Episode 10: The Hemp Mine

What is The Drip by AQUALAB (formerly Water In Food)?

Welcome to The Drip (formerly Water in Food), where we keep your mind hydrated with some science, music, and a mantra. I'm your host, Zachary Cartwright, lead food scientist at AQUALAB by Addium

Hosted by Zachary Cartwright, Ph.D.
Lead FOOD Scientist at AQUALAB
https://www.aqualab.com/

Zachary Cartwright (00:00):
I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is water and food.

Allison Justice (00:02):
My question was when is the flower dry enough to then go into the curing process, did a little reading. And of course found that water activity is, is that metric even, even greater than the moisture content meters that some people would

Zachary Cartwright (00:19):
Today, I'm joined by Dr. Allison justice, who is the founder of the hemp mine located in South Carolina. Dr. Justice has combined her scientific education from Clemson university and her experience with cannabis producers in California to supply premium hemp in her home state. The hemp mine is known for its transparency to its customers and sound research. And in this episode, we discuss her highly regulated industry, current experiments and use of water activity measurements. Let's hear what Dr. Justice has to say on water in food.

Allison Justice (00:53):
Hello. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm excited to chat with you today.

Zachary Cartwright (00:58):
Yeah. W why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and the industry that you are in?

Allison Justice (01:04):
Yeah, so I am a, a PhD plant scientist did my work at Columbia university. Most of my work there, well, actually all of my work there had nothing to do with the industry that I am in now, except for it being still work with a plant, mainly controlled our agricultural studies with ornamentals and vegetable type crops. But now I am working with cannabis. Something that at the time, when I was studying was, was not legal or even considered by my fellow peers to potentially be a career path. But oddly, it turned out as one. And now I'm the founder and owner of the hip mine, which is a vertically integrated hemp company in South Carolina.

Zachary Cartwright (01:58):
So you did nothing with him or cannabis when you were in graduate school?

Allison Justice (02:02):
I did not. I did not. I worked mainly with plants like pansies and poinsettias and garden moms, which coincidentally worked out quite well because the plants, as far as how you push them into reproduction are very similar. So that actually worked out in the positive at this point.

Zachary Cartwright (02:23):
And what were some of your favorite memories about grad school or about being at Clemson university?

Allison Justice (02:30):
Say it was the, the freedom that my major professor Dr. Jim Faust gave me, you know, he basically said, you know, here's some parameters, but, you know, want you to be able to explore and come up with your own project. And so my project involved a fungus end of fight, which I looked at and explored how, you know, pairing this into fight with different species of plants, how does it do different things? So, you know, uptake nutrients or fight off different pathogens, or even help promote rooting. And so I was able to not only, you know, really get to dig in with plants, but I also got to have a gain, a lot of experience in my cology in, you know, the study of a fun guy. And that was just really cool getting to kind of dip my toes into both waters and not just be in one.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
And once you were done with graduate school, did you start the hemp mine right away, or did you work somewhere else or what did you do before the,

Allison Justice (03:36):
So I consulted for a couple of years with greenhouses across the U S and again, mainly ornamentals. And eventually I just started getting calls for cannabis growers because yes, it is a plant and there's a lot of similarities between cannabis and other crops. And so began consulting and fell in love with the plant and the opportunity for research with this plant. And eventually moved out to California to be a VP of cultivation for OutCo labs, who is a vertically integrated medical cannabis company. And so I stayed there for three, three and a half years, and that was a really great experience because I, at that facility, I, I was originally hired on to design and build a two acre greenhouse, which at that time was the biggest cannabis facility in California, which was really cool to be a part of, but we also had two indoor grow facilities and one outdoor as well as being vertically integrated. So I got to, to really gain experience with the whole production. So everything from seed to sale and then really gain knowledge with extraction and formulation, et cetera, et cetera. So it really set me up to be able to do what we do today at the hemp mine, which is that same exact, exact setup, except with hemp instead of a THC producing plant.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
So you took all that knowledge from grad school and then all this experience from California and then decided to start the hit mine. Did, did you start this with friends or colleagues or how, how did you go about organizing this business?

Allison Justice (05:23):
Well, I'm from South Carolina and when I was out in California, South Carolina passed a bill to allow hemp production. And there were only 20 farmers approved that first year. And my family's background is farming of all different kinds, you know, on the land. We grow our hemp today. It, my grandparents grew cotton there. And then my parents had everything from tree production to hay, production, cattle, and greenhouses. And so they're farmers. So I encouraged my mom to apply for a license. So she got a license. And then after, I guess, a year, year and a half after they started growing hemp, we decided, Hey, this is going really well. You know, I'm going to move back and we're going to take this to the next level. And so it is, it's a family endeavor, my brother and sister and mom all work here. And then one of my best friends from college, Travis Higginbotham, he works here as well. So pretty much a family endeavor.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah. That sounds like a great group to be a part of. That's awesome that your, your family can be there together. And what, what are the goals of the hemp mine? What are you trying to provide or what makes your company different?

