Does anybody track their extraction efficiency?

I decided to start tracking dosages before and after vaporization. Does anybody else do this? I don't recall seeing much on the subject, so I thought I'd start weighing loads before and after vaporization just for shits and giggles.

Feel free to play along at home if you have a scale that measures to the .01g.

Round 1. Girl Scout Cookies - Cloud @ Noon - Starting weight .22g - ABV weight .17 - Extraction efficiency 22.73%.

I've got the spreadsheet started already, so no one can talk me out of it now.

Remember it all shits and giggles until someone giggles and shits!
Seriously though,this is a cool idea,would be sweet to compare the "Extraction efficiency" of different vapes.
Mmmm... Girl Scout Cookies,my favorite strain! Do they actualy make them out of real Girl Scouts,or is that just a rumor? Call me an asshole,but for that kind of buzz,yeah,I'll smoke a dead child. Of course I'd never kill a child,but if I found one just laying around going to waste......

Ok. But only because I'm obliging like that.

Asshole.

I knew I could count on you!

Round 2 was less successful...

Round 2. Girl Scout Cookies - Cloud @ Noon - Starting weight .19g - ABV weight .16 - Extraction efficiency 15.79%.

Time for bed.

Tried it!
Unknown strain vaped through on 7.5 and through bubbler

Starting weight: 0.10
End weight: 0.06
Extraction efficiency: 40%

Whoa the enano does work on the herb

Same strain through the solo on 7 and bubbler

Starting weight: .08
End weight: .05
Extraction efficiency: 37.5%

what about moisture content?

Hmmm how could one measure that is the question

Neat idea, and my 1st thought was as StickyShisha's regarding moisture content and how it would skew what is being considered as 'extraction' if thinking of only the actives.

Then again..... 'some' new information is better than 'no' information at all

Its biasing the data. You want to start with extra dry material and weight straight after vaping to get an accurate result

Edit : Would be nice to put the herbs and ABV in dessication jars to equalize the humidity level so you can have a real accurate average on a larger time scale

This is cool and useful info man! I'd like to see comparisons using several vapes but only one strain of bud from one bag. I think by taking out the variables like strain,moisture content and cure you'd get a pretty good idea about the efficiency of the vapes on a level playing field.
I'm gonna start keeping track,all I need is a decent digital scale and my main dealer has like 3 laying around so he won't miss one being gone. Hope to see more results,from lots of folks because I believe the data is relevant somehow.
Fuck it,I'll start now; .2 grams Blueberry through the MFLB. Wonder how it'll do?

I think this is a cool idea, if you really thoroughly dried your weed and cooked the life out of the bud do you think you could get a rough estimate on potency of the herb?
I mean, I think that there's some cannabinoids that are only released at combustion temps so they would remain. But other than those you could probably get most of the goodness out, I think.

i have one strain and time to play w/ ill check it out... ill use the mflb+pa @~45%, iolite, ud and eq elbow packed at 210-220. i'll use a .1 for every test..

EDIT: w/ this strain, the way i vape it, i seem to have a trend of losing ~.02 from every .1 vaped no matter what vape i used.... i guess on average by weight i would vape ~.2g cannabinoids for every 1g herb i vape ha..

this is very interesting never thought about it before unfortunately you need a pretty accurate scale for this experiment. if i had one i would definitely try this. excited to see some comparisons of different vapes.

With the only 2 experiments I did I used the same bud and I could tell the numbers are somewhat accurate to which vape is more effective. The solo doesn't cook the bottom half of the bowl as much as the top and that resulted in the numbers being lower than my enano which I stir every hit, thus extracting more.

I'd love to see others' input on extraction %. I imagine that the numbers should vary quite a bit, but still fall into a general range. There are too many factors obviously (moisture content, vape, strain, temp, duration bla bla bla) to get any specific findings, but It'd be interesting to find what range of numbers are out there.

