Hey everyone, first time posting and never been an avid forum poster, always a lurker, so please be kind if I’ve made mistakes.
I’m based in AU and my options on extraction are limited, we seem to be in early stages of hydrocarbon extraction and equipment can be hard to find.
However rosin presses seem to be everywhere, and I’ve gotten into making water hash from my trim and pressing that. (Quite happy with the results actually)
The issue is I seem to have so much waste! There’s visible trichomes left on my plant material after washing and my only thought on what to do with it is distillate.
Obviously I would have to dry my wet material prior to alcohol extraction, (which is something else I wanted to ask, is ethanol or isopropyl preferred?) but my main question is whether or not already washed plant material will result in acceptable distillate?
I’m a very small scale producer in comparison to a lot of the posters on here and don’t want to fund a short path distillation setup if its going to result in a very dark or subpar distillate (eg: i yield so little that I end up with all heads and tails.)
Cheers and sorry if this is the wrong section to be posting! Happy to delete the thread and repost if so.
You got nothing to be sorry about my friend! This type of thinking advances our industry. Welcome!
Whereas i’m a rosin guy myself, distillation is not my strong suit but I agree - there’s so much STILL in your biomass after a wash it would be a shame not to think of some sort of system to not waste it! I’m sure you’ll have some really good responses here.
As a small scale producer, I think it might be difficult for you to find value in this yourself.
Regarding the plant material - you’ve removed most of the THC, but extracting the plant material may open it up to pulling out similar amounts of impurities (sugars, fats, waxes, pigments, etc…) as if it were non-washed material. So you have a similar amount of impurities to a much lower amount of THC. This means you may have extra work involved in cleaning up the material to get a better quality distillate. Now if you can find a large scale producer that you can work with to take this material off your hands, it would be less of an issue for someone working at a larger economy of scale - in my opinion.
Having said that, I think taking the already-pressed rosin bags and ethanol washing those would give you a potential decent extract to distillate and capture any residual THC you didn’t press out. I know some people who solely do solventless extraction and they save all of their pressed rosin bags to send to someone they know who will extract them after they’ve built up a decent amount of them. I’ve never heard him talk about sending out washed plant material for extraction, but he’s always mentioned sending out pressed rosin bags for residual extraction.
Funny you should mention the rosin bags, that thought actually occurred to me for the first time today! Definitely something I was planning on researching. My main concern was whether or not the nylon in the bags would be broken down by the solvent. I’m unfamiliar with the properties of nylon but by the sounds of your reply I wouldn’t have any issue.
When I say I’m small scale, I meant in comparison to the lads on here with 1000+ pounds of biomass to work with. I am currently working with around 24 plants on a regular basis and have plenty of contacts who up until us discussing it had absolutely no use for their trim, extraction in this country seems to be years behind, even though the information is readily available online. Honestly the one person I know who does any form of extraction guards his objectively basic knowledge like some form of patented secret.
With the trim from a minimum of 24 plants, would distillation still not be viable?
I know it’s a hard question to answer with so many variables, but if you’ve any idea I’d love to hear it.
I’d make hash then take the waste bio and make butter with it.
Toss it in a pot on the stove with some of the waste water, toss butter in, cook for an hr, strain and chill the water butter mix in the fridge. Butter will congeal on the top. Voila
Wet bio makes this a huge pain in the ass to do much else with it
I’ve got about 10KG of butter in my deep freezer so trying to avoid making more, my only real use for it is cookies and I’m still working on getting nitrogen packaging going for shelf life, so currently it’s just kinda sitting there. Not super keen on making more if I’m being honest lol.
Thanks for your two cents though, if it comes down to it I guess that’s what I’ll be doing
Ive ran so many pressed patties and there is no difference in the end product. I never saw my self or any tests i had done show any kind if degrading the pouches they were squished in. Use to do it for a really big rosin guy on ig back in the day and to say the least it was well worth the effort and it wasn’t like they were doing a half ass job or anything. Only down side is the solvent loss from soaking them cause you do tend to lose alot but still way worth it. Id have to dig to find the data sheets for returns but it also had a very easy and fast winterizing time frame.
That’s really interesting to hear.
I’m definitely going to be upping my solventless production after seeing the results, got lots of use for it. Even the lower quality stuff.
Should have plenty of dirty bags floating around in the future, I’ll be throwing them into the mix if i ever do start distilling.
If you have some decent trim that you are taking off before you wash - then I think it could definitely have some value after you amass some weight.
If you are thinking about drying the wet buds that you already washed, and sending those out for extraction, that’s where I might not be sure it would be or wouldn’t be worth it. The trim itself though should be pretty good if it wasn’t washed as well.
So use MCT instead.
Decarb.
bottle it at 33mg/ml as tincture.
Highest markup for the least effort…
1000mg cannabinoids wholesales at 3x or better than what I can get for dabbables.
See: anything @batsona has written on the subject of direct infusion Eg: MCT infusions of rec flower 8ths you might even consider the water a FEATURE when extracting with MCT, especially low potency material.
You said you have some experience/access to hydrocarbon extraction? Instead of drying and extracting with ethanol, consider freezing the biomass and doing LPG extraction. Saves costs because you don’t need to dry the product (as long as you extract < -20C). And the extract that you produce, you can simply decarb and chuck in a vape.
I have not personally done this so I cannot comment on yield.
If it’s just a personal supply, I definitely echo those telling you to make a tincture or budder. Go coconut oil or MCT, extract your bud with these oils in a crock pot.
I know people who re-run their CO2 extracted material with butane.
I’m not a rosin guy, so I don’t know the margins, but you can absolutely follow up one extraction type with another to make sure all noids are extracted… but as it has been said, your yield may be complicated by the amount of cleanup you will be required to do.