Feedback on a ghetto grain alcohol extraction (pictures)

[dannite]

I want to eventually get good at making budder/wax from hexane/butane extracted oil, but I started today with a simple experiment.

Having no money at the moment to buy materials (top shelf weed/solvents etc) I decided to start my experiments with materials at hand: 75% ethanol liquor (everclear in this case), about a quarter cup of ABV weed finely ground, and about a half gram of diced old black non-full-melt hash.

I steeped the materials in the liquor heated in a bowel placed on an electric skillet at 60C for about 15 minutes. Then I filtered with a coffee filter pouring the filtered material into a small pyrex baking pan. I set that on the skillet keeping the temp right below the boiling point of the liquor.

At this point it is probably correct to refer to the pics here:
http://imgur.com/a/naioO

The first pic is just as the last of the alcohol boiled away, leaving the %25 water that was in the liquor. You can see the dark oil beginning to bead on the surface of the water. I took it off the griddle at this point and let the water evaporate most of the way. Eventually I skimmed the black oil off the pan yielding what you see in the second picture.

I have read most guides out there, so I realize where I cut corners, but I have a few questions to make sure I am on the right page:

1 - While the dark black oil I have extracted seems more pure than the hash I added, the amount yielded (about half a gram) seems suspiciously close to the hash I started with. Did I not use enough ABV or somehow not get anything out of it and I only purified my hash a little? I should however note that the consistency of the resulting oil is like sticky putty at room temperature instead of the hard brittle mess it was before.

2 - At this point I have not heated the material to around 105C, so theoretically, the TCH from the hash has not isomerized, while the goodness from the ABV is already isomerized. Should I cook it at 105C for a little bit to isomerize what came from the hash?

3 - There is a this thin layer of golden sticky stuff everywhere that seems distinct from the black hashy blobs. Is this maybe the honey oil from my ABV?


Thanks so much for reading all of this!

 

[stroh]

ABV isn't going to yield all that much considering most of the actives have already been extracted. if your hash was lower quality, it also wouldn't yield very heavily, though a general rule of thumb is that hash will yield more than nuggets would. a 15 minute soak time is ridiculously long, you should be shooting for under 30 seconds, thats why they call this method QuickWashISO. The golden sticky stuff is the extracted THC, which will not undergo isomerization unless you go through some pretty painstaking steps which require some lab gear and hydrochloric adid. i think the term you are looking for is decarboxylation, which would take place anyway when you smoke/vaporize it. The black blobs, while still containing some psychoactive components, are mostly made up of plant material, chlorophyll, waxes, tannins, and other impurities.

ISO can be used to produce bomb oil, but nonpolar solvents such as butane or hexane would be much easier to get a purer product from.

 

[dannite]

Thanks, and yes, decarboxylation was the term I was looking for - I'm not wanting to carry out the acid/baking soda process. So as long as I'm not ingesting the stuff, I'm fine as far as heat treating goes?

K, so the very small amount of the golden oil is my real product - the half gram or so of black tar is just the plant material that the water in the everclear pulled out?

So should I consider the black product waste, or is it good to vape? Is it equivalent to a low grade hash then?

 

[stroh]

vape away brotha, that stuff is still got plenty of goodies in it, the golden stuff is just the most pure part of your product. definitely akin to hash, it should still get you ripped

also you'd be fine even ingesting it so long as there is no alcohol left in it, which is pretty easy to tell.

 

[dannite]

Heh, you are right, stuff actually kicked really hard. Its a dirty high that tastes terrible, but according to my very unsophisticated "lung-chromatograph" says the THC content is surprisingly high. Can't wait to make something that doesn't taste like ass.

 

[Abysmal Vapor]

Heh, you are right, stuff actually kicked really hard. Its a dirty high that tastes terrible, but according to my very unsophisticated "lung-chromatograph" says the THC content is surprisingly high. Can't wait to make something that doesn't taste like ass.

I've tried water curing the long soak iso and it became at least 10 tonnes lighter. It tastes alwful so i won't consider vaping it. Tonight i am going to try to put the long soak iso into my bho tupe mixed with enough abv to prevent clogging and allow safe and efficient passage of the butane trough the scattered small parts poo hash . I hope butane does not extract the nasties but only the good stuff from the iso.

 

[weedemon]

according to my very unsophisticated "lung-chromatograph" says the THC content is surprisingly high.

haha that's awesome man!

good work on your experiment man! I am glad you tried it and figured it out yourself! I was going to suggest that also.

before you mentioned a baking soda process. I never heard of using baking soda on herbs before.

I also wanted to commend on the reason to want to decarbox your product. my understanding of it is that we are wishing for this process to have happened so that when we ingest or eat the product it does not have to be consumed with a fatty substance for our liver to be able to process the drug. the heating process will do this for us this way.

maybe there are more applications? why were you wanting to do it?

 

[dannite]

before you mentioned a baking soda process. I never heard of using baking soda on herbs before.

I also wanted to commend on the reason to want to decarbox your product. my understanding of it is that we are wishing for this process to have happened so that when we ingest or eat the product it does not have to be consumed with a fatty substance for our liver to be able to process the drug. the heating process will do this for us this way.

maybe there are more applications? why were you wanting to do it?

The "acid and baking soda" process I was referring to was the isomerization process given by Robert Nelson in his Cannabinoid Chemistry. In his process, he uses bicarbonate to neutralize the acid.

I am not that concerned with needing to ingest this specific batch - it is not particularly tasty or large. However, my reasons for desiring to decarbox are several fold:

1 - A general sense of completeness. As long as I am learning, I might as well take all my products as far as I can. I have learned to make a lot of things with my hands outside of the cannabis arena and have always done my best work when I am intimately acquainted not with processes, but materials. The more I fiddle with anything, the more I will learn about how the materials respond to various treatments.

2 - An intermediate goal is make budder, putty and waxes at and above the quality levels I am getting at dispensaries. These processed forms of honey oil generally call for decarbox on the way there.

3 - I can't go into detail at the moment, but I am involved in helping engineer a machine for processing these kinds of materials. This machine needs to have the decarbox process available and I just want to think through what is going on in there chemically.

 

[dannite]

Scraped from a cleaner part of the pan this time, was much better. Not good enough that I will finish it off, but not bad enough to throw away. I suppose I'll put it in my rainy day "dankrupt" emergency stash.

I did however pick up some supplies for my next experiment. I got some hexane and some more laboratory glass. Also picked up half an ounce of White Rhino. I'll start tomorrow or the next day on some small hexane batches.

 

[weedemon]

right on dude! looking forward to seeing pics of your hexane White rhino run! hexane is a solvent i'd like to try this with someday also!

plz post pics?

also thx for getting back to me. i see you are a true scientific mind at work

 

[dannite]

I will def post my hexane extraction pics. Prolly be my next post in concentrates.