Is it decarbed?
It doesnāt look like powders to me it looks like crystals
Okay thanks for the response. What causes it to crystallize ?
And no, it hasnāt been decarbed
Is it pieces of biomass? Like is it just because it wasnāt really filtered well?
Try decarbing it and see if it goes away
Thc a wants to be a crystal, if your crude is high enough in potency itāll auto crystallize
Decarbing it would make it thc which canāt crystallize
Hello all!!
I am a hemp farmer, and have had some biomass washed in ethanol to create crude. The processor that i used was very vague in the returning weight of crude and I have been looking for actual numbers of āexpected returnsā for this years crop.
I want to run 1200 pounds of hemp which the biomass COAās have 10% CBD.
What should i expect in returns for weight in crude??
I apologize ahead of time if I am a noob to this, but I am sick of being taken advantage of as a farmer and want input from honest people vs just āgetting what I getā from processors.
Any input would be very appreciated.
A very rough rule of thumb is you will get your CBD % + 2-3% back in crude.
For example with your 10% biomass, you should get back about 12% of your weight in crude: 1200lb bio ā 144 lb of crude.
THANK YOU!! I appreciate that. Plus it just solidifies my original feeling that we were ripped off the first batch we ran last year. We ran 300 pounds and got maybe 7kgās, if that.
I am hopeful that these numbers are on par, even if we only got back 10% I would be happy, and obviously 12-13% return on the total weight would be better. As Iām sure you are aware, the cannabis market is full of grifters, and finding honest processors who donāt skim off the top is tougher than finding gold in the Sahara.
Any more info you or others can contribute, or just personal experiences in this topic would be great!!
Thanks again.
You can get nearly all the cannabinoids out if your system is properly designed. I see people saying getting 80% is āgoodā or only leave 2% behind (ex ur starting material is 10%) is āgoodā (same thing really).
Personal experience - Iād say neither is good, because you can get 95-98% of cannabinoids out with a well designed custom system - which is half the cost of a āturn-keyā solution. I wouldnāt focus on building ur system to get the best āyieldā - Iād focus on building a system that results in clean product that strips the maximum amount of cannabinoids.
Think differently about it.
Oh, Iām not building my own system just yet, we are still in the fledgling stages of hemp production and growing. At this stage I am looking for as close to verifiable numbers from experienced extractors who run hemp through an ethanol extraction process. And what sorts of return numbers per pound of hemp being run when the cbd percentage is 10% in the biomass.
EG: I have 1200 pound of 10% cbd hemp at 0.3% THC.
What should I expect from the processor who washes this with the ethanol process as a return in weight of crude??
So typically we yield about 1kg of finished crude per 23lbs of biomass @ 10% cbd. These numbers also reflect winterization efforts. This is implementing -70C etoh all the way through. Filtered from 50um down to 1um bag filters. Decarboxylated and ready for the next process.
If youāre going to use ethanol extractors as a service - you need to make sure the product is properly winterized (and how that will be handled post extraction if its not).
Also with ethanol, its very common that sugars are extracted - which makes the distillation process more time consuming having to clean the entire system after each batch. Ex. I would only do a tolling deal if they are giving you back disty - NOT crude.
My math on this for 10% material (conservative and factoring for loss etc) =
1,200 * 0.08 (loss factored at crude) = 96 pounds of crude
96 / 2.2 (converted to kilos) = 43.6
43.6 * 0.6 (converted to disty - assuming crude is an average/decent %) =
26.18L of finished distillate.
Short hand math is 33lbs of 10% material = 1 liter of disty
So basically - Iād say your range of return for disty is 26.18 - 36.36 finished distillate liters.
Iād say 30L is a real expectation for your 1,200 lbs.
Save this math for future reference 
Sorry for jumping in on this thread rather late, but Iām new. Hereās our experience: we ran our first hemp test extraction back in the Fall of 2019 using 500 lbs. of 10% biomass. Using -20C ethanol to wash we extracted 21.84 Kg of crude, pre-decarb. Going by that, your 300 lbs. could have produced 13-15 Kg. of crude. We do better now, after fine-tuning our SOPs and equipment and typically achieve close to the 12% rule-of-thumb that mcpikeig cited above.
EPIC!! Thank you very much for your input and math and experience in this. I appreciate it very much.
We are pretty sure that at this point the processor is only able to take it to crude, sadly, and not to the distillate stage to which we are hoping to go to. It seems that the individuals we have sought out to take the 1200 pounds to distillate all leave us with a creepy feeling like we are about to be F*cked over, and honestly we have just turned away from such individuals and processors.
So, the one fellow we get the best vibe from can take it to a really good crude level, and when we get our FSE products up and selling we will then take the next step and run some of it to distillate.
We sometimes wish we were in the States to have as many processors on hand as optionsā¦sometimes 
Thank you again!!
Youāre welcome and I wish you guys the best.
Thats sugars man. Big pain when running to distillateā¦ be cautious of your gear pumps (espc. Chinese manufactured because the external of the gear pumps are usually metal, but the internal is usually plastic).
You will have to clean ur system every day at the end of the batch while the system is still warm/hot.
I am also a hemp farmer who is trying to do my own extraction on my CBG plants. Mine tested out at 15% CBGa and my first two goās yielded minimal results. Any suggestions? My process went like thisā¦
Denatured ethanol with 4.5% heptane - 20 minute soak in -30c - Filtered though carbon and celite - placed in roto vap - then to short path
Input 40lbs of Biomass - Yielded 440ml of distillate.
What am I doing wrong? Thank you in advance. Iām feeling defeated after growing such beautiful plants!