Now that my purity has gone up significantly I’m running into red ring oxidation issues pretty quickly on jarred for storage distillate.
Like a good boy I searched the forum first and came up with a few options that folks have suggested. I saw everything from distilled water to helium but the best 3 options IMO came up to be argon, vacuum sealing your jar or attaching an oxygen absorber to the lid.
I really like the oxygen absorber idea but the reviews on amazon are hit and miss. Argon is a simple and fairly inexpensive route. Vacuum sealing seems like a great idea as well, extremely inexpensive but how deep of a vacuum do you actually need to achieve to remove the 20% oxygen? I have a vac oven that can get down to 3 microns if necessary but could I just use my vac sealer attachment for mason jars and achieve the same results?
I think the end result I’d like to achieve is longevity. We’re a small mom and pop so we don’t go through as much material as some of you guys do, but what I do have I’d like to keep from oxidizing so fast. I can seal a jar and start to see red within hours.
This has always worked great for me along with freezing the jars when not in use. And for and added safety measure dark glass may be good.
Be smart about your storage. If your going to be working with 100g batches at a time but you make 2kgs every run just split that recovery flask into 10 small jars instead of one big one. Use argon and freeze them and then just pull the jars out as needed.
When you pull a vacuum on a concentrate, you lower both the boiling and vapor points of its constituents. When you open the jar you will have a more aromatic head space, but more depleted concentrate of aromatics.
In addition to Argon, Nitrogen will work for your purposes as well, if you pull a vacuum and then back fill with nitrogen.
Consider that if you vacuum to -29” Hg, you have evacuated about 97% of the atmosphere, 20% of which was oxygen, so you have 0.03 X .20 = 0.006 or 0.6% oxygen remaining.
If you backfill with N2 and then vacuum to -29” again, you have 0.0 3 X 0.006 = .00018, or 0.02% oxygen.
The advantage using argon, is that it will float remaining oxygen to the top of the jar and away from the contents.
I keep my personal concentrates in the freezer for several years in jars or zip lock bags without noticeable degradation.
I exclude as much atmosphere as possible by filling the 2 dram jars to the top and squishing the bags before sealing, so that there is little room left in the container for atmosphere, making the oxygen supply for oxidation more limited.
It’s actually still 20% oxygen of the remaining atmosphere (you’re pulling all gases, not just oxygen). Dilution by backfilling is what brings the ratio down.
If three percent or 0.03 of the atmosphere is left, and twenty percent of that is oxygen, then why doesn’t 0.03 X 0.20 = 0.006 or 0.6% express that content?
I’ll add to this - this is the procedure for creating an environment for pyrophoric substances like trimethyl aluminum that burn on exposure to oxygen, so it works alright. When I worked with stuff like that we would purge 3-6 times and that would usually keep anything from starting to smoke.
Nitrogen is also a lot cheaper in cylinders and a decent membrane based N2 generator isn’t that expensive these days.
If you pull 97% of the gas mix that is air, you still have 3% of the original oxygen left. Diluting that to atmospheric pressure with N2 will bring the oxygen to nitrogen ratio down.
Dammit the genius of some people! Ok you win this round, not sure why thats never occurred to me. I think I just felt like a baller with my two jars full of kilos and didn’t realize I was screwing myself.
I think this right here is enough reason to stay away from vac sealing non distillate concentrates.
Based on what GW is saying no matter how deep you vac there will always be some lingering O2.
I’m definitely going to grab some argon and some oxygen absorbers and compare them. 20 cubic feet of argon is like 30 bucks at my local welding supply.
I’ll experiment with one jar argon filled, one with an absorber and one with both and see what my results are.
The only problem with argon and nitrogen is that they’ll both dissipate almost completely whenever the container is opened a few times so the oxygen absorber might actually make the most sense. Both couldn’t hurt.
Yeah this was my thought process too. I went ahead and got the argon locally and ordered some O2 absorbers. Yeah I went a little overboard but the upfront costs justify the means.
And btw if any of you shop with Praxair kick them to the curb and find a barnes welding supply if you have one. I was able to get my argon tank, gas and regulator that will work with nitro for more than half what Praxair wanted to charge. And barns has dry ice at .55 cents at only 100 lbs, which fits in my wheelie cooler lol.
I figure with argon at 30 bucks a 20 cubic foot refill I can open and close the jars personally as many times as necessary. But for my clients who may go through their distillate slowly a 500cc O2 absorber could potentially last a handful of open/close cycles.
I filled some D8 jars already with an argon blanket that had just barely started to get rose on top, hoping they halt the oxidation process now.
Some water clear D9 that will oxidize in hours. I’ve been melting the red ring off the top then just using the clear but I’ve lost a couple hundred grams just to keeping it clear in the carts. I’m going to do this one more time then fill with argon. I should be able to see if its working or not rather quickly, fingers crossed!
I wouldn’t melt the red ring off if I were you, it will cause more oxidation.
You want to avoid heat, light, and oxygen to keep that stuff clear.
The argon helps with oxygen. Get some brown glass jars to help with light and freeze it when not in use (in appropriately sized containers)
Never heat the jar to remove your disty. Use a butter knife or something and scoop that shit out and add to your mixing vessel then use as little heat as possible to homogenize your terps.
I’ve tried everything besides heat my disty is rock hard even at room temp. Besides my wifey won’t let me bend up her silverware anymore
I get it though, after this batch I’ll be taking your advice and making up smaller jars moving forward so I only have to heat up what I’m using. Seriously that shit right there is genius
You already know those goodies are going in rubs and edibles
The flavor is still on point it just looks like my old school first pass crap I used to pull off my USA Labs spd
Dammit the genius of some people! Ok you win this round, not sure why thats never occurred to me. I think I just felt like a baller with my two jars full of kilos and didn’t realize I was screwing myself.
my disty is rock hard even at room temp. Besides my wifey won’t let me bend up her silverware anymore 
