EVERCLEAR extraction

ok so i was able to do some runs late last week using EverClear as the solvent. what i did:

put 4g of fresh flowers and the EC in freezer, in two dif jars, the day before. the next day i poured the EC into the jar with flowers and did a 40 sec soak with slight agitation. strained through fine SS mesh and then through a coffee filter (unbleached). while that was evaping with a fan on it i noticed some white stuff filming on the top and around the edges. stroh or weedemon told me that the white filmy stuff was the water separating itself so i didnt worry about it. when it was all evaped the oil was milky looking. sticky to the touch and was harder to scrape up than any oil ive made before (all reclaim ISO extractions). when scraped up it looked like a light tan and was kind of a sticky flakey solid. i got .2g from this extraction. so then i took a good look at the flowers after they had dried and could not believe the amount of trichs still on them. they looked brand new still so i did a 2nd run with them.

for the 2nd run i went 90 seconds and neither the flowers or EC were frozen. into a jar and slightly shook them for the 90 secs and strained the same as before. this time there was def more and it was slightly darker, as expected. evap was pretty much the same. still had the white filmy stuff, but when scraped up was a darker tan color, almost a light brown. same consistency as before. this time i got .3g out of it. so after this run i was still too curious about the white stuff.

i took a look at the flowers and they still appeared to have considerable trichs on them, so this time i ran them with ISO. 30 sec quick wash, shook the hell out of it, strained as before. still waiting on that run to evap, but the oil looks much more amber and clear as opposed to the opaque return from the EC.

i then said fuck it and put both the 1st and 2nd run into my funnel and melted them into my Omi cart. it loaded beautifully. i am however worried that this oil is too thick for an Omi cart tho because im not getting very big rips. they are pretty light and it took FOREVER to prime. on top of not working well in the Omi cart it tastes horrible... worse than the ISO taste. i think i will stop with the EC and just use ISO from now on. i dont like the idea of doing butane runs and my backyard is very small (in the city) so its not easy for me to do the runs outside. so id rather stay away from butane, but EC and ISO make the oil taste funny (ISO is better than EC IMO).

so now im back to looking for a dif way to make oil. i guess ISO will have to do for now. i would love to hear if others have done any EC extractions.

I've really only used EC for secondary extractions, the first being done with butane. I only do the secondary extraction if the first one doesn't come out as good I'd like it to. Dissolving into everclear removes many of the plant waxes and clears up the oil. However, I have noticed that my oils that were dual extracted didn't taste nearly as good as the butane-only ones.

Do you have pics of your different runs? Also, did you try each individual run before putting it in the omicrom?

I don't have a whole lot of experience with quick washes, but I think combining the first two runs was where you went wrong. The first run might have been decent tasting, so the bad taste may have come from your second run. This is why I asked if you sampled the individual runs, since then you would know for sure.

I've heard some good results from people using EC, so I don't think that's the cause of the taste. If you wanted to test this, you could do two different runs with the same strain and soak time. Do one with EC and the other with ISO, and see how they compare.

Shame you can't do bho extractions, they're astoundingly simple to do well.

Better luck next time!

I heard you can do up a 3min soak with everclear, since its not nearly as aggresive as ISO. Like ^he said, only time i deal with it is to clean up butane extracts.

Once you go butane you never go back. It is a better extract almost all the way around since its a non polar solvent, and it boils away at 30-34 degrees(F) where as alcohol is up in the 180s i believe. If you want a flavorful product, this is the way to go.

Are you sure there is no way to do a quick spray outside. I usually spray an oz at a time and im only outside for like 1min, then once the liquid butane boils away you can go back inside.

i did not taste either batch before loading it. i was in a hurry and did not have time. normally i wouldnt have combined the two, but i was like fuck it and wanted to put at least a .5g into the Omi cart. i figured it may not taste great, but this shit tastes really strange. i forgot to mention the effects... they are very good. gets me medicated off of very little. so in that regard ive done ok, but the taste is well worse than the ISO taste im used to from reclaim oil.

what really bothers me about the EC extraction is the color of the oil after evap is over. its still milky beige and scrapes up beige or tan. or even brown if its a 2nd or 3rd run. is this normal? it makes me think that some kind of sugars are actually left behind...? the ISO 3rd run evaped last night and it looked better than the EC oil before scraping. i have not tasted it yet.

im going to try the EC soak again. im going to do 2 runs almost identically except for the soak time. i will do the normal 30 sec wash with ISO and a 2 min wash with EC. then i will try each and see which i prefer. as for butane... im aware of how easy it is, but it still seems more dangerous than i want. i know it is pretty safe if you dont do stupid shit, but i guess i just want an alcohol soak to work for me. however i suppose i just wont get as nice a tasting product eh...? i really dont have anywhere outside my house to do the evap. it would have to be just right on my back deck. my yard is small and my deck is as well. i dont want it that close to my house right? besides then i gotta do like 2 or 3 purge steps right?

maybe i could give it a shot, but im not sure where to get the tane. ill try the EC vs. ISO test and reevaluate after that.

2clicker...you mention a white/milky color, to tan/beige or brown in the later washes...This describes my first ISO hash...here are a few pics of the washes. Mine was with 91% ISO, so no sugars, or anything, and I got the color you described. I also though mine tasted fairly odd, but I got used to it and it became good tasting to me I suppose.

