How To Make Concentrated Cannabis Oil

[Hiker]

Finally got my oil done tonight. Man does that distiller work great. I am glad I got it. Wife said it was an excellent buy too. I got 8+ ml from 61 gms. It looks great. First time making my oil worked perfectly. Wife had everything under control. Ordered me around like I worked for her. Used 750 ml Everclear and 350ml Spyritus. Reclaimed total 800ml. Filtered correctly this time. No popping. No errors. Can't wait for it to cool and to tack half a rice grain. Been so long.

Thanks to everyone for the distiller information. In my opinion the Megahome distiller works great. get one with 540 watt rating. If you are making oil you might want to try a low wattage water distiller. Low wattage is important. Easy to burn oil. Saw a lot of different ones when I was shopping around that were 1000 watts. That might be good for water but not so much for oil.

That's a really good result!
I made my wife some Bubba Kush oil last week. I used about the same amount of material and got about the same amount of oil, but I think you beat me on the recovery.
I'm always worried about cooking it down too far in the distiller, so I probably stop that step too early.

I'll second the advice about getting the low Watt model. I got mine second hand, so had no real choice. If buying new, get one that says it's for alcohol if you have a choice. I opened mine up to see if I could make it run a little cooler, but there are really no parts in there. The heating is all done by this big element on the bottom. Anyway, I experimented and couldn't get it to perform any better, so I just put it back together. It works fine, but I would like to have had one with a lower wattage heater inside.

 

[Lab Rat]

Its great that you are reclaiming alcohol (if you have any pics please post them) and 1 ml of RSO weighs around 1.1 grams so 8+ ml is like 9 grams and therefore about a 15% extraction yield which is quite good for a cold wash.

 

[wildjim]

That's a really good result!
I made my wife some Bubba Kush oil last week. I used about the same amount of material and got about the same amount of oil, but I think you beat me on the recovery.
I'm always worried about cooking it down too far in the distiller, so I probably stop that step too early.

I'll second the advice about getting the low Watt model. I got mine second hand, so had no real choice. If buying new, get one that says it's for alcohol if you have a choice. I opened mine up to see if I could make it run a little cooler, but there are really no parts in there. The heating is all done by this big element on the bottom. Anyway, I experimented and couldn't get it to perform any better, so I just put it back together. It works fine, but I would like to have had one with a lower wattage heater inside.

Hiker, you helped me decide on the distiller. Appreciate it. Wife thinks it was my best purchase.

My wife did it. I just held stuff. Lol The distiller worked great. Better than I expected. I thought about getting the alcohol distiller one but decided I wanted to distill water too. I think 540 watts, really less to the heat strip, is quick to evaporate the alcohol. Water does take a long time for a gallon but that liter went pretty fast. I opened the distiller and checked the amount of liquid and closed it and distilled about five minutes longer. I don't think it could have been better.

I think the wattage the heating element is using might be determined by an RC circuit and changing the resister might lower the wattage. A stroke messed up my memory and I can't say more than that. I used to be able to figure that stuff out, electronic engineer. All that college is worthless now. You might be able to get some electronic tech to think it out. But my opinion is the 540 watt distiller works fine. We'll see how it turns out next time. And the next.

Thanks Lab Rat. Sorry no pictures. Wish I thought about it though.

WJ

 

[420 Motoco]

Hi Folks,

Have some consultation this morning. Will be back in 2-3 hours. Thank you for your patience.

 

[wildjim]

Still snowed/iced in. We got power this morning finally. Hope all of the rest of you in the South are ok.
Motoco, no phone yet bro. Email if ya need to.

I hope you are safe and warm for this next bout you look to be having today. Most people never thought you had anything but warm to hot down there.

WJ

 

[Hiker]

Hiker, you helped me decide on the distiller. Appreciate it. Wife thinks it was my best purchase.

My wife did it. I just held stuff. Lol The distiller worked great. Better than I expected. I thought about getting the alcohol distiller one but decided I wanted to distill water too. I think 540 watts, really less to the heat strip, is quick to evaporate the alcohol. Water does take a long time for a gallon but that liter went pretty fast. I opened the distiller and checked the amount of liquid and closed it and distilled about five minutes longer. I don't think it could have been better.

I think the wattage the heating element is using might be determined by an RC circuit and changing the resister might lower the wattage. A stroke messed up my memory and I can't say more than that. I used to be able to figure that stuff out, electronic engineer. All that college is worthless now. You might be able to get some electronic tech to think it out. But my opinion is the 540 watt distiller works fine. We'll see how it turns out next time. And the next.

Thanks Lab Rat. Sorry no pictures. Wish I thought about it though.

WJ

yep I had the same thought. That's why I tore it apart. The heating element IS the resistor in the circuit. The circuit is super simple. When you hit the button it starts the timer by simply charging up a capacitor as the timer. I took that part of the circuit out. Mine is on when you plug it in. You unplug it to turn it off. If I had had some higher powered resistors in the junk parts, I would have tried putting one in series, but I couldn't find anything bigger than 5W I briefly tried to cannibalize the thermostat from a broken space heater, but that basically turned into a waste of a couple hours.

