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Andy
Hey guys, what’s up? Welcome back to another episode of marijuana sa weekly. And today we are talking with Dan from origami extracts and dams. Basically he won the amber cup. That’s basically a, it’s like a Cannabis Cup, but just for extracts. And yeah, we honoured to have the winner. And the second place the runner up in second place with us as well, the

Dean
couple makers on this show,

Andy
yeah, there’s a high concentration of really quality extractors here today. But yeah, we can ask them some questions, basically, find out a little bit more about it as Yeah, it’s not. I mean, cannabis is going the extract route. It has been for a while, but it’s still a very under educated market. It’s just seems very new and up and coming. And so we’re going to find a little bit more about that. Dean, any things you think you’re expected to find out today.

Dean
So I personally have known Dan for a couple years, you know, and he’s super, super good at what he does. So I highly respect what he’s doing. And I’ve seen a lot of the work that he’s doing. And I think he’s got a wealth of knowledge. So I’m hoping to learn a little bit about him and his extract journey today, and hopefully build on this conversation into more technicalities down the line. But I think just to learn a little bit about sort of the process and and who he is and what he’s been doing, it’s going to be really valuable for someone who’s potentially thinking about getting into the space. Yeah, I

Andy
think I think today is going to be one of those ones where we just got to have our minds blown,

Dean
hanging open. So as always, we’re going to jump right into it. Thanks. Thanks, Dan. So first question, how long have you been making extracts and over that journey of making extracts what’s become your favourite kind of extract personally.

Dan
So making extracts that started a long time ago, plus minus 1010 years ago, I first dabbled in the alchemy of the plant. I think it was all spurred on from me once looking at the alchemist cookbook. And during that time, there was a cannabis book that was available on the Internet called the alchemy of cannabis. And in there, there’s some really, really old school techniques where guys were showing how they were doing extraction. So anyway, about 10 years ago, I was playing around with the basic extraction. iser, with isopropanol, doing basic black oil. And obviously from that, it tasted like shit. And it just really wasn’t my vibe. So there’s got to be better way. So then we went on from there. And you know, started with I then saw online a couple of years after that butane extraction, I started playing around with lighter gas and Turkey bases and glass tubes. And I went through the the works of it. And obviously the with all that I’m quite a knowledge driven person. So I just continuously was scouring the internet for info information. I learned everything I have known from the internet, and obviously practical but yeah, went from there and ethics have progressed. And I’m all of the years of going through trying bottle hash. Trying ethanol, trying rosin trying all the different types, I’m leaning on the one to my solvent extraction. And so at the moment, my favourite that I’m making is probably all that I enjoy is applesauce.

Andy
Nice. On that, you mentioned, obviously, your your pursuit of knowledge. And just in the intro before this, we we were talking about like how there isn’t actually a lot of knowledge on you know, on this topic around the internet and from within South Africa, like surely must have taken quite a lot of dedication to get to where you are now, as opposed to just sticking with flour.

Dan
Yeah, well, for sure. I mean, look, at the end of the day. I’ve been a grower for longer than I’ve been extracting. So maybe that’s now 20 years of growing. And with that comes a lot of also, you know, a lot of the same thing, digging deep. And when you dig deeper growing now, when I was available, when it was available, it was on the internet. And again, it’s forums, forums have a long, deep rabbit hole that you have to journey through. You can’t just type google how to do this. And it’ll give you the answer. Unfortunately, not you have to dig deep and go into forums. And that’s where it comes from digging deep on forums, and Reddit and all the different places that take hours of reading. And then now obviously, we have YouTube, which is great. But there isn’t that much on YouTube that I would lean to. It’s more Read, read, read, read read lead on the forums where there’s more professionals that talk about it.

