Contact him on Instagram or phone might be best.
Thank you sir.
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When in the process could and should you hydroxylate with the water in your ethanol?
Before or after you make a solution with your extract? Could this be done prior to extracting with said ethanol?
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I was talking about titrating out the excess acid present after scrubbing. I do NOT advise any intentional pH adjustments except those that are required after the fact, and before distilling the crude.
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Gotcha. Thanks.
However that leads me to another theory that someone on IG brought up, if we did modify the pH of ethanol before extracting with it, would that change the solubility of various compounds such as Cannabinoids, terpenes, lipids, etc?
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That is not likely, since we are utilizing the non-polar character for extracting those things. However, it would certainly amplify the extractions of unwanted water solubles… as far as we know, that is. Who knows what the damned alkaloid profile of [insert strain of cannabis here] is!
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On that note, I am going to start advocating for Kratom, as well, btw. Good kratom has been a Godsend to me!
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Whole plant Kratom, or extract?
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I am using freshly dried and ground (micronized) leaf material. That is standard. You know me, the extractionist, though.
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Wondering, is there an ideal pH that crude should be prior to distillation? I think it’s pretty common knowledge that acidic crude leads to isomerization in the boiling flask but what about crude that is too alkaline? Effects on the distillate?
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Ph7 is fine.
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What @Soxhlet said, for sure. It’s all about the excess proton availability. I’d even go 7.1 or so, just in case the H+ concentration changes when the water is removed. That won’t actually happen, since pH effectively disappears without water, but effectively we want to eliminate H+ availability upon heat-activated dissociation.
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Yeah, gone but not forgotten the power of hydrogen lives on!
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Kratom is an interesting plant! Its like cannabis in many ways. (uncovering more about how body works, and is a complex and variable mixture that has similar biz/political scene as cannabis)
My Old company was providing a few kratom isolates for analytical standards and bioresearch cpds toCayman chem and Chromadex. I know this is not the thread, but I would love to talk Kratom with you sometime. Making a purified full spectrum extract has been more challenging (fun) than isolating single alkaloid.
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Isn’t this the process needed to make purple or pink distillate?
I’ve been told time and time again “it’s all about adjusting the PH during brine”
But can’t find definitive answers…
So here are the general rules for distillate color:
Water clear Δ8 is made most often by adding acidic decolorants (such as activated charcoal) to the boiling flask, and water clear Δ9 is made by using different or similar decoloring agents prior to distillation, during the ethanol diluted phase, usually post Winterization, during so-called “scrubbing” with said decoloring agents… taking care to ensure a neutral pH prior to ethanol:water azeotrope removal. This white transparency often leads to observations of other notable colors, and these colors are produced (most often) by changes in pH during the scrubbing phase, although they can develop from decolorants and other agents in the boiling flask.
Pink (salmon pink, not red) is likely caused by the production of quinoids, which are often cannabinoids with extra oxygen atoms bonded to them. This can happen after or even during making water clear distillate of either Δ, but it seems the cannabinoid purity must be especially high for this to happen. If other things, such as phosphatides (think: vegetable lecithin), are present, their antioxidant activity supersedes that of the cannabinoids, and the material will oxidize a different, most common (even and especially in normal gold distillates), deep red or brownish red color. For cannabinoids to become pink quinoids, they must be present as the only, or at least the most superior antioxidants in the distillate.
Purple color occurs most often in the presence of alkaline conditions, and probably only if CBD is also present. See information regarding the “alkaline beam test for CBD”. This alkalinity only technically exists in the presence of water, so it is more the presence of water-dissociable hydroxyl groups (in the boiler), heat, and air that actually cause distillate to turn purple, when water is not present. This can happen if the ethanolic phase was mixed with a base or filtered through an alkaline medium (e.g. magsil) without any or at least proper neutralization prior to distillation. It can also happen if a base (e.g. NaOH) or “pre-base” (e.g. MgO) is added to the boiling flask, and other conditions (i.e. heat and air or oxygen) are present.
I hope that “clears” things up a bit, regarding color formation in distillates. 
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Our T5 clay is a drop in replacement for Celite if you are interested. A 25kg bag of T5 costs about the same as 10kg of Celite 545.
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Awesome! Thank you so much! Is there a specific PH I should go for during the scrubbing phase to intentionally produce that salmon pink?
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I tried this technique today, but I am unsure how to proceed. I have added 30g of citric acid to about 9kg of 1:10 solution (190 proof), but there has been no visible change in the pH based on my test strips. About how much have people needed to use total? I did not want to press on in case it was the indicator that was the issue, so as not to over-acidify.