Solvent-less medicine Straight from the 918 by Anna Ervin
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jeremy Babbitt of 918OG and I don’t think I have ever had the privilege of meeting someone so passionate about what they do. Whether he’s studying the composition and behaviors of different trichomes or designing the perfect water chilling system to process bubble hash, he just won’t quit until he’s 100% satisfied with his process. And when that happens, he’ll turn around and do it again, somehow finding a way to make it even better still. Located in Bristow and Tulsa, Jeremy’s operation is small, but his competition makes up some of the biggest names in the Oklahoma cannabis industry. Partnering with the Triminator and Nature’s Kiss, he has entered and won multiple contests with his solvent-less product, including both the High Times Cannabis Cup and the Cowboy Cup. These opportunities have given him a platform to educate and inform people about the benefits of solvent-less, and why they should care about the way their medicine is being made. Anna: How did you get into making concentrates? I started off growing. And it’s the wild, wild west back in 2018. My first harvest was hermaphrodite… So, I thought, I can clean it all up and make pre-rolls out of it. The day I was making pre-rolls, OMMA changed the rules and said, “only processors can make pre-rolls.”
vest, and then you wash it off and sell all the lettuce. I’m just washing off all the trichomes, you know. Growing is such a learning curve, and you’re always fighting battles and you’re always learning new things in that. And I looked at the processing side of making solvent-less and I thought, I can climb that a lot quicker. I got lucky and had a couple of really good hash makers up in Cali take me under their wing... And I just did it every day. I was constantly hitting up growers like, “give me your trim… let me just run it and see what we can do.” I ended up working with a couple of growers, really honing in on my skills and being able to identify good product by just looking at it, and knowing what kind of strains and lineages would do well. Anna: It sounds like you love what you do, and that’s what’s important. Exactly. I do love what I’m doing, I don’t mind getting up and going to work anymore. Heck, most of the time I’m working 20 hours a day. I’m trying to build a greenhouse right now so I can get my own outdoor grow going. I love sun grown terpines, I just feel like you get something better, not better but different.
What I’m trying to learn in growing is how to make that trichome better. I don’t want it too waxy where it builds up, I don’t want it to light where it just breaks off or breaks open. So, I’m really trying to learn that. I’ve been studying a lot of things from Frenchy Cannoli and different people out there that I feel like are on the same page. I feel like my set up is very similar to what they’re doing. So, I just applied and got my processing license. There was I’m also an engineer, so I love to build things. I built a a pretty big demand for [pre-rolls], but I wasn’t planning whole water chilling system, so I don’t have to use ice when on doing that with my next harvest. I thought, “well what I wash my stuff. I can take my water down to 32 degrees can I do with this processing license?” and pipe it all over, and I’ve learned a lot doing that. Anna: What drives your passion to create such a high qualNow, in the past we would use BHO and I just never liked ity of product for patients? it. I didn’t care for the aftertaste and the high was just different. So, we would take nuggs, squish them and just make I’m smoking it too. I want the best, and I can taste it. It’s flower rosin. I thought, I’m going to go ahead and get into the solvent-less side of the world. So, I just dove in, I got like in a coffee, you can taste the little minute differences. a washer, and my first original press and I really loved it. I I want to be able to pick that out in a good hash. Weed should taste good. With rosin, you kind of have an overall thought, okay, I like the way this tastes. taste to it, but the strain makes it a little different with all I mean, I’m surprised you even have to have a processing those terpenes. And just finding those terpenes that help license to do this. It’s like taking your lettuce that you har- people, because everyone’s a little different.
