How Top Teams Balance Art and Process in Extraction ft. Brian Adams

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Bryan Fields: Brian, extraction is your team's core competency. Most teams believe a consistent SOP guarantees consistent results. It doesn't. Why not? Brian Adams: Well, loaded question off the rip here. Um, yeah, I mean really it comes down to mainly being driven by the operator and the material coming in. I think a lot of people get this understanding that extraction can be very cut and dry — same SOP every single time no matter what. In our experience, you may run the same SOP, batch in, batch out, but you're going to get varying results, even on similar lots of material from similar people. There are a lot of variables at play, and being able to make adjustments based on the material and ultimately your end goal is, I believe, super important. A lot of people just get hung up on running the same SOP, but we try to empower our extraction team to make adjustments on the fly so we can maximize our results. It takes a lot of time, coaching, and development with our team to get that done, but we've made a lot of strides over the last year or so to give them the power to make those decisions while operating. Bryan Fields: Was it always like that, or was that something where earlier on you were a little more rigid? Did you have to stumble into that path and realize this isn't working, or did you recognize from the outset that flexibility was necessary? Brian Adams: We figured it out because running extraction is one of my favorite parts of the business — it's a piece I really enjoy and spend a lot of personal time on, doing research and having conversations with colleagues in the space. When we started reading, talking to people, hearing what they're doing, we started messing around, making adjustments to SOPs as we ran, and we were seeing really interesting results. We'd tweak a piece of the SOP, run a new batch, get a result we wanted or didn't want, run it for a while, make another tweak, and see all these different results. Then we started compiling the data and noticed that certain material demands a certain SOP to really maximize what we're going for. There's also the equation of how much time you spend on a batch versus how much you get out — that's a math equation of what makes sense for the business. It came from messing around, making tweaks, trying to be better, and not being complacent with the results we were getting. Bryan Fields: Can you give an example of one of those variables you tweaked and the results you saw? Brian Adams: Yeah. We started out running ethanol only here — that's kind of where the impetus of all this started — and then we graduated into a hydrocarbon system as well. Even just messing with material, we'd get in nice, dense material testing really high, but we kept getting yield results similar to the trim we were running. We were like, what's going on here? There should be quite a bit more THC based on the COA and just based on the human eye. That led to some adjustments, and the next time we got that material we got better results. Hydrocarbon is a whole beast of itself because we're making so many different products out of one machine. If we're trying to make an award-winning concentrate, it's going to get a completely different SOP than if we're just trying to crank crude for distillate, or making isolate, or if the customer is asking to maximize yield. We always put it in front of them: do you want to maximize yield, or maximize color and flavor? Then we make adjustments based on what the customer's end goal is. Bryan Fields: That's such an interesting point — being proactive, putting the finished product first, understanding what you're trying to create, and running the SOP off that. Other teams get the material, extract it, see what results, and decide downstream — a very reactive process. Would you say the industry is 50/50 on that, or something different? Brian Adams: I think a lot of people do run and see what happens, partly because of the equipment they have. If you're not able to maintain your temperatures through a whole run, you're going to have crazy swings and variability. A lot of people unfortunately don't have the equipment to maintain consistency throughout a run, so they're at the mercy of what they get. We've selected equipment to make sure we can maintain that consistency, so we can dictate up front how we're going to run and what end goal we're going for. We hit that about 98% of the time without a lot of downstream adjustments in post-processing, just because we have that level of control on our machines, where I think some people just don't have that luxury. Bryan Fields: So would it make sense for them not to try to create certain end products if their system struggles to maintain those characteristics? Brian Adams: Yeah, they should probably focus on what their machine is best at producing and maximize that process, then outsource the rest. Unfortunately a lot of people in this space want to do it all under their own roof, and that gets them into trouble. When you crunch the numbers, it probably makes more sense to outsource to someone with a better cost structure who can offer a similar or lower cost. A lot of people probably shouldn't really be running an extraction program given how the cost structure of the industry is nowadays. If you can't get to a certain level of volume, the math is upside down, and people's time would be better spent on an area of the business they're more