Dean
That hits me really close because I also learned most of what I know in or most of what I learned in the early days or when I was getting into it was also all on on forums and you know, sort of getting involved during the learnings then unlocking different sections on the forum and kind of chatting to specific guys. So yeah, the forums as always, been such a such an I still go on forums, to be honest. But yeah, I agree with you on that lack on on YouTube. And that’s also kind of the reason why we’re having this conversation today. Now with extracting, it’s quite technical, though, and there’s a lot of sort of mistakes that one one can make some of them quite dangerous as well. Can you tell me just out of interest sake, has there been any major setbacks that you face during your extraction, extraction career that you’d like to share with us?

Dan
I think, you know, luckily, with what you said it would have been dangerous. I, I took heed to that note, too, that very, very, very, very, very strongly when I started, because we were working with something that obviously is very flammable and explosive, essentially, I’m not, I’m not going to risk my life to make something that’s just to enjoy a little bit of something, you know, it’s just a hobby of mine. It’s just something that I like to do. So, unfortunately, or fortunately, yes, there was no, there was no setbacks in terms of explosions or anything, because that’s the reality. When you’re dealing with your team, you cannot do it inside you cannot do it in a certain space, certain places just cannot work in. So I took note of that, and I made sure that it was always done safely and correctly, so that it was never a problem. My only lack of all, you know, thing is the equipment, available of equipment availability of coming when I started, was non existent, absolutely non existent, there was nothing that was involved or at least orientated towards what we do. Now, you know, you can get it, it is available. And there’s good equipment, and it’s bad equipment, but you need to just do your research before you jump deep into this because it is a depreciating state a very dangerous thing you’re doing if you don’t do it, right.

Dean
Yeah, and I mean, the equipment’s not cheap in this game, either. So don’t don’t make those expensive, expensive. Mistakes. So you did, you did mention sort of your favourite extracts that you currently sort of consuming? Can you tell us a little bit about sort of the process around that, that being made, or just a little bit about, you know, your favourite extract that you’re currently making.

Dan
So it would be way better is one that I enjoy? You know, at the end of the day, I’m all about Terps, and flavours, and sharing, you know, at the end of the day, I don’t want to be smoking something that’s dark, horrible, and it’s going to taste like shit, you know, frankly. So at the moment, I’m making like a weird data. That’s basically just a lot of terms. And it’s more of like a crumble, you know, a crumble. Yes, yes. Dry, it’s more of a wet consistency. So it’s like cake batter, I just find that a lot better, it’s got a lot more terpenes to it, it’s more manageable than stick to everything so much. And it gets you can play in different data you can use in different ways.

Dean
Amazing. Yeah, that that sticky aspect is definitely one of the things that I’m personally overcoming, you know, I’m getting quite a constant like me sometimes getting differentiating results, and trying to deal with it. It’s literally sticking to every like the other day, my girlfriend’s like, what’s that all in your head? I just like had it on my hands and like subconsciously touched my hand, it was an absolute disaster. So I’m also tending more towards the things that are a little bit easier to handle with the gloves. So a little bit on our yeah, thanks for all these kind of tidbits of information so far. Tell me a little bit about I mean, obviously, we came from the amber Cup where we got to all samples and beautiful kinds of data and see kind of a little bit of what the market is making in South Africa. What do you personally currently think of the the sort of quality of extract within South Africa? Have you seen it sort of been? Is the quality increasing? Or have we are we kind of sitting in a specific sort of stagnation currently?

Dan
No, no, we definitely we definitely progressing you know, there was the start of in the beginning. And I like I was doing it was, you know, dark, it was horrible. It was it was full of waxes. It was wasn’t properly taken care of it was sort of just a make it and we’ve made it not there was no there’s no more there was no in depth knowledge about it. People are learning a lot more about the craft. You know, I’ve been I’m really surprised and really glad to see that the rosin game in this country is really stepping up. I personally don’t do right and I don’t I don’t I don’t know that I don’t smoke it. I just, it’s just much from what it was to what the hey priests that were there with their hair straighteners that also using the proper egg, there’s some guys in South Africa that I’m, you know, I really, really think are doing the right thing. They’re doing the whole bubble wash and then doing the front of home washing to a freeze dryer from a freeze die putting that into the presses and it’s giving them some really quality product. And that’s, that’s international level. So we must remember that we are at an international level, immediately with this. It’s not like we were we were sort of held back because we didn’t have genetics. Now the genetics that he has, it’s a matter of how dedicated you are to doing the extraction and people are dedicated that is also a great day. That’s it for Right,

