Hey All, just took over my own lab and looking to expand my tool belt. Have badder/butter tech down pretty solid, now its time to learn sugars. Currently I extract with N-butane on a precision X-10 with my solvent reaching -75c for extraction. I am using fresh frozen material and looking to explore sugar tech in pan (pyrex). I understand needing to have your crude in a viscous state before agitating/whipping before sealing and allowing to crash out to create this specific. Could anyone give a few spoon fulls on what steps I should be taking to achieve that nice wet sugar look?
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Just extract with propane. No need to agitate. Just get the extract in a dish and let it sit on heat for a few days and you’ll have sugar by default.
Ive always had very good luck using an ultra sonic bath. Pour out, 5-10 minutes in ultrasonic, cap and its ready in 24 hours or less usually.
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You should be able to just pour your extract into a pyrex and it should sugar in a few days at pretty much any temp in the oven . It doesnt even matter how wet it is when you pour even . Pryex sugar is the easiest extract to make . Set and forget then scrape and purge . You dont need to do anything special . If you seed your pan with a small amount of sugar or thca it crashes in 12 hours . I will just leave a small amount of sugar residue instead of cleaning my pryex and it crashes crazy fast . With a totally clean pan it can take a few days . Adding “seeds” of sugar or thca or using a dirty pan will give you the quickest results . The only agitation i do is after sitting over night if it barely crashes from using a clean pyrex with no seed . Or when im scraping it all up and chopping it up to help purge it before i pull a vac .
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Great tips. I don’t plant to use propane, maybe mess with some blends in the future. I see different sugar textures, some that are very fine grain and some that are very small formations. I would attribute this to the strain it self, but is there at all to getting different size “grains” of sugar? maybe allow to get viscous, whip one time, set and forget? score the pan before allowing to sit in the Vac oven?
I have been playing with a few jar tech fails that didnt set, scoring some resealing, whipping some and resealing and seeding them and resealing. Will report what happened with each
when you set and forget, are you leaving in an open pyrex in the Vac Oven? or are you sealing once you see it get to a certain viscosity? I have saran wrap and press and seal to mess with as well…
You can throw some press and seal over the dish before putting the lid on.
You will absolutely notice different results depending on strain. However, you can influence the growth by changing the rate of evaporation. Slower evaporation will produce larger formations.
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Never been a huge fan of using saran wrap for pyrex tek . I have played with it in the past but not really worth the effort . Oven temp and how much butane is left are going to be the main variables. Try recovering the oil to a thick syrup like consistency
then pouring into a pan and set it in the oven at 80 F and see what happens try to use some seeds or thca so there is nucleation points for crystal growth to start . Experiment with temp and solvent saturation level from there . So yes just pour into a pryex then set it in the oven and check on it the next day
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This is what I plan to do, when you leave the pyrex in the oven, are you covering it? or just letting it cook open? pyrex plastic lid on top? press and seal? I feel like I may be over thinking this but as a former chef I like to have a basic recipe to go off of then I experiment from there. I have been messing with seeds a little bit and plan to set up a nice experiment this weekend.
Any recommendations on what terps are going to be making the best diamonds? I know that highly volatile ones tend to do well as they act like a solvent
apricate the spoon fulls!
Set it and forget it bro. I personally dont cover my pyrex with anything, just set it in the oven with no vac. For smaller finer grained sugar i also like to fold my parchment into a square to act as a
“tray liner” and pour my run into the tray about a quarter inch thick and set it in the oven.
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just pour into your plate and let it crash at room temp for a couple of days. you can put it in a 105f oven to speed things up after 24hours.
after 1-2 days or so just break everything up and purge at whatever temp you feel like purging for 8-48 hours.
sugar is the easiest thing to make
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Parchment trays for beautiful sugar flakes with the least loss. 105°F and you can have dry sheets in 4 hrs sometimes. 80-90°F and up to several days with no parchment for the stuff you can tell has terps.
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Your saying pour onto parchment lined sheet trays and place in the oven at 105 with vac or no vac?
80-90 aka lower temps used for the good stuff and don’t put parchment for this tech? Also, vac no vac?
When you let it crash at room temp, just put the plastic lid on or wait until viscous and put a better seal?
I’m a former chef, I like to overthink things before I do them lol. Also want a bunch of different techs to try at once to see which one I lean towards.
I would let it crash in the booth
Any recommendations on what terps to stay away from with sugars? What works well? would appreciate any of the what doesn’t work strains anyone would like to share
Have you considered playing with actual sugar first….
Crystallization is about understanding saturation/nucleation/ripening. All those can be learned without the need for flammable solvents.
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I would personally suggest avoiding pan tek sugar and going for a low end cold crash and reX/decarb method.
Most of the time small facets and “caviar” is going to get decarbed for carts or passed over anyway, with a cold crash you can immediately separate your fractions, and either decarb or go straight to reX.
It really saves SOOOOOO much time on post processing it’s a no brainer. Pan tech sugar is going to get your lab left in the dust. Even if you are small starting out, don’t gimp yourself.
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Are you doing the cold crash passive with a jacketed vessel or active with a recovery pump? Iv been messing around with it lately, only done active tho going to try passive pretty quick here.
my first ever “reX” was when i was 5 years old making rock candy haha
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I’d run no vac until the entire tray has fully sugared for sugar flake, pouring a good 1/2-1" thick depending on thickness preference. Your tray will need walls at least a 1/2" taller than the product and in some cases provide reinforcement objects so the walls don’t fall outward. Just pour, heat at 105°F, lift off the parchment by scraping or by simply folding, then pull full vac for a minimum of 1 hr.
For pyrex pan tech no parchment. The parchment can be too much trouble when it’s very wet. Also no vac until you’re ready to try to purge any leftover gas at the end. If you have substantial sauce you’ll want to treat that carefully to pull only solvent without sacrificing terpenes unnecessarily and there’s so many ways to get there.
If you’re talking about growing diamonds or having isolate cold crash is probably going to be much faster depending on what equipment you have available.
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