Hello guys, pleasure to participate this forum, hopefully one day I’ll help as many people as I have learned from you just reading. Thanks to you, I was able to produce a vapeable concentrate from hash.
Unfortunately I don’t have access to anything other than hash where I live, so that limits a bit the tek I use, and is the reason I opened the thread, I can’t improve my oil any further.
Back to what I’m doing, I’m limited to what I have access / can afford to produce my medicine. Here’s a list.
hot plate with magnetic stirrer
Büchner filter with 0.22 micron disk, since I can’t rely on the hash production I want to make sure nothing passes thru (although it does happen with water soluble)
natural bentonite (food grade pH 9),
Granular AC (aquarium grade)
Mgso4 (unused
citric acid (used once, no difference observed)
190 proof ethanol (it’s cheap here and I don’t run large amounts in a way it would be worth it, so I don’t own a vacuum oven, not can afford one)
small vac pump (takes 20 minutes to filter 500ml)
Important to mention that I chose to avoid things that could kill me or blow things up, I’m not a professional after all.
Notes, limitations and issues:
I use a freezer that peaks - 30c, I cool the eth and hash overnight before extracting
my bentonite works fine as filter, no carbon powder passes thru the cake.
the color is very dark, almost black, but vapes fine, no noticeable burn residues. The taste is acceptable, not like clear carts tho. Since the material is very expensive here I don’t get to play a lot with it, so I dillute it in 1:20 eth and filter / scrub at that concentration, I was afraid I would lose too much yield by filtering a less concentrated solution.
I have tried 15m ac and bentonite scrubs at 60c, no notable difference, considering the final product is dark, it does have decent impact on the solution before evaping the ethanol tho, not sure how it loses translucency like that.
I don’t decarb on purpose, considering I don’t have the right equipment, id probably end up with too much CBN if I did (correct me if I’m wrong), and the vape pens reach enough temps to burn thca.
I’m too stupid to understand in which conditions d9 would isomerize, and if it only occurs from d9 and not thca. Either way, not too worried, unless I get CBN, which effects I hate.
Points I’d like info on:
Find the best evaporation technique that doesn’t rely on expensive machinery (again, can’t afford a roto or vac oven)
Improve translucency (note, I don’t care about the color itself, dark amber is just fine), I think I have the material to achieve that, probably just doing it wrong.
Find a way to get rid of some water solubles. I always get a little bit of yellowish water left when burning the ethanol off, when that happens I add a bit of distilled water to avoid getting the solubles into the oil and mechanically separate them, followed by 5 minutes under 100c. Does adding water to etho prior to evaporation help any further?
Improve yield (less than 30% currently, although the hash isn’t bad at all)
Should I rosin press instead whatever this is? Haha
As I’m stupid about this, I’m not totally clear on what information I should be providing to get help, so please feel free to ask. Finally, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, so feel free to send me reading if you have to. English isn’t my mother language, so I could have missed something here while studying the already available content.
Thanks in advance!
Ps: I’ll start taking some pictures from now and share as I go, eventually to be available as valuable information to other people with the same limitations as me.
Edit: second reading suggests you’ve already done the majority of your homework. @Krative might be able to suggest an appropriate secondary solvent. 30% yield from hash is probably indicative of the starting material not your technique…
In my earlier days I set up a distillation apparatus to remove my solvents, but this never heated evenly and usually ended up with some unwanted isomerization. You can get a vac oven with pump for ~6-700 or a rotovap for ~1000-1200. A rotovap would definitely be the way to go in the long run, but a vac oven may work temporarily.
I’d recommend, since you’re starting from hash:
Mix ethanol and hash at room temp
Place in freezer for 24 hours (if you have access to dry ice, then having the last 6-12 hours on dry ice would do you wonders)
prepare your buchner with a layer of Bentonite on top (t-5 works best, what you have should suffice though. Just be sure to pack it in on top of the buchner, about 0.5-1 inch thick), place buchner in freezer for 24 hours
take buchner and ethanol hash mixture out of the freezer and as quickly as possible to avoid warming, filter ethanol hash mixture over buchner (if you can, perform filtration in the freezer itself)
remove solvent
if you still wish to clean up the extract, you can dissolve it in Heptane 5:1 at room temp, place in freezer for a couple hours before filtering over a freshly prepared buchner, this time topped with a thin layer of AC
An aluminum oxide cake on top of a celite 545 cake in your buchner funnel will aide in further winterizing help. AO is great for winterizing, as it traps the nasties while filtering
Thank you all for pointing me in the clearer direction, I’ll study all the info and post a feedback soon!