I agree with you that the water one works fine. I guess you're right that it would let you have dual purpose. With the hotter distiller, you just have to check sooner. I found it pretty easy to chart the progress by how much I've recovered. If I use 2 quarts to wash, I want to recover 1.5-1.7 quarts before I stop distilling. Basically I use jars for everything, so I know how many times I filled the jar and how much I put in, so I just try to pull out 75-80% of that.

 

[wildjim]

Thinking a little more, it might be an LC circuit. Since I haven't disassembled mine I can't say for sure. The heating element is possibly the coil and there would be a resister for the timing of the capacitor's charging and one for the voltage drop to determine the heating element's temp. I think. As I said before, the stroke messed up my knowledge base.

I figured when I was doing mine I would check when about 75% has been reclaimed. Then I replaced top and distilled for about five more minutes. Started timer when it started dripping again. I am guessing I reclaimed close to 80%. I am not a perfectionist anymore and I don't keep notes. I used to be that way but no longer. One of the reasons I don't do journals, along with ptsd paranoia.

I also use BALL jars because they are graduated. In oz and ml. No matter what, I think the distiller is the way to go making oil. No vapors, so no explosions. No open doors to the outside. No fans. No odor. Just have to be more attentive and check the level of liquid in the distiller during distillation so the oil doesn't burn. I like it!



WJ

 

[Hiker]

I still do mine outside, but that's my effort to minimize adding water to my solutions.
It's 22F this morning, so I'm gonna get everything ready to make a batch of oil tomorrow morning. It's gonna be colder tomorrow, then we start warming back up. If I make the oil when it's this cold, I'm 'winterizing' at the same time.

 

[Lab Rat]

Regardless of your preferred method and your opinion about mine, few can argue my "anal" attention to temperature control and precision. Previously it has been argued that the oil produced with my extraction method is "too dirty" and I am therefore trying to clean it up.

I'm making RSO from 6.25 ounces (175 grams) of dry bud rich cuttings (a gift from a grower friend of mine). Using just bud is preferable but beggars can't be choosers.

Regardless of your extraction process these steps should help with that polish you extract.

1. Increase your solvents PH
Alcohol (like water) has a pretty neutral PH of 7. Chlorophyll has a PH of 4 (more acid). By increasing the PH of your alcohol to an unnatural 9-10 you will decrease the chlorophyll pickup.

Without geeking out too much:
Chlorophyll specifically, is only able to form complexes with other molecules to stay in solution at biological pH (7.4). Its natural environment is at a pH of around 4 not 7.4. At this pH it has a net charge of -2 so that it can form a chemo-gradient for electron transport during photosynthesis.
So since pH =-log [OH-/ H+] when at pH 4 the [H+] concentration is higher than the [OH-] thus creating an environment that is more likely to associate with the (-) charged area of the chlorophyll molecule. Hence the low solubility of unbound chlorophyll in water, the large hydrophobic areas compress together and present their hydrophilic areas to exclude water from the center, becoming a mass that will sediment in water.

So 2 things; if you increase the PH of the alcohol prior to your extraction you will reduce the chlorophyll uptake and if you increase the PH again prior to winterization you will increase the precipitation of solids during your freezer time thus increasing the quality of your oil.

How to increase PH
I cheated a bit on this; my dad is a chemist so I just used 0.05% of water mixed with calcium hydroxide (used in small quantities to make sugar) which makes the water have a PH of 12.5. That 0.05% raised my alcohol to a PH of 9. I tested the PH of my solvent after the extraction and found that the plant matter had lowered it to 7 so I added another 0.05% before I put in the freezer for winterizing.

For people that don't have access to calcium hydroxide I would use crushed antacid pills dissolved in a bit of water. How many I don't know, it would have to be trial and error.

 

[Hiker]

In college, I had a lot of friends that were chem majors and took several chem classes for my biology major. I recall a slogan all over the chem building at SDSU, "Better living through chemistry." They had stickers, posters, buttons, etc.

You're write up made me think of that slogan.

 

[Lab Rat]

Winterizing

Basically before evaporating just stick you green solvent in the freezer and a certain amount of time later you filter it with coffee filters. Many people go 48 hours, you really just have to know how long it takes for your alcohol to stop getting any colder. You can do this by just sticking in some alcohol and check it every few hours. At the temperatures at which fats and lipids coagulate they will do so immediately and not over time. So if it take 14 hours for your solvent to hit its coldest temperature then leaving it 48 hours is not going to make it more pure; unless you figure out a way to make it cooler.

Results so far
The alcohol from my hot extractions is usually black, like cold coffee but I did notice now that this time it was dark green so the PH increase has seemed to work a bit. Next time I will try increasing the alcohol PH to 11 to see if I can further reduce cholorophyll uptake.

I am currently halfway through winterizing. I took a "before" picture and I will do a side by side comparison after 24 hours in the freezer at a PH of 9 and after filtering.

 

[Lab Rat]

The before and after winterization pics were not very impressive as from that angle under the same lighting conditions few changes were noticeable.

However when looking at your alcohol from above, a reddish hue could be seen. Although I have no before picture it previously looked dark green and now it looks a dark amber like red wine.