Shits and giggles, y'know.

i think i extract like ~4/5 of my cannabinoids from vaping, and cook the rest haa.. that's how it feels to me.. that leads me to believe my bud is at least ~25% THC.. based on how i lose .02g when i vape .1g on average... and what i cook out is effective. not exact math, but i'm sure it's close enough ha.

Started with .20 and ended up between .7 and ..8,but the scale was kinda iffy so I'm not 100% on those numbers.
Now I actually have go buy a decent scale. You'd think a scale you borrow from a drug dealer would be accurate but nooo.
But we are starting to get some pretty interesting info here. So please,if you have a good scale,good weed and a good Vape take a few seconds to add your input.
Once we get all this figured out, quantum non-locality should be easy.

Fred did that a while ago, his findings reported a weight loss of 20-35% IIRC.

I think 30% must be the average, but as was said above, moisture content will eskew the results.. especially in non-MMJ places where there isn't as much quality control.

I'd like to see more inputs as well, i don't own a scale yet.

i have weighed before and after butane run. also, before and after winterizing.

18-33% and as much as 35% of that waxes. Older dry stuff makes waxy BHO.

you can weigh out a .5 on that scale accurately i'm sure.. just vape through .5 evenly and weigh the whole thing after.. and see how much you lost from that?? maybe weigh out a half g or whatever and vape it through out the day and save the avb in its own pile and weigh it wen you get through it??

Good idea man,wish I'd thought of that. I'll try again but this is a HEAVY indica day and I'm easily distracted so it may be a while.
Plus that's a lot of math for a Friday,but I'll try to ignore things that may or may not exist in my living room...all for the greater good!

In French "La flemme"
Into that just now
Enjoy, chill

I did this for a month or so, cant seem to find my spreadsheet....

However, I stopped because as my consumption grew it became tedious and after convincing myself weight is probably a pretty poor indicator to use. I'm sure I could be wrong, I have nothing to back up my thinking but here are a few reasons I stopped.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong (id to be wrong actually! lol)
1. It seemed that each strain behaved differently, this could be exactly what we are looking for, how potent the herb is, but for no real reason I think it is more than that. Similar to how some strains seem to vape better by nature
2. Moisture, I try to get buds on the more dry side of things, but I don't see how this wouldn't throw off results pretty majorly.
3.(This one I would really appreciate some clarification) I don't think there is any way to really know, but I think all the weights would do is directly reflect temperature. While to some extent I'm sure that corralates with efficiency, I would think after a certain point you would be charring it more (reducing weight) while not really getting any more medicine.

Like I said I don't have anything to support my thoughts, just thinking aloud (typing aloud? ) and my makeshift-science and paragraph formation both suffer the more medicated I get. But since there is an interest I might start tracking mine again.

Edit: adding a few more thoughts.... I think tracking how "effected" you are from a consistent amount of herb would be the best thing to track, but for me atleast, I have a very hard time measuring how vaped I am other than vaped, and not vaped . But on top of that, too many things effect how you feel that you can't keep constant or even be aware of. Thanks for starting this thread, while my science related education is practically none, I really enjoy pretending I know what I'm doing! (especially herb related science )


Appologies for what I'm sure is a indecipherable wall of text, ill try to come clean it up later

@AA, you bring up very valid points. I decided to start tracking weights because I have to tools to do so, and because why the hell not? The task is made super easy (for me) due to the ease of weighing loaded and spent ELBs on my digital scale. I don't have to pre-weigh the herb prior to loading it, nor do I have to retrieve the AVB (and hope that I got it all) for a comparison weigh in.

One interesting factoid that I've learned so far is that I was able to extract more "weight" from a .13g load (.05g leaving an ABV weight of .08g) than from what looked like a similar-sized load, but actually weighed in pre-vape at .19g (I only extracted .03g from that load).

What does that mean and what do I do with this information? I have no idea. But posting about it on the internet seemed like the logical first step.

I don't expect to cure cancer or anything.... I just like playing with weed and spreadsheets.



edit: FWIW my current average weight diferential is running at 24.93%.