Decoding The Holy Grail: Terpene & Cannabinoid Retention: Decarb to Extraction

Re: Decoding The Holy Grail: Terpene & Cannabinoid Retention - Decarb to Extraction

PROCEDURES FOR ORANGE DRAGON

Prepare app 7 grams of material of your choice. I choose to roughly cut buds with scissors. This arguably dissects the plant material fibers and allows an increase of chlorophyll, waxes and other yuckies that contribute to bad taste to leach out into the final product. Some prefer to roughly tear the buds by hand but I fear the precious sticky trichomes adhering to my fingers is a waste of cannabinods.

Time to decarb. In my opinion, there are entirely too many variables to be too anal about this step. Altitude, ambient temp, humidity, moisture content and age of your cannabis and a labyrinth of other factors can effect the perfect time/temp ratio. There are literally dozens of "perfect" decarb times and temps on the web, many substantiated by lab tests. Pick out the one your happy with and go with it.

A note of caution on decarbing in a sealed jar. Granny's ol' mason jar turns out to have insanely insulative properties. A co-conspirator working with me on this project placed an oven thermometer in the empty sealed jar and put it in a preheated oven. It took almost forty minutes before the inside of the jar met the oven temp. I placed the open jar and lid and ring in the oven during the preheat process. When it reached the target temp, I put the prepared cannabis material in the jar and sealed it as quickly as possible trying to avoid a drop in temp of the oven and jar. I then increased my normal 240 for 40 min to 250 for 45 min. This seemed to give a proper decarb. Next time, I'm considering placing an oven thermometer in the jar at the same time as the cannabis to get a better idea of what's going on. Of course, the thermometer will have to remain in the sealed jar through the freeze cycle until opening to add ethanol.

Remove your freshly decarbed material from the oven and allow it to cool for a while before placing it in the freezer. Make sure you don't open the jar!! In a separate jar, pour 3-4 oz of grain alcohol, everclear 190 is a good choice if it's available and place it in the freezer also. 151 ethanol or vodka will work also, just a bit less efficient in extraction. Leave both in the freezer for 24 hours shaking the jarred cannabis vigorously 2-3 times for a couple of minutes.

At the end of 24 hours, pour enough of your chilled everclear into the jar of cannabis to cover it by about 1/2", shake it vigorously for a couple of minutes and return it to the freezer for an additional 2 hours. This should have been the first time you've opened the jar since it initially went in at the beginning of the decarb process. At the end of the 2 hours, remove the cannabis/ethanol mixture from the freezer, shake it vigorously for a couple of minutes once again.

Now it's time to strain, filter and enjoy. Pour the mixture through a close mesh strainer removing as much of the tincture as possible with pressure. Seal the strained jar of tincture and let it set for about ten minutes at an angle if possible. This will allow the sediment to gather and make the next step go a little quicker. Pour the tincture through a paper coffee filter, gently, trying to not disturb the sediment. I normally repeat this last step a second time but that's at your option.

At this stage I normally do a reduction by naturally evaporating the ethanol but I suspect I'm experiencing a loss of molecularly volatile terpenes and will advise skipping this step and make dosage adjustments of the final product to find your sweet spot.

Ethanol extraction never reaches 100% efficiency so there are still goodies left in the used mash. I cap mine and place it in the freezer until my next extraction. Before getting started with your new tincture run, pour your virgin ethanol into your used mash, shake it a bit and strain it up. Use this, then, for your new tincture run.

This is an early beta test that has given pleasing results the few times it's been tried. I'm anxious for those who are interested to give it a try and share your objective experience. The process is a bit involved and reading back over this I question my comprehensive communicative skills. If clarification is neede, I pop in fairly often.

Good luck and enjoy.

BCDD
 
Re: Decoding The Holy Grail: Terpene & Cannabinoid Retention - Decarb to Extraction

Bucudinkydow said:
PROCEDURES FOR ORANGE DRAGON

Prepare app 7 grams of material of your choice. I choose to roughly cut buds with scissors. This arguably dissects the plant material fibers and allows an increase of chlorophyll, waxes and other yuckies that contribute to bad taste to leach out into the final product. Some prefer to roughly tear the buds by hand but I fear the precious sticky trichomes adhering to my fingers is a waste of cannabinods.

