Concentrates for Noobs - Q&A

[farscaper]

flip the patty
remove the rainbow bubbles
time is dependent on the variables
.total weight of patty
.total thickness of patty
.viscosity of patty
.vacuum atmosphere
.temperature
.amount of excess butane used in extraction
.purging surface material

so when one speaks of variables... we are not kidding... science is simply replication of art.

and if it doesnt have trichomes... you wont get a fat return.

@mvapes id love to try your patty sir!!!

 

[negan]

@mvapes and other masters - Do you think the overall purge time is effected by the run size? I'm sure it is too some extent as smaller amounts heat quicker, but that seems like only a smaller gain. I would also imagine that if the paddy is thicker it will take longer to purge (in addition to heating all to the same temp) as it is harder for the gas to escape? So for instance if you did 2 runs of the same strain (all , one run is 10g the other is 50g, would the 50g run take longer to purge. Is it a much longer purge or just longer to get all of the wax to the same (target temp)?

 

[Big Baby Jesus]

Hey @Big Baby Jesus - first things first, I want to help. So I'm going to help address a few of your thoughts and then hopefully it will get you going in the right direction.

1. Old weed, most people have the illusion that the bho process will turn your stuff into gold. It's not true brother, you get out what you put in. If the weed is old than its probably decarboxylated and the oil you'll end up with will be dark, viscous and taste and smell like pickles.

Next, grinding. You never, never want to fine grind. There's a reason most grinders are 4 pieces. It's to catch what falls off. You see where I'm going with this? Your wasting the stuff needed to make the oil, you'll crush your yield. Secondly, your stripping the plant material allowing the solvent to pull more than just the medicine. You'll end up with a batch loaded with chlorophyll. I pick my nuggets apart and run them fresh and full. It gets expensive but it's part of making oil.

After this is the packing the tube part. As for the rest of your process your missing a lot! Forget the iso mixing. I wish everyone would stop adding more and more solvents to the mix.

Use heat and a shit load of time or get a vac. Using another chemical to help time the evap process in my opinion is silly.

If you want purging help with a vac feel free to pm me.

Guys, how many dispensaries do you think are using the iso process to evap? NONE! Get it right before you explore.

In my opinion, if your not going to get a vac and chamber you probably shouldn't make bho.

I would stick with plain iso runs or dry sift. There really are no short cuts.

I have a load in now that I threw in last night at 10 and she looks like she's gonna go for another 10 or 12 hours. I have it set at 108° currently. Sprayed 56 grams with 2 cans of capital.

I think I should get about 12 grams out of it.

I'm not expecting some sort of alchemy. The outdoor has been in the freezer since it was cured, so degradation has been minimized as much as possible. It's just down to, do I want to smoke it or make a concentrate and vape it? I also think it's high time (heh, heh) for me to take a crack at making my own concentrate since I've done all the rest for a long time. Good point about grinding it. So just pack nuglets into the tube as firmly as possible? No point in grinding and rerunning it after the first round? Thank you for your advice.

 

[farscaper]

@mvapes and other masters - Do you think the overall purge time is effected by the run size? I'm sure it is too some extent as smaller amounts heat quicker, but that seems like only a smaller gain. I would also imagine that if the paddy is thicker it will take longer to purge (in addition to heating all to the same temp) as it is harder for the gas to escape? So for instance if you did 2 runs of the same strain (all , one run is 10g the other is 50g, would the 50g run take longer to purge. Is it a much longer purge or just longer to get all of the wax to the same (target temp)?

in short... if the 10 and 50 were ["EXACTLY"] the samerun tech, strain exc... and the exact same thickness of patty and they were both placed in the same vacuum oven so they would be under the same atmosphere then theoretically they should take the same amount of time to finish...

barring the possible heat recovery time after a flip... cause you have to cool it some to be able to remove it from the parchment.

and a slab of 50g is much harder to handle than 10g

edit: ensure you read that theoretically statement above because it is just that.
I still stand by the variables of variables...
"Murphys law"

 

[Skored]

Great stuff, learning soooo much. On the topic of purging, I have a couple questions.

I'm running QWET and purging with heat, not vac. First question is: does consistency of product have anything to do with purge success? In other words, my product has been hard as a rock and very brittle - it just snaps, no pull. Is that any indication of amount of ethanol left in the product?

The second question about the best purge process: I, like many, have been collecting my product after all ethanol has evaporated, transferring to a small slick pad for final purge. But, does it make sense to purge directly after all ethanol has dried, in the same pyrex I used? Seems like this is the absolute thinnest the film would be (about 1G spread across your standard size pyrex), and thus allow for a quicker and more efficient heat purge.

