Was curious if anyone had ever done much with lower % alcohol extraction?
I know you’re able to winterize at room temp with methanol and ethanol by adding water and having the fats/wax “louche” themselves out.
I’m curious if you were doing a room temp extraction and took the alcohol % down if it would be similarly exlusionary.
Secondly, if you aren’t picking up waxes and fats, you have more room for thc. Even if the solvent “power” was lowered, if you cycled the solvent over the material enough times I would assume you could make it efficient.
Obvious drawbacks are increased chlorphyll (easily remediated with charcoal). Increased beta-carophylene (remediated via LLE) As well as increased energy requirement for evaporation.
But back to the original question.
Has anyone tried lower % alcohol extraction and managed to gather any useful data?
I would assume the answer is no for anything but LLE or some form of chromatography. It seems like everyone has a pretty similar extraction technique, because it’s obvious what works and basically everyone who is respected in this industry says you want less water in your extraction to get the best results.
What your proposing would seem to go against everyone’s advice, so I wonder if this ever has been tested before?
Super cold extraction is easy and foolproof, that’s why most people do it.
Room temperature extraction is on the rise because of multiple solvent wash ability. It’s just more technical in post processing.
I think there’s some other alcohol variables to be explored? Just needs more expertise and data I’d assume.
What are the water solubles people always talk about? I guess chlorphyll is a big one (semi-water soluble, but gets thrown in there), sugars maybe? The bulk of the undesireables are non-polar in nature.
Whenever I’ve louche’d it almost seems carmelized or sugary. It burns like sugar as well. It stays super sticky even when exposed to dry air for quite some time. It seems to have a lighter and more amber color than the crude it comes from.
