After scouring this forum for weeks, I finally felt I had learned enough to attempt my first distillation. First attempt didn’t go quite as well as I’d like. Don’t have my notes on temps and vac pressure, but the distillate came out pretty red and smelly (smelled kind burnt or smokey) and only tested at 81% total cannabanoids (79% THC).
This fraction distilled at 164C vapor temp with a vac pressure around 100-150 micron (not as low as I’d like). Tested the vac by itself goes down to below 30 micron with only gauge connected. Are these numbers good enough to consistently produce high grade distillate? How would you rate this distillate in terms of color? Waiting on potency test results for this 2nd pass stuff. It still has a hint of that smell. Any thoughts on what is up with the smell? I don’t know how to quite describe it other than slightly smokey? Does anyone know if this is something that boils above or below THCs boiling point? And what it may be? Terpene degradation product or something?
Thanks to everyone on this forum. Learned so much from all of you!
So I got the test results back and am quite surprised. It tested as almost entirely d8 THC. My only thought on how that could have happened is from the carbon scrub I did prior to 2nd distillation. I used about 10% by weight AC, stirred in ~70C ethanol for 1 hour. Does that seem like the cause of the isomerization? Any other thoughts?
Always check your ph after using any scrub or filter agent. If it’s acidic it will convert to D8. I do it on purpose all the time, I love D8! But if thats not what your looking for it can be a bummer.
Basicly Yes. It s possible deu to the scrub
But a second option is that your filtration was not good enough and a bit of A-C got into the boiling flask
Brand of A-C ???
