I would like to make a stable crumble with ethanol.
The bulk of my extractions go to carts, so I haven’t had much opportunity to experiment.
All together I’ve made sauce/diamonds 1x, I left a decent amount of solvent in after rotovap (thin syrup consistency) and poured that in a 1/4” + layer. Placed in vac oven @ 85f, vacuum oven to -28 and seal. Open oven 48 hours later to burp ethanol.
This yielded a thick layer of sugary crystals covered in a sauce layer.
I’ve been successful with shatters, batters and crumble but its really difficult to get the ethanol off and preserve your terps. @Apothecary36 listed the gist of it. Use a heat source, a whipping tool and an exhaust source for fumes. You’'ll need to whip the EHO straight away before any vac purging get it warm enough to reduce its viscosity (90-135 F depending on stablity) and whip the hell out of it for 20-25 minutes then into the vac oven at full vac, I generally stay between 100-107F for EHO, takes me at least 96 hours to get to desirable levels of residual ethanol. If you havent properly whipped your EHO prior to vac purging you’ll end up with sugar wax. Hope this helps a bit.
pretty much i take the crude and instead of putting it in a vac oven i put it in my [all electric DON’T USE GAS STOVES OR FLAME BASED OVENS] kitchen oven and i set it to 175F then i wait 30 mins take it out put it on dry ice long enough for it to be solid enough for me to flip it then i put it back into my oven for another 30 mins. The slab i get after is basically all flavor with a hint of alcohol and then i purge that slab down in my vac oven at 99F-110F for three days do the usual flips and i usually get a tasty slab. Mind you i’ve winterized and carbon filtered and if you take the 175F route prior to purging in a vac oven then you’ll never have a clear color, bright side is you’ll hit flavor town.
100% Experimental only done it 4 times in a row, with 4 batches.
This time I decided to purge this eho down in my vac oven no regular oven prior and i’m doing four days @122F with a flip every 12 hours, this however always make me lose terps.
I extract my terps before hand using a freeze dryer. This removes water as well, and keeps the ethanol you do your wash with from absorbing and holding some terps.
-cryo wash, 5 mins
-add 2% terps once roto’d down to a thick syrup. let spin on roto at like 70 rpm to homogenize.
pour onto parchment paper, and into oven at 130F
-Purge both sides multiple times, normally about 2 hours at this temp. You can lower the temp to 120 and continue until you think the ethanol is low enough. These higher purge temps are in my opinion necessary to get the ethanol out.
-The messy part. oven at 120F. Take your shatter you have just made, and ball it up into a patty. Flatten out, and spread 1% terps onto the shatter patty. You will get terps all over your hand and the silicone sheet you should be working over. Pull the shatter like taffy, over and over until there are no more terps on your hands. Feel free to roll the shatter in any terps that drip onto the silicone. Pull like taffy till no more terps and the shatter is a much lighter color and looks shinny. Put back into the oven to set for about 10 mins.
Repeat this until the amount of terps you want are in, I do 5%, 2 before the pour and then 3 with the pull method. for more crumbly consistency, use only the 2% you initially put in. for more buddery, add more.
-Once all your terps are in, let your patty sit in the oven at 120 until it completely waxes by itself. You can take it out every couple hours and re pull it. Normally takes about 5 hours.
It’s hard to get enough ethanol out without losing the terps, unless you use this method.
can you elaborate on using the freeze dryer to extract your terps? you freeze dry the plant material prior to extraction or you freeze dry your unfinished shttare?
On some crumble batches this works fine. I have recently had some batches that after whipping it and placing it into the vac oven it bubbles out of control. I remove the vac after about 20 -30 minutes and all of the air that I whipped into it is gone and it looks like messed up shatter again.
Has this happened to you? If so, what do you recommend?
This method definitely still works. Freeze dry the plant material before extraction. This collects the terps for you, and also removes excess water from the plant material that would end up in your ethanol, or in the extract. Its all about making a shatter with as little terpenes in it as possible so you know you are only purging ethanol. Once the ethanol is out, add the terps, pull and stretch to homogenize, then let sit at 120F until the waxing is complete. consistency depends on cannabinoid acid preservation, as well as how much terps you add.
Personally I’ve always vac purged my slabs or oil prior to whipping when it comes to EToH. This way you can simply whip to completion on a hot plate to avoid exactly what you’re describing.
This is what I would expect it to look like if you re add about 4-5% terps by weight. The picture above is quite dry, probably not much terps in the extract
