Making QWISO for the first time tonight... am i forgetting anything??

Hello all,
Tonight me and my brother in law will be making some QWISO and it is the first time we have done this. i watched loads of videos and i think our planned process will correct but before we do it does anyone see something we forgot?? we are using trim from a local grower. for our first test run we plan on using about 14 grams. here is what is planned:

1) grind up the trim

2) place 14 grams on a baking sheet lined with tin foil and put in a oven at 200 degrees for 20 min (we are using a toaster oven cause we are doing it in a garage if this matters) i did not know, but this step is for edibles only

3) place the decarbed product in glass mason jar

4) pour the 99% iso into the jar. just enough to cover the product

5) shake for 25 seconds. no more... no less

6) pour out mixture through a cheesecloth into a pyrex plate or baking pan

7) allow ISO to completely evaporate in a well ventilated area with a fan blowing on it

8) after all the liquid evaporates, scrape up the oil

9) put oil in omicron cartridge

10) test final product

11) (optional) if final product works well...... eat doritos

if this is all correct i have a couple of questions...

1) using just 14 grams as the test, how long should it take for the ISO to evaporate?? i was told it could take up to 24 hours but with our small test amount do you think it will take 24 hours?? is possible to wait too long??

2) how do i tell that it is time to scrape?? do i look for a certain "consistency"?? should it be hard as a rock and crumble or slightly gooey like a thick molasses??

sorry for the long post but i really want t get this done right and not have to waste too much green product as i do not have that much to test with. i do have more than 14 grams of trim but i do not want to waste the whole amount.

does anyone have any tips or tricks for me??

thanks in advance

Use the largest dish you have for evaporation. The more surface area exposed to air the better. 18-24 hours is standard for me without fans/heat and with the size of dish I use.

Any filtered QWISO I've made has been pretty viscous. Thick and oily. You'll know it's time to scrape because it will be completely dry. No alcohol should remain.

Make sure you have adequate ventilation.

It is not absolutely necessary, but highly advisable to send the finished product to a qualified lab for final testing. The best place I know of is called "Stu's Lab" and I can PM the address to you if you're interested.

i will be using a fan over the plate. will that help the evaporation process more quickly?? i also read about making a "double boiler" and using hot water that is changed out often to aid in the process as well but i don't think i can do that so a fan will be what we are using.

i only asked about the consistency thing because i have watched ALOT of youtube videos lately and while most end products do come out like you stated "Thick and oily" one guys i watched, his end product was hard to almost "rock" like consistency and he showed himself "breaking" off pieces of it. so i was thinking maybe it was possible to "over dry" it???

I get sandy consistency if I don't filter the QWISO - which only occurs if I'm using honey reclaim.

Yes a fan will help evaporate faster than not using one. You can use a double boiler, though I don't know why the water would need to be changed out and it should NEVER be attempted without adequate ventilation - a stove top fan plus your other fan should be sufficient with an open window/door. With a double boiler it should only take about 20 minutes to an hour, depending on your volume. That said, I prefer QWISO that has been evaporated naturally.

honey reclaim... forgive my noobness, but what is that?

the double boiler method is out but i do like that it speeds it up that much. i may need to switch to that if it goes too slow and the kids get nosey but a locked door should prevent that.

one other thing... alot of videos suggest freezing the ISO and the trim... thats not going to happen this time (will try that the next time). so by me not freezing the trim and the ISO... will this affect my product??

I've only used the freezer method once and I didn't notice any difference in quality.

'Honey' is the vapor condensation on the inside of glass pieces and whips. It's already thick and viscous like honey and there usually isn't very much particulate, so I often don't filter after washing in ISO.

Well i'm glad the freezer method did not make a difference to you. now that i think about it.... why freeze it, if you have to put it in the oven to decarb it??? isn't freezing a waste if you have to heat it up again??

thank you for your defination of "Honey" someone else said something similar in other thread but did not use the word "honey" so i was confused. I also learned that i have been a big dummy these past 3+ years i have been cleaning my DBV wands in ISO and dumping it. i had no idea i could have just dumped the yuckness from the zip lock bag (i put my wands in a bag with just enough ISO to submerge it and shake like hell) into a pyrex dish and let it evaporate and vape what was left. 3+ years of wasted product down the sink or toilet next time my wands get dirty (which they are already close) i am going to try and save and evap away the iso and try it

I always assumed freezing was to help easily knock the trichs off cannabis plant matter.