Pics during evap

Pics after evap

Pics pics of first wash mostly scraped

thanks purpl3

i feel better about the EC and my results. my dish looked a lot like your pics and it sounds like my washs were fairly successful. im going to have to take some pics next time.

i would prefer a tad more of a viscous product than the flakey to taffy like solid it scrapes up as. it loaded into my Omi carts nicely, but does not hit that great. would this consistency be better off used in a Revolution?

oh and one more thing... are there different micron coffee filters available? the brown filters i have take FOREVER to filter through. are there other options?

thanks everyone!

Glad to be of help! I know I was worried when my dishes were evapping to white!

As far as the filter thing, not sure on getting ones of a different micron size, but you can set your coffee filter in a small handheld strainer, and place your buds in that, then use another small sized hand held strainer to make a sandwich, and squeeze the EC/ISO/etc out. if that doesn't make sense I can find pics...

makes total sense, but i run the flowers w/ solvent through a fine SS screen first, then the liquid left from that goes through a coffee filter. it sucks to have to sit there and hold the jar upside down for 5-10 minutes while the concoction filters through.

ive since been using a vice to hold the jar upside down while it filters so i dont have to hold it the whole time.

turns out i did take a pic and forgot all about it...

this was from the first run

That looks about right Too funny, not remembering taking the pic and all!

so after more usage of my Omi carts it turns out that it was the cart itself causing my original ECHO runs to taste like shit. now that the Omi cart taste is gone my ECHO runs taste pretty good.

this leads me to want to do another EC extraction. knowing now that the EC needs more time than ISO i will likely be doing 2 min washes instead.

does anyone with more EC experience suggest a different wash time?

Hey 2, it has been my experience that long washes w/EC will leave you with more organics in your
finished product. This is not really a big deal for use in the Rev. However, I have killed at least one
Omi cart w/ extended wash oil using EC. I prefer a 30-45 sec. wash using either solvent. No need
to soak up the waxes, chlorophyll into the end result. Good luck. It seems the shorter the wash, the
tastier the result.....

well im thinking a longer wash is needed. i did a 45 sec wash the first time and only got .2g return from 4g of trich rich flowers. a longer 2 min wash was done for the second run and yielded another .3g. then i posted my results and was told that EC isnt near as aggressive as ISO and that the wash should be longer.

i mixed the 2 washes from the first time together and they taste pretty darn good. it seems that EC does indeed need a longer wash to yield the same return as ISO. i will be using a Rev with this run btw.

If u got .5 on 4g thats like 12+% isn't 15% return a pretty avg number yield on high grade extractions? If so it doesn't sound like you need to soak a whole lot longer then 2 min and I would probably use that run in it's own cart if your gonna put it in the omi and not mix it just i case u took too much plant matter in the last wash.

Edit: guess the last isn't a concern cause it's goin in a rev.

i agree it shouldnt be any longer than 2 mins, but my very first wash was 40 secs of which gave me a .2g return. the second wash, was a 90 sec wash, gave me a .3g return. i was just saying that i think the first 40 sec wash was not long enough and that a good 2 min wash is about right for EC.

ive got 2 dishes evaping now. this time it was like 4.2g of flowers, first wash was 2 mins, 2nd wash was 2 mins. i can clearly still see trichs so im going to run the 4.2g again, but ground up and a 30 sec ISO wash on that one.

im planning on trying the oven purge method for these runs. whats the best way to get this errl to solidify enough to handle without it sticking to everything?

wanted to update this thread with a link. it details what seems to me to be a great way to wash using EC.

http://skunkpharmresearch.com/qwet-extraction/

im going to try this method, but evap after wash instead of the oil bath they describe in the link. the oil bath is for making the extracting into a tincture i think. anyway, i am also going to get a reusable gold tone coffee filter for the 1st filtration. the 2nd will be with your normal unbleached paper coffee filter.

what about taking all three washes (likely get at least 3) in a jar and re-dissolving them in EC...? then put that mixture into the freezer. wouldn't that then harden and separate the waxes and chlorophyll and then be able to quickly filter again to remove them...?

i will be sure to post results.

I plan on doing an EC extraction in the next couple days or so. I've only made tinctures before, and they have been EXtremely potent. However, I had them sit for almost a month. I have no idea how much weaker it would've been with only a minute or two.

I've done one EC extraction, and it came out really nice. I usually run Iso, 99-91%, and found that I like to do 2 washes, one quick wash 30-45 secs to get the first layer of oils (cleanest run) and then I will run a second batch that usually ends up really dark, from the Iso being in the plant for a bit, but it still has plenty of actives, and I eat this oil a couple of times daily( just a rice grain size bit, for health RSO ). I would like to try EC again for another first run. I did notice the one EC run I did had a much nicer flavor than the iso washes do. I did not get the milky stuff on the EC run, but have seen that before, and thought it was the water in the mix. I purge my qwiso on a coffee cup warmer in a SS cup (in front of a fan in the window), so maybe all the water cooks off by the time it gets done purging, as my end product did not have any of the milky look to it.

I do remember reading somebody else having trouble with EC extract in the omi carts. Something about the oil running away from the heat, or possibly not wicking right?? Hard to remember after all these posts... It would probably be in the omicron thread, but I can't be sure where I read that, it just rang a bell.

i think my next run will be a 99% Iso soak and then dissolve and winterize that return in EC.

the Iso is more aggressive and will dissolve more of the trichs faster than the EC. then one can use the EC to "clean up" whatever is undesirable in the Iso return. at least thats the idea.

actually the more i think of it i may do 2 runs of 4g each. one using EC for all washes and the other using 99% Iso for the first wash only. then taste each to see which one is better.