Hello everyone!
It’s been months into building and establishing the lab and i can honestly say we have learned so much. I thought it would be easier but as time has taught me i truly didn’t know as much as i thought i did prior as a cannabis smoker, and AG major, haha.
So during the past month we have really had the opportunity to experiment a little, changing parameters meters to observe what changes we can with crude oil. I wanted to make a post and hopefully get some guidance from others that surly know more than little ol’ me.
Observation/experiment #1-
Ran flower (buds all pop corn size for the first time instead of grinding flower) -40 in centrifuge filtered with mm (Paper filter, DE filter and Charcoal filter) then ran into roto evap at 40C till very little ethanol is being reclaimed from the coils. Running an AI Roto i can pull down to <10 torr usually before removing the ball and collecting into a beaker. Crude oil came out syrup colored pretty yellow when thin.
Now usually (bud/flower is ground down) and i run in the Roto at 50c down till reclaiming calms down then start my decarb process by bumping temp in the water bath to 90C to get material thin, and allow more ethanol to come out of the crude oil, but this material turns almost black in the roto ball.
Good…. Or Bad….? Eh idk, The Material that was ran at 40C in roto then decarbed on a heat plate before further distillation took much longer to decarb, but stayed a lighter clear almost syrup color. The material that is ran up to 90C will be dark in the Roto but decarb quicker on the heat plate with almost no weigh change before or after the decarb plate. No testing back yet on the batch ran at 40C (flower/bud) as i hope this helps me see if it was good or bad to stay with a lower temp.
Observation/experiment #2
Shatter/Budder/Sauce/Crumble all are so similar and as a smoker I can tell someone the differences for the common sales person but not the temperatures nor the process in which these differ. Please don’t judge me haha so from my research over the past few months we attempted shatter, #1 was dark but shattered. #2 sugared and left more as a diamonds and sauce after pulling from the vacuum oven at 120F. On #2 batch i then added it all into a large beaker melted down at 70C mixed for a while then put into 2 Pyrex pans sat in the vacuum chamber for 2 hours with heat, then pulled vac. Now #2 batch is a cake like material…. Kinda crumble but not…
Again any and all advice or opinions would be helpful and appreciated! I am looking to learn and make good products for patients to enjoy.