And yeah I came to a similar revelation not long ago. The best part is, it's not even 'yuck'. I find the flavour to actually be quite decent and it's incredibly potent.

Quick question for this thread... If you're not using this for edibles, why would you decarb it?

Thanks Kingofnull

according to some of the youtube videos (not all of them) some did the decarb so i thought you had to. i was under the school of thought when using fresh trim and bud that decarb was needed and if you were using ABV decarbing was not needed cause you already did that when vaping.

are you saying i can leave out the decarb process??? if so that would be awesome and one less time consuming step. Please.... any QWISO professionals out there..... is decarbing necessary??

Freezing everything makes a HUGE difference. The reason why is that a lot of impurities are also dissolved into the ISO. This is why most people's QWISO is very dark, sticky, and thin. When you keep the product frozen, these impurities are frozen and dissolve into the alcohol much more slowly. When I run a 1/4, I get about .3 on the first run of very hard, yellow oil. If it's room temperature, you can handle it and not get any on your fingers. Then I get .7 of oil more similar to others' QWISO on the second run.

Just put the trim, the ISO, and your mason jar in the freezer for about 12 hours. Also make sure you have a couple trays of ice, and put a bottle of very salty water in the freezer. After it's all frozen, get a bowl or tray and pour in the salt water and ice. Place the mason jar in the middle of the bowl with the water level low enough that the jar doesn't fill up with water or lift off the bottom of the bowl. Make your QWISO in there.

Another important thing is to use two strainers on top of each other to separate the ISO from the product. You want the ISO out of the product ASAP, so use a normal wire strainer on top of a funnel with a coffee filter.

These two things will give you a much better product. Smoking chlorophyll is rough lol.

Decarbing is only completely necessary if you're going to eat it. If you're smoking/vaping, it gets decarbed when you smoke or vape it. If you want to decarb, you can also just decarb the oil after it's done. I do this sometimes when I get impatient. When it's evapped to just the few drops of water left(no ISO at all), I'll cook it in the oven for 20 minutes.

I'll try this next time.

You'll like the results. The best QWISO is actually made with dry ice. Use that stuff and everything is so frozen you can soak for 30 minutes.

thank you all for the help and suggestions. so i am striking the decarb off my list in the OP. i am at work now so there is no way i can get the ISO in the freezer. i did call my brother in law and told him to put the greens in the freezer. we are not planning on doing this till around 9pm tonight (kids got to go to bed first), so even though the greens won't get 24 hours they should get about 5 1/2 hours in the freezer. the ISO i will throw in the freezer when i get home so it will get 3 hours or so in the freezer. i know it's not 24 hours but i am thinking cooler is better than nothing.

i just watched another youtube video and when the dude was scraping the pyrex plate the end product (oil) was crystallizing and sort scraping off in crystallized pieces. i thought the end product was supposed be more thick and somewhat pliable and able to be "manipulated" in your fingers. i cannot see how a crystallized product would work in the omicron carts. so how do i make sure i get a more thick and pliable end product instead of hard crystallized product??

3 hours isn't to bad...a whole bottle of ISO wouldn't get very cold in that time, but if you put just enough for your runs in a smaller container it should get pretty cold and next time you can give yourself more time to prepare.

The stuff you saw that guy scraping is actually good. That's how your first run should look. Like I said before, the really oily liquid looking stuff is a bad run. If you do it correctly, the product should be fairly hard after it's dried all the way. You should be able to touch it and not have much or any come off on your finger.

I can't say much about using carts. I make the oil, but I dab it. You could do a bad run on purpose, but after it dried, it'd probably still be to solid and it wouldn't taste to nice. What you should do is look into the thread about diluting oil for carts. There's one by the maker of the omicron, but I don't know where it is. Think they just use the same stuff as they use in ecigs(propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin).

runs??? i don't understand what you mean? how can you have more than one run once it's an oil?

well anyways, i just got back from his house and the the iso is in the pan evaporating away near a window with a fan. so here's what i did and hopefully we got it right

1) put the 14 grams of trim in the mason jar (forgot to grind it up... oooops maybe mistake 1?)

