Hey Everyone, I decided to give the Bucket Tek a go and thought I would share some of my results and methods.
I used a large stainless steel pot and 200 proof ethanol, they were pre-chilled to about -25C. Roughly 4 pounds of Dry Ice was added to the ethanol in the pot and I let that chill for about 10 minutes, my temperature probe only handles down to -50 so I cant be sure what temperature I ultimately achieved but I waited about 5 minutes after it hit the minimum. I opted to go with 1 pound of hand trim in a 73um bubble bag and 1 gallon of ethanol all in one batch, I left the dry ice in the ethanol while soaking/extracting. The trim was fully submerged while within the bag and lightly agitated every 2 minutes for a total soak time of 10 minutes. I poured most of the ethanol into my storage container and used thick rubber gloves to squeeze what I could out of the bag without freezing my hands. Leaving the trim inside the bubble bag I put it in the Panda Spin Drier for 5 minutes and ultimately ended up very little alcohol loss. The solution was a little greener than I had hoped so I threw down some Celite and Activate Charcoal powder and filtered 2x’s with vacuum assist to end up with a beautiful golden amber solution. Using a rotary evaporator I removed most of the ethanol with low heat and high vacuum; I then transferred over to the vacuum oven for a final purge keeping the oven between 95-100F at full vacuum. In the end, I had a beautiful slab of shatter that tested at 93.4% total cannabinoids.
@TreeMonsters looks fantastic! thanks for the 1k word substitute.
Unless that’s “total acidic cannabinoids” 93% seems a little high to me.
Assuming you achieved 100% acid form, you should not be able to exceed 88% “active”. Low 80’s for “total activated cannabinoids” is absolutely achievable.
Any chance you could share the COA? or at least the part showing the numbers and the lab who called it?
Hey @cyclopath , so according to the fine print I am not supposed to reproduce, except in full, without written consent, but it has names and addresses and such so I feel that I probably would be best to not post it at least until I speak with the lab directly. However, here is the break down of the results: 87.93% THCa, 3.03% THC, 2.04% CBDa, 0.38% CBG. The lab we use is Agricor located in Denver, CO; the total potential THC is 80.16% total potential CBD 1.79%.
Hope this help illuminate the details a little better, I just rattled off the total cannabinoids earlier because it is the primary figure they list.
those numbers sound totally legit. especially with that pic and a scrub. listing the total cannabinods in the manner they do is mildly deceptive imo, given the state of knowledge at the consumer level.
Yeah, for a long time here in CO that was what was listed on packaging and deemed acceptable. That has since changed and we now have to specifically list the total potential THC as that is after all the psychoactive “get you high” portion 
I am however very pleased with the concept of hitting a purity of cannabinoids that high regardless of their forms.
I recall an argument at a past lab between a sales rep and myself about how we needed to have our crude co2 oil testing at at least 80% to compete with other companies. I tried to explain decarboxylation and molecular weights… all I got in return was “Customers just see the highest number and they buy it, that is what they want!” This is the same person who thought we could simply “dry out” our THC oil and it would be shatter “like they make with butane”…sooooo
Anyway, I sincerely appreciate the fact checking. I’ll keep you posted on Round 2 if anyone is interested. Also, if anyone who has experience in this would like to weigh in on how I can best preserve my terpenes when purging that would be greatly appreciated. I need to achieve less than 1000ppm of residual solvent (ethanol). Information like levels of vacuum or temperature or duration.
both numbers are valid measures of potency. It’s certainly easier to appreciate the purity with the summed cannabinoid number.
as far as the fact checking goes, had a lab returned 87.93% THC on a QWET, then calling bullshit would be the appropriate response…we were just discussing the problem of inflated numbers over here…Shady Lab Results
Preserving terps and fully purging etoh is a very fine line. The boiling point of ethanol is relatively high, and the terps + ethanol love to form azeotropes.
Your extract looks phenomenal!
Does it have any flavor?
@lefties.cannabis, not much flavor in this batch, but to be fair it was processed from trim that was very dry and 2-3 months old. It was good cannon fodder, if you will, for the initial experiment. The taste is very light and clean, I sampled it with and E-nail and it was a great head rush.
@Future, Thanks for the info and compliment, I greatly appreciate it. Would going with 190 proof potentially be better in your opinion given that the alcohol and water are already forming azeotropes? (I was thinking maybe that would somehow limit the terp loss) Or is there some chance a molecular sieve step after reclaiming alcohol might help break the azeotropes and help regain lost terpenes? Maybe the better answer is just having a separate terpene extraction prior to cannabinoid extraction.
I figured the carbon scrub was gonna take away what terps you had left.
I think the solution is doing a steam extraction under vacuum to get the terps first, then do the ethanol extraction and purify as much as u can like u did, and then reintroduce the terps back in
Try playing with your carbon soak times and temps to minimize terp and cann loss. Also what Carbon do you use? The difference in adsorptive characteristics is enough to try playing with different types of carbon powder. I highly recommend talking with @shadownaught he is very knowledgable and offers superb products. After talking with him on the phone I got a sample of his hardwood carbon and like it a lot. I was using Summit Carbon before and find that I use way less of the Carbon-Chemistry Hardwood, a lot less with better results.
We have prewashed granule sized neutral carbon (no fine dust at all), Alkaline carbon, and acidic high surface area carbon…if you’d like to play with something new 
@Jay-TL
Awesome, perfect timing too, I’m placing an order for 55 gal of denatured ethanol today, Ill have to ask for a sample! Can’t wait to get my hands on some.
Did you use LaTex to generate that pdf? Thanks for the free flow of info. Provides an excellent jumping off point. Thanks again.
I paid an experienced SOP writer to build me a template, which was provided in an editable word doc, that I export to pdf
Cool. I liked the format. Gonna give it a shot in LaTex/Tikz. Give me something to do in the wee hours when sleeps eludes me 
il take a batch. Where do I order?
DM’d just now.
Im new to ethanol extraction. Since you would be extracting at temps -40°c or colder are we finding you dont need to filter stage one? You can go right into stage two filter with carbon scrub?