successful with. Bryan Fields: Right, because if you can't hit consistent cost structures and you're overspending on additional downstream steps, you end up losing money — it might be easier to outsource. But sometimes I wonder if teams have a sunk-cost fallacy, thinking, "We spent $250,000 on this machine, we invested all this to get it running, we hired people, we have to produce these products," when in actuality outsourcing to a partner could be the stronger financial move. Brian Adams: 100%, totally agree. A lot of people get sucked into that, and I understand it — to some extent, having the level of control, being able to make adjustments or do what you need to do, I get it. But is that really what's best for your business and your brand? Probably not. Bryan Fields: Is it difficult to understand the cost structure proactively — like when you're producing dabs versus isolate versus distillate — or do you have good visibility into what it costs and the margin? Brian Adams: We're really fortunate to have good tracking and understanding of what we're doing. I'm also lucky that my little brother is our CFO and does a good job keeping things organized, really understanding our true overhead cost. That allows us to be upfront about what we know it's going to cost. With extraction there's always variable yield depending on the material, so we run a little risk-reward sometimes. At this point, most of the people we do business with we've worked with for years, so we have historical data and feel confident when we quote a job. With a new customer, sometimes you pump the brakes and run a test batch to validate, or you roll the dice, or you quote the low end of your average and ratchet it up once you have data. Bryan Fields: Does extraction scale well across different states, or is it a nuanced challenge where the recipes and SOPs you have in Massachusetts don't transfer as well to other states? Brian Adams: With our experience in New Jersey, we more or less replicated our exact machinery, so we see solid, consistent results on both sides — but that's because we replicated what we had. If you didn't do that, you'd be starting over from scratch. In our instance, our averages are pretty damn consistent. Bryan Fields: What's the balance with hardware for the vape category? How important is the hardware in accentuating the product being made? Brian Adams: It's so important — probably one of the most important parts. Obviously the oil is the most important part, that's what we're trying to show, but the best way to describe hardware is like the producer of a show — the one making sure it gets delivered the way you want it delivered. It's really important, especially for a vape product. Bryan Fields: How do you know what the right hardware partner is, and as things scale, how much consistency is there to make sure the customer gets a repeatable experience so they buy the product again? Brian Adams: What's tough with hardware, and has been difficult for us to manage over the years, is you may find hardware that in testing goes unbelievably well — great results, great feedback from the team and close partners — but then you start ordering hundreds of thousands of these things, pumping them out to the market, and all of a sudden you get inconsistent feedback, bad reviews, returns. It's never really the oil — everyone says the oil is great, but it didn't give the vapor production they wanted, or it clogged, or it didn't work in the package. Often you don't see that until you go to mass production. We've learned the hard way a few times that once you start seeing inconsistencies, you've got to pull the plug and move on. Finding a hardware manufacturer that's very consistent in production is a real challenge. Bryan Fields: It's difficult too because your brand reputation is on the line. Consumers aren't really selecting based on the hardware — they're selecting on the brand and packaging. When they have a bad experience, they go to the message board, and your team has to do internal analysis on whether it was the oil batch or the hardware. That's stressful, because that person is unlikely to come back. Brian Adams: Yeah, and I think the people who actually say something are such a small percentage of what's really happening — most people just move on and never buy it again. I've heard anecdotes from consumers who loved a brand, bought it three or four times, and on the fifth time it just didn't perform like the other times, and that was it — never bought it again. The cannabis consumer is really fickle; one bad experience and they're on to the next, and winning them back is a tough challenge. It's also hard to track — it could be a bad batch, an end-product inconsistency, or material you knew you shouldn't have run through but did anyway to make it work. Bryan Fields: You spend so much money to acquire that customer the first time. They come back a second and third time, then have a bad experience but stay loyal for a bit, then eventually move to another brand — and it's disheartening because you don't see those lost sales clearly. Brian Adams: Right, and we're not vertically integrated like a lot of companies here in Massachusetts. If you had retail, you might get that feedback much quicker and adjust faster. We have to rely on our retail partners and on consumers reaching out, so our feedback loop is much slower. I always want to hear feedback as soon as possible so we can sift through it and make an adjustment. But sometimes it's tough — if you spent well into six figures