Currently having some decent success with my little home vape cart set up (massive thanks for the advice that got me to this stage)
Im running the following steps:
Ethanol wash
Coffee filter through buchner to take large particles out
Winterize for 24/48hrs
Vacuumn filter again with 2 micron paper and 3cm DE
Rotovap until remaining oil starts to thicken slightly
Purge in vacuum chamber for 48 hrs.
Decarb on stirring hotplate/oven at about 90c
Mix CDTs back in.
Fill carts
My question is can I skip the vacuum chamber purge and go straight to the decarb stage to remove last bits of ethanol?
Im not recovering any of that ethanol anyway so not worried about losses.
If this is possible to do what sort of parameters would you follow? I assume start at a lower temp while the ethanol boils off and then ramp it up when things begin to thicken?
If its going to degrade the oil doing things this way im happy to continue as I am, but if not this would vastly shorten my process and remove anxiety from running vacuum pumps overnight etc.
Thought the process step including the refining made that clear.
Im aware its not the rotovap removing the terps but previous times ive been decarbing on the hotplate in a non closed system so was assuming they are being removed then.
A rotovap is still solvent recovery. Vacuum is used to preserve quality of the compounds & lower boiling points etc. but if the material has nothing worth preserving then ya it’s probably a waste of time
Ok apologies im obviously more misinformed on correct terminology that I’d like to think. I first assumed “crude” was the correct term, but after reading more I was under the impression after refining such as winterization and filtering it no longer was?
Is there an issue with putting this “crude” into vape carts as the first response seemed to imply?
As I said in previous post, I wasnt assuming the rotovap was removing terps etc but they were being lost on the open air decarb after.
Winterization is a step performed on crude, and it would still be considered winterized/decarbed crude at that point (W/D Crude). There is nothing wrong with it, but a distillate is more common in today’s market. As long as it’s working in your hardware.
To refine it more would be to go through some sort of distillation process. there are also more advanced filtration setups such as membranes that can get you closer to a finished or better color product without distillation.
what I am implying is that, dependent on the quality of your input material is how I would probably assess your situation. If you are processing high quality material, or material you spent time growing yourself. I would take the effort of using vac to preserve the extract through the extraction process.
If the material is lower quality to begin with, then it could be considered not worth the effort to try and preserve anything other than the cannabinoids
It probably doesn’t matter, and would be regarding natural terp profile for the most part.
Your solution cannot exceed the boiling point of ethanol until the majority of the ethanol has been boiled off….because the ethanol IS BOILING!!! (That’s where all the heat you are adding goes).
If you are not reducing your ethanol volume before winterizing, and are extracting at -65, I suspect your (current) winterization process is completely irrelevant.
The DE might be relevant, but logically, if the fats/waxes are going to precipitate at X temp in Y volume of ethanol, there is no way they are going to make it INTO solution under those (very same) conditions. If you want precipitation, you either get it colder, or use less liquor. Or both.
I tried a few disti carts a while back but never enjoyed them as much, so I never really looked into going the next steps with a short path etc.
Its all my own material, quality is so so. Its older material by now and not been stored to perfection so seemed like an ideal usage for it. Assuming the terps have degraded somewhat by now anyway.
Even though I was vac chamber purging I was still open jar decarbing so assumed the terps would be lost regardless. Few people seemed against the sealed jartek ideas so thought Id keep it simple for now.
Thats why I figured Im just wasting that time and may as well skip the step.
Would love one of those decarb rigs @cyclopath has come up with, but it seems a tad overkill/expensive for my usage case.
And yeah none of this is for commercial purposes just personal.
Thank you for the info that’s very interesting. Sounds like I definitely am doing it wrong.
Currently sticking the freshly coffee filtered extract back in the freezer at -73 for 2 days or so. Also im not keeping the filtering kit cold so its warming to about -20 by the time the buchner is empty.
Would this be doing anything at all or I may aswell go direct from coffee filter to the DE and paper?
Im using ceramic evo max ccells and the hardware seems to cope absolutely fine as it is, so I need to work out if the benefits of winterizing correctly is worth the effort. Apart from a lighter color and maybe better flow is there anything im missing?
You would be correct. As stated, my terminology needs as much work as my process!
I do not. I will do some more research into this. Sure this is probably childs science I should know!
So ethanol boiling point is what, 78.something? So the oil technically wont start to properly decarb until the ethanol has mostly boiled off and I can raise the temperature to 100c or so?
Would you recommend using the hotplate stirrer or oven for that?
Because I have no traps on my vacuum chamber or pumps and they are unattended for 8 or 9 hours. Ive been changing pump oil after every purge session.
