1st attempt CRC and Sauce Tek FAIL need help

Hey Gang,

My first attempt at Sauce Tek and CRC is a fail. I’m hoping to pick your brains about where I went wrong and the best way to go about fixing it. Sorry for the long post, I have to explain my process so you guys can try to see what I did wrong. Solvent not cold enough, CRC media/pack job, too much material to media ratio, not enough solvent to weed ratio, didn’t wet the CRC with solvent, pour out with too much/ too little residual butane, I made many mistakes…

I packed the CRC column based on a friend’s SOP then got the bright idea to modify it because I had some trace pesticides. I have a 4" x 8" CRC column I made myself from BVV parts. It has a 2 um sintered disk at the bottom, then I put filter paper on top of the disk to help with cleaning.

Top to Bottom:
280 g Silica
100 g Florisil
100 g T41
300 g Bentonite
200 g Charcoal
60 g Diatomaceous Earth
filter paper
sintered disk
1040 total grams of media

I packed each layer with a stainless steel column packer. On a scale, about 50kg of pressure pack job, although the coal and T41 were super fine and hard to pack. I packed the column by sucking full vacuum when I purged the system prior to starting. Did this dry.

The CRC is in between my material columns and collection pot, with a Swagelok ball valve on both sides.

Then, trying to follow the OTS Sauce Tek as close as possible with my Precision X10MSE
which doesn’t have jacketed material columns and my chiller only goes to -37C, I proceeded to blast some top shelf fresh frozen Sunday driver. 100% n-butane, no blend. I had 40lbs of material, pre packed in column socks in the freezer overnight (about 18 hours). Freezer gets close to -40C. Columns hold about 9lbs of frozen material each. I chilled my solvent tank down the maximum it will go with my chiller, -38C and blasted all 40lbs of chilled solvent across the 9lbs in the material column. It took approximately 35-40 minutes to drain through the CRC. First run looked water clear going into the collection pot. I should have poured it out into it’s own jar, but I kept going because I wanted all 40 lbs run to produce one homogeneous batch of concentrate. Figured I’d pour it all out at once because its difficult to remove and replace the collection bowl by myself. I did not wet the CRC, I opened ball valve super slow and tried to be gentle until I achieved full flow (super slow)

I distilled the butane back with collection pot at 20C and when my solvent was fully recovered and chilled back down to -38C, I repacked another 9 lbs of frozen material without changing the CRC media. It took about 45 minutes to drain through the CRC the second time. I noticed some color in the collection pot after the second run but didn’t look too dark. I put a total of two x 9lb socks through the initial 1040 g of filter media.

I changed the media in the CRC, same pack job and layering and continued as above, three more socks, through the CRC totaling 22 lbs of fresh frozen blasted through the second CRC pack of 1040g of media. Near the end of the transfer through CRC, I was using 100 psi of N2 just to make solvent move, 30 psi was no flow whatsoever.

Following Sauce Tek as close as possible, I tried to eyeball “about 1lb of solvent” and poured out of the collection pot straight into mason jars. I was really disappointed with the color immediately because it looked like the sample run I did with no CRC. I put the jars in a dry ice/iso bath for two days. Out of the freezer the butane solution was frozen solid. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, left on the counter at room temp for four hours then it looked like this when it went into the oven with lids tight:

![IMG_4749|video](upload://tp78nWflKk3s oRtup4YxcoTWqf24.MOV)

It’s in the oven now, after three days, I have small size crystals forming in only two of the three jars. The one with no crystallization was filled about 1/2 way, the two with crystillization were filled about 2/3 or more.

What to do with this dark resin? Thinking I should redissolve this in the material column with more butane and push through the CRC again to lighten it up? Or should I dissolve it in a liquid solvent and suck it through the Hochstrom filter with some media?

Should I just leave it and let it crystallize? It does have killer terpene retention, tastes great. Gassy with a subtle fruit finish.

This is most likely what I will get if I do nothing. This is from my test run with no CRC, it looks decent to me, but it looks dark in a jar or spread out on a sheet:

All I did to make these was blast at -38C, no CRC, distill at +30C to thick syrup, then pour straight into jar. I added about 1/2" of distilled butane straight on top of the resin and put the lid on tight and straight into the oven at 80F 3-4 weeks.

I need that bright yellow color; the buyers care more about color than taste in my neck of the woods. Can anyone advise me how to improve the CRC/Sauce Tek with my current setup or clean up the dark resin I have in the oven? I’ve been reading a lot about W1 in the CRC. Everybody raves about it on the CRC thread. Thinking I better get some before I try CRC again?