Time to decarb. In my opinion, there are entirely too many variables to be too anal about this step. Altitude, ambient temp, humidity, moisture content and age of your cannabis and a labyrinth of other factors can effect the perfect time/temp ratio. There are literally dozens of "perfect" decarb times and temps on the web, many substantiated by lab tests. Pick out the one your happy with and go with it.

A note of caution on decarbing in a sealed jar. Granny's ol' mason jar turns out to have insanely insulative properties. A co-conspirator working with me on this project placed an oven thermometer in the empty sealed jar and put it in a preheated oven. It took almost forty minutes before the inside of the jar met the oven temp. I placed the open jar and lid and ring in the oven during the preheat process. When it reached the target temp, I put the prepared cannabis material in the jar and sealed it as quickly as possible trying to avoid a drop in temp of the oven and jar. I then increased my normal 240 for 40 min to 250 for 45 min. This seemed to give a proper decarb. Next time, I'm considering placing an oven thermometer in the jar at the same time as the cannabis to get a better idea of what's going on. Of course, the thermometer will have to remain in the sealed jar through the freeze cycle until opening to add ethanol.

Remove your freshly decarbed material from the oven and allow it to cool for a while before placing it in the freezer. Make sure you don't open the jar!! In a separate jar, pour 3-4 oz of grain alcohol, everclear 190 is a good choice if it's available and place it in the freezer also. 151 ethanol or vodka will work also, just a bit less efficient in extraction. Leave both in the freezer for 24 hours shaking the jarred cannabis vigorously 2-3 times for a couple of minutes.

At the end of 24 hours, pour enough of your chilled everclear into the jar of cannabis to cover it by about 1/2", shake it vigorously for a couple of minutes and return it to the freezer for an additional 2 hours. This should have been the first time you've opened the jar since it initially went in at the beginning of the decarb process. At the end of the 2 hours, remove the cannabis/ethanol mixture from the freezer, shake it vigorously for a couple of minutes once again.

Now it's time to strain, filter and enjoy. Pour the mixture through a close mesh strainer removing as much of the tincture as possible with pressure. Seal the strained jar of tincture and let it set for about ten minutes at an angle if possible. This will allow the sediment to gather and make the next step go a little quicker. Pour the tincture through a paper coffee filter, gently, trying to not disturb the sediment. I normally repeat this last step a second time but that's at your option.

At this stage I normally do a reduction by naturally evaporating the ethanol but I suspect I'm experiencing a loss of molecularly volatile terpenes and will advise skipping this step and make dosage adjustments of the final product to find your sweet spot.

Ethanol extraction never reaches 100% efficiency so there are still goodies left in the used mash. I cap mine and place it in the freezer until my next extraction. Before getting started with your new tincture run, pour your virgin ethanol into your used mash, shake it a bit and strain it up. Use this, then, for your new tincture run.

This is an early beta test that has given pleasing results the few times it's been tried. I'm anxious for those who are interested to give it a try and share your objective experience. The process is a bit involved and reading back over this I question my comprehensive communicative skills. If clarification is neede, I pop in fairly often.

Good luck and enjoy.

BCDD
Click to expand...

You make the second member in 24 hours to knock me over with oil extraction. I was stopping to share that we have a new member among us, one Radic, an experienced oil-producer who shared some knowledge he'd gained from personal experience about infused oils and increasing the saturation of cannabinoids through repeated runs of the same carrier oil. This is from the thread on Making CCO, the thread where your process would be best posted Bucudinkydow. I encourage you to share it there as well.

Incidentally, I'm within a month out from my next CCO extraction. The urge keeps pushing to the front of the consciousness, a sure indication that it's been too long since I played with ethanol, cannabis, and extreme cold. :laughtwo: When I do, I'll give this method a try and report back on the Making CCO thread as well as in the Study Hall.

