The current rush to produce purer products, that contain maximum concentrations of specifically isolated components, is actually just a research step.
The next step in industrial cannabis refinement is blended components. Rip the plant into a bunch of pure, select compounds, then recombine for optimum taste and effect. This trend has already started, but is currently based on little science.
Problem is not the concept, but the lack of solid reproducible research. Synergistic combinations, targeting very specific symptoms, will eventually pop up. But right now, the target is more toward smell and taste, rather than towards overall effect.
Information about very specific micro-ratios of compounds and their exact combined impact, is just not available yet.
Definitely, everything with color is not safe to dab, but the converse point (as presented in my original question) is that some very dabbable and beneficial products do have color.
The entire point of purification is the isolation of single compounds, I donât question the tek at allâŚit works. What I question is the trend toward making products that are bland, and lifeless.
Why bother with the orange juice when you can just drink the everclear directly? Some folks just appreciate a mixture.
Red #2 is goofy too. Maybe someone will add a load of Fluorescein Sodium to their crude, make everything glow brilliant green, jk. I mean natural coloration, not adds.
Even water has a natural color (blue) if you get enough together at once.
You can still have the heavy full body high extract and make it look nice without losing too much essence just run hot and dont dewax but still use certain powders to clean it a bit of the heavy metals or pesticides if it has any. The fats and lipids will give that heavy high like darker colored rosin does, look lighter, and not have metals or other contaminants. Also inline many are using too much of the powders to achieve the same results as a soak with minimal powders which is whatâs causing the loss of flavor profile
Just looked again at Fluorescein Sodium. If you add it to your irrigation water then use it on your plants, Fluorescein Sodium will be taken up into the plantâs xylem, and your plants will glow under UV.
I do use filtration powders, but sparingly. I also use common sense and observation.
I treat any ETOH extract like a fine liquor. It has to have the proper ânoseâ. Itâs color and clarity are key points.
I use carbon if something about an extract is âtooâ, but otherwise I avoid it. As for Celite, I usually use it to make thin plate filters. The kind that you make with an ETOH slurry, I can then layer whatever I want, above.
I would love to see this kind of data developed but it is a big job.
My work led me to using a lot of GC-MS data on trace environmental contaminants.
We got really good data at the parts per quintillion level but when you have that kind of sensitivity you see thousands of peaks in the output.
If you have enough money you can identify the important peaks and get very good analytical accuracy.
It took millions to develop methods for all the isomers of PCDD/PCDF along with two PhD analytical chemists.
I always did wonder about the thousands of unidentified compounds, many of which didnât even have names.
Fire is a big hammer.
Identification and isolation are just a first step. True knowledge is still many years away.
After ID will be many years of trials, just to figure out even a small bit of the âentourage effectâ. Formulating custom effect mixtures is not possible yet.
Going back to my orange juice and everclear example. Even though we know the components of the drink, if proper ratios are not maintained, it will not be a good mixed drink. It might be drinkable at all ratios, but only one combination is âbestâ. Until our knowledge base increases, about everything cannabis, we are stumbling around, only guessing at correct ratios.
Analytical analysis is necessary, but it is only a single piece of the entire puzzle. Custom mixtures for very specific effects, that are tested under controlled clinical conditions, will eventually result, but who knows when.
Truthfully, We might never get final answers. The types of trials needed are the kind that big Pharma does. They are more interested in manipulating molecules to make a patentable product. They are not really searching for complete knowledge, just for a cash cow.
When we are all older and richer, we can form an industry association and pool some of our ill-gotten gains to do that type of research, for all of our sake and that of our industry.
I have a deformulation lab. If people are interested in crowdfunding a true deformulation of a given cannabis extract we could get a significant amount of data and possibly extended terpene index compared to what we, as a community, have now.
Component identification is important, as it is an essential first step.
Beyond identifying the makeup, comes solubility and rate of dissolution. Solubility and rate of dissolution are different, but are relatedâŚ
We already know that the majority of the psychoactive compounds in cannabis are non-polar, so their solubility has been explored, at least in an informal manner.
The âentourage effectâ, however, is most likely not solely due to interactions between the psychoactive components. We just donât know yet if interactions with other compounds in the raw plant are beneficial, but are currently being lost, due to excess refinement.
What is currently lacking is rate of dissolution data. Rate of dissolution is a determination of the amount of time needed for a known sample size, at a known temperature, with a known solvent passing over it, at a known rate, to completely dissolve. We know stuff gets dissolved, but what compounds, and at what rate? What temperature is optimal for a specific compound? What solvent flow rate is optimal? How much time is needed? What volume of solvent?
Currently, we use brute force, and we get good products, but are they as good as they can possibly be? Probably not.
Targeted extraction, where specific compounds are selectively pulled, rather than bulk extraction, where everything is pulled at once, would be desirable. This requires a lot more information than we have right now.