on a big batch of hardware you were confident in and it goes south, how do you rectify that? We've had to discard a lot of hardware because we didn't want to ruin our brand's reputation. That comes down to whether the hardware manufacturer takes ownership of their responsibility and what they'll do to support us as a partner. We've had to move on from partners when, in our opinion, they didn't do what was right to remedy the situation. Bryan Fields: Have you thought about expanding the brand into other categories, or do you want to lock in on a few? Brian Adams: Nimbus really just wants to be known for high-quality smokable cannabis. We want to play in all the smokable categories and be at the top of the pile in all of them. Even though people hate on distillate, it's the king and it's where the sales are, so it's going to be a cheaper product, but we want to make sure it's the best distillate vape in the category. We want the best live resin in the category, the best pre-rolls, some of the best flower. All those smokable categories are where we want to play, at a very high level, respected for quality and value. Bryan Fields: How do you transfer that metric of quality internally, since it can be preference-driven? How do you define quality and set the standard to meet it? Brian Adams: That's an ongoing battle we're always chasing. We get feedback from the market, and especially when launching something new we try to survey outside of our company as much as possible so we can make adjustments or price things accordingly based on the feedback. A lot of people in cannabis race to get something out on the market — we've done it many times, getting excited to show something new without getting that consumer feedback and iteration to reach the highest level product. That's something we're focusing on this year and going forward — compiling more true market feedback so we're making products people really want, even if it's not our personal favorite. We just want to make sure it's the highest level of quality possible in that category. Bryan Fields: Right, so when someone sees the Nimbus brand, they know exactly what to expect — versus walking in looking for a value-minus brand where they just want to buy something cheap. Brian Adams: Exactly. We want people to have a good experience they can write home about and come back to purchase again. I'm not going to say we hit that every single time — we're not perfect — but we're striving to be, and we're going to keep chipping away, lowering that swing so the level of quality gets tighter as we get better. That comes from innovation and a dedicated team, and we just have to keep making sure every batch is at the highest possible standard. Bryan Fields: And that consistency standpoint requires understanding the limitations of your system, having the right operator, the nuances, the flexible dynamics — that's where extraction people don't understand how stacked the variables become, and to do it at a high standard you have to stack all of those on top of each other for a long period of time. Brian Adams: Oh yeah, it's a balancing act. A lot of people go into a dispensary and buy a product without thinking about what's behind the scenes. There's a lot of hard work beyond just producing the product — amazing cultivation partners keeping us well provided with good quality material, a great sales team working with retail partners to make sure it's placed correctly, and a marketing team making sure it's positioned correctly. It's a lot of moving parts that go into that one little vape cart you buy at the dispensary. Bryan Fields: When you first got started with processing at Nimbus, did you imagine it would involve this many layers and variables? Brian Adams: I had somewhat of an understanding because before starting this I worked for Wana, and I got a taste of it there — this is a crazy industry with a lot of moving parts, and one company does a lot to produce a product. It's not like calling a factory in China, telling them what you want, and they make it and send it to you — definitely not that simple. I had a little understanding coming in, but taking it to the next level of contract manufacturing, doing it for other people, on top of extraction and not just making edibles like Wana does — there's more nuance and moving parts that make it interesting, but that's also part of the fun. Bryan Fields: Right — small batch is one problem, and as you scale up you hit new problems, hardware being one, consistent products being another. Early on you succeed at small scale, then midscale, and as you accelerate further there are new challenges right around the corner that you didn't see coming. Brian Adams: Yeah, it keeps me on my toes, that's for sure. Bryan Fields: Why does clean BHO always win? Brian Adams: I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this one. I'm not going to hate on the rosin people or the solventless community — I have a lot of respect for them, and it's a product I thoroughly enjoy — but when it comes to a true clean concentrate, if you're making hydrocarbon BHO dabs the correct way, with the proper equipment, proper SOPs, people who give a damn, and good material going in — the same level of quality that a solventless hash maker would use going into a hydrocarbon system — it's hard to argue that it's not the cleanest concentrate out there, if it's done right. The cannabinoids, the aromas, the terpenes, everything the plant has to offer — that's BHO. It's literally the complete essence of the