Agreed. We are trying some different things to see if we can fix the post-production loss and taking weights of everything along the way so hopefully some of the changes we’ve made will help us recover more.
We don’t decarb the material. We grind up dry material and put it in the machine. The taste of the oil at the end is really nice, smooth and currently gets me nice and ripped.
That’s definitely worth a try! Never thought about it possibly making the oil have a little less viscosity.
You should definitely pull terps first. And then your crude. The refine your crude and add back the terps. Especially if you aren’t decarbing before running the material.
Its really not much more work and is extremely valuable.
What would be the recommended time, pressure and temp to get the terps? Last time we ran for terps we got around 25mL. From a 5L vessel. Does that sound about right?
By which I mean; raw yield means nothing without a potency. You have cannabinoids going in, you have cannabinoids going out, following the “dabbable mass” is not going to tell you where the cannabinoids are.
You might be throwing out 25% cannabinoid “fats and waxes” at winterization if you’re just flailing around blindly (not using in house analytics)
Yes you’re 100% right. Without analytics you’re really running blind. We have sent out some of our end products for testing but each test is almost $750 CAD to get terp profile, solvents, etc. I started reading the in house analytics thread and I’ll get more into it later. Maybe there is something affordable that we can have at the lab that will allow us to test the material with a lot of frequency.
Great suggestion and we will give it a try! The biggest issue we ran into with CO2 and decarbing was the color gets really dark. Even with color remediation it’s hard to get it even to the color that we get without decarbing before any remediation. At least that’s what we have found.
Do you add the terpenes after you pull it out of the vac oven and just before putting it in the filling machine or can they be added and then left in the oven at a lower 80 degrees keeping it under vacuum until ready.
We filter the first time with 10 micron then move down to 1.5 micron.
We try to make it like ground coffee not powdery. What have you found works the best for you?
Any brand in particular that you have had success with? We had heard that TLC results are not very accurate but I see some brands claim they see a 1% +/- difference from HGLC testing.
Do the terp pull first, then main run. Reintroduce terps to crude at 3-7%. Also suspect hardware is part of the issue. We use Jupiter CCell with no issues on raw CO2 oil.
Will also give those carts that you suggest a try!
We tried those all glass cartridges and it looks great before use, but once they are used it starts to look fuggly. Additionally with the ones we tried the body / glass is thicker than most cartridges so it can be a problem for some vape devices. I’m not sure if these ones have cotton inside.
Here’s what it looks like after it’s been used for a while. This isn’t that bad, other carts have the dark middle all the way to the top and look really bad. Also that much material shouldn’t be passing through IMHO.
Hey there,
So we run a 20L eden labs CO2 machine. We use trim from our trimming machine. Its usually pretty fine and with kief sometimes. We pull terps first around 1300 ~ 1400 psi and 41~45C extraction vessel temp. Depending on the strain (some like to gush out terpene weight) your our yields are from 0.7% - 2% on trim, 2% - 5% flower. Usually 1 1/2 hours run time, sometimes longer up to 3 hrs if your still pulling terpenes. It should come out like whipped cold liquid that dissolves in room temp into an oil or, if your collection cup is heated, it will come out in oil form.
After that we unload the material and repeat the process. We gather up enough terp extracted runs to then do crude runs. We usually get between 7 - 11% on trim yields and more for flower. Post processing usually takes off around 30% of the weight. 1800psi 32-34C extraction vessel temps. 8-12hrs.
We find adding back 5-7% terps by weight helps with flavor and will definitely loosen up your oil.
On average you should be seeing anywhere between 25-30% loss of crude weight. My average for post proceased co2 extract off an apeks 5L is 76%
I fill my 5L vessel with 1000g coffee ground consistency trim or flower.
Terp strip trim or flower
Remove terp stripped biomass and decarb. For decarb everyone and their mom has a sweet spot they have found i have found that for 1000g 250°F in a vacuum oven for roughly 30 minutes does it. You are really trying to remove water without totally browing your material as this will result in darker extract. So you must linger around the oven with each new batch you are decarbing to ensure accuracy, at that point i let my material cool to handling temps and load.
I do a room temp winterization 10:1 like everyone else here. Then freeze that material and filter again sometimes i have to do this twice depending on material. Buchner funnel and 5micron do the trick. You can always improve this step with diff tools.
Re add terpenes and smoke some dank🙌
Also not decarbing your material could be killing your cannabinoid fraction. On 1000g input no decarb i have seen 60g yield vs decarbed material 160g. Quit playin and decarb foo
i have found that for 1000g 250°F in a vacuum oven for roughly 30 minutes does it. You are really trying to remove water without totally browing your material as this will result in darker extract. So you must linger around the oven with each new batch you are decarbing to ensure accuracy, at that point i let my material cool to handling temps and load.