I second extracting direct to a carrier oil
Surprised more folks don’t do that
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They make adapters. I have setups for pond pumps/5 gal bucket to rotovap, garden hose attachment (faucet) to rotovap), and chiller to rotovap. Your more than welcome to the faucet and pond setup. Or I can take pics of the parts needed to get you going.
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I used a 5 gallon bucket of ice water to recover 5l of ethanol yesterday. Cold trap was dry when I was done. Did have to add a little extra ice to the bucket before I was done. That was on a 10l rotovap. Don’t let people tell you a chiller is mandatory for small rotovaps, it isn’t. Put that money towards a vacuum regulator.
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I’ve done it 3 ways
Tap
5 gal bucket, pond pump, ice water
Chiller
Tap beat out 5 gal pond pump setup
Chiller barely beat out tap setup.
I think a dry ice condenser would beat those 3. I havent had the pleasure of trying that method.
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Tap only beats bucket in winter time when incoming water is prechilled by nature in my experience tho
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yeah, that was my first response.
at 5lb a year, even using 1 gal solvent per lb and running retail 190proof at $75gal (that’s what it runs in the liquor stores here), you’re not looking at much more than $1 a day in solvent. so $3-4k to get it back wouldn’t be high on my list.
building or buying a small still on the other hand…Reflux Still For Small-Scale ETOH Reproofing
really doesn’t take much to recover ethanol: Who is king of EToH Recovery? - #146 by cyclopath
@TheKid420; are you by chance adding edible oil before dosing? because extracting directly into the oil of choice is another way of avoiding the whole solvent recovery thing…
see: Low dose CBD DIY and Stupid question... oils tinctures/lipid infusion
edit: I see that @BigM and our one and only @VerifiedConsultant both suggest direct extraction into an edible oil as well…
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i 2nd this. this would be your cheapest and possible best option if you can get the decarb time down
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This just in… The Economics of Lipid Infusion
(I suggest weed/water/oil in a crockpot for OP)
And using bromocresol green to find decarb end points (should be trivial to get the infusion temp/time dialed in so there is no need for a separate activation sep).
There are also consumer level devices available for doing this direct infusion…I’m sure someone has linked them in the past.
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hell yea! great info
No experience with this device.
I personally would not purchase it…but it might do a great job of solving the problem for many home users.
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I think a small alcohol distiller may work best if you dont have too much ethanol to evaporate out.
Ebay has one. I used one in the past with decent results. I got about 80% of input etoh back.
Make sure you buy the version for alcohol and not water.
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Thank you everyone for the replies, I didn’t get an email, checked back and I’m floored I have so many replies so fast.
While we have budgets like everyone our priority is in doing what will be the best for our child so we’re not opposed to spending some money if it mean a more quality product and/or increased time saving for us. The ability to recover 1g/hr on a 5l rotovap is almost the most intriguing part, as opposed to the 4-8hrs for the 4-8oz. We have way too many kids and are way to busy to be able to spend too much time doing things the slow but cheap way.
Long term goal is renovating a closest into a grow/processing room. It’s only 8x9 and we already have the 4x4 tent so space will be at a premium. When I build a shop we might upgrade to a perpetual grow and then will have higher yeilds.
Also the wife figures if we have the nice equipment we can also use it for making essential oils. Whatever sells her haha. But in reality I foresee us stepping up to 5-10 lbs a year eventually.
I apologize as there are so many replies, let me try to start by getting back to some of you:
@ExTek90 RE: decarb. Our process isn’t fancy but it goes like this:
- Trimmed flower gets decarbed in a Ardent Nova machine. we’ll need a replacement for that too.
- Dry trimmed flowers lightly broken up and put into jar inb freezer with separate jar of extractohol 200 proof.
- 24hrs later we mix and replace in freezer for another day shaking periodically (read maybe once) with enough liquid to cover flower well.
- Filter with Buchner funnel w/ 20 micron filter paper.
- Run through source for 4-8hrs, but we end up mrunning too long often and it bumps causing us to have to start again next day.
We have a quote from Terry for the 5l rotovap, 5/-30 chiller and a 50L circulating water vacuum pump.
@BigM That’s essentially how we’re doing it but it just takes too much time. We need something with faster recovery times. Also we have with the magical butter but it seemed like the potency was lackluster. We’ve been making her capsules with dispensary bought RSO, @ about 30mg each. We essentially make the rso, take some to figure out rough potency then dilte with coconut accordingly. Have a spreadsheet for known % rso.
@verifiedconsultant, @BigM, & @cyclopath : I am open for suggestions with the top replies in mind. I don’t know what I don’t know.
But basically we need potent capsules with minimal time to process. Quality and time are our major priorities.
@TheFire210 : We have considered it but not sure how to begin making it into capsule form. And quite frankly dealing with the sticky mess is very unappealing.
@Dr.stanky : Like a beer chiller? A coil in a bucket of ice water? I could do that. The chiller is 800.
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when you’re done decarbing while it’s still runny, suck the oil up into a syringe and fill capsules with it or dissolve in mct oil if straight extract is too strong.
it will be stronger than the extract you make now and have a wider range of terpenes/compounds like flavonoids. it also takes a fraction of the time and costs a lot less. i can walk you through exactly how to do it if you want
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Bucket of ice water and a pond/reservoir pump from the grow shop is all you need to replace the chiller. No coil.
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Our only experience with that is the magical butter. And we weren’t satisfied with that.
How would you recommend doing it? Sorry if this is the wrong section for that.
Just trying to figure out which will be best for us. The Rosin is sounding intriguing…
I don’t know why you soak for so long. Minutes, not hours, I think is how most people do it. Don’t shake the jars. A panda spinner and filter bags would be a much better investment than a rotovap at this point. Look up the bucket tech on here.
And you probably should be careful with solvent around grow equipment. Vent well.
Good luck with everything.
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They can also use a dry ice condenser as well. Many cheaper ways around the “chiller” when you’re not running gallons and gallons
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Because we’re average folk trying to figure out how to make a quality product.
Same as any other industry, you don’t know what you don’t know.
I’m trying to learn, but the internet is filled more with opinions than facts to back up those opinions. So we’re trying to sift through all that and get advice from people in industry rather than backyard like us.
We would like to step up our backyard game to something resembling a small industry.
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Well we strive for fact on here, not opinions (which are mostly hopes n dreams, lol)
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Many of us boot strapped it in the beginning and are happy to help you down that path
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