Allison Justice (06:42):
Well, you know, as, as you guys are beginning, or, you know, I guess have the past couple of years worked in the cannabis industry, you know, promoting the water activity meter, you find that it's not always a lot of trustworthy people in the business, or maybe not for the right reasons. And so it makes it very difficult to know who to trust in the industry. And so something we try to do is be very transparent in everything we do, whether it's what's in a tincture bottle or whether it's, you know, what's the background of, of this genetic that we're, we're growing and breeding and, you know, what are, what's the data we collected from last year that we can provide you the data this year, where you can grow successfully and, and, and make money and, you know, feel confident doing the next year. So transparency is something we really strive for no matter what we're doing, but, you know, I would say long-term goal. The, the biggest part of the hit line is, is our plant production unit. We grow vegetative liners and sell those across the U S distributed out of six different greenhouse partners while the breeding is actually taken here in South Carolina. So I would say plantain genetics is where we're headed.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
So it sounds like transparency is, is really important as well as being a science driven company. Some of the experiments that you've recently done on post harvesting caught my attention. And I was wondering if you could talk about those experiments and what your goals were there

Allison Justice (08:21):
Post-harvest is very exciting for me. You know, one reason why this plant was so exciting for me is because there's so little research done and, you know, that's fault to regulation. And it just being something that was, was done successfully in the black market, but at the same time, things were done from simple trial and error, not necessarily based off of science, then even more so universities weren't there to pitch in and help figure things out. So, you know, even though the plant science itself is lacking even more so the post-harvest physiology is, is extremely lacking. And so when I was at OutCo, we did what I called, be the, the burp experiment. And so that to, to just explain what the burp is, you know, you grow your, your cannabis flour, you dry it, and you dry it for, you know, many reasons why dry other foods, where it preserves it doesn't spoil, and then you cure it.

Allison Justice (09:27):
And so, you know, when you say cure, you might think of wine or, or another type of food, but, you know, the problem is you can't compare it one-to-one exactly as you would, you know, or even tobacco, you know, there's some very different processes that are going on and thing is we don't even know what's, we don't even know what's happening much less know how to manipulate it. And so the burp for me, the Burt project was just to try to wrap some data points around what's even going on. And, you know, the, the cure traditionally is taking that dried hemp flower where I'd efforts dried, put it in a bucket. And I would say 99% of the people in the cannabis industry, it's just basically a five gallon bucket from home Depot.

Allison Justice (10:15):
And you put it in there and, you know, at this point it's an art. So it could be for three days for this grower, it could be 14 days. It could be 30 days. It's, you know, whatever your experience is showing to be the best results or whoever taught you. And, and then it comes out and there's theory all over it. You know, it's, it's removing of nutrients, which makes no sense. It's, you're exchanging of gases. Okay, well, which gases and which ones can we add to make that process better? We don't know yet. So anyways, I did a fast and dirty version one where we put it in buckets, we measure CO2, we measure oxygen humidity, et cetera, et cetera. And we're also taking water activity before and throughout. And so, you know, what we really could take away is that there's a lot of CO2 being put out by the plants, Y don't know yet, but we at least know that fact, you know, the, the oxygen meter, just to be honest with you, it was not reading correctly.

Allison Justice (11:26):
So that's going to be something we repeat, obviously, as well as ethylene was something we measured. But again, the ethylene that was put out by the curing process was so much that it was over the capacity of our, our testing unit. So when we repeat, we're going to have a different unit to be used, to be able to test ethylene. Cause ethylene for, for me is something that's very interesting. You know, I, back in grad school, when I dealt with post-harvest, it was taking cuttings. So, you know, you have a poinsettia plant, you take a small portion of the tip, and then you, you either stick it or, you know, something we were looking at a lot is what's happening during shipping because in poinsettias, most of the stock plants are grown in South America and they're shipped up to the us. And if there's too much ethylene, they'll rot.

Allison Justice (12:26):
But if you think about bananas, you want to give bananas at a certain time ethylene where they will ripen, where they're nice and enjoyable, right? So if, if, if this flower is putting off a lot of ethylene, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do we want to inhibit that? Or do we want to encourage that? We don't know, well, at least wrapping our heads around what's being produced naturally is step one. And then from there we can do different things to inhibit or, or add to. So that's something, again, we will be looking at in greater detail. But I think the, the one really big takeaway from that project was that curing is a homogenization process. So our, our water activity, you know, when we took it beforehand, keep in mind, it was about a week of drying. And so obviously the outside of the blood is going to dry out faster and the middle will be wetter.

