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Dry sifting

B

Bootsy

New member
Hi. Thanks in large to the info from this site and the folks of the forum, I am lucky enough to be in a surplus situation with my weed stock, hopefully forever. even keep my brother and a couple of friends supplied. got enough cannabutter frozen for any baking needs so last couple of grows I have done a dry sift of the sugar leaves and trim. Kief doesnt take much room to store. I havent done any carding, so i expect there is still quite a bit of thc left in the sifted leftovers, but I dont feel the urge to go further mechanically - carding is a lot of work for something I don't really have a use for.
MY QUESTION - Would it make sense to do an alohol wash to extract what's left - or would it be weak? If I keep using the same wash through multiple batches of the trim, will it keep getting stronger? I havent found this in my readings yet. Need focus - time for a bowl of that kief!
 
Not an expert so all I can say is what seems logical to me.

I would definitely try a wash after you sift. The trichs are powerful but I wouldn’t think every drop of THC is in the trichs (plenty of strong strains don’t get very frosty) and Your sift wouldn’t be 100% efficient, so a wash of what is left would do a good cleanup. You could run your EtOH through multiple washes if you want but you are probably going to make RSO or something that requires you extract the alcohol so as long as you can recover the alcohol you wouldn’t necessarily need to run the same stuff through multiple batches before you distill it off. The strength of the RSO should always be the same or similar but I think you just would have more or less of it (all things being equal). I did read somewhere about how much THC a solvent could contain and it said there was a max but I can’t recall if it mentioned what the limit was (or if it had any citations indicating it was more than opinion). It is logical there is an upper limit and I suspect it is pretty high, but not my area of science 🙂
 
hi. thanks. i totally agree, especially after noting how ticky a couple of strains still are after sifting. for now, I at least wont throw it out. sounds like you found some references i didnt see yet. no super rush and its easy to store for awhile. all interesting.
 
Logic says the alcohol will only carry so much. When I do washes, I do the same bud twice and get almost as much on the second wash as the first. Second not as clean.
Many take the leftover material and make brownies as there is still THC left behind (not a lot)
Yes for me it makes since to wash the bud after sifting it.
I also am no expert! Nor am I a chemist.
 
Here's the stepwise method I use for QWET extractions.

Green Dragon Tincture (Actually should be called "Golden Dragon!")

Ingredients
1/4 oz (7 grams) of dried cannabis flowers
6 oz. 190 proof grain alcohol
Directions
  1. Decarboxylate the cannabis in an oven at 240F for 40 minutes uncovered.
  2. Place the cannabis in a canning jar and place the jar in the freezer for at least 24 hours.
  3. Place the alcohol bottle in the freezer for at least 24 hours.
  4. After 24 hours, measure and pour 3 oz. of freezing cold alcohol into the jar of cannabis and shake for five minutes.
  5. Place jar back in the freezer for 2 hours.
  6. Remove the jar from the freezer and shake for another five minutes.
  7. Strain the jar through the cheesecloth into a separate container, and then return the plant material to the jar in the freezer.
  8. Filter the strained alcohol thorough a coffee filter to remove the fine plant material. (If you have "Bubble Hash" bags, just pour through a #160 for faster results)
  9. Pour the remaining 3 oz. of frozen alcohol in the with the plant material, and then shake for five minutes.
  10. Freeze, strain and filter as before.
  11. Combine the alcohol from both runs. there will likely be only 4 oz. or so due to spillage and absorption.
  12. Reduce from 4oz to 2oz for ~ 17.5mg/ml concentrate (I just open the jar and let a fan blow over. Takes a couple of hours)
Hat tip to ReikoX on OG! for this comprehensive Thread on all things Tincture, RSO, Edibles...
https://overgrow.com/t/not-just-anot...re-thread/7668
 
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grouchyoldman have you ever decarbed the resulting oil after your wash rather than the plant material before your wash? I am about to wash a couple ounces and thought I would refresh my memory on the process and I came across a link to another site where they proposed this method (doing it in a sealed jar) as part of a process to retain more terps in the oil, reduce oxidation/degradation/evaporation of volatile terps and cannabinoids and remove the toasted weed taste. It seemed kind of interesting. They had lab results from the experimentation that showed the terp levels were significantly higher (in combination with using a source turbo to be able to extract the alcohol at a lower temp and under vacuum). Was just curious if you had done it this way and your experience.
 
And a second question - I know you follow the process that requires 2 hours of standing time in the freezer for the wash, did you ever try any other lengths of time? GWE says 20 minutes but I have seen everything from 5 minutes to 24 hours for a quick wash on different sites. I’m not sure if I will follow the 20 minutes or the 2 hours but not any longer than this. I think the temperature of the freezer makes a difference as well. Pretty sure my freezer is about 0F/-17.8C. I don’t think most home freezers are cold enough for true winterization but even a home freezer improves the quality significantly.
 
DeadlyFruit I know you're speaking to Grouchy but during the sub-zero temps, ice and snow here in Feb I threw a new jug of EverClear into the deck's snow bank, decarbed enough for two jars and threw them in with the EC and took a pic. The next day they were covered in snow. I did a 15-second shake then into the freezer, not sure if I repeated it after 2+ hours or the next day. It was the prettiest, light-yellow oil I've ever made. I combined the once-washed materials into one jar and it's still in my freezer, too hot to work on it this summer. I took the jar out one day to reach something else and a teeny bit of yellow oil seeped out of the weed within a few minutes.

