Small scale home extraction set up questions

That’s about a 6:1 ratio if I’m not mistaken.

I used to open blast a ton, I made some decent shatter back in the day with a 1.5x6 tri clamp spool, some end caps and a pie plate.

You need an oz though to make it even worth while though imo.

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Are you specifically looking for a good smokable product? Legal hemp derived D9 gummys might be a good solution for you depending how you are about edibles. I believe you could obtain those cheap enough and keep on the legal aspect of all this. You also said RSO is obtainable. I must say if the price is right a little RSO can go a long way. Not to mention huffing anything is not exactly a good approach to anything “medical” or not and eating your meds is usually a healthier approach to obtaining the results you desire.

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No, I said I really don’t care if it is smokeable. I have a rosin press for smokeable rosin. I am looking to just full extract the left over rosin pucks and hemp since it doesn’t press very well. It will just be used for edibles and topicals.

And the RSO is $50 for 0.5g so not cheap at all.

I can almost certainly say that it’s highly illegal to extract with butane in your home in most states. It’s a literal bomb if mishandled. I’d almost say you’ll get more time off you get caught extracting

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Then you soak all the pucks in ethonal to extract the remains

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That was essentially my initial plan. I was just trying to figure out the best way to destroy/lose a little terps as possible.

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I’m going to say that your response sounds a little drunk, and the only reason is because all the best parts of cannabis are the terpenes…
If you haven’t figured that out yet then you honestly need to do a little bit more experimentation

Obviously it was a typo because in every other thing I have said I want to preserve the terps. I meant to say “best way to NOT destroy”. I would have thought most people would have assumed that was the intention especially considering that it essential what this entire topic is about.

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You are contradicting yourself.

You get high cannabinoid extraction or get to preserve terps, not both.

You also didn’t mention your plan to use materials you already squished…

Quite honestly? You’re trying to squeeze blood from a stone here.

If you’re truly concerned with getting every bit of the cannabinoids out of your goods, save up your pucks till you have a decent amount, do a warm eth extraction, and make a tincture or edibles from that. You’re not gonna get a good smokable product imo.

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In Virginia , you can grow but extracting is still a felony.

My understanding is that pressing rosin from your own flower is technically illegal here. I don’t care that much because I’d rather use flower and keep my tolerance down most of the time.

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You can make some pretty decent at home extract with ethanol following the bucket tek. My version uses double walled, all stainless french presses instead of a bucket. Makes draining into the buchner much easier. Using dry ice directly in ethanol gets things nice and cold, and the double walled presses will let me soak 5, 10, 20 minutes while still staying way below -40, without any nasty condensation issues to deal with on the outside.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VFDY7CG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A cheap chemistry lab glass set, a couple stands, and a mantle with stirbar will get you through solvent recovery, albeit mind nubmingly slow. No need to try vac distillation at your scale, especially since you don’t mind losing terps. Wouldn’t want to attempt vacuum distillation of my ethanol for recover in the crappy glass I have, but I can recover around a liter an hour with my little still.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N2KM9RH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For recovery in such a setup, I would avoid using any type of reflux column. Just use a 3 way distillation adapter right off your boiling flask for faster recovery. This will help recover faster, which means less time your extract spends on the heat. You can always reproof after recovery if needed. No need to get crazy on a condenser either. A short Liebig will be plenty for small scale, even with just tap water.

I like to dump right from the french press into a buchner funnel with a nice cake of celite in it. If you make the celite cake thick enough, there will be plenty to scrape off the top layer as things accumulate. This will require a vac pump, but nothing fancy is needed. Any el cheapo should suffice. Get a buchner funnel and a few flasks to go with it. Run clean ethanol through your celite cake to rinse any fines through before using, and switch to a clean flask before filtering your tincture.

I can make some pretty tasty shatter, well as tasty as shatter gets anyhow, lol, with this method. Final evap is done in teflon boats at room temp, then into the vac chamber till I decide it’s good nuff. If I’m just going for edible oil, there will be no vac. Might even leave it a bit runny and still drunk on booze. Makes it easier to dump right in to whatever.

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Thank you!!! Finally someone actually read what I wrote and didn’t completely disregard it.

I really like the idea of using a french press. I was just going to use jar and a mesh filter, but a french press would be much easier. I already have the vac pump and was planning on getting a vacuum funnel to filter and possibly winterize.

Out of curiosity, why do you say not to use a reflux? I am likely wrong, but I thought using a reflux would help retain some of the lower temp terps because they would condense in the reflux and it would hopefully separate out the alcohol from the terp vapors at least a small amount. That is just completely based on my knowledge of distilling liquor so I don’t know how well it would translate to cannabinoids.

Thanks for that link too. I’ve been looking at a lot of glassware and hadn’t come across that set yet. It looks like a decent price as long as the glass itself doesn’t break just from looking at it funny.

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What he’s getting at with no reflux column is that you ideally don’t want your extract to be heated too hot or for too long, and if you have a longer reflux head it’ll take longer to recover the ethanol as some of the vapor will condense and drip back into your solution. Refluxing is still going to be a tradeoff, and might not get you any better terpene content for the trouble.

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Retaining all the terpenes from an ethanol extraction, while purging the ethanol, is essentially impossible.

The boiling points and vapor pressures just don’t work in your favor.

You’re not thinking about it wrong (reflux/fractional distillation)…but there are trade offs involved because the compounds being sought are heat labile (break down with heat) and susceptible to O2.

Performing your solvent recovery under vacuum reduces the boiling flask temp, and ameliorates some of that damage…it doesn’t make the terpenes any easier to hold onto…but does mean the ones that you do manage to keep are less degraded.

Do you know what a QWET is yet? (Linked above).

Can you purchase 190proof ethanol in your local liquor store?

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Not true (in many states) for BHO. Eg OR allows home extraction using butter/oil/ethanol. Butane extraction is a felony without appropriate licensing.

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Terp retention is kind of a moot point when recovering ethanol. If you are extracting some really good stuff and want the best end result, evaporating to atmosphere seems to give me the most flavorful product. Takes forever, and not that big of a difference, so in the still it goes. With a reflux or vig, it will take much longer to recover, thereby degrading what you are concentrating more vs a shorter recovery time.

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Ohhhh yeah I hadn’t even considered the extended time. I suppose it would be better to just lose those low temp terps than to save some of them but degrade everything else.

I know it isn’t the perfect solution, but I am just trying to make the best of it. Plus like I said, I have an engineering background and I love tinkering around with processes trying to chase different forms of efficiency.

Yeah, I know what QWET is and was planning on likely extracting that way, but purging differently.

And I can get Everclear but I kind of want to mess around and also save money by just buying Costco Vodka and try to get it as close to 95% as I can until I lose patience.

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With a vacuum setup, could one not more effectively use higher boiling point solvents? For example, limonene

To achieve what?

Dabs that taste anything like the input flower?

No.

Concentrates without flammable solvents? Sure, but getting rid of the extraction solvent to below the taste threshold is not going be trivial with limonene

I would argue that a “Quick Wash ETanol” doesn’t specify a purge method, but merely the quick, cold, wash.

Rm temp thin film evaporation is as @BigM contends, the gold standard for EHO production.

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This is where you will want to use the vig or reflux column when proofing up. Whether it’s worth your time is up to you, but if you already want to tinker with it, it would be a great way to familiarize yourself with the equipment and process before attempting to reclaim your alcohol from the tincture. It can be an extremely fun and rewarding hobby.

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