just sell machines — our idea is to help engineer your post-harvest process. I've been told that in Canada, indoor flower is being produced for around 55 cents a gram, and 60% of that cost comes at post-harvest. If you can save money in post-harvest efficiencies, eliminate bottlenecks, and deliver properly cured, homogenized flower at peak terpene content — plus tannins, esters, sulfur compounds that aren't even being tested for — you get completely different flavor profiles. For example, a banana gelato strain has a creamy essence that becomes more citrus with a hint of cream when traditionally dried, but cream with a hint of lemon through the CryoCure process. There's a lot people are missing by not testing for those compounds, and that flavor difference is part of why people make purchasing decisions. Bryan Fields: What's the biggest driver of that 60% post-harvest cost — time, labor? Greg Baughman: Mostly labor — the number of people needed to trim and package, plus energy for dehumidification and space. There are a lot of driving forces, and sometimes it just comes down to SOPs that could be slightly altered to save a lot of money. Ed Rosenthal: It starts with cultivation. Cultivators are using very primitive methods — they're growing these big bushes, which take a lot of labor to care for and harvest. If they grew using more scientific methods, they could cut labor costs by using tractors and automated harvesting equipment. But there hasn't been much research into this, and it starts with breeders encouraging and breeding bushy plants, then farm managers doing what they were taught by people who learned to grow during prohibition. Methods efficient under prohibition aren't necessarily efficient for legal farming. During prohibition, the federal law was a five-year minimum for 100 plants and a ten-year minimum for 1,000 plants, so you wanted to minimize plant count and grow the biggest plants possible. That was efficient cultivation under those laws, but without them, it's just inefficient. Bryan Fields: What should they be doing instead? Ed Rosenthal: Row planting — just like corn or wheat. You don't get paid to veg. Look at how apples are grown now — not on big trees, but on plants with little branching, grown on poles in rows just like corn. Cannabis can be grown the same way; I've demonstrated that. But breeders aren't breeding plants for that, and even where plants could be grown that way, growers aren't looking to, because farm managers learned from people who grew during prohibition. It's now a third or fourth generation of misinformation, and it's hard to get a farmer to try something new — cannabis farmers are no different than traditional farmers in that a failed experiment can wipe out your crop. Bryan Fields: Greg was talking about 55 cents a gram — and you're talking about THC for pennies a gram? Ed Rosenthal: If you're an executive listening to this, just think about walking through cultivation differently — you should hire me to change your operation. Call us right now. I've been working with a very successful farmer in Ontario, Canada, on this. Bryan Fields: Greg, do you think teams need crises or problems in order to make internal changes? Greg Baughman: No — there are a lot of people operating in crisis right now who are just stuck in it and don't care. The industry isn't in a great place. I don't think people need a crisis to make a change, but obviously if it hits your wallet and sales start to dive, you'll look for efficiencies or ways to make your product better. But sometimes those efficiencies require investing capital to save capital, which is the catch — you're trying to save money by spending money. Bryan Fields: It's that Henry Ford quote — I'll probably botch it — basically that by the time you realize you need to buy the machine, you could have paid for it ten times over. Ed Rosenthal: But it's more than that. There was a time when cannabis was up to $6,000 a pound for the best product. As legalization progressed — medicalization, then adult use — the price kept dropping, and it's still very low from a farmer's perspective. Before, there was economic and political risk, and people paid farmers for taking that risk. Now that the risk is gone and corporations are involved, it's driven the price down. In that respect, cannabis is no different than any other crop — the farmer gets the short end. Farmers in nearly every area of U.S. agriculture barely make a living, and it's worse in cannabis because the people teaching "the science" of growing cannabis are teaching the wrong way — teaching people to grow for prohibition. Bryan Fields: So actually, if you wanted to help farmers, one thing you could do is fight for re-criminalization — because if there were prohibition again, big corporations couldn't be in it, it would go back to a craft industry, and prices would go up. Though that would also mean around 700,000 arrests a year, which is also, in a twisted way, a jobs creator. I certainly want farmers to succeed, but I also think big industrial processes are part of the backbone supporting this industry too. Bryan Fields: Greg, going back to what you said about Canadian producers — are U.S. producers behind the curve too? Ed Rosenthal: The technology people are using is based on prohibition politics, not the science of growing cannabis. Even in universities discussing cannabis cultivation, they haven't updated to current farm techniques. Greg Baughman: That's true, he's right — a lot of Canadian producers are still growing prohibition style too; there are a lot of efficiencies producers everywhere could incorporate. To answer your question, Bryan, the Canadian market is more mature in that there were once twelve giant companies in Canada; now there are five, controlling about 80% of the market. The other 20% are craft growers hoping to cut into that 80% so the big five will buy them out. I see that happening here too — unless you have efficiencies, grow great flower, and potentially go vertical, you won't survive. I think the dream of getting bought out by big tobacco isn't realistic. Bryan Fields: Why not? Greg Baughman: Because big tobacco isn't going to buy a farm — they're going to buy product and contract it out. Ed Rosenthal: Do they buy their tobacco leaves right now, or grow their own? I don't believe they grow it — they have contract producers. It's the same as the chicken industry: big processors sell farmers the chicks and the feed, let the farmers raise them, then buy the chickens. Why do they let farmers do it? Because there's no profit in farming — so they farm it out, the farmers do the work, and the company takes the profit. What makes you think this industry, in a mature market, would be any different? Greg Baughman: I'd say we're far from a mature market, and I don't know how long the timeline to maturity would be. Ed Rosenthal: I'd disagree — in areas like California and Nevada, where the market's been around 10 or 15 years, it's a totally mature market. Greg Baughman: Sure, I