Rosin Pressing Tips & Tricks

Contents

• Material Quality
• Humidity
• Temperature & Time
• Micron Filter Bags
• Pre-Pressing
• Pressure
• Reading a Pressure Gauge 

Material Quality

If you're after quality results, starting with quality material is essential. This means pressing material with good genetics as soon as it's dried and cured.

Humidity

The moisture content of your flower will help determine your rosin yields. Think about how overly dry herbs will soak up the liquified trichomes like a sponge, thus reducing your yield. Always ensure your herbs have a relative humidity close to 62% for best results.

You can get the humidity levels exactly right by storing your buds in a Humidity Controlled Storage Container.

Best Rosin Pressing Temperature & Time?

While this is likely the most debated topic of rosin pressing, there are generally two temperature ranges that we press rosin within.

Cold Pressing: 70°C - 88°C or 160°F - 190°F. This temperature range is generally accompanied by a longer pressing time of somewhere between 1-5 minutes wich produces a budder like consistency.

Hot Pressing: 88°C - 105°C or 190°F - 220°F. This range is usually accompanied by a shorter pressing time of between 45 seconds and 3 minutes and produces an oily or shatter like consistency.

Generally, people consider cold pressing to produce higher quality rosin but with a sacrifice in yield. In contrast, hot pressing is said to achieve more rosin but with a sacrifice in quality. But with so many variabilities, it's always good to experiment and see what works best for you. 

Rosin Micron Bags

These unique bags filter out any raw plant material that would typically contaminate your rosin when pressing. They come in different micron sizes, which affect your rosin yield differently. Two standard bag sizes for pressing buds, trim and shake are 90 Micron and 120 micron.

90 Micron: With the smaller pores of this bag, you generally achieve a higher quality/less contaminated rosin but at the cost of yield quantity.

120 Micron: With this size, you will get slightly less filtration and thus not as excellent rosin, but your yield quantity will improve.

Pre-Pressing Rosin

A Rosin Pre-Press condenses your plant material and reduces the pressing footprint, allowing more material to press at once. This also minimises the distance the rosin travels and leaves less space for your rosin to get trapped, thus increasing your yield. 

How Much Rosin Pressure?

The pressure is another factor that plays a significant role in rosin extraction, and there's plenty of debate about what works best.

Flower Rosin: 500 PSI - 2500 PSI

Hash Rosin: 300 PSI - 2000PSI

With such a massive variance in opinion, it's best to experiment and see what works best for you and your flower. But as a starting point, we recommend beginning at 1500 PSI for your flower and 1000 PSI for hash. Then try pressing at a few hundred PSI lower and higher. Compare the quality and your yield to decide what works best for you. 

Calculating Pressure

To calculate the total pressure, take your desired PSI (Pounds per Square Inch) and multiply it by the area of your material in Inches. For example:

Desired Pressure = 1,500 PSI
2inch x 4inch bag = 8 square inches

The equation is as follows:
1,500 PSI x 8 square inches
= 12,000 pounds of pressure or force in total. 

12,000 pounds = 6 ton.

So we'll need a 6-ton rosin press or bigger.


Try our pressure calculator to skip the equations.

Reading A Pressure Gauge

We'll have to do some more math to apply our pressure accurately with a pressure gauge. A pressure gauge only displays the pump's internal pressure, not how much force the pump is using. 

We will need to know the maximum force the pump can provide and the total internal PSI of the pump when at max capacity. For example:

20-ton rosin press.
10,000 PSI maximum internal pressure.

So this means that the pressure gauge will display 10,000 PSI when the pump is applying 20 ton of force. Or, it will show 5,000 PSI when the pump is applying 10 ton of force. Get it?


If we want to apply 6 ton of force on this rosin press, we will have to do the calculation.

If 6 ton is 30% of 20 ton, then we need to find 30% of 10,000 PSI. .
30% of 10,000 PSI = 3,000 PSI

So there we have it. 3,000 PSI on the pressure gauge means we will apply 6 tons of force on our 20-ton rosin press.

Formula:
(6 ton ÷ 20 ton) x 100
= 30%

10,000 PSI x 30%
= 10,000 x (30 ÷ 100)
= 10,000 x 0.3

= 3,000PSI