If you’ve driven on Interstate-90 through Ellensburg, you’ve driven past the Kittitas Valley. I’ve made that drive 100 times over the course of my life, but it wasn’t until Respect My Region’s Mammoth Labs tour that I imagined ancient mammoths roaming through the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, digging through the snow with their trunks to graze on the grass hidden below.
Some of the world’s largest and intact mammoth fossils were found in Washington, near Selah. Andy Aversano, the owner of Grow Bros., connected his cannabis concentrate brand to the region by naming it after Columbo, the Wenas Creek Mammoth. Mammoth Labs’ logo features a stoned woolly-mammoth covered in glowing golden cannabis oil, pouring a beaker full of gooey, golden terp sauce all over the place.
Kittitas County is notoriously anti-cannabis, County Commissioner Paul Jewell has went on record saying he didn’t believe legal cannabis was a positive step for the county. Cannabis farmers have to work within the tight water and zoning laws to make sure their operations fit within Kittitas County laws. This forced many cannabis farms outside of Ellensburg’s city limits, deep into the county.
Grow Bros. and Mammoth Labs facility is tucked away down an unmanicured road behind a green fence. Behind the fence is a row of shipping containers and a few small custom buildings, like the ones you see on construction sites. The facility has great 360 degree views of the entire area. On clear days you can see the Cascade Mountains to the west and the beginning of the Columbia Basin to the east.
Aversano’s cannabis story starts like many of ours, smoking weed while avoiding your mother’s watchful eye. In his case, it was smoking on the deck while his mom was in the shower. Aversano’s relationship with cannabis remained constant while he studied diet and exercise science at Central Washington University. After he earned his degree, and a short stint in the city, he decided the normal 9-5 life wasn’t for him, so he decided to move back to Ellensburg to grow weed while the I-502 market was opening.
Leaving the office, Aversano walked us through each stage of Mammoth Labs seed-to-sale operation. Each stage takes place in a different container, the extraction lab itself is in a special climate-controlled office building with top of the line ventilation systems and other precautions to keep the extraction specialist safe while the equipment is running. Mammoth Labs follows a “slow and low” approach when purging their concentrates. This means placing the concentrates in a purge oven at low temperature for a longer amount of time. This preserves terpenes which contain flavor and aromatics.
During the Summer months, Grow Bros. will complete an outdoor grow. Last seasons outdoor harvest produced 1000 pounds thanks to the “beautiful Ellensburg sunshine,” Aversano said. Every single last pound was blasted into golden cannabis oil. Oil that was beautifully packaged and stacked on pallets along both sides of the last shipping container. This was was the last stop on our tour, and we got to smell mason jars filled with cannabis oil. An entire mason jar full of golden-orange terpene sugar is the next best thing to a grow room at day 60.
Mammoth Labs shows that you don’t need some crazy state-of-the-art, multi-thousand square foot extraction facility to create products worthy of a spot on the top shelf. When the people truly love what they do, dedicate and sacrifice time to perfect their craft, anything can be accomplished.
Mammoth Labs Tour Gallery
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*All photos by Instagram.com/Ro3ski*