Before winterizing all the alcohol was filtered twice through coffee filters so the alcohol was completely clean and filtered before winterizing. After 24 hours in the freezer the temperature of the alcohol was 23*F (-5*C) and filtering was much slower, like it was having a hard time going through. When it was done I understood why; here's what my filters look like:

For those people winterizing after a cold wash, are you filtering once before sticking it in the freezer? My filters were caked with solids before winterizing so although winterizing helps it would be wise to do a before and after.

I still have one more trick up my sleeve which is UV reacting. All my alcohol is in a glass one gallon jug in the sun and will lay there for 6 hours. Unfortunately the jug is of amber glass and transparent glass would be more recommended.

I'll take a picture of the results in 6 hours but if it doesn't work I'll have to wait a few days until I get some clear bottles.

 

[Gfcollective]

Winterizing is a great way to get clean oil. This was cannabis oil that I cleaned up for a patient.

Went from 6.1 grams down to 3.4

I&I

 

[wildjim]

In college, I had a lot of friends that were chem majors and took several chem classes for my biology major. I recall a slogan all over the chem building at SDSU, "Better living through chemistry." They had stickers, posters, buttons, etc.

You're write up made me think of that slogan.

Good day Hiker
That slogan was international advertising when I was in my pre-teen and early teen years. Saw it in commercials on TV. Don't remember the name of the company, but it might have been DOW. Wow. It has really come true.

WJ

 

[CajunCelt]

Lab Rat, since you're refluxing, why aren't you using an alchemy separator? That with a brine wash, and you won't have all the gunk.
It seems your caught in the middle of the cold wash/reflux methods.
There's little use winterizing when refluxing unless you want to just clog up a bunch of filters. If you used a lab grade separator (fairly cheap), you wouldn't have the gunk & waste.
Just a suggestion.

 

[Lab Rat]

Yes I'm refluxing but what's an alchemy separator? Do you have a link to read more about this brine wash? Calcium Hydroxide is way more powerful to raise the PH and precipitate solids than brine.

I wouldn't say caught in the middle as much as just trying to clean up my oil without sacrificing yield too much.

Considering I filtered before and after and I got more solids stuck in the filter I think winterizing is a great idea. It might not work too well if your oil is already very clean . Can you show me a pic of a lab grade separator?

 

[CajunCelt]

No, you still winterize using a separator, you just don't need the filters.
It's a big glass pear shaped beaker that is clamped to a metal stand.
The oil rises to the top, the crud goes to the bottom & then you simply flip it upside down & pour out the oil mix.
Filter out the brine (not used for pH) & you're done. Your oil will be transparent & a golden amber color.
Also, your adding an extra hydro molecule with your ph'ing. That affects the polarity of the cannabinoids. That's why the pros use a light brine or hexane wash. The hexane adds $3,500. if you're interested in removing it though (& hopefully you are).

 

[Lab Rat]

I would have to look into it, you put your alcohol/oil mix in a glass pear and by what chemical process does the separation happen or you use it after winterizing? What's the purpose of the brine if not to control PH?

I am adding 5 ml of calcium hydroxide water to every 2 liters of alcohol, 2000 x 0.0025 = 0.25% and I used a gallon of alcohol total. People add a cap of water to their oil, although it might affect the cannabinoids I don't really see this as much of a problem unless H20 has been proven detrimental in a lab.

I wouldn't be adding hexane to my oil, that stuff is toxic and then you gotta figure out how to remove it. H20 molecules and even calcium hydroxide is safe for human consumption. I am interested in further cleaning up my oil. Since my yields are so high when "dirty", even a 50% hit in yield will make for an above average production.

BTW, did you ever get those lab results back?

I got a gallon of dark red alcohol/oil; any other ideas to clean it up?

 

[CajunCelt]

I did. I'll post them soon. They were great for the refluxing. At 150°f, I was able to retain all the terpenes. The CBD levels were unaffected & the "activated" THC content was 100%. It had more CBNs, but that was my fault in the decarbing.

So the separator. There is no chemical process from using it other than the natural separation of the materials from winterizing. The brine is an agitator & is easily removed.
I wouldn't use hexane or anything with -ane in it, unless I had the professional equipment to go with it. I would probably need to have 1,000 patients too.
So... Ain't happening. Lol.

 

[Lab Rat]

Great news; if you want just post them on my thread, no need to do a thread hijack but I wish you had done at least 2.

Isn't brine salt (sodium chloride) with water? By adding brine you are adding H20 molecules as well plus calcium hydroxide is not only a PH modifier but a great separator of solids. It is used by water treatment centers to help solids coagulate and therefore purify the water. How would brine be removed? The same technique could be used for calcium hydroxide mixed with water.

I understand how using a separator would help you reduce your coffee filter use but to get a honey golden color to your oil you would need something else. As for the UV reacting, my glass jug is amber and I think you need some clear glass bottles for that to work.

Google "polishing extracts" and click on the link from skunkpharmresearch, I'm reading that page to get ideas.

Yeah hexane is toxic, even trace amounts can make you sick; the same with butane so no dice. I'm only using things safe for human consumption