Thanks for this. :hugs: :hugs: :hugs:

Back to Radic's info:

Radic said:
greetings
Baya asked how much herb at the maximum do you think is possible to infuse in 50ml olive oil
yes it is possible to mix cco and oilive 1:1
infusing cannabis into olive can be repeated with the same olive oil several times to fortify the medicine.
the first time you do it, it's called a "full strength" oil infusion of cannabis
repeat the process using the same olive oil and fresh herb you get "double strength" or X2
again,
repeat the process using the same olive oil and fresh herb you get "triple strength" or X3

you can keep repeating the infusion process using the same olive oil up to 9 times before the olive oil wont infuse any more

full strength, X2 and X3 are usually administered at dose rates of 1 to 10ml
x4 or better usually administered at dose rates of 1 to 10 drops
Click to expand...
 
I can't be the only one among us who read Redic's post and thought "Gee, there's an interesting set of tests to get together."
 
Good late morning,
Everything went with the knee. It was just a lot of scar tissue. She is psyched that there was not any other problems. Even so it was enough to keep her in a hospital for three days. We are home and I am still playing catch up.

I need to drop off some prescriptions and a bunch of other things. Stay medicated and ice are on the discharge instructions.

I have managed to read this thread and none of the others I am subscribed to. I should have some time to comment on a few things through the day.
Best
 
Canyon said:
Good late morning,
Everything went with the knee. It was just a lot of scar tissue. She is psyched that there was not any other problems. Even so it was enough to keep her in a hospital for three days. We are home and I am still playing catch up.

I need to drop off some prescriptions and a bunch of other things. Stay medicated and ice are on the discharge instructions.

I have managed to read this thread and none of the others I am subscribed to. I should have some time to comment on a few things through the day.
Best
Click to expand...

Very good to hear canyon, I completely understand knee pain and what she's been going through as I'll be schedule for surgery on my L knee next month. I sent you a PM earlier this week. The PM is in regards to my future surgery and 2 others, one in which in scheduled for next Thursday. I hope that you may be able to help once you get a chance to read up and catch up.

I do hope all is well at home and recovery is swift and smooth. Take care
and be well.

Mag7 LST Heaven In DBHBB
 
Bucudinkydow said:
PROCEDURES FOR ORANGE DRAGON

Prepare app 7 grams of material of your choice. I choose to roughly cut buds with scissors. This arguably dissects the plant material fibers and allows an increase of chlorophyll, waxes and other yuckies that contribute to bad taste to leach out into the final product. Some prefer to roughly tear the buds by hand but I fear the precious sticky trichomes adhering to my fingers is a waste of cannabinods.

Time to decarb. In my opinion, there are entirely too many variables to be too anal about this step. Altitude, ambient temp, humidity, moisture content and age of your cannabis and a labyrinth of other factors can effect the perfect time/temp ratio. There are literally dozens of "perfect" decarb times and temps on the web, many substantiated by lab tests. Pick out the one your happy with and go with it.

A note of caution on decarbing in a sealed jar. Granny's ol' mason jar turns out to have insanely insulative properties. A co-conspirator working with me on this project placed an oven thermometer in the empty sealed jar and put it in a preheated oven. It took almost forty minutes before the inside of the jar met the oven temp. I placed the open jar and lid and ring in the oven during the preheat process. When it reached the target temp, I put the prepared cannabis material in the jar and sealed it as quickly as possible trying to avoid a drop in temp of the oven and jar. I then increased my normal 240 for 40 min to 250 for 45 min. This seemed to give a proper decarb. Next time, I'm considering placing an oven thermometer in the jar at the same time as the cannabis to get a better idea of what's going on. Of course, the thermometer will have to remain in the sealed jar through the freeze cycle until opening to add ethanol.

Remove your freshly decarbed material from the oven and allow it to cool for a while before placing it in the freezer. Make sure you don't open the jar!! In a separate jar, pour 3-4 oz of grain alcohol, everclear 190 is a good choice if it's available and place it in the freezer also. 151 ethanol or vodka will work also, just a bit less efficient in extraction. Leave both in the freezer for 24 hours shaking the jarred cannabis vigorously 2-3 times for a couple of minutes.

At the end of 24 hours, pour enough of your chilled everclear into the jar of cannabis to cover it by about 1/2", shake it vigorously for a couple of minutes and return it to the freezer for an additional 2 hours. This should have been the first time you've opened the jar since it initially went in at the beginning of the decarb process. At the end of the 2 hours, remove the cannabis/ethanol mixture from the freezer, shake it vigorously for a couple of minutes once again.