I do want to fully purge, but am not a fanatic about it like you butane guys. I sort of figure that that trace amounts of everclear is just not that harmful. I mean, there are tons of people out there vaporizing a shit load to get drunk, and in the past, ethanol has been used as an inhalant for pulmonary edema - so it can't be that bad right, especially at the levels we're talking about.

Ultimately I've been purging after I let all the everclear evaporate at about 120 for about 45 minutes. There is no smell of everclear, and really no taste of everclear. And the taste is so freakin amazing. Purging longer at 160, not so much the case.

 

[farscaper]

Great stuff, learning soooo much. On the topic of purging, I have a couple questions.

I'm running QWET and purging with heat, not vac. First question is: does consistency of product have anything to do with purge success? In other words, my product has been hard as a rock and very brittle - it just snaps, no pull. Is that any indication of amount of ethanol left in the product?

The second question about the best purge process: I, like many, have been collecting my product after all ethanol has evaporated, transferring to a small slick pad for final purge. But, does it make sense to purge directly after all ethanol has dried, in the same pyrex I used? Seems like this is the absolute thinnest the film would be (about 1G spread across your standard size pyrex), and thus allow for a quicker and more efficient heat purge.

I do want to fully purge, but am not a fanatic about it like you butane guys. I sort of figure that that trace amounts of everclear is just not that harmful. I mean, there are tons of people out there vaporizing a shit load to get drunk, and in the past, ethanol has been used as an inhalant for pulmonary edema - so it can't be that bad right, especially at the levels we're talking about.

Ultimately I've been purging after I let all the everclear evaporate at about 120 for about 45 minutes. There is no smell of everclear, and really no taste of everclear. And the taste is so freakin amazing. Purging longer at 160, not so much the case.

if your concentrate snaps like glass at room temp....

umm you did it right and are overthinking it all

do you mean to say you are vacuum purging some after the initial everclear evaporation?

or just increasing temps?

 

[Skored]

if your concentrate snaps like glass at room temp....

umm you did it right and are overthinking it all

do you mean to say you are vacuum purging some after the initial everclear evaporation?

or just increasing temps?

Glad to hear I'm overthinking it! Just making sure I have a healthy product in the end, that is super delicious!

It does snap like glass, very brittle at room temp. I'm not vac purging at all. Once all the everclear has evaporated at room temperature (about 12 hours), I then purge with heat. I have to get heat on it just to get it to stick together and come off the PTFE. But I typically heat for about 30 minutes, and then continue heating and cooling while folding and peeling to remove all the product. It hardens up real quick, which is why I take it back to the heat to get it sticky again in order for the fold and peel to work. That fold and peel process typically takes 15 minutes to get it all.

 

[NickDlow]

Glad to hear I'm overthinking it! Just making sure I have a healthy product in the end, that is super delicious!

It does snap like glass, very brittle at room temp. I'm not vac purging at all. Once all the everclear has evaporated at room temperature (about 12 hours), I then purge with heat. I have to get heat on it just to get it to stick together and come off the PTFE. But I typically heat for about 30 minutes, and then continue heating and cooling while folding and peeling to remove all the product. It hardens up real quick, which is why I take it back to the heat to get it sticky again in order for the fold and peel to work. That fold and peel process typically takes 15 minutes to get it all.

It definatly sounds to me like you're doing it right. I switched to EC/ET also and have been very pleased with the results with no excess solvent worries. I do use my vac with my EC/ET runs sometimes but I pull vac under room temp. No added heat.

The consistency I try to achieve is basically what you described but also that I can touch it and pick it up in room temp without it sticking to me.

 

[Galactus]

I have a quick question and sorry if it has already been answered but:
"How to I tell the wax I purchased has been purged completely? Can I purge it more myself to make sure?"

 

[mvapes]

@Big Baby Jesus - there are so many different people that grind and pack different ways that it's hard to say. But, I can at least share what I do.

I pluck my little nugglets into pieces about the size of a gumball. I don't pack crazy tight either. If it's too tight than once material starts to degredate within the tube it creates blockages that absorb tane and product. Overpacking WILL affect your yield. Once packed you should be able to blow air (from your mouth) through the tube with little to no restriction.

@farscaper - I don't flip my shit anymore. I read an article (don't remember where) but it said that flipping was no longer recommended because technically you were pulling the remaining tane back through the slick. Makes sense, so I tried it. Much better flavor. The less your hands are on it the less terps you lose.

 

[DieHard]

@mvapes I feel like I read something also about NOT manually popping bubbles.

 

[DrRishi]

I am about to do another BHO run.

