I’m mostly interested in the terp layer (HTE?) during an Otsst. Would it be possible to distill the rest into distillate? Forgive me if this has an obvious answer. Mining is very new to me.
Would definitely be able to use the crystalized portion for distillate. The THCa would just need to be decarboxylated prior to distillation. If you have a really clean separation you shouldn’t even need to worry about lipid removal. Hope that helps.
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strip the terpenes if they are palatable.
Most solvents will typically damage monoterpenoids and sesquiterpenoids while the latter is often observed in as a hydrocarbon itself.
Proper removal of terpenoids involves steam distillation and in my experiences terps from mining smell like slightly sour vegetable produce because of dwelling for weeks at 80-90f.
2¢
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I’ve a limited understanding of the process, but would it be possible intercept and pour off the terp layer shortly after a healthy cold crash, assuming the highest quality fresh starting material and a careful cryohydrocarbon extraction?
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Yes it is possible, you could get away with doing that without degrading the terps to a degree however at this point you have already subjected it to butane and butane targets lipids and waxes, using a mix will pull more terps. Fresh frozen comes with water, which will help get the terps out faster during a blast.
Large scale terp stripping is done with water/steam passing directly thru the plant material itself, TrueTerpenes and Floraplex are good examples of steam distillated terpenoids. There are many ways to skin a cat but when preserving volatile compounds nothing beats water, heat and low dwell times.
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Many ways indeed. Stripped and water soaked, how would then dried plant material react to a cold non-polar hydrocarbon extraction? I’ve read of reports of there being problems with ethanol extractions after such a process.
Do you mean a secondary extraction with Ethanol on the same material after blasting ? If so, I always make crude for distillate out of second runs because the profile of the plant is already stripped out
If you do the blast correctly, youll use extra butane and there will not be any cannabinoids worthy of washing with the Ethanol IMO
Properly dried plant material blasted with non-polar dry hydrocarbons (99% N-Butane) will pull in less terps overall, resulting in a more stable bho, because there is less water.
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I meant after the steam terp strip.
why distil?
if you actually get crystals, those will be in the 95-99% purity range when washed.
decarb them to go from 95+% THCA to 95+% THC.
done.
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Great question! The end product needs go into a vape pen. Would decarbing crystallized thca to thc rearrange the extract into a clear viscous distillate like material?
decarbed diamonds should be considerably clearer, and higher potency than most distillate I’ve run into.
yes, the viscosity does decrease upon decarb.
you’d still need to cut with terps, or a little of that sauce from step one, to make carts.
I haven’t performed this trick, but it would be a tek I could get behind. I’m still not convinced that distillation (especially batch mode in an SPD) is an appropriate way to treat ones meds. see THC Imposters (Isomers)
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I’m very interested in this idea. Seems like one could short cut alot of processing given a proper crude extraction.
doesn’t it?
…but you need much better input to get decent sauce with large (easily washed) THCA crystals.
so you can take last years abused leftovers via distillation, and add some store bought terps, or take great fresh frozen material and make diamond/sauce based carts…
I know which ones I want as a consumer.
I’m only guessing which ones have the higher margin.
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I think the best way to get those most value out of your product would be to steam distill (under vacuum) your terps first. Then do a hydrocarbon extraction after to get your thca. Reintoduce fake (food grade) terps to crash out your thca. Decarb your crystals if your going to end up in carts. Then reintoduce your original cannabis terps.
If the material is old and smells bad, then intoduce fake terps instead of the original stuff u pulled from the steam distillation. Those bad terps can still be used to crystallize future batches so its not total garbage.
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I’d argue ('cause apparently that’s what I do 
) that hydrocarbon first then crystallization is less work, and at least as efficient given input that is worthy of either route.
Having not done either, I’m clearly just playing devil’s advocate 
I’ve also given away my bias that laziness drives innovation.
anyone here played it both ways (or either) and want to share?!?
Edit: I guess there was also a third route suggested above, which was steam then etoh. which I’ll give you might be easier to get past the fire marshal. reports here suggest opening all the cells with the steam causes down stream issues.
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Ive seen something recently on IG that i thought was a cool process i dont see a lot of people talking about.
I saw dude do a hydrocarbon extraction which looked to be PHO crude first. The oil looked fire and the terps looked like they were already seperating. THEN he said he was going to distill the terps off somehow to get the cannabis terps. Then filter the oil for distilling the cannabinoid. I wonder about this process and how viable it might be in getting real cannabis terps.
This also might help with Live Resin Terps cause it seems easier to capture good tasting terps from live resin with hydrocarbons, and it seems harder to pull good terps from live material whether steam or any other method for capturing terp from live material.
I really dont remember who this was. I was just flipping threw stuff before bed or something.
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Exactly!
Although the lazy sob in me still wants to know why one would distill when decarb should suffice.
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I’ve been seeing people do butane extraction, separation, then run the HTFSE through short path.
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