Well, I didn’t smoke it, but I tasted it and my tongue is burning now. I’m fucking confused.
I don’t want to derail this thread so I’m gonna start a new one to try and find out wtf is happening.
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Ty for your kindness.
Ash from the carbon.
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I’ve rinsed carbon with EtOH and then rotovaped the filtrate and there is a white residue that appears as ethanol condenses down. But if you put that carbon over a cake of T5, there is no white residue that appears. DE didn’t seem to completely remove the residue either.
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Yeah, I have t5 under. Normally 60g carbon to 150-200g t5. But I think i only used 100g t5 this time. I guess it’s not enough to catch it all then.
Has anyone ever noticed higher THC%:THCa% after using carbon powder?
I used to use a carbon cartridge filter, and now I use carbon powder. My test results in 2018 averaged 80.5%THCA : 5.4%THC compared to 2019 averaged 69%THCa : 16.2%THC.
I’m just trying to figure this out cause it has been affecting crystallization
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Based sheerly on consistency after using carbon I am tempted to say you are on to something.
source of carbon matters…
you changed sources.
are you seeing yield losses as well?
Or does it look like decarb?
you might just be the first one to chase this down correctly…
everyone else assumed it was the white powder they added
or other brands folks are using might not have so much ash?!?
could it be the ash that is changing your hash?
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This is interesting indeed. Now that I’m chasing diamonds it definitely makes me think I need to stop using carbon.
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That did not look like THCa. With the pH intentionally acidic, it may have been a weak acid precipitate… which would explain the burning tongue sensation. If you are trying for diamonds from ethanol, I recommend concentrating the neutral ethanol:resin solution in a cool rotovap process to remove ethanol until the solution just begins to thicken a little bit, then pouring it into a scratched beaker in a cool room with a coffee filter or paper towel covering it to keep dust out and let it concentrate further in air by evaporation. It should not have acid or base added to it, but a quick filtering (prior to concentrating) through neutral ac or clay for color should be fine.
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Thank you! I will try this out.
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Cool… just remember, by “neutral”, I mean non-adjusted. The pH of ethanol will always read a little acidic, and possibly a little more acidic with THCa dissolved in it. 
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So wait would a pH adjustment/degumming be worth it to try to go for diamonds.
So, I’ve been wondering. If I run it over a bed of neutral bentonite. Would that effect the ph of the etho?
@GroovyOctopusLabs @Renchi This is where you might as well have put the material into a hydrocarbon, anyway… either on initial extraction or by LLE from ethanol diluted with water.
If you properly comminuted the biomass without sharp blades, and extracted with ethanol kept below -67°C at reasonably brief residence time, and finally filtered effectively, you will not pick up any significant amount of undesirable material, like chlorophyll, phospholipids or phosphatides for which you would need to decolor, pH adjust or degum.
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Bentonite is a generic term for a certain aluminosilicate clay structure, which can have any number of acids, bases, cations, or intercalated waters of hydration in it. Generally, bentonite is hydrophilic and has sodium and/or calcium cations floating in its intercalated water. Calcination, or “firing” the clay at various high temperatures, with or without air, will change its properties, especially with regard to non-polar solutions of cannabis resin. Not so much with ethanol, although it does need to be calcined for any work with ethanol, since you don’t want extra water in the alcohol. The more anaerobic and hot the calcination, the better the results for decoloring, and the less likely it will change the pH.
However, dried opaline (hydrated amorphous) silica is the most preferable decoloring agent for cannabis resin I have ever found. Search those terms here for more information I recently released on this material.
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Thank you again. As usual you help further the necessary knowledge of understanding the fundamentals in our field. This is much appreciated information and I shall look into this further.
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Where is a good source for neutral AC?
Currently, using carbon A from Summit.