Over the last two years TC Labs has build its brand by working closely with Colorado’s top cultivators, processing the very best plants into high-powered concentrates. The company has designed and constructed its own state-of-the-art “dab lab,” including an expansive onsite grow op. Relying on a variety of genetic lines from star breeders like Mike and JJ-NYC of Top Dawg, Tierra Rojo and Mendelian Dave from TR Seeds, and The Docta from Archive Seedbank, TC Labs painstakingly choose each individual strain for its resin and terpenoid development, average concentrate yield and general growth characteristics.
And the company has started to reap the rewards that this search for excellence has sown. TC Labs took home second place at the 2013 US Cannabis Cup in Denver for Best Medical Concentrate, it also shared first place at last year’s Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam for Best Seed Company concentrate, and grabbed top honors for Best Medical Concentrate at the Cannabis Cup in Denver.
TC Labs is now expanding its operations to provide high-quality concentrates to all legal and medical states. Here’s a look at how these master extraction artists work their magic!
1. Once the bud has been dried and cured to perfection, lab technicians break down the plant material and begin packing it into the column of the facility’s closed-loop unit. This column is capable of handling approximately 1,000 grams of plant material.
2. Once the column is hooked up to the unit and brought to pressure, the solvent is released, soaking the plant material inside. For TC Labs’ purposes, this soaking process is kept to a minimum. The solution is then released into the collection basin of the unit and heated slowly; 80 percent of the solvent will be boiled off in this part of the extraction process. A pump is added to decrease run times and accelerate the recovery process.
3. Once the pump finishes recovery, the unit is disassembled. The solution is now scraped from the collection basin and placed on a tray.