Each run I have done up to now produces a very light coloured patty that ends up as granules (yellowish).
I really like vaping this concentrate but I would like to understand how you can get shatter?
I am purging in a VAC chamber with as little heat as possible. There is a moment that it looks like shatter but as the purging continues it becomes this light coloured patty. Very tasty but not shatter.

I have read as much as I can on the net but I feel that a lot of the information is conflicting and sometimes I feel that the techniques are actually stripping the flavour from the concentrate.

What are the critical temperature levels (if this is the key)?

Any tips welcome.

 

[mvapes]

@mvapes I feel like I read something also about NOT manually popping bubbles.

Never. Your absolutely right @DieHard.
I also will say that when you go to the tank (for those vac purging) open your vacuum pressure valve slowly. Let the muffin rise little by little. Rather than deflating it. I find this does two things. Not only has it slightly helped my yields but I learned a lesson one time the hard way.

I went to let in some air to help lower a muffin that was fucking huge. Mother fucker popped and blew all over the side of my tank.

I lost a good portion of the run.

I usually allow the vac to increase in increments of 5hg's at a time.

 

[amberevil]

My mind is blown. Thank you @mvapes. I feel like the more I learn, the less i have to do.

 

[Vapinghole]

Wow, I feel like a noob even reading the noob thread here.

I'm a flower guy, mostly. But this weekend I picked up a shitload of oil/shatter at the dispensary. White widow, lemon og, cotton candy, Girl Scout cookie, and gorilla glue. Dang. However, I prefer to roll a small bit of the stuff in some herb then pull through my EVO at high temp. Holy cow!!

Cheers from a concentrate newb.

 

[mvapes]

Little bit of blue goo.....

N-tane, 19 hours at 104° on glass.

 

[blastin_rogers]

regarding how to achieve shatter instead of wax... i never vac purge (i use ethanol) and always get shatter.

i believe the consistency difs come from the amount of heat applied and the length of application. low heat for a couple of hours consistently produces shatter for me.

unfortunately i do not have enough experience with BHO to compare. i suggest looking for an ethanol extracted oil before BHO. not sure if any dispensaries are producing QWET (quick wash ethanol) tho. QWET is much easier and safer to make than BHO as well.

just throwing that out there.

Ive never tried ethanol, do you think the ethanol is helping you get shatter? And do you mean true hard glassy shatter? I didnt think you could make that with ethanol and I would love to know more, my alcohol extractions always come out runny, and my bho always comes out waxy and never shattery

 

[PPN]

Ive never tried ethanol, do you think the ethanol is helping you get shatter? And do you mean true hard glassy shatter? I didnt think you could make that with ethanol and I would love to know more, my alcohol extractions always come out runny, and my bho always comes out waxy and never shattery

Did the weather is wet in your country? Did you use perfectly cured buds?

I don't get a lot of experiences with ethanol extraction but my bho's extraction are waxy only when I use a not enough cured flowers or trying extractions when weather is wet (too much humidity is trapped in your oil and except using high heat purge you can't purge it from your oil....

edit: it depends strains too....and a mix of different strains could produces waxy concentrates....

 

[2clicker]

Ive never tried ethanol, do you think the ethanol is helping you get shatter? And do you mean true hard glassy shatter? I didnt think you could make that with ethanol and I would love to know more, my alcohol extractions always come out runny, and my bho always comes out waxy and never shattery

like PPN said, there are a bunch of variables to achieve the dif consistencies of errl.

i dont think the solvent has much to do with it. i say that because when i used to run iso washes i still got shatter. never blasted so i cant speak to that, but clearly it can produce shatter as well.

sorry i dont have a better answer for you.

RANDOM noob question for those more experienced than myself....

aside from trich quantity... what else does flowers have over trim in regards to extraction? i ask because i can get some VERY good flowers at a nice price, or trim from those flowers for much cheaper. i know that a bud run is preferred, but should i considering washing some trim?

just trying to weigh the positives and negatives of both.

any help is appreciated!

 

[herbivore21]

Get the trim bro, with ethanol and the right technique, you should get just as good shatter (albeit lower quantity of course). Trial it out

EDIT:

Ive never tried ethanol, do you think the ethanol is helping you get shatter? And do you mean true hard glassy shatter? I didnt think you could make that with ethanol and I would love to know more, my alcohol extractions always come out runny, and my bho always comes out waxy and never shattery

Greetings. I don't believe you're familiar with my work.

This was made with iso and ethanol. Strain is Blue Cheese. It has been sub-micron filtered to clean out any bacteria, mold or mold spores and has as such been sterilized.

Please feel free to search my username to see the many various different wax-free, fat-free, plant material-free and sterilized absolute shatters. Some are more like quartz than glass though, I gotta admit. All are made with iso and ethanol only. I have never, ever used butane!