I’m considering trying new filter aids like alumin oxide, specially if the compound is naturally found, like my natural bentonite (which seems to be deactivating my AC). In other words it’s not easy to find branded products here, those more natural tend to be abundant and cheap, so I want to to that route and still avoid harzardarous solvents (ethanol only)
Other than that I’m considering getting a cheap vaccum chamber, adapted to my mag stirrer (total cost to me would be about 100usd with pump), should work. If it does I’ll try to buy a countertop device that buys me some time before going rotovap. Suggestions?
I’d probably too stubborn to admit it’d been easier do do bho + terp carts, considering I’m stuck at black oil.
Current batch, naturally evaping the ethanol in a large pyrex, should take a week, so I’ll take that time to study and get material if needed for next batch.
Ah, forgot to say what I’m doing this time:
-30 frozen eth + hash (previously frozen), the result is saturated etho with a somewhat clear golden color (picture later).
What’s probably happening next
24 hours later I intend to filter it in a new cake (actual celite 545 is impossible to get, there are rip offs tho) maybe I’ll freeze the cake too before filtering.
Evap the remaining solution in a vacuum chamber
Add 10 to 15% terps and serve in Carts (I have a problem with the base product, it’s too dark and cloudy, although strong)
Turns out this is what I needed, the color improved a lot, after a couple of polishing passes I got the light color I was hoping for.
Other than that I’m having issues to get the terpenes right. I tried 5% superlemon haze from TT, and 5 days later, nearly no taste in the cart. I mixed the disty and terps at 140f for 15 minutes.
How much terpene do you guys use in odorless disty? I like them really flavorful, but not too much to avoid burning nose, what would you recommend?
Also, some terpene blends are stronger in a way you’d use less, correct?
In my experience with TT, the earthy, piney and sweet are the strongest, for instance tangie and super lemon haze are weaker in flavor than og kush and banana Kush (this one is really strong).
Next batch I’m going to try 10% Tangie, then 7% og kush.
@that445guy, thanks on the color note, I had to run it countless times to get there. I was bored and wanted to know if I could still improve. I increased the solvent / disty ratio before filtering. I used bentonite, ac, aa, celite 545, 0.22um filter disc and lots of patience, it would take hours to filter less than 1 liter solution, lol. Not sure I’ll put this much effort next time.
I got a lot better results using hardwood carbon from summit or carbon-chemistry than using the aquarium stuff. if you ever have access that might be good to try.
@that445guy Thanks for the tip, I have already been looking into floraplex for a while, waiting for my bottles to arrive, what are your favorite strain profiles from them?
@magisterchemist, I actually bought lab grade AC, that’s what took most
of the color out. The aquarium AC was garbage.
So far grand daddy purp and cannaloupe haze are my favorite, but blue dream and wedding cake are tip top as well. You also may want to dial your heat back to 120f, you’ll preserve more terps
thank you all so far with all this help, you have no idea how much I have improved my process and quality since the first post.
I’m about to try floraplex (samples on the way), but then something else came to mind and I ran a small test, related to using the original terpenes. Turns out the natural plant taste in the cart was much better than any terpene blend I have tried before. (I basically added collected thricomes from flowers into my disty and filtered the result)
Being so… is there a method where I could in one pass (with fresh cut flower) get a wider spectrum oil, except the greens, and fat/waxes so it will work fine in a cart or can be used to partially mix with disty? Again, it just cannot be milky, but I dont care about the color, as long as the result tastes like fresh plant, so I wont have to add terpenes later.
I now have a vacuum chamber as well, with a termal pad for temperature control, it works quite nice, however the maximum vac I was able to reach with a 12cfm pump was -660mmHG
