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 (thatās what it runs in the liquor stores here), youāre not looking at much more than $1 a day in solvent. so $3-4k to get it back wouldnāt be high on my list.
building or buying a small still on the other handā¦Reflux Still For Small-Scale ETOH Reproofing
really doesnāt 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 thingā¦
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 wellā¦
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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 inā¦ 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 infusionā¦Iām 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 itā¦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 didnāt get an email, checked back and Iām 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 weāre 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. Itās 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 isnāt fancy but it goes like this:
- Trimmed flower gets decarbed in a Ardent Nova machine. weāll 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 Thatās essentially how weāre 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. Weāve 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 donāt know what I donāt 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 youāre done decarbing while itās 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 werenāt 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 intriguingā¦
I donāt know why you soak for so long. Minutes, not hours, I think is how most people do it. Donāt 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 āchillerā when youāre not running gallons and gallons
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Because weāre average folk trying to figure out how to make a quality product.
Same as any other industry, you donāt know what you donāt know.
Iām trying to learn, but the internet is filled more with opinions than facts to back up those opinions. So weāre 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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this 
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If you donāt have a panda spinner yet, get one! It will save you money on the first batch by spinning the cannabinoids and ethanol off the plant. Thereās no better way to accomplish squeezing that last bit out
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Thereās also ways to āoptimizeā the source turbo. I donāt have any of the info on hand as the idea to use the turbo was my second idea way in the beginning, right after the soxhlet as numero uno. Iāll do some searching, but not having the access to the plethora of information in their FB group kinda sucks. 1 thing right off the bat is to use an actual vacuum pump, versus the on-board unit. Lower vacuum, lower temp to BP, faster throughput of solvent recovery. 
That 1 thing right there should show immediately gratifying results over using the little thing that built into the unit. Sorry, I spent like a week considering etho extraction, and a cls is only a couple hundred more, and a roto is a couple more hundred from that. I just spent time ghosting their group as a wealth of info before latching onto here.
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Lanphan is one of the bad vendors out there. Avoid cheap import gear, shit gear can cause a fire or working with materials that arenāt chemically compatible. Lanphan is notorious for smoking, arking or burned out gear. Last thing I would want is any of that to happen with a roto
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