Well, strictly speaking the buds are highly water laden and they do freeze.
There are a few things to consider though:
1. Cell structure isn't all that important to the quality of the smoke, to put it plainly it's all getting the same fire.
2. Plant cells resist lysis in freezing temperature due to the presence of cell walls. This is especially true in a frostless environment as the crystalization through the cell wall (from outside to inside) is what causes most lysis to occur in plants.
3. Bringing the temperature down will prevent highly volatile
terpenes and flavor molecules from evaporating during drying, a constant concern during the drying process (and the reason it's best to keep temps low during drying).
4. You almost eliminate the possibility for mold doing this.
All that being said it seems like a legit process to me. Ice will sublime below freezing temperature on its own, without even taking the stuff out. The trick would be finding a sweet spot where the sublimation happens most rapidly--you can probably play with the settings on your freezer to get better result.
Too cold and sublimation will proceed VERY slowly, too warm and you won't get any sublimation.
By the time you're actually taking the stuff out, you're not getting sublimation (as this doesn't happen above freezing in water). You're actually melting the ice a bit and allowing it to evaporate--but the 3 weeks of sublimation that have happened
in the freezer probably make this much less sketchy than it sounds, as by that time the water content is probably pretty low.
The only con to this is that it makes the drying part of the process much longer, but you're going to be keeping a lot more of the flavor/smell goodies (
terpenes) around doing it this way.
The reason you can smell
terpenes is that they're evaporating off and entering your nose. If you can smell the bud when you enter a drying room, it's because it's shedding its
terpenes--that's bad. Below freezing you'll lose almost none of them.
The scientific explanation here might've been a bit lacking, but the process itself sounds stellar to me. I'm sure there are other pitfalls to avoid (like frost--a high quality frostless freezer is probably a must here)--but overal this sounds like a much better process than hang drying to me.
If I had a frostless freezer I'd definitely try this on my next run.