was generalizing about the industry overall, not a mature market. Ed Rosenthal: Right, but the state of California is a mature state market. Bryan Fields: What if the industry is really 50 different industries? If interstate commerce happens, wouldn't that change things from 50 independent state markets into one more collective market — making the industry, in my perspective, less mature because it would shift toward more concentration, like Canada's five companies? That's where operational efficiencies become so critical — specialization, knowing your numbers exactly, understanding your challenges and pain points, and knowing where technology investment can help you improve. Ed Rosenthal: Well, if it were that simple, investing in the stock market would be foolproof — but you don't know what obstacles will come up. And you don't know the future. I think at some point it'll be cheaper to "brew" cannabinoids — taking the genetics for making THC and other cannabis chemistry and putting them into yeast, which has a nucleus and genetic code to manufacture THC. Imagine: instead of buying lights, setting up a grow, and waiting 90 to 120 days to roll a joint, you get a bucket, fill it with water and sugar, throw in the yeast, and seven days later the yeast have produced the THC. Bryan Fields: Sure, but I still have to wait seven days — I wanted that joint on Wednesday, not the following Thursday. And that yeast-derived product isn't going to taste the same. Ed Rosenthal: You don't have to wait 90 days, put up lights, or feed plants. It's like brewing beer. And that yeast product not tasting the same — that's the beautiful part of capitalism, I can just go to my store, Alpha Extracts and Concentrates, for the terpenes. That would be the end of farmers in this industry, except for farmers growing for the flower itself. Bryan Fields: Greg, five years from now, what current cannabis practice will look most outdated? Greg Baughman: I'm hoping the whole method of traditional drying and curing changes. We're happy to announce our Hydro-Dry method here, which sets us apart from others freeze-drying cannabis — we've finally cracked the code on delivering something you can't even tell went through a freeze dryer, and it's just better quality. We're looking for strategic partners and places to put machines to develop this further and get it into full swing. Once people get this product, I think they'll move away from traditional drying. Bryan Fields: Would that help operational efficiencies, and would consumers ever know the difference, or would they just notice the product got better somehow? Greg Baughman: They might just say, wow, their product got better somehow. But it is better — there are a lot more terpenes. On our Instagram we've posted comparisons showing the Hydro-Dry has almost one and a half percent higher terpene content, and cannabinoid levels are higher too. It's undeniably better than traditional, whereas the full CryoCure process was just as good but had a different texture that pushed it into a niche category — traditionalists rolling joints found it a little harder to get used to. Some people love it, so having both as options is great, but the Hydro-Dry is a complete replacement that's undeniably better than traditional cure. Bryan Fields: So this is essentially a V2 based on market feedback about texture, while keeping the same core benefits? Greg Baughman: Correct. The original CryoCure formula is better for something like a pipe, where you take a piece of bud and put it in. Ed Rosenthal: Greg didn't quite explain the terpene difference precisely — CryoCure product retains about double the terpenes left after typical drying, because in a normal drying room, all that fragrance you smell is terpene that's leaving the product and going into the air. This process prevents that loss. It also prevents mold — just because you don't see mold on your product doesn't mean it isn't there, and this process leaves no room for mold to develop. Greg Baughman: Yeah, it's a three-log reduction in microbials. Our Canadian customer had shown signs of botrytis and powdery mildew pre-process, and since switching to our process, he hasn't failed a test yet. Bryan Fields: That's typically where people decide to invest — after a problem occurs — but I'd encourage people to invest in prevention beforehand, since these issues are expensive and problematic when they happen. Ed Rosenthal: But let's get past the economics for a second — for the consumer, the difference in taste and quality is remarkable. Whether it's a joint or a pipe, you can feel the terpenes and get the full effect that you just don't get from traditionally dried cannabis. That's what makes this important — not just the savings for the producer, but the better quality for the consumer. We're not doing this to sell someone a magic bullet or be a snake oil salesman. Bryan Fields: No, you wouldn't — because if the economics don't work, it's hard to implement, no matter how good the technology is, especially if it makes the price unmanageable for the consumer. Greg Baughman: The best part is our machine — our biggest machine pays for itself in 14 runs. Bryan Fields: What, 14 runs? It's paid for. Ed Rosenthal: But I disagree about the consumer point — when it comes to feeding your head, people will pay outrageous prices. Bryan Fields: Sure, but you'd have to understand the nuance of how people select products post-harvest — terpene content is one common way people decide, but you'd need people to know something was dried using this technique to assume it has higher terpene content, so on that basis it might command a premium price. But you'd also need to educate the budtenders to explain the difference. Greg Baughman: And that was the big problem with launching CryoCure — you can't rely on budtenders to educate the consumer. Telling someone "this is different" immediately makes them wary; some are curious and want to try it, but then don't understand what's different unless they go read about it online. The problem is some people buy cheap, inferior equipment, don't know the recipe, and still call it "cryo cure" because it's a cool name — then people try it and think cryo cure sucks. That's where the Hydro-Dry comes in — you don't have to educate the budtender, it's just presented as premium weed, and it's undeniable. Some people go for taste, some go for potency — but with this process, you get both. Bryan Fields: Just one quick question for you both — the 14 runs payback period, can you clarify that? Greg Baughman: Yeah, 14 runs on our largest machine, based on Michigan pound pricing. Bryan Fields: So everyone can do the math themselves. Greg, Ed, thanks for taking the time — where can our listeners find you to get in touch? Greg Baughman: They can go to cryocure.com and reach out through the contact form on the website. Bryan Fields: Cool, thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Greg Baughman: Thanks for having us, Bryan, appreciate it. Bryan Fields: Thank you.