Allison Justice (13:29):
And, you know, over time that'll work itself out. But what we found is that the water activity was lower when we put it out of the dry room, put it in the bucket. And then at the end we tested again and it showed that the water activity was higher. And so these are sealed buckets. And so we're not, you know, the theory is not that somehow water or moisture got into the bucket and made everything, a higher water activity. It's more of the, the, all the buds are homogenizing. And so the water is evenly distributed through the buds. And so, you know, the, a lot of people guessed that, but I think that was probably the first time that anybody put a number on it. So that was really cool to find, but obviously so much more to learn about what's happening in that bucket. You know, we're just touching the surface here.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah. This process really reminds me of wine making and same thing that caring process, you know, a lot of people do it in a very artistic way or a traditional way, but it sounds like you are trying to put science first and trying to put some numbers around. What's actually happening during this, this Burberry experiment. What, what are your water activity values? Are you trying to target a certain water activity? Why is water activity important for understanding this process?

Allison Justice (14:56):
It it's very important. So obviously for, for safety purposes, we have to dry it down to a certain percent or, or the microbes, which are there, you know, basically, but, you know, it's, it's also important because again, the cannabis industry has kind of been, you know, working from the ground up. And when I first got to OutCo, you know, the, the guys were trying to explain to me, well, when is my question was when is the flower dry enough to then go into the curing process? And they grabbed a STEM and, you know, they bent it. And at the time it, it didn't make a noise. It just bent. And they said, well, this still needs to dry something once it's dry it'll snap. And so, you know, for me, that was a little bit bothersome.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
So snap test that we've heard about,

Allison Justice (15:52):
Yes, this is the snap test that you'll actually hear crack when you've been the STAM. And so, you know, for, for myself and the PhD chemist that was on staff, you know, that was a little bit mind boggling. And we, we knew there had to be a better way. And so did a little reading and of course found that water activity is, is that metric even, even greater than the moisture content meters that some people would use. We, we found that to be the standard and, you know, immediately went down that road and after we were able to put some metrics around, well, what should it be at, at certain points during the drying process, we ended up being very happy with, with that move.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Did you investigate different curing conditions or are you using different environmental conditions or what is that part of your experiment look like?

Allison Justice (16:48):
Well, you know, we, we had to start somewhere and if you ask just about anybody in the cannabis industry, the goal is to have it about 60% relative humidity and about 60 degrees Fahrenheit temperature. So we started there and, and at that metric, we ended up having dry flour at about seven days. And so, you know, you hear everybody saying, Oh, well, if you go, 30 days, 14 days you'll have a much better product. And so I got to reading through the journals out there and, but try this as one of the biggest problems during drying, because, you know, Mo if not dry enough mold can grow, but at the same time, we didn't want to dry too quickly because that would, volatilize the turpines. And so the plant would lose, you know, the, the good smells that you want to keep. So in reading, we found that vitritis will not continue to grow under about 0.8.

Allison Justice (17:59):
And so our thought there was, well let's very quickly get it down to that 0.8, where the vitritis will cease and continuing to grow. And then let's try to stretch out that time period instead of four or five days. Let's, let's stretch it out to about two weeks staying stable, right under the 0.8 Mark above the 0.7 Mark, which was, it took quite a few times to figure out how to get the room, to allow the plant, to stay within those parameters, which, which actually ended up being, you know, a lot of dehumidification at first and then actually kind of writing would the help of foggers. And so that's how we kept the, the water activity stable. Again, looking through journals, we saw that a lot of the enzymatic activity continues to work within a plant between that 0.6 and point, well 0.7 and 0.8.

Allison Justice (19:07):
So whatever it is that is happening with the plant at that point in which, you know, I like to come to think of it, if you're keeping it wet enough, it's almost a zombie plant, you know, not necessarily a flower, but a plant. If it's not all the way dry, it, it has the potential to, to come back to life and maybe be rooted. So it's kind of that halfway in between where there are enzymatic activities happening. So the goal there was to keep it, you know, for about 10 days, but at that higher water activity level, and then dry it off at the end very quickly to be basically what the consumer would prefer. And so that was kind of the setup we had going for, for drawing.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
And as you get ready for a second round of experiments, have you already started some new experiments and what are the goals of, of this next round and what are you changing or what are you adding to those experiments?

