How long should I dry my biomass after harvest for an ethanol extraction? I’ve read that if you’re planning on making distillate to dry as much as possible. I’m going to be filtering the ethanol extract but that’s it - not planning on making distillate with it. Does this mean that drying it out fully after harvest isn’t as important? Part of me thinks that drying less would be better to preserve more terps? (I know that EtOH is not for terps but if you can get more in there then why not?) I’ll be using the filtered extract to make cartridges/edibles. I’m doing this on a home-grower scale so I don’t care so much about watering down the ethanol over time.
The details:
I’m going to be using about 10oz of biomass that I grew at home. 200 proof EtOH with bucket tech and dry ice. Then filter through a 10 micron then 1 micron filter. Then winterize in dry ice and filter again through a T5 bentonite/AC cake. Then boil off/reclaim the ethanol with a cheap still. Put into vac chamber and vac out the remaining EtOH. Decarb. Put in carts and enjoy.
Terps will never be great using ethanol as a solvent, similarly to the water, some of the terps will remain in the ethanol and “water it down”. You should be fine to extract when the material is about the same moisture level as bud you would smoke, but drier is not going to hurt you.
I would just not worry about the terps, let the bud dry down to normal levels and then follow the steps you posted above. Do everything as cold as you can. If you are not happy with the flavor at the end, you could potentially mix in terps from another source.
Also, if you are decarbing on a hotplate or something, there is no need to use a vacuum chamber, as the decarb process should remove your residual ethanol.
Never had anything pop for more than 500ppm ethanol after decarbing on a hotplate. You get more than that? I am decarbing to distill, so maybe going a bit higher temperature wise, but still.
Like @ky_cbd , EtOH is harder to purge, especially if the extract is not decarbed due to the hydrogen bonding intermolecular forces. 250 F is what I would purge EtOH out of decarbed cannabinoids but I also didn’t have to worry about my terpenes burning off .
This is part of why I wouldn’t go the ethanol extraction method at a home scale. Ethanol is only useful for making distillate IMO. I dont even extract with it though, just use it to winterize CO2 crude.
Decarbing on a hotplate untill you can visibly see the volatiles coming off has always gotten ethanol n/d for me. Hotplate set to 140C with a probe, but never actually reaching that temp.
Thanks a ton for help/suggestions. What would you recommend for a home-scale extraction? I’m looking for a relatively safe way to make vape carts at home (I need to be more stealthy with my cannabis use as my kids are getting older). I’m not opposed to butane but was going w EtOH because it seems safer (I have lab/medical experience and likely could do a butane extraction as safely as possible given the environment/non lab setting). I’ve still got 2 weeks until harvest so I could change the plan up a bit. If you were going to make an oil that could be placed in a cart with your home harvest, what would be your approach?
If you don’t want to deal with solvents, you could try going the DIY Solventless route. Find a decent press for some dry sift kief, or if you want to get a little more fancy, you could press bubble hash. Just need a vacuum freeze drier which probably is the most expensive piece of that puzzle.
So I have seen decent ethanol and iso carts… And ive seen more than decent water clear strain specific bhos by now… .
They were all ofc remediated…but the trick was to leave the end product before full evap ( that was light orange)to slowly evaporate further and cristalize at rt with an open conatiner… .
Ethos the sauce was still tasty ( depending on the strain some more, some less like the original input).
Probably over 5000ppm, but who cares if it vaped and tasted great… The terps do more damage than etho at this point imho…
They were golden to light orange in a ceramic…
Cristalized a bit,but the preheat took care od that pronto…
Stating all these flaws,because as a home user might look over these,but a commercial processor will definetly be all up in my #@#? €&%
