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 solventless 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 solventless, and why they should care about the way their medicine is being made.
By the time this story is published, we should know how Jeremy placed in both Rosin and Ice Water Hash categories at the 2020 Cowboy Cup. If you missed his panel, catch up with him here and find out how this former communications engineer learned from industry experts and established a reputation as an award-winning hash processor.
How did you get into making concentrates?
I started off growing. And it’s the wild, wild west back in 2018. My first harvest hermaphrodited on me… 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.”
So, I just applied and got my processing license. There was a pretty big demand for [pre-rolls], but I wasn’t planning on doing that with my next harvest. I thought, “well what can I do with this processing license?”
Now, in the past we would use BHO and I just never liked it. I didn’t care for the aftertaste and the high was just different. So, we would take nugs, squish them and just make flower rosin. I thought, I’m going to go ahead and get into the solventless side of the world. So, I just dove in, I got a washer, and my first original press and I really loved it. I thought, okay, I like the way this tastes.
I mean, I’m surprised you even have to have a processing license to do this. It’s like taking your lettuce that you harvest, 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 solventless 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.
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 terps, 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 too 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.
I’m also an engineer, so I love to build things. I built a whole water chilling system, so I don’t have to use ice when I wash my stuff. I can take my water down to 32 degrees and pipe it all over, and I’ve learned a lot doing that.
What drives your passion to create such a high quality of product for patients?
I’m smoking it too. I want the best, and I can taste it. It’s like in a coffee, you can taste the little minute differences. 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 taste to it, but the strain makes it a little different with all those terpenes. And just finding those terpenes that help people, because everyone’s a little different.
I had a guy tell me… “You changed my life. I tried your Purple Punch around two years ago… I’ve had respiratory problems so I can’t smoke flower. This, I can do. It gets rid of all the carcinogens and everything like that. You’ve changed my life; I don’t smoke anything else now.”
And it just kind of hit me. I want to make the best product and I want to have something out there on the shelves that’s the best for you, on every level it’s the best. You know, a lot of times when you’re running every day and you’re trying to get your plants in and trying to do everything you forget that, and you don’t see it all the time. But when you do see it, it’s beautiful.
So what do you think sets your products apart from other solventless on the market?
I really feel like some companies just put out anything, and a lot of time it hasn’t been stabilized. So you get it home, and it sits in your drawer for a day or two, and it tastes swampy. I really feel like taking the time to set my product.
I’ve got a lot of things setting, and a lot of these are experiments. I’m doing this strain for the first time, testing it 3 different ways and trying to see what’s the best way to stabilize it. I want to make [a product] that’s stable so you can keep it in your stash box, and when you open it up the next time it’s still good. You’re always going to have degradation, but I’m always trying to tweak and modify my jar tech to make a product that is longer lasting for the customer and tastes good.
What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced so far?
You know, like I said it’s been like the wild, wild west with the OMMA and the OBNDD. The hardest part is that you don’t know, am I doing the right thing? Are they going to come and shut me down? You almost just have to use blind faith and just keep moving.
I originally started off doing this with my dad and he loves to grow. But he just couldn’t take it, he was so worried they were going to come shut us down or throw us in jail. You know, his whole life he was raised “marijuana is bad, you’re going to jail.” So that was a hindrance, I wish that hadn’t been there and I could still be doing this with him.
And then just, finding good product. You know, hooking up with Nature’s Kiss was my best move so far. They consistently give me good product and it gives me the ability to learn so much faster. Because if I can get the same strain and I can play with it over and over, then I know, ok here’s what’s going on.
Where do you see the solventless market heading in the next few years?
The way I make solventless today will not be the same two years from now. Things are changing, we’re looking at sonic waves right now to be able to take those heads off. There’s been no money invested into this industry yet, but it’s coming. A lot of company’s are now like, oh, we need to invest money in research.. They’ve got to put the money into the research and development to actually build something, because now they can make a profit selling it.
Right now everything we do is all hokey. I’m taking a washing machine from Japan and I’m modifying it up and doing all this stuff. So it’s not as clean as I want. It’s not as precise as I want. There’s so much waste, so much waste in this industry. Just from a standpoint of doing that, by the time I get it from flower to frozen and washed all the way through, there’s just a lot of waste.
Where do you see yourself taking this company in the next few years?
That’s a good question… What’s my exit strategy? *laughs
I think it’s all going to depend on if they can declassify this as a Class I drug. Then we can actually have bank accounts. You know, we can right now but I don’t want to do it because they want .10 of every dollar I make. So it’s just not feasible.
If we could get some of that stuff through congress and get some laws changed, it won’t be a competition of just, who in Oklahoma makes the best hash. It will be a competition of, does Oklahoma make better hash than Michigan… So I’m hoping within 5 years we’re there.
When I look at myself and say “what do I really want?” Well, I’ve got my own land already and I’ve got my own grow. I would have my own lab out there, and I would just be a self-sustained, small boutique-batch of high-quality hash. Everything I grow would go straight into being washed. And I would have my own, basically all under one roof, single-sourced type of product that I could put out there.