plant, whereas solventless has other compounds in the mix that make it not necessarily the cleanest. There's also a wider variability in quality when producing solventless, even at a super high level — an innate mixture of quality based on the starting material — where with hydrocarbon you can dial your process in and tighten that scale of quality to be more consistent and get an overall cleaner smoke. Bryan Fields: How do we get consumers who walk in to understand those nuanced differences when making a selection? Brian Adams: A lot of time and effort. I think we all have to collectively put effort into educating the consumer — we're still such a baby industry in the grand scheme of things. I don't knock people who walk in, see BHO, and ask what that is — when you hear "butane honey oil," you hear "butane" and think, wait, that's the stuff in my lighter, I shouldn't be ingesting that. In reality, when made correctly, all the butane is gone — it was just the medium to making the concentrate. When you hear solventless and think it's just washed in water with heat and pressure, I get how that sounds less harmful, but in reality that product can be more bio-inclusive, with waxes, fats, and other things getting into your body. If you're trying to smoke concentrates, I think you're trying to be cleaner, and rosin is a step in the right direction, but there are other compounds in there that come into play. Bryan Fields: It's a difficult balance — people make split-second decisions and think they're selecting one product when in reality they might really want the BHO product but didn't recognize the nuance differences. Brian Adams: Right, understanding how it's made — that's one thing we're doing now, this first quarter and going forward. We're trying to put out more behind-the-scenes content, more QR codes on our packaging that go to videos so people can scan quickly and get an understanding of how we do things and how products are produced, because a lot of people have no idea. And a lot of people just don't care to know either — they want to get their product, get stoned, and move on with their day, which I understand. But how do we get in front of those people and give them correct information? There's also a lot of BS information and other agendas being pushed that make it challenging. Bryan Fields: Especially in the concentrate category, where the word "quality" gets framed in different ways, and illustrating that to consumers gets layered with challenges when the person down the street is doing it differently. Bryan Fields: So, Massachusetts rolling back adult use — on a scale of 1 to 10, how real is that outcome today versus just political noise? Brian Adams: I think it's a very real possibility. I'd say a seven, honestly, if I had to put a number on it. It could be more of a flip of a coin, but even the fact that it feels like a flip of a coin is a huge problem, something we've got to be paying attention to. Bryan Fields: Why do you think this is coming up now? Brian Adams: I don't know why it's coming up now, to be honest. The Massachusetts recreational cannabis scene has had a lot of negative news the past couple of years, and maybe the opposition feels that because there's so much negative news, now is the time to strike, because they can build on that. There's been a lot of unfortunate negative news around the cannabis sector generally, with stuff being sold in convenience stores and kids getting their hands on hemp products that are much more psychoactive than a typical product. Not that kids should be getting their hands on THC products at all, but they've had much easier access. Unfortunately people like us trying to do it the right way, going through a tight regulatory system and a crazy licensing process, get lumped in with that, and I think they see this as an opportunity to attack. They just don't want cannabis or any mind-altering substances in our society. In my opinion, it should be the individual's choice what they do with their body and life, as long as they're not bothering others. It comes down to a philosophical understanding of how you want society to be run. Unfortunately these people are really well-funded, with big pockets, and they're very calculated — they're choosing a non-presidential, midterm election year, when fewer people show up, typically an older crowd. You can see the playbook. Bryan Fields: That's got to be scary — you spend your days figuring out how to make a consistent product and grow the business, and now you're getting a call saying, by the way, they're talking about a rollback. When you shared that with me I was shocked — I hadn't heard about it, and I can only imagine you thinking, is this real? Brian Adams: Yeah, and what was crazy is we'd heard early noise that they were putting together a ballot campaign initiative to push forward in Massachusetts, and we thought, these people are trying, but there's no chance. We brushed it off for a while, and then boom, all of a sudden they got all the signatures they needed to get it on the ballot, and we thought, oh damn, these people are serious. Then hearing reports of what they were even paying signature gatherers — a lot of money — and looking at these campaigns' balance sheets, what they've got in the bank, these people are well-funded and ready to push. They're doing it in Maine, in Arizona, and now here, prepared to spend big to try to put the cap back in the bag. It's scary, and it's something the industry has to get behind — we've got to put industry BS aside and come