I’ve been using the QWET / Everclear method with a standard oven decarb proceedure, however I’ve had some issues with final quality results (just for personal use).
TL;DR: Not sure why tincture is not very strong, and looking for technical advice
I have a simple distillation lab setup (although I was considering modifying it to a vacuum distillation setup using NileRed’s aspirator method + a vacuum arm) to recover the boiled ethanol at the last step.
Here’s what I typically do:
Decarb in oven (no mason jar, 110C + 45 minutes)
Freeze flower in freezer in a mason jar by itself alongside another mason jar with ethanol
Combine the two after 24 hours of freezing and agitate mildly every 5 mintes for 15 minutes.
Filter & Strain using a sieve and 3 stacked coffee filters to get crude
Use distillation aparratus to recover ethanol and concentrate solution to 60mL
Store in amber bottles
Using an input of 16g flower (Solfire Gardens Mind Flayer, 25% THC by mass) leads to subpar results in a tincture using this method. Even shaking the bottle gets me very slightly high with symptoms that disappear as fast as they come.
I’m not sure I’m using the best proceedure or making the best use of my labware either. I have an optimization budget of about $250 or so with a goal of being able to make high/decent quality tinctures given the input material (I’ve also done a bit of reading on the site (Jesus Christ there is a lot of material here (Cannabis Oil QWET Extraction Battle of the Wash: Dry Ice vs. Freezer - Home Extraction by IchiBanCrafter)), but still am very new to the field).
Things I’ve considered:
Decarbing in a mason jar to try and preserve terpenes
Decarbing ground up flower in a boiling flask with oil as a medium under vacuum (mimics vacuum oven / minimal oxygen?) and collecting terpene distillate (and adding to everclear for a tincture?)
Any notes or recommendations would be greatly appreciated ^^
(I might not be able to answer until later tonight as my family is going out to celebrate my Mom’s birthday)
Instead of soaking for 15m and shaking every 5m, I would try shaking 1 minute, draining, and repeating with fresh ethanol. IME ethanol doesn’t need a soak time if you can rinse off the dissolved cannabinoids with fresh alcohol. If you aren’t rinsing or spinning off the ethanol in a centrifuge then you are definitely leaving some THC in the flower.
When you decarb the flower, is it ground up first or whole flower in the oven? The higher the surface area, the more complete the conversion: meaning if you grind it up first it’ll help make sure it’s all decarbed. As you probably know, THCa which is the naturally produced intoxicating cannabinoid is not very psychoactive when ingested. So one possible reason your tincture isn’t as potent as you would like could be that you aren’t fully decarbing your flower.
Another reason your tincture might not seem potent is your tolerance. Do you know how many mg it takes for you to feel edibles? Before I started measuring exact potency in my edibles I remember only feeling high from edibles once. After I started measuring I realized that I needed to consume 125-150mg before I noticed any effects. Most people can take 5-10mg and feel it (hence why this is standard serving size), but some people have higher tolerances or liver/kidney/GI issues that can make it much harder to get the same effects.
Another reason it might not be as potent as you want could be inaccurate testing. Just because a single bud from a batch of flower tests at 25% THC doesn’t mean that every flower from that batch is that potency. Some companies also straight up lie because sales are dependent on high THC%.
One thing you could do to standardize your tincture is to evaporate all the alcohol from your extract so you know your potency is ~70%, then add back ethanol or MCT oil to achieve the potency you are looking for (~6.7% in your example above).
Magic butter machine has worked well for me. Just put it outside so the ethanol doesn’t mess with you. Ticture works well on me and I’m a heavy consumer. They have decent starting recipes too.
You will find very few professionals who decarb before extraction, because it’s much easier to control and trivial to see the end point if you extract first.
Most commercially available tinctures are also concentrates bought back up in an oil carrier (for this very reason).
You could certainly extract with ethanol, recover all your solvent, decarb, then bring back up in oil.
Ethanol tinctures don’t actually age well in jars (might go dig that up later…)
80mg/ml it you got it all and decarbed it. How much are you taking? Got any data on how much YOU need?
If you’re only getting 80% of what’s in there (and the coa is accurate) how many mg of thc are in your 50ml tincture?
The process of decarboxylation releases a single molecule of carbon dioxide from the structure of the THCa, changing it to D9 and providing psychoactivity. Extract (cannabis oleoresin) at decarb temperatures (even without being in a carrier, like oil or alcohol) is a low viscosity liquid, which makes it easy to see when all of the CO2 has been released. No more bubbles means no more CO2 to be released, which also equals a fully decarbed product. Kind of hard to see what when decarbing the biomass pre-extraction. Terps are always better when you don’t cook them off of the biomass before extracting, too.
That is a reductionist explanation, and there are a number of variables that can effect the time to complete and effectiveness of the decarb process (however one chooses to engage it).
I would highly suggest you spending a little (or a lot) of time using the search bar her and reading up about decarbing and ethanol extraction. The answers to how to get the product you want are here. No shortage of discussions have transpired over the years regarding best methods and ways to optimize the process. Hope that helps.
I’ll take that as “I’ve never actually had a potency tested edible, so I don’t know how much it takes to get me high”.
Do you have approximate math for the edibles that have worked?
You’re making your own meds. Often that doesn’t happen until you’ve been using for a while. It’s possible you need 100 or more mg at this point in your journey.
I think it’s more likely that you’re simply not decarbing fully, but dosing is important & understanding your personal dose/response curve is a critical part of manufacturing your own meds
Not empirically tested; derived from mathematical estimates based on amount of flower added, seed vendor THC% and equal distribution of materials in the baking sheet.
I’ve made edibles ranging from 100mg - 600mg (which really messed me up lmao).
Materials were ensured for equal distribution to the best of my ability at each step; should be a reasonable estimate of THC concentration.
You should check for labs in your area, a potency test can be as low as $25-50 in legal states. One of the first things I learned when I started testing my home grown was that the breeders or seed resellers are giving you a best case THC%. IDK about you but I’m not a perfect grower. Most quality strains I’ve grown max around 25-27%, average closer to 20-22, and if things get messed up it can be lower. Hoping this next week’s harvest hits 30’s, it’s my best one yet and so frosty.
I have a few coworkers that grow and we share strains. One of my buddies gets 5% more cannabinoids than me consistently on the same clones, but he also has top quality gear and 2+ decades growing for a living in the traditional market. He spends a lot of time and money growing that extra bit of THC, and I’m ok with less quality and quantity as a trade for less investment and less effort. I don’t recoup any money, it’s all personal and growing’s not as enjoyable if it’s a job instead of a hobby.
