First Grow In Over 20 Years! Northern Lights Under 600W LED

Thanks Homer! Things have been going my way I guess. If I nail this third one then maybe I do have something good going, but for now it's beginners luck.

Aww shucks... Great grows and modest... you are Kurt Russell not Jack Black!!! :high-five: :headbanger: :thumb:
 
Not the stems but the bud mash goes into the batter mix. Depending on the ratio it's supposed to be undetectable in brownies because of the texture and chocolate.

Well, there are small stalks all the way to the end of buds so I just don't see it but to each their own.
 
This morning I evaporated all the alcohol from my alcohol extraction and when I weighed it up it weighed about half a gram. I didn’t have a good tool to scrape all of it out of the bowl so even if I only got half that’s still only one gram recovered out of half an ounce of weed so that is about 7% recovery if it was a full Gram but I think it is really more like 5%.

To be honest I never believed that alcohol was that great at dissolving resin because as I mentioned earlier I have used 95% alcohol to clean the resin off my hands after harvesting and it is pretty slow at dissolving the resin on my hands. Maybe I did something wrong I don’t know but personally, my opinion is that this system just doesn’t work very efficiently to extract oil. Back to the EVOO method.

!cid_e994a3e8-390b-4ae0-8047-ce801c39b7cb@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
!cid_1d49f483-2607-4fd3-932e-bb31f9e6f08e@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
!cid_c7eec7c0-33eb-4b9c-a258-0f99dcbdc79e@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
 
Splash some alcohol in the bowl pour it in something flat, quite a bit of concentrate left in that bowl.

I figure there is only about a gram in total and I am not sure the potency and I have oil ready to consume and more cooking as we speak so I think I will just call it a loss and toss it. It was an experiment.

Tip for next time.

Use a Pyrex dish and a flat razor blade for collection makes it easier

I was looking for a flat bottom dish but I can't seem to find one but I am pretty sure I have a few?? I don't think the alcohol system is very efficient so I am not sure there will be a next time, lol.
 
All good, but I'd give it one more go once you have cannabis to spare.

Actually, I do have the cannabis to spare but I don’t see what I did wrong to get such poor recovery rates so unless I find some new approach I figure there is not really a point to give it another try. As Einstein said trying the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, LOL.

I am open to suggestions but I have done a lot of reading and I really don’t see what I could have done wrong to get such a crappy recovery ratio. Happy to hear any critiques of my system.
 
I've never done it but I've seen others have great success with it, including Grandpa Tokin who did a whole thread on it!

 
I've never done it but I've seen others have great success with it, including Grandpa Tokin who did a whole thread on it!

Yes, that is concerning that other people seem to have good results, lol. I actually read Grandpa's thread and Sweet Sue's and several other articles and videos online and think I did a very good system so why mine didn’t work well is a mystery. Maybe because my name is Homer, D’oh… :eye-roll:
 
Here is a half-ounce of NL that has been cooking away for about six hours with 6 ounces of olive oil.

!cid_22a719d9-83b0-467f-aa60-3eda86a3dce1@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


I strained it through the 90u squish bag I have and it did a nice job leaving a pretty clean liquid. Once it was all in there I just let it drain for a while then I put on some surgical gloves and squeezed the bag as hard as I could with my hand into a separate container.

!cid_a1822404-83b3-4d95-84ec-e3ffc96b1776@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


Then I took the squeezed bag and clipped it to a stainless steel bolt so it would stay submerged during boiling.

!cid_b116d7f9-de3d-4d00-a368-ea3cd0e5d884@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


Before the water even boiled a lot of oil was released.

!cid_2f035b15-7335-4b46-a1c9-3ebc053ae2ad@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


Trying to get a pretty accurate measurement I poured off all but 4 ounces from my cup into a smaller measuring cup and on the left is the stuff that I squeezed. The one had 14 mL and the other one 15 mL which together makes about exactly one more ounce giving me a total return of 5 ounces of olive oil which is about an 83% return.

!cid_b8e25310-626a-4a93-80ac-fd53ae52e454@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


I let the remnants boil in the pot for about an hour and left it unattended after about 10 or 15 minutes. When I checked it after the hour the water had gone all brown and there didn’t seem to be that much more oil so I think next time I will only boil it for about the 10 or 15 minutes or watch it or when the water starts turning from clear.

!cid_6e34e2b9-74cc-4961-a5e9-61a8854e41e5@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


I try skimming the oil off the top anyway and it looked pretty clean but it’s pretty hard to get much of it without getting a lot of water also and you just seem to be chasing your tail with a spoon so the question is, is that last 17% worth making some kind of separator?
 
Don't they sell those measuring cups that separate oil and water? Or are they too imprecise for the amount we're dealing with here?

I would tip the cup so the oil collected in one place and use a hypodermic needle to suck it up if I was bothered by the waste.

Also, you could boil off the water and be left with the oil, plus whatever is in your water if you didn't use distilled!
 
Don't they sell those measuring cups that separate oil and water? Or are they too imprecise for the amount we're dealing with here?

I would tip the cup so the oil collected in one place and use a hypodermic needle to suck it up if I was bothered by the waste.

Also, you could boil off the water and be left with the oil, plus whatever is in your water if you didn't use distilled!

You are always full of good ideas Shed! I had never heard of a separator measuring cup but I found some online. I do have a big hypodermic needle so maybe today I can figure something out, good idea. What would be ideal is a separatory funnel like this but I think I can do it without buying anything.

 
I did a little experimenting this morning with the pot of water I boiled my bag of cannabis and olive oil remnants in yesterday. I took a big serving spoon and scooped off as much oil as I could and put that mixture in a bowl and then transferred it to a big martini glass because it has an inverted cone shape.

!cid_f18f659b-ffd7-4786-8eb8-9120059ce25b@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
!cid_7138833c-2c87-412a-80af-b95fb9ad50d2@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


As you can see because I cooked it too long some of the olive oil combined with plant material which I assume is chlorophyll cellulose and wax among other things. Once the oil was combined with these impurities it would no longer float so in my next attempt I will only be boiling my leftovers for 10 or 15 minutes to avoid this contamination as there didn't seem to be much more recovered after 15 minutes anyway.

!cid_f098452d-8b9a-46e0-af2a-b7f29b003b2b@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg


Using Shed’s great idea I removed the bottom layer of water from the martini glass with a syringe so I ended up with about one-quarter of an ounce of olive oil. I think that’s pretty good considering that I didn’t scoop all of it out of the pot and lost some to contamination and considering there is only one ounce left that was recoverable. I hope to get at least a half an ounce back if I am more careful next time and don’t boil it as long. So I am aiming for 5.5 recovered ounces out of six in the future.
 
You're getting this down to a science Homer! Thanks for doing all this research. :thanks:

No need for thanks buddy; I enjoy doing it and it is nice people find it useful. :high-five:
 
Here are the girls tonight. Not spectacular but respectable buds and despite not adjusting pH for quite a while still healthy.

!cid_73b69a9f-1462-43d5-ae66-0224b73bc177@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
!cid_6249b02c-7653-4912-a95e-535d9181c7af@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
!cid_c7bece3e-24c2-4194-8118-814aa7127f3c@namprd22_prod_outlook.jpg
 
Back
Top Bottom