together as a cohesive industry to fight this common enemy, so we're even able to keep selling products and building on what a lot of hardworking people have built. Bryan Fields: What's a signal that would make you feel like this is getting worse? Brian Adams: They're going to put ads out — I'm curious about their messaging. I think we'll start to see ads pretty soon; the election cycle is coming up quicker than we think, the Olympics are coming up, there's a lot of general viewership, and they'll take advantage of that airtime. I want to see what the messaging is and how mainstream media picks it up, because midterm elections typically bring out an older demographic that's still tied to traditional media, so how traditional media handles the messaging will be a telltale sign. Bryan Fields: A lot of that generation grew up with "weed is a gateway drug," "devil's lettuce" messaging. I'd imagine they'll go after "the children are using it," which statistically has been disproven, and maybe addiction rates and medical error. Does Schedule III help alleviate any of those concerns, or is it an independent thing? Brian Adams: I don't know — the Schedule III move makes you wonder if it plays into the hands of pharma, and whether pharma is potentially behind some of this opposition. I have no idea, but it seems strange these things are happening around the same time. Are they correlated? Going to Schedule III, maybe more FDA regulation, that plays right into pharma's existing infrastructure. Is this playing into their hands, or complete coincidence? Could be a total coincidence and the people at SAM just happen to have Schedule III happen in the same time frame. We'll see. Bryan Fields: It's definitely odd. Are there coincidences? Feels like there's never any coincidences, but it's hard to know. Brian Adams: Yeah, and unfortunately in Massachusetts the negative news around the CCC and how the state has handled the recreational rollout hasn't gone as smoothly as we all hoped. Bryan Fields: It's better than some other states. Brian Adams: Yeah, but still a lot of big fumbles. I'd say somewhere in the middle of the road in my analysis — better than some, not as good as others — but a lot of classic old-school Massachusetts politics that go down and don't help our narrative. Bryan Fields: In this grading scheme, middle of the pack should be curved up, because there are states where you'd say "yikes" — if they just did the opposite of everything they've done, they'd do way better, instead of expensive politicians lobbying for bad decisions time after time. Brian Adams: Yeah, it's wild. I can't believe we're even here talking about this — I never thought they'd want to put it completely back in the bag. But if you look back at the history of alcohol, there were perils too — here in Massachusetts there was the blue law era, they got rid of happy hour, and people fought it along the way. My real hope is this brings the industry closer together, that we team up to combat the poor messaging, and ultimately prevail. We all have to be on the same page, with the same messaging, and come together as one community to fight for what we think is right. Bryan Fields: At this stage we can never say never, but it seems unlikely — Massachusetts is a major state, they do serious numbers, employ a lot of jobs, and I hope they use sensible logic making these decisions. But you're right, there's a fear-based approach from an older generation who thinks it's the same weed they smoked in their college dorm room, and it's not — maybe that needs generational dialogue, and maybe that means recognizing we can all be adults and make our own choices. Brian Adams: Exactly, that's what we've got to push for — it's just freedom. This is America. You should have the ability to be free and make your own choices as long as you're not harming your neighbor. I hope other people share that sentiment, and if we look to help ourselves while protecting our neighbor, we'd all be in a better place. Bryan Fields: 100%. Last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Brian Adams: That's a good one. I wish people asked more about how we produce things. I think that gets lost in "how much is the product, what can I get it for, that's that." A lot of people don't get curious about how or why it's produced. I wish people asked more about how we came to the products we've put out and what the story behind that is — I'd love for people to ask more about the journey. Bryan Fields: I think that's great, and it's smart to use the QR codes and behind-the-scenes videos — shout out to Jack and all those guys, because I think you're doing a really good job, and I think those small details will help separate the brand as people recognize the nuance, the love and affection that goes into making these products, and why they can command consistent quality on a regular basis. So Brian, for our listeners who want to get in touch and buy your products, where can they find you? Brian Adams: Please follow us on Instagram at Nimbus CC. You can reach out to us on our website at nimbuscannabisco.com. If you're in Massachusetts, keep your eyes out — many dispensaries carry our products, and we're slowly but surely growing the brand down in New Jersey. We appreciate any feedback, we welcome it, we want to hear it — we're always trying to improve and be better. We appreciate the cannabis community, and we hope to continue improving here in 2026. Bryan Fields: Thanks for taking the time, this was a lot of fun. Brian Adams: Thanks, man.