I know the most obvious answer is to dissolve a sample into ethanol, freeze and watch for separation. My question is, can you identify fats and waxes before introducing any sort of ethanol?
I recent bought some live resin, seems to be the cleanest extract I’ve gotten without making it myself. I’m going to decarb in a small vessel to retain the terps and use the oil for carts. With all the bho slabs I’ve had before I always winterize then decarb. This is my first time working with live resin
This time I was going to decarb then winterize so I can use the ethanol to flush the oil and terp from the decarb vessel. Thing is, if the extraction was done right, then it shouldn’t pull fats and waxes and winterizing isn’t necessarily, right? So how do I determine if a oil has fats and waxes without dissolving and freezing some. Is there a way?
I was going to winterize just to be safe, unless you guys convince me otherwise
Product in question, claimed to be papaya live resin
Yes, I’ve taken several dabs on a terp slurper. Seems super clean, first dab I took was small, nice terpy hit, completely evaporated and the slurper looked completely clean, no residue or anything. Next few dabs were fatter, didn’t finish them so there was a bit left over for clean up.
It might be a bit too terpy, some of the oz jars are softer with more terps then the ones pictured. I’m sure I’ll loose some in the decarb and winterizing process though
I guess the appropriate course of action would be to decarb, then take a sample from that, add ethanol and proceed from there. If the sample looks clean, ill evaporate the ethanol and use the sample oil for edibles
If you have methanol you could test it a little quicker. Decarb and take a fraction of a gram and times that weight into methanol into a small 2ml vial is enough to see if it gets cloudy.
Columbia Labs now offers actual fats testing for cannabis oil. I wonder how much is left after methanol winterization… nobody has ever actually proved that this process removes all of it.
It definitely crashes more than ethanol at equivalent temp. This is easily verified. I have the same oil dissolved 1:10 in ethanol and methanol in my -30 freezer right now, and much more has precipitated in the methanol sample.
Split into 3 jars.
50% to winterize and decarb
40% to just decarb
10% to just melt down and allow it to sugar a tiny bit.
Recombine the 90% during decarb. Stir in the remaining 10% “sugar” towards the end once you drop temps down just to melt it in. 10-15% THCA is as high as I personally would go in most hardware.
Removing just some of the waxes goes a long way. Realistically even if you winterize as much as 75% and leave the rest out the cart will still taste proper. Personally I think at that point you may as well bring in some distillate and offer at a lower price point though.
I am dedicated to making fll spectrum carts, my recommendation is that if you have a life resin, I would not put it to winterize, because when you want to recover the ethanol you are going to lose many delicious terpenes, just decarboxylate it and put it in your carts. if it has little wax it is the least, a life resin product is worth more for its terps than for the little wax it may have! Good luck
That’s what everyone likes to tell each other on the internet but then if you go and straight up decarb live resin and add it to carts you’re going to have clogging issues. Have you actually done this or are you just making recommendations?
Live resin is going to be a lot more strain dependent so I’ve noticed some needs to be cleaned up more than others for carts. Live resin tends to vary a lot in appearance from extractor to extractor. So unless you want to roll the dice on a bunch of failed carts you’re going to want to add some distillate or winterized oil to keep the waxes and sugars from damming up your intake holes.
I share my experience, it cost me $ 200 but I like to help and I am not going to charge you for this information, I made sure to give all my carts a good winterization due to the problem of leaks and obstructions, even so I still had problems with leaks, until the secret was to have a good decarboxylation, there is the secret and use good brand carts, I only work with ccell carts, I do not use another brand and my decarboxylation is very good, I learned from a teacher here to decarboxylate Well my material, by eliminating the co2 and breaking the molecules you avoid crystallization, that crystallization inside the cart causes you to spill. You only need to have more than 54% decarboxylation to break the CO2 molecules and crystals do not form, decarboxylation is an art, I give you some advice, try 80c 1 hour then raise it to 125 C for 1 to 4 hours, you have to go testing, when you stop bubbling your material is ready Normally after reaching 125c I lower it back to 80c when I no longer see bubbles they are ready for the carts. use a steel plate or oven but do not apply vacuum. I hope this helps .
If your carts are leaking you’re just not filling/capping them correctly or what sounds more likely is you weren’t winterizing properly and had a ton of residual ethanol left in it. Residual solvent is going to cause the oil to leak from even the best cart. Decarbing will remove a lot of solvent but you can still have ethanol trapped in the oil if you’re not taking the appropriate measures to purge your solvent.
I don’t imagine you’re testing for residual solvent or D9/THCa content on what you’re making but I personally would never leave anywhere near half THCa in a cart. Come to think of it I don’t even know the last time I saw a tested cart selling retail with more than about 10-20%THCa in it. I’m sure it’s possible to get away with a little more but at that point it’s a question of shelf life.
Are you testing what you’re making or just guessing what’s happening? How did you remove the ethanol after you winterized?
My extractions are done with closeloop, then later I mix the wax with the ethanol to make the winterized I use (Dry ice), after filtering the waxes with a water pump and then I introduce the mixture to my rotary evaporator to eliminate all the solvent, After I remove all the solvent, I change the water for Avocado Oil and raise the temperature to 125C for a few hours, it will decarboxylate everything, then I remove it to a jar and I test if everything is ok, if I see that it is missing decarboxylate I put it on a silver heat at 120 and I go down to 80c and that it does not bubble, and with that I solve all the leaks that I had previously, I only use CCELL carts, I keep those cartridges, they are good, imported from all brands and they are the that have never let me down to my own experience
This dude has me paranoid I got some d8 mix or something.
I was thinking it might be too terpy because it was causing a little throat irritation. Similar experience when I’ve added too much botanical terps when I started making carts. Went home yesterday took a dab, dunno if that bitch was too hot or what but it irritated my throat and left a funky smell in my new rig and some chaz on the quarts and some reclaim on the bong.
Really wish I had a good way to test this. Maryland only tests for licensed facilities, VA only mentions hemp testing, even then they seem to only deal with business with hemp licenses. Been trying to get in touch with steep hill in dc but they’re aren’t great about getting back to me.
Think @kcalabs would be willing to process a sample?
