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.
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@EHO_AZ is correct on all points.
I suspect that failure to decarb is your biggest issue.
Yeah, that trick is for concentrate, not the flower (Decarb under pressure to retain terps?).
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?
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Ah, so don’t even bother with the oven decarboxylation and just extract with ethanol, then transfer to an MCT oil base and heat to decarb?
Essentially. I was suggesting decarb between EtOH and MCT.
Mainly because it would be more obvious visually.
But you can add the MCT before you even start recovering if you want, and you may be able to see decarb in the MCT.
I’m guessing you’re talking about full extract cannabis oil?
Not sure what the visual indicator is between THCa and THC in the oil.
Is there a color change?
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.
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Bubbles…
I’m talking about removing the primary extraction solvent from your ethanol extract. Then diluting in MCT. See: Tinctures
Imo “Feco” is an absolutely horrible name for said product, but if that’s what you wish to call yours, by all means.
I just make eho.
I’ll ask again: any idea how much thc YOU need? You tell us you’re not happy with the potency of your tincture, are you sure it’s not your liver?
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Ah, yes, sorry.
Edibles I’ve made from the same strain can mess me up pretty easily 
100% sure it’s not GI/hepatocyte related ^^
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
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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.
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So you made nominal 80mg/ml tincture. How much did you take?
Not an analytically tested.
Were YOU calibrated, then the act of you eating them might qualify as “empirical”.
Without said calibration, “qualitative Organoleptics” seems close…
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1mL (no effect)
I suspect decarb failure on my part. I’ll try the new method tonight.
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Here is another exploration of the (I failed to decarb fully) problem…Gummy potency problem
There are methods other than a bioassay that the home user can use to access decarb.
Eg TLC or even Bromocresol Green
Yep…all you gotta do is pick a starting point and dig in.
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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.
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Ok, did 2 washes of ~20g of THCa.
One was the right yellow color, and one was green (Both EtOH and flower frozen seperate, then combined and shaken vigiourously every minute)
Should I even bother with the green (second wash) one?
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Absolutely. I would suggest recovering separately this time through just to inform your sense of “is this worth it to me”
At a guess there are maybe 10% of your total cannnabinoids in there, and 5% in your biomass.
It is traditional to add a third wash if you want all of them,
The new fangled manner is to spun it done.
It washes the cannabis and then it washes the cannabis some more
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Assuming you made it through Decarb under pressure to retain terps?
one might expect that you’d seen these.
In case you did not…or did not catch the connection without additional explanation.
Missing key;
- decarb vessels
- while decarbing
- no longer decarbing
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Yeah, I was looking at that with a desktop centrifuge.
As I understand it, they place the cooled flower and alcohol together and then spin it in a centrifuge?
Not sure if that would work with a desktop centrifuge.
As in
It can probably can be done, but most extract in a bucket and use the panda to spin dry. See: Bucket Tek (Cold Ethanol Extraction on a Budget)
If you’ve got $30k lying around there is a wee French fuge that qualifies as “designed to do this at desktop scale”.
Edit:
Sort of. Depends on the fuge. As noted above, those without the correct tooling will simply use the centrifuge to recover more of their solvent (and hence more of their cannabinoids).
By spray washing you can get essentially complete extraction faster than you can spin the fuge up to speed and down again.
Ethanol is FAST!
Water is too, but that’s not I trick I’ve seen performed nor tried myself yet…maybe I’ll buy an espresso machine today: You Can Use Espresso Machines To Make Marijuana Extracts
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