Andy
it’s good because hopefully we’ll be able to catch up to the to the American market who’s unfortunately, with everything they do is they’ve always got a head start on us in terms of the learning curve. But I do think we’ll get there. For those guys that are watching at home. Dan, do you have any tips for a young and up and coming extract something, some tips for them to get started? Besides, obviously, be safe about it and careful.

Dan
Yeah, you know, that’s the most important thing. Be careful. Also, I think figure out what you want to do. In the end, don’t just go buy a piece of equipment and then realise I should that’s not what I actually want to do, or it just doesn’t make that in product that I’m looking to make. You know, you really need to do research about this. It’s not about you know, what you want to make, you want to make distillate if you want to make oil or if you want to make you know, dabs it depends on what what that’ll that’ll the PERT determine what kind of equipment you’re gonna need to go and buy. So you know, you can’t go to buy a rising machine and then make this the carts out, like has as many as you want, you know, you’d have to buy different equipment for that. So that’s the one thing know what you want to do what you want to do in the end. And shaman quality in its quality art, I’m sticking in some CDs, wheat into extraction, piece of extraction equipment that is going to all of a sudden be amazing, yes, it will come out something, something will come out is exactly the higher the quality that you can put into your extraction, the higher the quality that you’re going to get out. It’s just how it works, you know,

Andy
and I think that’s a that’s like a specially difficult one, because you’re looking at the quality going in and you’re like, oh, you know, this is like, you know, are you sure you’re gonna get the results from this, especially if you’re learning, you maybe don’t want to put your quality through a learning curve and then the learning curve turns out badly.

Dan
Your true unless it depends on how badly you actually want it. Yeah. If you want if you want to learn this craft really, really, really, really, really well. You’re gonna have to make those sacrifices and you know, do it

Andy
it’s about sacrifice and good good in is good out. And yeah, Dan, thanks so much for coming on and sharing some info congrats as well to winning the Ember cup. It’s quite an honour to have the winner on the show. And yeah, we look forward to having you again in the future.

Dan
Short sent yeah, thanks a lot guys.

Dean
I always like that quality and quality out kind of debate because you’ve got like 100 grammes of indoor nugs and you’re like, Oh, my

Andy
outside there, I

Dean
ended up fight or I’m gonna cut it up fine. I’m going to shove it into some sort of piece of some sort of machine and then I’m gonna blast isn’t gonna come out, you know, it’s an expensive place to make mistakes. And like, I mean, we’ve I’ve had experience pressing and blasting and you know, like, when you pressing I’ve made some expensive mistakes blasting, I’ve made some expensive mistakes as well, you know, but you got to just keep keep at it until like to think that’s the biggest factor the cost of the equipment.

Andy
It’s difficult, you know, because, you know, you’d like spent I suppose it’s like growing indoors as well. It’s like that initial outlay of capital is so intense. You can and then you can still mess it up royally you know, so it’s, I think it’s one of those things but like I said, if you’re really dedicated to it, and you put in the time and effort and like it’s not like magic, it’s not like something’s just gonna like turn up overnight and you’re just going to start making amazing stuff that takes you know, Dan said he’s been doing it for 10 years already. And that’s still I think that’s just an extraction obviously growing for longer so yeah, it’s a it’s a it’s a learning curve after the battle and glad you guys are here and you found us you can always reach out to us on the WhatsApp line for questions and we look forward to seeing you guys in another episode. Peace guys. These guys