what actually comes out of my mouth has had serious repercussions
if you’ve started processing, and discovered that the advice you were given to use “near boiling” solvent was indeed sage. I suspect the route you’ve outlined above will get you where you need to be. with the following caveats.
are you working with a buddy? It always helps to have someone around to document it when you do something stupid like set the barn on fire…more importantly, they can put you out with the garden hose so you can get back to work, or off to the ER.
ventilation. there is a lower explosive limit for your solvent vapour in air. Know it and avoid it. get yourself a detector that can warn you about it for next time.
I don’t like hot alcohol and plastic. HDPE is probably fine, but I still don’t like the idea of it getting in my meds.
Boiling ethanol? Theoretically, I would still use dry ice with ethanol during the run since there is probably still plant matter attached to those crystals. I always keep solvent at dry ice temps till filtration is complete. That way I avoid having to pull out anything extra later on.
I haven’t done this with kief, only flower. I imaging your solvent to biomass ratio changes a little bit, as you have less mass, but most of it is probably not being filtered out.
Also, Elliott always told me not to use ISO when things are being smoked. I take it upon myself to never use ISO.
Yea distillate is the end goals here. Possibly some heptane not sure yet. But for now ima do a hot iso on kief mix like crazy then filter. Then I’ll freeze if and filter. I’ll test with dry ice in the mix after 2nd filter to see if any fats still come off of there is which I highly doubting it but if there is I’ll put dry ice in all the buckets then filter again hit the rotos and start the first pass
One man army everyone else is working in the fields I’m trying to get this going everyone seems to ha e lost faith so I dumped all I had into this and I’m pulling shit out of everywhere to maintain. Seems like once I thought it was the rite way and now I kern something different. Crazy lol but ventilation isn’t a problem when mixing. I’ll def work on something for when heating.
It’s possible to break down Kief in ethanol at ambient temperatures without clumping, and can be done so quite rapidly. We discovered a method for processing a THCA solution with Keif in MCT oil. We use the CAT X1000 Homogenizer with the 20mm Knife Generator Shaft. The Knife Generator Shaft splits open the cuticle of the trichomes so the cannbinoids and terpenes dissolve in the carrier.
I think reducing your required solvent volume by collecting trichomes first is a sound idea. The brain trust at GW Pharmaceuticals does too, according to their patents.
If you need hot solvent that isn’t so scary to make or work with, look at heating it in a closed jacketed vessel with hot water, or one of the circulating heaters you’ve got laying around the barn.
if you add an air powered agitator, you’ve got a reaction vessel.
drain it, and put the cannabinoid laden solvent back in it, or buy another one, and you’ve got a still (mostly). Three of the damn things and you’ve got a system…
I’ve done a fair amount of kief extraction with ethanol and butane. When using ethanol I found it easier to mix a slurry and load it into a column and using positive pressure to push it through. I’ve needed pressures up to 80 psi to keep up with the recovery speed of the 20 liter roto that was also assisting with vacuum from the bottom of the column. It took more energy than what it was worth to keep the ethanol and column chilled through extraction so I would render it down to a high concentration, winterize, and scrub before recovering the last of the ethanol.
Dry loading with butane worked but if there was any clumping in the kief, the butane tended to channel and there were pockets of un-extracted material.
Apeks recommended I not load kief in their machines when I asked. “It would not be efficient”. don’t have a machine.
I do see kiefing as a viable solvent reduction technique. I think GW’s purification of CBG by running their water hash collection out to 45min to collect the non-stalked trichomes was a brilliant piece of applied biology.
I haven’t processed enough of it to have a good feeling for the problems that it brings. Last time I used butane on kief was outdoors on a sub 0C night in a small stainless thermos… I was very unhappy with the last “kief” I processed with Ethanol, but it was harvested from a trimming machine and was terrible quality
Curious what @Jonaaronbray would say about loading kief in his machines?
Edit: CBC, not CBG, which is why it took forever to find the ref. it’s in Potter’s Thesis
Hey buddy quick question, I have some kief that sifted through 75 micron screen, I planned on blasting to grow crystals, gonna do the strong Tek on it… It I don’t pack, just smack sides and let settle without packing, would this not work? Thanks buddy
Also would I get bigger crystals from dewaxing column or no dewaxing column… strictly the way I’m gonna run it
Do a warm filtration before you try to winterize. Trying to filter the keif and the waxes in one shot will be extremely difficult and slow. Stage your filtration in order to get the best flow rate. Filter the crap out of it while still warm, once it is really clean you can winterize.
We have never had the chance to run kief in our machines yet. If we did the cycle would need to be 3 times as long because of the higher potency of the kief.
With California’s tax structure on transfers of trim I could see people kiefing all of their trim to reduce the tax burden. Currently all we extract in California is old mountain mix and bunk flower lots. I have found a pound or two out of hundreds that would even be worth a terpene extraction.
Can I not load the kief without packing? Just tapping sides to let settle some, and either warm or dry ice which ever y’all say best… I’m attempting a 6in 2in wide closed column today, gonna sift the kief with 75 micron screen frozen I guess with dry ice
Your gonna clog depending on how you filter. Beware of solvent channing around your material.Have a sample of your extracted keif tested for canaboids, this will give you a better picture of how the process went.
Ok so basically what I caught is do cold, bc gonna soak material, and basically that I need to keep my screen from getting clogged,I use that ones that come with it, metal mesh,I usually set couple coffee filters I cut to size on top and bottom, but to keep the kief from getting clogged in filter I need to ball up filter paper, I have fast qualitive filter paper or whatever it’s called for more buncher, should I load just couple those before the screen or do I have to ball them up?
Also should I dry Ice freeze the material before sifting it
Ok just toss them in, if I use marbles do they have to be made of anything in particular, I may have old glass ones, but if I don’t steel ball bearings?
glass will work. some extraction suppliers carry ball bearings for dewaxing. the trick of using a magnet to agitate the ball bearings from outside the column might be worth the expense over the marbles you’ve got lying round.
you might double check that your marbles are ok with dry-ice temps before mixing them with cannabis and performing the same test.
