I think you need to break up those nugs to really get in there so that the water doesnt trap any of those goodies. I havent done side by side extractions of unbroken bud and broken up bud, but it was just a hunch i stuck with
This is an interesting proposition. Not once have i been able to make a stupid fire extract with those bovine humidity bags in the stored material. Hmmmm. I think i need to start talking to the people that insist on bagging their material with those. Thanks! Gonna get back to you on this. This is the first time ive ever heard this as a possible cause for darker extracts.
1 Like
What kind of cryro gloves are you using that dry ice can defeat? Are you using cryrogenic gloves?
1 Like
So are you saying the damper the bud the darker the extract?
1 Like
You definitely can! First things first cold aint cold enough for ethanol extracts until you get in the -80’sºC. I use 195 cane ethanol at -84ºC at the warmest. Aside from temp and Ethanol source/quality it is very important to minimize exposure time. Don’t worry about not extracting everything and leaving Cann’s behind. Ill get to that in a sec. Keeping it cold all the way through filtration is also helpful so filtering below 0ºC is a solid bet. I also recommend a slower evaporation keeping your water bath as close to ambient as possible, we do 30ºC. 85ºC is hot and will for sure darken your extract. To maximize your returns after your initial cryo extraction immediately rerun the biomass at a warmer temp for a longer time (room temp for 10-15 min should get the rest out). Obviously keep this second run separate. I typically winterize and carbon scrub the second run to get ride of all the waxes and chlorophyl. You will also pick up a good amount of water from rerunning at a warmer temp so pack a ton of sieve in your filter during your last filtration step to remove the water before evaporation.
7 Likes
You need to filter through a cake of bentonite clay topped with a layer of activated carbon in a Buchner with vac assist. I extract in a steel bucket and I get golden extract pretty consistently with proper SOP, filtration, and adsorbants. Both of those products can be purchased from @Shadownaught at Carbon Chemistry. The bentonite is sold as T5.
Below is some of my recent ethanol shatter.
23 Likes
now that is a nice looking EHO!
@tweedledew see, it can be done…
I’ve gotten some beautiful bright yellows, and light ambers, when extracting premium material, but having never scrubbed my extracts before hitting the oven, I’ve never gotten anything close to what @TheLostBiologist is showing above.
3 Likes
Yes it is possible to make a visually appealing ethanol extract with a shatter consistency.
The key is modulating the temperature of the extraction system - and by system I mean something as simple as solvent, a bucket, and a mesh bag.
If you can get the solvent down to -80 C, that is a good place to be. You need to allow the solvent to “warm” up to -50 C or maybe -30 C. If you attempt to keep the solvent at -80 with minimal flow/stirring you will get very small yields (less than 5%) but nice product. Ramp up to -50 C and then stop and you will get favorable yields and still great product.
At -80 C there isn’t enough kinetic motion on the molecular level for effective dissolving of cannabinoids, also introducing some “flow” into the solvent will help the process.
10 Likes
The bentonite does a terrific job of removing water soluble contaminants. It’s great for removing denatured proteins and unwound DNA that come along with the EtOH extraction. It even helps a bit with chlorophyll contamination. The AC is a great general adsorbant but in this case is used for decolorization.
There is always talk about AC absorbing cannabinoids. I haven’t seen anything in our testing that suggests that it has a significant negative impact on final concentrations. In fact, we typically see a bump in concentrations after carbon use. So, if it is removing cannabinoids it’s at least removing everything else at a faster rate. The end result is a higher final concentration. At least with our SOP. There are a lot of ways to use AC and I haven’t tested most of them.
8 Likes
what evidence do you have that ethanol is extracting DNA?
As a Molecular Biologist, I have isolated a LOT of DNA over the years. Getting the DNA out of plant cells is non-trivial. grinding after freezing in liq N2, and extracting with an aqueous based solvent (alkaline lysis), or another organic solvent (phenol/chloroform). Both ethanol and iso-propanol can be used to precipitate DNA from aqueous extractions, I would not expect either to pick up significant DNA during a properly done (cold, not ground below 1/4") extraction.
Given that I haven’t actually looked for it, I’m not certain it isn’t there, but it’s not something I would expect to find, and am curious…
2 Likes
I’ve made small batches of ethanol extract that was accepted by the community as a relatively decent product. Generally, as others have said, cryo conditions were key.
We did a series of simple soak extractions to observe the rate of chlorophyll and other darker pigments being dissolved into the solution. We found that when soaking fresh, cryo frozen flower in chilled ethanol (around -70C) the solution began to pick up darker pigment after 48 hours of soaking.
I’ve included a picture of some “pull and snap” made with a 30hr simple soak and vacuum purge, no other post-processing techniques were used.
From what I’ve experienced and seen, it seems ethanol extracts can be more difficult to scale than hydrocarbons, though many states make hydrocarbon extraction difficult to utilize with ppm recs.