7 Likes

I’d just purge the diamonds and redesolve the sauce/terp fraction and refilter through crc with only b80 (I heard it works well) to get a lighter color :man_shrugging:t4: But I’m no pro.

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W1 is worth the purchase if your not seasoned with multiple adsorbents, their quantities and how that effects your extracts specific color

The nice thing about W1 is the terps are untouched. I have a x10 and I only run W1 in 4"x10" CRC from @Killa12345 with both 5 and 1um filters.

The thing here is you dont like the color … so put your batch back into the collection, squirt it with tane, set the heat to 30c with all valves closed until its dissolved and then push it thru your dewax and CRC again with fresh media and I think youll be happier with the results

Good luck!

EDIT: just realized this post is old lol

11 Likes

Also noticed it was an old post, I feel bad nobody replied to the OP lol. Not a bad looking run, nice formation at least. Best guess is that it just channeled. Number 1 culprit when the non-CRC looks the same as the polished material. Especially with a 4" diameter column

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Looks fire to me.
I know you are going for a different shade but it looks good from my house!

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I’m glad I’m not the only one! I feel bad when I see these unanswered posts too (especially when the poster takes time to describe details) but on the other hand the info is in other threads, it’s just buried and not always readily available

Putting the extract back in the loop to get the color you want is really not something everyone realizes is an option so I hope that solution helps somebody reading this thread later. I myself got that tip from diving thru a few threads on here and said to myself “why didn’t I think of that”

Gotta love this place, Leveling up together!

:call_me_hand:

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How much w1 per # do you recommend using?

1 Like

Depends on the bio you’re running

I know you’re asking someone else but I’m gonna throw my 2 cents out here…

W1 ratio like @FicklePickle said it depends on the bio…

What I do is…

On really good bio or FF i usually do 50g per # … that gets me that nice golden yellow almost neon if that makes sense…

If you want white but still have terps
If it’s still good bio bump it up to 75-100g/#

It really is a little trial and error… I say start at 50g/# and go from there… log your results

W1 for good
B80 for everything else​:+1::+1:

But there are many on here who are leaps and bounds smarter than I… :man_shrugging::man_shrugging::man_shrugging: So take it for what it worth I guess

Hope it helps

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I can pull good oil from any bio that has good terps. If the bag has a nose it’ll make great extracts. The problem really comes down to yield, some could yield 12% some could yield 25% and those would require vastly different volumes of media…

The best thing about w1 is that if you go to hard on the powder the terps are still right there. B80 isn’t as forgiving in regards to over doing it with the ole magic dirt

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What size sintered disc are you using?

On my new rig which is in pieces at the moment still, I have a 1um sintered filter followed by .22um cartridge filter.

On a crc I recommend always using paper above any sintered disc. For longevities sake

9 Likes

I don’t CRC I don’t redissolve and I run on a passive closed loop. When it comes to sauce I’ve came to a singular conclusion that the longer with lower heat you purge your sauce the better it comes out. If you try to rush sauce you’ll never find the terpene profiles you disire. And I’ve grown some epic diamonds that had absolute garbage for sauce & ended up with a small amount of diamonds & fire sauce. It’s really trial and error to get the sauce perfect I’d try bipassing the CRC with good indoor freshfrzn & see what you come up with.
NOW MY QUESTION :question::question::question:
DOES all sauce terp out after a certain amount of time or under certain circumstances? I have a hard time keeping sauce from terping out or sugaring out. What can help prolong sauces viscosity before it starts to sugar?

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You want a thick sauce? I don’t get it. Mix some d9 in there?

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If your sauce turns to sugar, you weren’t done crystallizing your thca yet.

Not certain you’re using “viscosity” correctly either (nor certain you’re not)

Honey is viscous, water is not. terpenes are low viscosity, “sauce” should be too.

If you don’t want THCA to crystallize make sure there is none.

Can you suggest one guaranteed method for making sure there IS no THCA in your sauce?

1 Like

Transfer it from one flask to another by phase change and you’ll certainly not have any thca in the receiving flask.

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Yep, that would do it :rofl::joy::rofl:

Thank you for leaving the lower hanging fruit for @Tobias

@Tobias: you see it?!?

It’s included in @thesk8nmidget’s strategy

Cold crash, decant . Repeat

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I couldn’t
I decanted
I can!!

Yep, that is a solid regimen. Probably the most appropriate.

Not the one I’m suggesting @Tobias should look for (again appreciated).

:shushing_face:

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So you recanted your lack of decanting and then you could!

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