If it came out runny, you didn't purge enough, or you purged wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much!

 

[mvapes]

The fruits of today's labor.

Blue Widow.

 

[canj00digit?]

Jeez, hard to follow up an mvapes post with my modest exploits!

Just thought I'd share some pics of my latest butane run.
Working on improving my tek bit by bit.

Anyway here is the starting material, Iced Grapefruit buds (medium to smaller sized):

Recently I switched to vaccing off of glass at the advice of the pros in this forum.
I looked around my kitchen and found a pyrex lid from a casserole dish and it fits nicely into my vac chamber. But it's not a dish per say, so it doesn't hold much liquid, which means I have to blast into the pyrex dish I've always used, evap it off down about 75% so I can then pour the remaining liquid onto the pyrex lid.
Since it's summer here I've been evaporating off the butane without heat, simply by tilting the dish back and forth and rolling the butane from side to side. When doing this the bottom of the dish freezes so you must keep the butane 'tilted' onto one of the side walls of the dish, alternating all the dish sides so there remains a warm(er) part of the glass for the butane to contact so it can evap.
The bottom of the dish remains frozen, from the butane moving back and forth over it, and, much to my surprise and pleasure, I realized that waxes were sticking to the frozen bottom of the dish and remaining there after I poured off.
Essentially it's a 'natural dewaxing' process it seems. Of course I am sure it isn't as effective at removing all the waxes as true winterizing but for something that occurs on it's own during the process, without any additional solvents or processes, it's pretty cool 'bonus'.

Here is a photo of the dish I blast into. It may look like frost, but it's not (the dish is at room temp), it's all plant waxes.

The run in the vac:

Shattered happiness (on tan colored parchment):

It's not the clearest, cleanest stuff I've made but still very happy with it.
It could still use a few more hours in the vac probably, but I am more than comfortable dabbing it as it is currently.

Sucks living dab-to-mouth makes you a bit impatient on the vac end. Two full time medical users in my house so oils are consumed as fast as I can acquire the material and make it.

 

[herbivore21]

Jeez, hard to follow up an mvapes post with my modest exploits!

Just thought I'd share some pics of my latest butane run.
Working on improving my tek bit by bit.

Anyway here is the starting material, Iced Grapefruit buds (medium to smaller sized):

Recently I switched to vaccing off of glass at the advice of the pros in this forum.
I looked around my kitchen and found a pyrex lid from a casserole dish and it fits nicely into my vac chamber. But it's not a dish per say, so it doesn't hold much liquid, which means I have to blast into the pyrex dish I've always used, evap it off down about 75% so I can then pour the remaining liquid onto the pyrex lid.
Since it's summer here I've been evaporating off the butane without heat, simply by tilting the dish back and forth and rolling the butane from side to side. When doing this the bottom of the dish freezes so you must keep the butane 'tilted' onto one of the side walls of the dish, alternating all the dish sides so there remains a warm(er) part of the glass for the butane to contact so it can evap.
The bottom of the dish remains frozen, from the butane moving back and forth over it, and, much to my surprise and pleasure, I realized that waxes were sticking to the frozen bottom of the dish and remaining there after I poured off.
Essentially it's a 'natural dewaxing' process it seems. Of course I am sure it isn't as effective at removing all the waxes as true winterizing but for something that occurs on it's own during the process, without any additional solvents or processes, it's pretty cool 'bonus'.

Here is a photo of the dish I blast into. It may look like frost, but it's not (the dish is at room temp), it's all plant waxes.

The run in the vac:

Shattered happiness (on tan colored parchment):

It's not the clearest, cleanest stuff I've made but still very happy with it.
It could still use a few more hours in the vac probably, but I am more than comfortable dabbing it as it is currently.

Sucks living dab-to-mouth makes you a bit impatient on the vac end. Two full time medical users in my house so oils are consumed as fast as I can acquire the material and make it.

Nice one!! welcome to the glass club brother!

 

[amberevil]

So @canj00digit? are you finshing the whole purge than scraping tje Pyrex? If so do you have a special tech to remove the bho because I am having trouble imagining chunks like that scraped off Pyrex.

 

[canj00digit?]

So @canj00digit? are you finshing the whole purge than scraping tje Pyrex? If so do you have a special tech to remove the bho because I am having trouble imagining chunks like that scraped off Pyrex.

Yes, the purge is finished on the pyrex.
I scrape it with a razor, and it's a real bitch to do lol, then I put it onto parchment.
When all the little bits on are the parchment, I amalgamate them and then press into a litte 'slab'.
I use light heat from a mat to press and light heat from a heat gun to help manipulate when scraping & moving to parchment.