When extracting with cold ethanol, what is generally the upper limit for biomass moisture content? In terms of not degrading your ethanol’s extraction “power”, and in terms of best quality oil? I’ve been getting stuff at 5% moisture content and it’s making me wonder if I need to dry it out before extracting. It’s chilled in a -80C freezer overnight prior to extraction.
you can extract material that has been frozen fresh from the field…
http://future4200.com/search?q=fresh+frozen+ethanol
the equipment used for recovering your ethanol can be used to re-proof it. the tooling to tell how much water is in your ethanol costs like $10.
it’s more work, and in most cases isn’t worth the extra effort.
if you’re not trying to preserve the terpenes in your final extract, then bone dry is superior.
what is your end point? (at -80C I’m assuming an EHO)
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End product is EHO and distillate.
I’d recommend bone dry, and extract at -40 when going for distillate, and a hair drier than you’d smoke, and -80 for EHO.
you might even try decarbing in the oven before your distillate runs. even -20C will work there.
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No need to winterize if extracted at -20C if going for disty? I was under the impression that colder extraction conditions were required to skip winterization as a separate step.
fair enough. I was only considering the chlorophyll and terpenes. you lose both with the oven treatment (you lose one in the oven, you fail to pick the other up with the lack of water).
I’ve not actually taken extracts made this way to distillate. I used them in MCT based tinctures.
I’m also talking QWET. 90sec to 3min. ideally in a fuge.
you can go as long as you like at -80.
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I left a some trim soaking in a 5gal bucket of ethanol in a -80C freezer for 48 hours once and came back to find that the solution was very green.