Hey all,
I am wondering if anyone has tried using a wine or tincture press to remove ethanol or other solvent from soaked plant material? I see a lot of talk about using centrifuges and spin dryers, would a press give to much contaminates?
Thanks
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Yep. I would expect that everybody who has processed with Ethanol has at some point looked at a press and wondered if it was the correct solution. Many will have tried it. Some have even gone to the trouble of sourcing presses and selling them into this industry
eg see: Industrial Filtration Equipment Q&A - #7 by SamboCreeck.com
You have also understood the (perceived?) issue with presses.
Just like wine makers value the free flow juice over the pressed juice, the majority of folks processing with ethanol seem to equate “pressed” with additional ballast (unwanteds).
I tried a tincture press once upon time, and it did get me more solvent back. but the process as I took it over involved days long, room temp incubations, so I can’t actually verify that a press yields greener extracts.
it really depends on your scale and desired end-points. if you’re making RSO for granny, or to get your buddies shitfaced, then it’s yield not shelf appeal you’re after, and a tincture press might get you ~5% extra. If you’re looking for an EHO shatter, for commercial purposes, you’ll want to go with a 'fuge.
Making distillate? could go either way. press is usually the cheaper approach. which means you’re up and running sooner, which can make all the difference.
Thank you for your detailed reply, it is very helpful.
The ultimate goal is to produce distillate so I might try a press and then use filtration methods to remove as much junk as possible. This would not be on a commercial scale, but still large enough to be able to process bulk amounts of plant material. I have a fairly large wine/fruit press that would probably work well for the amounts I am thinking.
I was thinking of keeping the free flowing ethanol strained from mesh bags separate from the ethanol removed by press. This way I would end up with two grades crude.
So if you are doing a room temperature extract of course you will draw off lots of chlorophyll, etc… If you are doing a cold extract, the press will not increase the ammount of chlorophyll or contaminants expected. We find that the process of removing solvents, extracts cholrophyll from the biomass because the solvent reaches room temperature in the process. In a press with PP plates, which are an insulator, there is reduced thermal transfer thus your solvent remains cold as you separate your solvent from your biomass. the result is high quality “free flow juice” as described. presures can me adjusted to prevend any excess squeezing that yields unintended extraction of chlorophylls and other contaminants.
There are always several solutions to a problem. A centrefure is definately a great machine, though I would use it when I am at a craft scale. Once you industrialize, they simply are too labor intensive to run. Labor and solvent loss alone create a significant expense, making presses a fantastic option when at a large scale. Presses, however, are not even an option when your scale is simply too small.
Or not…depends on definition of “small”
At “home use” scale a standard French press is useful. I believe OP was suggesting one of these.
https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Squeezing-Cheese-Pressing-Tinctures/dp/B07B9CFVVW
Even if I’m wrong in that, it is the press I used once upon a time, and does recover additional solvent.
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Even smaller scale one that I like to use at home for personal very small batch stuff.
https://www.amazon.com/AeroPress-Coffee-Espresso-Additional-Filters/dp/B001HBCVX0/
Also makes outstanding coffee so long as you clean it well between batches.
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https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01KW8WAW0/ref=sspa_mw_detail_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1
We tried this for hemp. Our material was ground and not very compressible. The most ground material would leave 5 liters of ethanol behind in the hemp.
So we were using lots of strength to get out all we could and we broke it. I wouldn’t recommend any of these unless you have a way to recover more ethanol after the fact, which you might want to do anyway.
I designed a system to do this and we have a panda brand rotary dryer too. Ethanol recovery hasn’t been a problem since.
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Does that mean you are basically just using a panda?
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Imagine pressing keif together in that bad boy!
I have a tincture press similar to what cyclopath posted that I have used for other plant extractions in the past. It is made well and works pretty good but only holds 1 gallon. I ordered a panda spin dryer for upcoming extractions, so I plan to do a side by side to see what the results will be.
I also have a fairly large wine/cider press slightly smaller than this one that was given to me years ago but never used.
It is very heavy duty and could process quite a bit of material, but there are a few issues. The pressing takes some time and involves ratcheting down on the press blocks, often times adding more blocks as you go. Also, I would imagine the filter bags could only be used one time compared to a spin dryer centrifuge with re-useable zippered micron bags.
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