Posted: Aug 25, 2019 3:00 pm
theropod wrote:Yes, the alcohol dissolves the THC, and CDB, among other compounds. I’m going to soak the weed in super chilled Pure Grain Alcohol (PGA). The weed will also be chilled, as will the filters and other tools. This helps lock in the chlorophyll and waxes in a frozen state while still dissolving the active compounds. The plant material will then be filtered from the extract solution. Under low heat the alcohol will then be distilled away for repeated use until the mixture is down around 5% alcohol. At that point the concentrate will be allowed to slowly release the remaining alcohol, unless I employ a vacuum finishing.
The bubble method doesn’t recover all the compounds as it just strips the trichomes. This method will leech away those compounds.
The water is the enemy. Water in the plant material, or water in the alcohol allows chlorophyll, and other undesirable compounds, to also be dissolved during the wash. If there is no water in the PGA all we worry about is water in the weed. If the weed is chilled down to -100° F that water born component is bypassed, and if the PGA is also super chilled no melting of the weed ice crystals will happen.
The result should be a clean oil with no green bitter taste.
RS
That's interesting. Yeah, for cooking I'd probably want to "launder" the product a little more. It's not bitter in the olive oil though, and putting it in capsules, I don't taste anything. I put it in capsules for convenience, I was taking it with a medicine dropper, but stained way too many shirts that way.
I don't have a dry ice source, nor a grain alcohol source locally. I freeze the weed when making hash, but I don't think it stays frozen in the ice water for long. That does filter out a helluva lot of chlorophyll, and then the hash gets further rinsed in the bags when I use water to collate the hash into one pile on the screen. My neighbor is your age, and says that he hasn't smoked hash this good in decades.
With the olive oil, I just put dry crumbled bud weed directly into the oil so it's not rinsed at all.
I know I've posted these methods before, but I thought doing it again could save Theropod some trouble, but I forgot about the crappy taste when cooked in a recipe. For me, personally, I use way too much cannabis to put into brownies, or really anything. I'd weigh a few hundred more pounds from eating all day.