2) filled the mason with iso till just over the trim

3) shook like hell for 29.8 seconds (missed the 30 second mark )

4) poured out the iso into another mason jar that was covered in cheesecloth

5) took the cheesecloth off the top of the mason jar and replaced it with two coffee filters

6) SLOWLY poured the iso through the coffee filters into a 11 x 9 (i think. i'm not much of a baker) pyrex baking pan

7) placed it by an open window with a fan blowing on it.

told him to check it as soon as he wakes up in the morning and as much as he thought was needed throughout the day tomorrow as he works from home. so now i wait till there is no liquid left right? such a noob i am but at least it was fun and the trim didn't cost me anything if i ruined it

It's best to do it twice to the same bud. The first time for 15-20 seconds with no shaking. From this, you get very pure oil. Then you use new ISO and shake for 20-30 seconds. This gets the rest of the oil left in the bud. These are "runs."

***UPDATE***

EPIC FAIL!!!!!!!!

so i get a text this morning from my brother in law... he went and checked the dish after just about 8 hours and he said the pan is COMPLETELY DRY and there is nothing to scrape. I have no idea what went wrong. there was about 1/4 of liquid in the pan, so i am pretty amazed that, that amount of liquid evaporated fully is such a short amount of time. I am even more amazed there was nothing to scrape. was it the double filtering?? when i went through the cheesecloth filter the liquid was dark green color and still had some stuff that made it through the cheesecloth (the cheesecloth was folded over itself and then folded over itself again). i thought i remember reading that the "green" color was not good cause it meant you had chlorophyll so i filtered it again through the double coffee filters and the liquid was clearer but had a yellowish/slightly greenish tint to it. so that is what i let evaporate. maybe it was the wash method?? all the videos i saw said once the iso is in the jar covering the trim shake for 30 seconds and pour that out through a filter. after i got the news this morning i went and googled QWISO and came across a written article that said once the iso is in the jar covering the trim, let it soak for 30 seconds, then shake it like a mad man for 30 seconds, then pour out through the filter.

i have no clue and it turns out the trim we used last night (14 grams) was it. i thought he had more but that was it. i could re-try the experiment again using the 14 grams of ABV i have in another jar but i am sure using ABV is nowhere near the same as using green trim. i am so disappointed!!! and the thing is... i am not as much disappointed in the fact we used all our product as much as i am disappointed that i do not know what went wrong???

Real shame there mmenzie. Sorry to hear about your loss.

Did you brother try scraping the plate? My first batch totally looked like there was going to be nothing to scrape, but once it was fully dry I could see the resin through a light and I was able to scrape it with a razor blade.

It's worth a shot with the ABV. I just made a small batch with the reclaim from all my glass pieces, and I'm right fucked after a few very small dabs.

Thanks King. like i said i am just more disappointed that i do not know where i went wrong more than the fact i lost product. if i lost product but knew what i did wrong i would have the confidence to try again and improve on my mistake. since i do not know where i went wrong i could end up wasting more trying to fix unknown mistakes and still not end up with a usable final product. so thats whats makes this loss so hard to take. I wanna make this stuff but not sure what i should try?? I am willing to try again with my ABV and since getting more ABV is the fun part but it just takes along time to build up that much ABV. i just want to get it right.

was it my washing process??? should i have let the trim soak in the ISO for 30 seconds then shake for 30 seconds like the written article i found?? like i said earlier the videos all said shake for 30 seconds only, none of the videos mentioned soaking for 30 seconds first then shake for 30 seconds.

was it the double filtering?? should i have only filtered once??

i am open to any help out there to figure out where i went wrong

I bet a lot of it has to do with the fact that you didn't grind. Not enough surface area exposed, and for too short a time.

ok grinding i will do next time (if there is one with trim that is) but when you say "not enough surface area exposed, and for too short of a time"... i understand that you mean i should grind for the surface area part, but the too short a time part.... do you mean i should have let the trim soak in the iso for 30 seconds then did the shake for 30 seconds for a total of one minute the trim is in the iso?? just want to understand what you meant by "too short a time"??