Now it's time to strain, filter and enjoy. Pour the mixture through a close mesh strainer removing as much of the tincture as possible with pressure. Seal the strained jar of tincture and let it set for about ten minutes at an angle if possible. This will allow the sediment to gather and make the next step go a little quicker. Pour the tincture through a paper coffee filter, gently, trying to not disturb the sediment. I normally repeat this last step a second time but that's at your option.

At this stage I normally do a reduction by naturally evaporating the ethanol but I suspect I'm experiencing a loss of molecularly volatile terpenes and will advise skipping this step and make dosage adjustments of the final product to find your sweet spot.

Ethanol extraction never reaches 100% efficiency so there are still goodies left in the used mash. I cap mine and place it in the freezer until my next extraction. Before getting started with your new tincture run, pour your virgin ethanol into your used mash, shake it a bit and strain it up. Use this, then, for your new tincture run.

This is an early beta test that has given pleasing results the few times it's been tried. I'm anxious for those who are interested to give it a try and share your objective experience. The process is a bit involved and reading back over this I question my comprehensive communicative skills. If clarification is neede, I pop in fairly often.

Good luck and enjoy.

BCDD
Click to expand...

One of my concerns with sealing the jars has been the pressure build up from the co2 release. Visions of exploding cannabis bombs. I was surfing the cannabis pick and shovel suppliers and noticed that at least one place is offering those nice 3 clamp stainless containers in four sizes, at jacked up prices, as decarb chambers for oven decarb.

The bomb factor probably is a nonissue, at least with small batches. The heat transfer gain with the stainless would be a benefit though.

I like the idea of using small quantities of alcohol and rinsing the waste with the next batches alcohol. What I have done in the past is to do three short soaks with a more liberal amount of alcohol for each then, either distilling it or just boiling off the alcohol. The cost and hassle has kept me from doing it very often.

The orange is interesting. At what point in the stripping is it showing up? That could be a clue. I reduced something down that left a hard read residue on the beaker that would not redissolve in alcohol but would easily wipe out with water. So, it was not an oil. I wish I could remember more.
 
Canyon said:
One of my concerns with sealing the jars has been the pressure build up from the co2 release. Visions of exploding cannabis bombs. I was surfing the cannabis pick and shovel suppliers and noticed that at least one place is offering those nice 3 clamp stainless containers in four sizes, at jacked up prices, as decarb chambers for oven decarb.

The bomb factor probably is a nonissue, at least with small batches. The heat transfer gain with the stainless would be a benefit though.

I like the idea of using small quantities of alcohol and rinsing the waste with the next batches alcohol. What I have done in the past is to do three short soaks with a more liberal amount of alcohol for each then, either distilling it or just boiling off the alcohol. The cost and hassle has kept me from doing it very often.

The orange is interesting. At what point in the stripping is it showing up? That could be a clue. I reduced something down that left a hard read residue on the beaker that would not redissolve in alcohol but would easily wipe out with water. So, it was not an oil. I wish I could remember more.
Click to expand...

Hey, Canyon. A sealed glass container was something that wasnt even on my radar for safety concerns, also. I ran across a post on another forum where a fellow was routinely doing this to avoid odors. Doing a little reasearch, I found numerous instances of it being done successfully with a lot of concerns from individuals never having tried it but failed to find any evidence of a jar breaking under these conditions, much less exploding. Still with a little trepidation, I finally worked up the courage to try it. No problem.

I like the idea of stainless containers for heat transfer advantages but my ol' mason jar is working pretty well now and I'm cheap!

In the early days of rediscovering cannabis, I rendered an insane amount of pot useless in my novice attempts at doing oil infusions, most using my handy dandy magic butter machine (never did get the hang of that thing and it seemed such a simple process; hurt my ego). So, I adapted the policy of venturing as little material as I could for future experiments and have become comfortable with small batches.

I, too, used to do a second quick rinse with ethanol and then evap it. Everclear in my area is pretty pricy and it hurt to waste it. Saving the mash and doing the rinse prior to the next run seems to work just as well and stretches the ethanol a little further.

The color was evident as soon as I strained and filtered it. A surprise to me. I was hoping that it would lean a bit to a yellow hue, lending credence of the presence of terpenes. Someone suggested it was due to the coloration of the strain but that's a bit of a stretch considering it was blue dream I used. That's since been debunked evidenced by the use of three different strains all coming out orange to almost red. Interesting.