Allison Justice (20:07):
Well, the, the most, I guess this next round of experiments, we're not going to do too much with the actual drawing step. I want to kind of keep that, you know, just, just one step for drying, probably do the 60, 60 just to be standard. And then what we'll really look at is, is what's happening and curing. So before, you know, measuring before and afters there, well, I guess one other big thing we did find in the first burp experiment was that those five gallon buckets that, you know, even the ones with the gaskets, they're not airtight, we had CO2 sensors in the rooms, so ambient and then CO2 sensors in the buckets. And what we found is that daily, you would see a spike of CO2, basically spiking at lunchtime. And so, you know, we were able to correlate that exactly what the ambient CO2 sensor. So they were in the rooms with the trimming team. And so all that CO2 is actually coming from the trimming team and it was getting inside the bucket at the same rate. So what we're going to do in this next experiment is, is use that bucket just because it is the standard bucket. You know, we need to understand what's happening there, but then we'll also use a, I hadn't decided yet either glass or stainless steel, truly sealed container, where there's no effect from the ambient gases of, of what's in the room that it's in.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
And if someone listening wants to learn more about your research, is it published somewhere? Is it available for listeners to read? Where can they find out more about this experiment?

Allison Justice (21:54):
The, the, the first burp experiment, there's a PowerPoint on, I think it's called SlideShare. Yeah. It's correlated with LinkedIn, the SlideShare, this next experiment I'm actually doing with Clemson university. And so I'll try to give some sneak peeks on my Instagram, but we'll actually publish that one. So it might take a little while to get that wrote up.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, definitely. It takes a while, but we'll make sure to watch for it. One thing that I, I wanted to touch on, and I probably should have asked this earlier, but you know, a lot of people, when they hear about cannabis and hemp, they, they kind of get confused by what it all means. Could you maybe take a step back and just describe some similarities and key differences to our listeners between cannabis and hemp? Yeah.

Allison Justice (22:43):
That's definitely a confusing one if, if you're new to cannabis in general. And so let's start with that. You know, they're, they're both hemp and marijuana. They both are cannabis sativa. You know, it is the same plant is just a plant that has diverted to be a high THC plant. So a plant that, that will, in fact, it gets you high to a plant that produces a different metabolite, a different cannabinoid CBD or CBG, which does not get you high, which we would say is hemp. They, they look almost exactly the same, but some again, we're either bred for a certain purpose or originated from a certain area where just in the wild, you know, it either by nature was high CBD, high THC, but, you know, for us, the biggest thing is, is law is regulation. And so for this plant cannabis, sativa law defines it as this plant if containing under 0.3% THC. So if it contains 0.4% is technically marijuana, if it's 0.3% or under it's hemp. And that could be him, this grown for CBD, that it could be hemp, that's grown for fiber production.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
And is that percentage that 0.3%, is that a national standard, is that state by state and are there people pushing to change that percentage?

Allison Justice (24:19):
Yeah. That that's a federal standard and absolutely, you know, I think if everyone, I think if they moved it to 1%, everyone would be very, very happy. It's quite impressive to see how different in terms of yield specifically for CBD, how different a plant behaves at that 0.3 regulation versus even even 0.8, you know, it's, you have very, very different plants, just, just how the genetics work from that difference. So, you know, if we could go to 1%, nobody's getting high on 1% and, you know, it would just provide a lot more opportunity for the farmer, for the breeder, for the industry as, as a total.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
And my last question today for you is, you know, you've transitioned from graduate student. You were a VP of cultivation now, a co-founder and founder. What advice do you have for students or young professionals about growing their careers and taking it to the next level?

Allison Justice (25:28):
I would say, put yourself out there, you know, take as many internships as you possibly can, you know, be willing to move. If, just for example, if you're a Clemson student and you want to get into this industry, you know, get out there to, to California, to Colorado where they've been doing this a long time and, and network and, you know, get your hands dirty, doing trimming, you know, D doing all those things that what will really pump you up to have a nice resume for when you are done with your studies. You know, you're not just a 4.0 student, but you also have these experiences. And now you have, you know, the, the VP at that company to give you recommendations. That says a lot, you know, the other thing that's kind of cool now, versus even when I was in grad school, is that Instagram is a, a huge networking tool.

Allison Justice (26:27):
You know, a lot of people are, I don't know why it worked out like this, but Instagram is a huge tool for cannabis and marijuana companies, as well as, you know, growers of those companies having their own Instagram. And they're willing to talk to you and they're willing to share some things they're doing. So it's very easy to just, you know, look through your phone and try to network that way and, and keep up to date with what is going on in the industry. So, you know, biggest thing, just put yourself out there and get experience and, you know, try your hardest when you do get those opportunities.

Zachary Cartwright (27:07):
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Dr. Justice, we really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to getting this episode out there. We'll include your, your Instagram, if that's okay with you when we post it so that anyone listening, if they want to learn more about your experiments or just connect that they can do that. So thanks again, Dr. Justice. Thank you. I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is water in food. Find this podcast on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.