4 Likes
@cyclopath Pure supposition. When I first came on at this facility the post processing was minimal and rudimentary. The SOP was also much different. The extractions they were doing at the time were much warmer. The coldest they got was about -10c, straight from a commercial freezer. At the time we were seeing significant precipitation of water soluble contaminants both during rotary evaporation and durring subsequent decarboxylation (for decarb oils). They stuck to flasks, burned on to beakers, and smelled and tasted atrocious.
At first all we knew about the contaminants was that the only way to get them off the wall of a flask was to wash them with warm water. While they would resist ethanol washing they would come off quite easily with warm tap water. Hence, we began describing them collectively as “water solubles.”
After doing some research on what they might be I honed in on denatured proteins and unraveled DNA. My assumption was not that the ethanol was absorbing the DNA but that the ethanol was carrying water from the extract, bringing the contaminants along for the ride, similar to chlorophyll micelles. Our theory was that the water we picked up in the extraction (which was a lot due to the temps we were running) was leaving behind the water solubles as it was purged away both azeotropicly with the ethanol in the rotary evaporator as well as boiled off durring decarb.
As I understand it ethanol precipitates DNA not due to insolubility but by reducing the amount of water available to hydrate the DNA. This concentrates the DNA into the remaining water, causing precipitation. This would seem to fit with what we observed in that as the water content fell we saw greater and greater deposits on the flask/beaker.
Long story short, we picked up the bentonite to help deal with the water solubles we were seeing. It was a dramatic difference. We have since greatly evolved our extraction SOP. We run much colder for much less time. I would surmise that alone would mitigate the water soluble issue by way of simply having less water picked up during extraction. However, beyond working well for water solubles the bentonite also provides a terrific fine filteration media. On the basis of “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” I have not attempted to make an oil with just the new SOP. Whether I have water solubles to remove or not it sure does make the oil shiny. 
10 Likes
Lol im just using regular trim gloves…
@Phytoalchemy 48 hours of soaking? At what temperature?
I do two runs at cryo temps. One for 3 minutes for the premium pass and a second pass at 5 minutes for bulk oil/crude material. Those usually both come out golden or light Amber. If all I’m making is a bulk oil or a crude I just do a single 8 to 10 minute run. Those come out black as my soul. I can’t imagine what you’re picking up over 48 hours!
3 Likes
Do you think putting in a dessicant inline (even moreso than the bentonite, which I’m guessing has some dessicant properties) would decrease the water soluble/dna pull? I’m humming and hawing about working with some fresh/fresher material.
Also, do you notice anything qualitatively after the filtration? I mean in the actual alcohol/resin solution itself? Or do you only notice the differences in the finished product?
Soaking at about -70 to -75, we started observing a darker green past the 48hr mark, again just simple soak with no agitation. Fairly low yielding experiment done with about 200g of freshly harvested material. My only goal was to see how long I could soak the material before it would start turning dark.
Now doing ethanol extracts in a closed loop, that’s another story.
Edit: -70 to 75 Celsius
3 Likes
There is a slight color improvement with bentonite alone. There is a dramatic improvement in color when the cake is topped with AC.
I wouldn’t say that bentonite acts like a dessicant as much as it adsorbes water soluble constituents. But I’ve never measured the water content before vs after filtration. That would be interesting to look at though.
3 Likes
If you don’t mind sharing…
Do you know what type/grade of charcoal you use? And approx. ratio of carbon to oleoresin?
1 Like
awesome. (Worried you had hard evidence I was wrong 
)
With a cell wall & two hydrophobic membranes between the DNA and the ethanol, only folks who are boiling their material in solvent should be yielding significant DNA imo.
Sonicating during extraction might also lead to additional cellular contents in the crude.
4 Likes
I use hardwood activated carbon from Carbon Chemistry. @Shadownaught can hook you up with both adsorbants. I use a coffee filter cut to lay flat on the Buchner to hold up the bentonite. The key is to make a cake that is thick enough in the center that it reaches and comes up the sides but not so thick that your filter speed drops completely off a cliff. After you get the cake made (which will take several passes of the solvent through the Buchner as you will have a lot of bipass in the initial pour) you can add the carbon on top, again in a slurry. I add enough AC to form an even 1/8 to 1/4 inch layer. I then typically pull the cake dry on vacuum suction for an hour or so so that it really firms up. Prior to putting in your extract you should drop a good amount of ethanol through the cake to hydrate it. You should also flush the cake with about a liter of ethanol after completing filtration.
We do the cake filtration during extraction while the solution is still very cold. It immediately follows our coarse filtration of a Watman paper filter to get out the bulk of the remaining plant matter. There will be a small amount of plant matter left in the solution that will form a layer on top of the AC. You’ll want to occasionally scrape off the very top of the AC to remove the debris and increase filtration speed.
I’ve found I can get 5 or 6 filtrations out of a cake before the color starts to darken as the AC saturates. If you need to do more you can scrape off some spent AC and add fresh AC on top.
Also, your first pour through the carbon will be the clearest. So clear that you might think you just lost all your cannabinoids. Don’t freak out, this is normal. I’ve never seen a significant drop in yield from using AC.
17 Likes