Well, there are some places/licenses that may be able to reduce the taxes on the 200 or 190 proof potable ethanol if you can prove it is being used only for processing or cleaning, and that it is not being sold for drinking or use in edibles or tinctures in any way. I include 200 proof, because it is a simple matter to let it absorb water from the air or simply dilute it with distilled water to 190 proof before using it.
@CuriousChemist22 By putting dry ice in the ethanol, you may be A. adding excess water to the ethanol unwittingly, B. imparting effervescence and acidity (carbonic acid) that screws with the extraction, and/or C. quite possibly just not reaching a low enough temperature if you’re not measuring it accurately with a Type E or Type T thermocouple and reader.
Another possibility is overgrinding or oversoaking… if you chop open the cells, there is nothing stopping the chloroplasts and chlorophyll from leaking out of them… and oversoaking is when the ethanol is allowed to warm up while still in contact with the plant matter, and adding that green ethanol to the nice gold stuff that quickly passed through in the first place.
@Chimeraleaf Yes, I do check the proof of recovered potable ethanol from time to time, and it’s always fine, as long as the recovery was done properly… iow, the recovered ethanol:water azeotrope was drained before cranking up the boiler temperature to remove any excess water from, decarb, and devolatilize the crude.
@OilArt is using heptane-denatured ethanol, so hygrometer readings are completely useless except to tell you that whatever liquid phase you have in the test cylinder has similar, lesser, or greater density at the measured temperature to/than regular ethanol:water mixtures.