So i receive some pretty dark “crude” from a client that he wanted to get ran through CRC and cleaned up. I ran it through my CRC and looked really good. I poured a slab of it and there was no muffin which immediately thought was pretty weird. creeping on full vac i noticed that solvent was purging through very fast and my “slab” was super runny. Today i was able to take a puddy knife and scrape the entire slab with ease off the parchment at 100f and the hash pretty much ran right off my puddy knife into a pyrex dish. Also pretty strange to me. So i thought maybe i just needed to dewax. So today i set up a secondary dewax chilled with LCO2 and ran another 500grams through the system. thought that it might fix the problem but i poured another slab today and still same problem. I jarred some of it up today to see if anything would crash and i guess that would tell me if theres some THCA in there.
I dissolved at a ration of roughly 20:1
The “crude” material was ran with cold butane only.
He said that the crude was in the oven for 2-3 days at 115f with no vacuum and no covers on the pans or jars so there wasn’t any pressure.
Is there a chance that the crude could have decarbed? Possibly might be a reason as to why im not able to make slabs out of this stuff even though i ran it through a de wax and CRC?
I typically have no issues making stable shatter through CRC even when i don’t dewax.
Im dropping some off for testing tomorrow to see if any of the THCA has in fact converted to THC. Just wanted to come to the forum to see whats your guys thoughts were on this subject.
I feel like it could decarb a little bit but to what extent. Is 2-3 days enough time at that temp to do anything?
how old was the herb or trim when ran, how old was the crude, if it was stored was it at room temp or refrigerated? the three days at 115 might push it over the top if its aged appreciable already.
Material was around 5 months old while some of the crude was up to a month or two old. crude supposedly at room temp… while the material was very improperly stored. fluctuating temps and open to the atmosphere. so im sure along the line this stuff has degraded pretty bad
I have seen rosin decarb at 40C in an incubator over time. Took a little over a month to get 3/4 decarbed. Checked on UPLC. Once THCa crystallizes it’s not going to decarb at room temp, that molecular structure is hella stable. 2 to 3 days at 115C probably decarbed all of your crude. There may be a little of the acid form left but my guess is not a lot.
@StoneD if you’re looking to preserve Terps but decarb you might want to look into reflux. We have had great success with RSO in reflux. Terps preserved and made the thinnest RSO I have ever seen in my life. If you cant get a reflux set up you would probably want to do in in a vac oven no vac at 100C? Maybe try Mason jar with the lid not all the way tight. Allows for pressure to release and Terps to stay hopefully. You need to mix while you decarb as well otherwise that CO2 stays trapped. It’s tough to say because terps have high vapor pressure and want to leave even with no heat.
Well shoot. My apologies its mad late and I been toking. That’s 46C so it would be slightly decarbed but not much. Could be that this strain isnt stable enough to make shatter or the THCa content itself is just that low. Does it smell extra terpy? I have worked with a few strains that no matter what wont pour up as shatter.
Yeah its probably old slightly decarbed and very unstable. If you have a distillation unit I would just run it through that. No need to even try and mess around with extract that isnt cooperating. Get the good stuff and on to the next extract.
yeah the stuff is extremely unstable. probably the most that ive ever seen. even at 80 degrees F. at 100 degrees F i can pretty much dump the entire pyrex pan into a jar. and unfortunately i dont have a SPD set up at this location yet…
Don’t you get issues with the terps smelling “off” even if you reflux? I thought catalysis was the only good way to preserve flavor through decarb (other than removing them first and reintroducing). I would LOVE to find out I’m mistaken
Yeah heat of any kind will make Terps change from their original concentrations which could make them smell off. But honestly after reflux I thought they still smelled amazing. We did it with RSO most of the time where I work and that eas the most fluid RSO I have ever seen in my life.