Hi everyone! Hoping you can help me out with a simple question. We have been getting our CBD isolate from the same supplier for about 8 months now. It started out it was always bright white but after a while its now slightly off white. By this I mean the kilos we purchased previously have slightly changed color and the kilos we are receiving now are the same off white color.20201107_173506|375x500
This is the older isolate above that changed color
Interestingly this is the oldest sample i have and it has retained the best color.
P201002-7 001 CBD Isolate Batch #P2-0003 (2).pdf (315.3 KB)
COA shows alot of pentane but under legal limits for their jurisdiction and a tiny bit of ethanol. Would you guys purchase this product?
Our supplier has told us this is just oxidation and is totally normal . We are wondering if this is true or if they are just not washing the isolate thoroughly. Just want to get some opinions from more experienced individuals so I can give my customers accurate information and make informed decisions when deciding where I purchase my isolate. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Dissolve in methanol at a 1:3 ratio (Isolate1 : 3Methanol) and put into the freezer for 24 hours (check periodically) checking for precipitation of fats and lipids. If fats and lipids “fall out” of the solution than chances are it’s no bueno.
BUT the number 1 way to tell is to send it out to be tested at a 3rd party lab to tell you exactly what’s in it.
That looks like perfectly legit isolate, just that the supplier did not wash it as well as your previous one. (That is assuming that the previous one was not synthetic). I like to see a little yellow as it usually means it’s not synthetic (and in 2020 about 60% of the iso we see in testing has some synthetic in it. The off yellow color does not mean that it is fats and lipids or needs to be winterized. In fact, that is rarely the case as is usually had to get distilled before crashing to isolate and winterized beforehand so I rarely if ever see any fats or lipids in isolate. The off-coloring is some trace mother liquor still in the crystals.
So, if it is that important to you (honestly, I don’t see the big deal) but you can basically clean it, you could also re-crash it but lets start with the easier of the two.
Cleaning>> Get yourself a Buchner funnel with 2micron paper. Run chilled Pentane over the isolate using a vacuum. This will wash the isolate (watch your temps), when you are done… put the iso in a vac oven, purge the pentane if clumpy I use a lapidary rock wheel/tumbler. Makes perfect powder.
Recrash>> Melt the isolate into Hexane (some can do with pentane) use your isolate recipe of choice, when crystals precipitate this time very little mother liquor will be there to drain… drain then follow #1 above.
If you would like a 3rd party test, thats what I do… PM me.
Hey Thanks for the input that is confirming my thoughts. The product is consistantly testing at over 99% purity so I’m not going to bother washing it.
I export to markets where there is very little knowledge about Cannabis in general much less concentrates, extraction processes, ect.
Lately customers have been looking for the whitest isolate because they think it is the most pure but Ive known this is pretty good product from the COAs. The synthetic argument will definitely give me something to respond to them with.
I agree the color is not a big deal. Just need to to know how to best explain it to my customers. Appreciate the help! I may contact you for additional third party testing.
As someone here stated, if you are getting domestic it’s usually legit the synthetic comes from China via Europe but does make it into our market. Years ago, (especially out of California) you would see large deals in synthetic isolate. These days (last 2 years) peple got smart because we figured out how to test for the synthetic. Now they cut the real iso with synthetic. There is a reason isolate seems to have no bottom floor. If you ask anyone in the industry if they though it would be possible that iso was going for $400/kg a year or two ago they would have thought you crazy. It’s still possible for American labs to produce iso for $400//kg and make a tiny profit but not really worth it at all.
Oh… one more thing to chew on… how come isolate is cheaper than anything else including the distillate to make it? (Market prices and considering how much distillate it takes to make it).
Oh… one more thing. Its also one of the reasons today that American isolate is worth more in Europe is because 2 years ago they tested products in Germany and found out that most contained synthetic CBD (google it) we had a mad rush of European countries hitting us up for isolate all of a sudden.
Because it can be made on a very large scale and removes the thc in the process. Most buyers want a thc free product and ideally a pure product and making an isolate does both is far less complicated and less labor intensive than making a “t free” distillate which requires chromatography and distillation or some other high cost/skilled process which still leaves you with a less than pure product vs that isolate that covers both those requiments easily.
you can skip multiple extremely expensive steps when making isolate, such as distillation and remediation. Shoot you can extract in one vessel or centrifuge, and then decarb, winterize, and go to isolate in a second vessel that you have connected to the extraction fuge or tank. Two vessels which can easily be scaled up to just about any size your wallet allows without much more ancillary equipment.
Try scaling a 1kg a day t free distillate operation to 100kgs and the costs will be 7 figures on equipment alone and would require a pretty big team of skilled people to pull off.
Now doing the same 100kgs of isolate a day and you could pull it off for less than 250k in equipment and do it with 2-3 close to entry level techs.
Would lipids/waxes cause a mct tincture to become cloudy? I use one companies isolate to make a cbd tincture with mct and it fully dissolved and clear, not cloudy. I used another companies cbd isolate and mct to make the same tincture and its cloudy. Real cloudy.
When I’ve made tinctures in the past with ,not quite winterized extract, they looked par for the course until they sat in storage for a bit and then started to have some nasty looking shit happen.
Thia was mixed @ 160 for 1 hour and the nasties came up after a few months.
Did your solution become cloudy right when you added the isolate or after some time? And did you change anything at all about your mixing process other than the isolate?
Just made 2 new batches of tinctures this am. My normal sop is 1g Cbd isolate, 1ml loranne raspberry food flavoring, 55ml mct oil. Put in double boiler for 30 mins. Shake, shake, and shake some more.
I do notice with this current batch of isolate, the food flavoring does NOT fully homogenize and separates, as well as giving the mct a cloudy appearance they the amber glass dropper container.
I’m guessing since the isolate has lipids/waxes, its causing the flavoring to fall out of suspension, and giving the mct a cloudy appearance.
I wont name the company I got the isolate from, they may be from here. It’s not a recent purchase. Probably 1yr ago.
I think I’ll find some methanol and do a test. I only have 3g isolate left from them. Then off to my half kilo I bought on here 8mo ago