I once had a similar experience with some indissoluble residue when I let my ethanol/cannabis mixture soak much too long. I was told it was waxes that had leached out but who knows. Odd that ethanol would extract it from the material initially but then wouldn't redissolve it the second go around.
 
Hello sports fans,
Everyone has seen the test results from start to finish on the Nightmare on Canyon's Street experiments. Except for the tcheck disappointments, I learned almost everything I set out to determine. I saw the strengths & weaknesses of the carrier oil extraction process. I got enough hard data to point me in the right direction for further progress. Aside from the suggestions that have already been made about terpene retention, unfortunately I don't have anything to add to that.

There was serious room for improvement in the extraction efficiency area. I believe I have now conquered that 22% dilemma. I am not ready to talk about that little advancement yet but I believe I can get "virtually" all of it out quickly now. I would have to uhhh...what's the word....uh...TEST to know for certain but I feel pretty good about it. Before NM, I didn't know that was such a big issue.

Before I try to wrap this up for everyone, I would like to hear some feedback. What are you unclear on? What did you guys conclude from the tests? Is everybody comfortable making coconut/olive oil extractions now? I think everyone here already had some experience with edibles. So, to me, this was more of a "where do we stand" exercise. So, where do YOU stand now? Throw out the observations and questions and, with a little help from my friends, we will sort it all out in the conclusion.
 
I'm still waiting for Scientific to volunteer to write up the summary. ;) I got lost trying to keep track of the various tests and strains and methods and results and hate to admit that I have no idea which turned out to be best at decarbing for THC or decarbing for terpenes or...

C'mon Sci! You're very good at breaking it all down so I can understand it!
 
Re: Decoding The Holy Grail: Terpene & Cannabinoid Retention - Decarb to Extraction

Yeh I'm with shed on this. I'm sorry as I'm trying to get up to speed but being a Newby and not even having my first real grow yet I'm a little lost as I haven't done any harvest, dying and curing, decarbing, or oil making. Please be understanding as I'm trying to learn and get the most out of this wonderful plant for my daughter
Thanks
Derbybud
 
Maybe if I mentioned what I was looking for in terms of results it would help anyone with the knowledge to fill in the blanks? The questions I'd selfishly like to see boiled down to bullet points are:

- best methods of decarb (method/times/temps) without having to buy a Nova or similar device
- best methods of extraction (method/times/temps) without having to buy a Magic Butter machine or similar device

And maybe is there value in doing the decarb and extraction in one step (directly into oil)?

I know the value in reading through the many pages in study hall journals, and most of the ones I read I can follow along pretty well (even contribute here and there). This one lost me (and Derby and even Scientific!) so I'm sure we're not alone.

:thanks: in advance :)
 
It's a lot for most of us to digest, including me. :battingeyelashes: :Love:
 
InTheShed said:
Maybe if I mentioned what I was looking for in terms of results it would help anyone with the knowledge to fill in the blanks? The questions I'd selfishly like to see boiled down to bullet points are:

• best methods of decarb (method/times/temps) without having to buy a Nova or similar device
• best methods of extraction (method/times/temps) without having to buy a Magic Butter machine or similar device

And maybe is there value in doing the decarb and extraction in one step (directly into oil)?

I know the value in reading through the many pages in study hall journals, and most of the ones I read I can follow along pretty well (even contribute here and there). This one lost me (and Derby and even Scientific!) so I'm sure we're not alone.

:thanks: in advance :)
Click to expand...

Even if you do follow every day, so much info seems to come in in different formats and punctuated by the usual chatter that it's hard to assemble any kind of coherent synthesis. And I sometimes get the feeling there's a back channel I'm not privy too? Private messages or stuff that got deleted as off-policy at some point or stuff people talk about in person or something? I'm probably wrong about that, but I often just lose the thread and have kinda given up, hoping someone will do some data reduction, analysis, and reporting.

If this was going on at work, I would definitely have called for a meeting for everyone to get together to share results in person and discuss (and for coffee, donuts, and catered lunch, of course--and maybe a social hour at the brew pub afterwards?) ;)
 
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