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Hi gang,
We make lovely -80 BHO, that sells like hotcakes. We take some and spin it out, decarb the isolate, mix back together and make delicious carts, which also sell super well. We have a small percentage of runs, somewhat strain dependent, that seem to have residual THCA and the pint jar batch will bubble to overflowing the cart when we inject with a cart farmer.
Though itâs been a small percentage overall, we have a pretty big tub of these âfizzyâ cart juice batches and I really need to get them used up and out of here.
Iâve tried cooking some at 190 for 18 hours, in an attempt to decarb without blasting my precious terps, and the result was till the overbubbling.
We are changing protocol for the BHO initial offgassing to create some bigger crystal structures and hopefully eliminate the ultra fine THCa that is getting through our mesh bags during spinning, but that still doesnât help me with this big horde of fizzy cart juice.
Anyone have a similar experience or some guidance for how to clean up this cart juice without cooking the terps out?
So, youâve got two suspects, assuming youâre not unintentionally carbonating your decarbed isolate.
Residual THCa from your HTE. Have you had your HTE tested? Knowing exactly how much THCa is in your HTE can tell you a lot about your process, and variations from batch to batch.
A âpyrex-techâ crash out generally results in 30-50% THCa remaining, spinning with 25u screens. Of course, the larger your crystals, the more likely they wonât pass through your screens, and the faster the HTE can flow off them There are methods to reliably get down to 20-25% residual THCa, and generally at that point itâs inconsequential for cart formulations.
Residual solvent! Butane (all alkanes) is a hydrocarbon, and so are your terps which make up most of your HTE (esters and such aside). Like attracts like in chemistry, and it can be a bit tricky sometimes to get your solvent out of your HTE, especially if thereâs a good bit of d9 in it, which tends to thicken things up.
Could you describe the procedures you have in place to purge your HTE? Iâd put a $2 bill on residual solvents being the culprit.
are you doing any agitation during decarb? pop it the oven in at 180 and then stir the shit out of it once up to temp. i use a drill and rosin whip. you can also shake the shit out of a mason jar.. put it back in the oven and check again with another whip in a few hours.. repeat until it stops being a fizzy drink
warm the jars of fizzy cart juice up to ~130F. Put em in a vac oven and pull vac until all the fizzy bubbles are removed. Should take less than 30 min. Make sure there is some headspace in the jars
You will have to learn to throttle your oven to do this properly if not youâll muffin over and loose parts of batches. This takes up to 3 hours at time if the hte is thicker.
Also keep in mind you VOCâs will start to evaporate off around 65°f-85°f and meaning donât over heat your terps! Keep an eye on temps and ensure youâre not roasting the hte. But you also need to be within you BP for your solvent choice. Just ensure you do a thin layer (2â at most) in Pyrex as this will allow for more surface tension to be easily broken and allow for faster and much more efficient purging.
Also donât use the nose test to see if there is a residual. Itâs not reliable and your nose in this case does not know.
Pic for relatable experience of terps I received a few years back. They were still holding onto residuals.
This is just after putting them into a warming bath as it was a noticeable amount of compounds evaporating off as I cracked this jar and it had a substantial amount of pressure prior to opening. It quite literally popped the lid off into the air.
Only posting to advocate for safety of post processing and in hope others will do their due diligence and ensure theyâre only putting out the best safest product.
You guys are awesome, thanks for the help! Our BHO process results in <75 ppm butane, and the company we test with wonât show if itâs 74 or 3, just jumps from zero to <75.
I will work on agitation as well as thinning it out in Pyrex to speed up the process, and report back. Cheers!
If you have low ppm in your HTE of butane then I would recommend turning the cart farmer down in temp. I a fizzy cart issue until I got temps low enough. I believe it was starting to decarb in the heated line.
Thanks! Dang the spintek looks awesome. I will have to research it some more but it sounds like a great way to purge our BHO anyway, and if it could fix my whole tub of delicious fizzy cart juice then it would pay for itself right thereâŚ
If you see the above posts that is from 3 different finished carts from 3 different strains. looks like 8-10% THCA in there. I need to check my decarbed isolate and make sure Iâm getting it all done in that side too. We cook it overnight at 240 and pull vac on it too so we assume its fully decarbed when the bubbles stop, but I need to get some tested. Honestly I breed and grow and design grow rooms and buildings more than the extract, but I have to know enough to know whats going on and be able to help trouble shoot to keep things running smoothly. I mostly smoke flower joints and aged dry sift hash, the dabs are more than I need at 40 years old after trying pot for a couple decades!
Those numbers are for batches that worked perfectly, like most of our batches do. Its just some that donât. And the ones that donât wont even make a bubbly cart, they will bubble over when attempting to fill with myriad tiny bubbles.
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