With recreational cannabis laws passing in Colorado and Washington, and Oregons new dispensary law. There is more public "testing" and "profiling" of our favorite plant then ever done before.
There are several different methods to "test" cannabis, and not all are equal, or give the same results. We will get more into that later Im sure. For starters Id like to talk about the elephant.
The elephant is the variance in data collected by these tests.
For example, a well known lab in Washington, Analytical 360's highest THC score is 23.91%..
I only recently started working with dispensaries and had some of my flowers come back at 25.1% from a different test lab.
I saw someone in the PDX area with results of 94% thc from a floral and blonde colored GSC wax... logically I could not agree that only 6% of the sample was waxes and terpenes and shortly came to the conclusion that the results may have been inaccurate.
Not to long after that I met with a biochemist who is a great extractor and makes some of the best concentrates I have ever seen. I asked him about it and he said the testing was not easy. He mentioned that he had a GCMS at his disposal and could not get the same result twice, or even a general consistency amongst results. Even with a concentrate.
Recently in the gsc thread budelight shared a link that brought me to this
http://smokesignalsthebook.com/projectcbd/news/the-ring-test-oshaughnessys#sthash.yGTSSCSO.dpbs
It seems that norml and project cbd did a "ring test" and to nobodies suprise quite a few labs were producing results that were "inaccurate" (padded?)
At some point I plant to take samples to all the local labs and compare the results to eachother. Sure it feels good to think, I tested at 25.1% but I would rather have undoubtedly accurate results, vs "impressive" ones.
Obviously as a grower or dispensary, its easy to want to return to the lab with the highest results. As a patient or breeder and perhaps someone in the medible business, accuracy might be greater than...lets just say "padded" results.
Feel free to Post your results, share your thoughts on testing and profiling, the various methods of chromatography, and labs accuracy etc.
There are several different methods to "test" cannabis, and not all are equal, or give the same results. We will get more into that later Im sure. For starters Id like to talk about the elephant.
The elephant is the variance in data collected by these tests.
For example, a well known lab in Washington, Analytical 360's highest THC score is 23.91%..
I only recently started working with dispensaries and had some of my flowers come back at 25.1% from a different test lab.
I saw someone in the PDX area with results of 94% thc from a floral and blonde colored GSC wax... logically I could not agree that only 6% of the sample was waxes and terpenes and shortly came to the conclusion that the results may have been inaccurate.
Not to long after that I met with a biochemist who is a great extractor and makes some of the best concentrates I have ever seen. I asked him about it and he said the testing was not easy. He mentioned that he had a GCMS at his disposal and could not get the same result twice, or even a general consistency amongst results. Even with a concentrate.
Recently in the gsc thread budelight shared a link that brought me to this
http://smokesignalsthebook.com/projectcbd/news/the-ring-test-oshaughnessys#sthash.yGTSSCSO.dpbs
It seems that norml and project cbd did a "ring test" and to nobodies suprise quite a few labs were producing results that were "inaccurate" (padded?)
At some point I plant to take samples to all the local labs and compare the results to eachother. Sure it feels good to think, I tested at 25.1% but I would rather have undoubtedly accurate results, vs "impressive" ones.
Obviously as a grower or dispensary, its easy to want to return to the lab with the highest results. As a patient or breeder and perhaps someone in the medible business, accuracy might be greater than...lets just say "padded" results.
Feel free to Post your results, share your thoughts on testing and profiling, the various methods of chromatography, and labs accuracy etc.