Currently extracting about -73 for 1hr at the moment. Im sure you will tell me thats way too long again but im trying to do some personal tests comparing yield vs quality. I read somewhere if you can get to around that temperature, winterization isnt overly necessary anyway?
Currently its just popped into a cryo freezer and bucket is shaken every 20 mins for agitation.
Im currently pulling much more golden than those pics of my first run but I am using more flower than old trim now.
I did 3 washes this time with the 3rd still looking very viable, but doesnt look a huge return after rotoing.
Im sure Ill be told to wash warmer and with less time, but I find it much easier to just do another wash than trying to learn all the remediation techniques and kit.
Ill do the reading this evening. Appreciate the lesson as always.
Huffing your meds is bad for you. Huffing stuff you don’t want makes even less sense…Given that you’re already IN ethanol, optimizing (reducing) the lipid (fats/waxes) load (winterizing) makes sense to me.
However…
Are you seeing any evidence of precipitation?
At dry ice temps, the data I’ve seen suggests you can soak as long as is convenient.
You will pick up minimal unwanteds.
If you reduce your ethanol volume and chill again, you might be able to drop some of what you did manage to pick up…but most folks don’t bother…and many more simply don’t understand that without reducing the solvent volume/increasing the concentration, they are achieving nothing.
Looks like I’m about to have my first opportunity to test it anyway.
First wash on this batch is the most lovely deep golden (after first course filter) I’ve seen yet. Very happy with it.
I got too excited and didn’t bother to chill the biomass back down again before the second wash and just chucked it straight into a -64 wash.
Everything else same as usual but it’s pulled green for the very first time.
I’ve had a good read on those winterization links. I’m definitely way above 10:1.
I’ve rotod it down from 8l to 2l so far. Thinking I probably need to go down to about 500ml.
Do you think it’s worth trying to push the freezer further then -73?
Plan is to chill, then give it a quick blast through a coffee filter, then back into freezer until back to temp and then through the DE and 2 micron filter.
It’s only a small amount even if it all goes wrong so I’m more interested in working out what works/ what doesn’t incase it happens again on a larger amount.
I guess it’s going to be harder to see the green the darker the solution becomes as it gets reduced, is it worth adding back to more ethanol to get a better look at the colour?
Unless you’re using assisted gravity (centrifuge), you’re leaving enough solvent on the biomass to continue extracting as it warms up.
If you don’t want green, you need to stay cold and move fast. Removing green after the fact is more difficult and usually looses you more of your VOC profile
I’m using a cheap panda copy from Amazon. Forgot to mention that.
Usually pop the tub, give the bubble bag a squeeze to drain what I can for a min maybe 2 once I’ve messed about, pop it straight in the spinner.
Normally get about 3/4 of a litre back from that.
I usually do a quick 30 seconds blast to get the majority quick maybe 0.5l, and then let it go for a full cycle to get the rest.
First blast is normally ok but the full run usually have a small green tint. It hasn’t been that pronounced on all other washes so I’ve just mixed it back in.
Depending on how these winterization tests go I’ll try saving it together for the next time I inevitably mess up and have a green run.
My guess is you’re getting enough og the actives on the first pass that you should skip anything that looks green.
Ethanol is amazingly fast at pulling cannabinoids from ripe trichomes (pretty sure it’s the co-solvents).
You can get a decent feeling for how much you’re pulling on your second and third washes by recovering the solvent separately, but without potency tests on everything you’ll never be quite sure.
I recommend letting your tastebuds tell you what does and doesn’t belong….and I’m pretty sure they’ll steer you away from anything green.
Just gotta work out what I did to make this first wash pull more than it normally does. Not sure if it was 20 mins longer soak, more bud to trim ratio, ambient temps etc.
I’m not extracting that often so a lot of my variables can change.
Obviously it’s frustrating to do double the work for a second wash to see it come back shit quality or poor returns, but as I’m working such a small scale id be more annoyed leaving double digits % behind.
I have been looking into the best way to test the biomass THC remaining.
I know the purpl pro or the tcheck don’t seem to have the best reputation on here, but was wandering if they’d give me a rough guide. They don’t have to be perfectly accurate but if I could see there was roughly 10% or 30% THC remaining after first extraction, id know whether to bother with another run.
All the proper lab kit I looked at seems to be serious money, but if you or anyone are aware of something that can be brought relatively reasonably and also self taught on how to use id be interested.
If I had a spare 1k at the moment it would be going towards a vacuum oven first, but decent used ones seem relatively hard to come by here.