(I tried making canna-ghee in jars in the Insta-Pot, after much reading. It tasted like sh!t the first time I tried it. It's been in the fridge since, hoping some decadent brownies or fudge will hide the taste.)

I have a question, wondering your opinion - I dried popcorn bud but ran out of lids so I froze it in a gallon Ziploc. When I go to decarb it for edibles/butter/ghee do I need to thaw it first, before the oven?
 
DeadlyFruit & Puglover1, raise some interesting questions about the QWET extraction. I'm just a concentrate Fan, not a guru. so I'll comment but also invite opinions from those with more concentrate expertise.

- "have you ever decarbed the resulting oil after your wash rather than the plant material before your wash?"
I got myself into a real pickle with a large batch that I completely spaced and neglected to decarb before beginning the alcohol wash. I ended up with 12oz of beautiful tincture that had zero activated THC. Since the tincture is Ethanol based, you can't decarb it using heat. The alcohol flashes off at about 190 degrees F, below the temps you need for decarb so all that happens is that you "boil down" the tincture to a higher concentration and eventually end up with RSO oil when all the alcohol is gone. What I should have done is to follow that process and, once all the alcohol was gone, decarbed the oil. Instead I decided to use the natural decarb method, which is just to let it sit for four months as the THC-A degrades(changes?), into psychoactive THC. The four months clock recently rang and I'm now testing the resulting tincture. Long story short, DECARB BEFORE YOU BEGIN QWET!

- "I know you follow the process that requires 2 hours of standing time in the freezer for the wash, did you ever try any other lengths of time?"
I've tried much longer (6 hours), and shorter(10 minutes) "Standing Times," between washes and had the best results with a couple of hours. Part of the waiting period idea is that any moisture in the tincture will freeze and be left behind when you filter before the second wash.

- " I dried popcorn bud but ran out of lids so I froze it in a gallon Ziploc. When I go to decarb it for edibles/butter/ghee do I need to thaw it first, before the oven?"
I decarbed my last batch straight out of the freezer. It seemed to thaw so fast that it didn't matter.


One more tip, filtering your tincture through a coffee filter between washes is messy and takes FOREVER. As I mentioned above, I have found that draping one of my #160 mesh bubble bags over the mouth of the 1st wash jar as a filter works great. You pour the first wash tincture through the screen into a second jar, then just tap the mesh to drop the herb back into its jar for a second wash. Clean, simple and near as I can tell identical results. The pros use a Buchner Filter which uses vacuum to pull the tincture through a paper filter.
 
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Thanks for the great input grouchyoldman and Puglover1 . That is great info!

Great comment puglover about the snowbank. In winter their are plenty of days it is colder outside than in my freezer. I agree with grouchy that you should be able to decarb straight out of the freezer, although you would probably want to add two or three minutes to your timer for the weed to come up to temperature, and you may have a little added moisture in it from freezer frost and/or condensation, although likely not much. Something else I just noticed on the topic of decarbing - when I did it this last time I put an oven thermometer in with it to double check the temp of the oven and I noticed the oven acts a lot like your house thermostat, in that there is a range it moves constantly between. If you set it to 250 for example the oven will heat to 250 and the element will turn off but it is still hot so the temp will continue to rise another 10-20 degrees before the element starts to cool. The temp in the oven then falls down below 250 by about 10 degrees before the element heats up enough to begin the rise again. In short you may be setting it to 250 but it is actually rising and falling between 240 and 270 (I’m sure it varies a little between ovens). Once I realized this I tried to compensate by opening the oven door to let a little heat out as it was coming up to the target temperature so the range was smaller and mostly between 240 and 250. Not fun to sit watching it but could get the job done. I may try using my bbq, with the heat low on one side and the weed on the other. The heat will be indirect and more constant. I decarb in sealed jars to lower the smell so it wouldn’t pick up a bbq smell/taste.

Grouchy - I hear what you are saying about flashing off the alcohol if you decarb after you add ethanol but the article I was reading had the oil in a sealed jar so it was not exposed directly to the heat source and can’t evaporate away on you (and it should have less alcohol to evaporate because it has been reduced to oil). With that said, the guy who wrote the article did state that while he has done it multiple times without problem it was on you if you manage to blow up your jar of highly flammable alcohol.

Re standing time in the freezer, I went with two hours for the first wash and 24 for the second wash, all of it in the freezer. After another 24 hours chilling in the freezer I filtered a second time to get rid of the last fine silt on the bottom of the jar. I used to let the filtering occur in the freezer but this time I used your tip of using a bubble bag, which was so mush faster. Brilliant! Not sure if you did it this way or not but if not a tip in return - try screwing the mason jar lid ring over the bubble bag, sealing it in place so you don’t have to try to hold it. Saves a potential mess if you lose your grip.

Below on the left is the first wash (2 hours) and on the right is the second wash (24 hours). The second wash looks darker green in the pic than it is in person. I washed 33 grams of trim and popcorn. I decarbed another 34 grams but haven’t yet washed it. I’m not sure if I am going to canna butter it and wanted to do the alcohol removal and see the final product before deciding. My oils to date have been hit and miss but I think this batch is going to turn out well.

98B5F4A4-9268-4F63-9A41-A9D9F5539F42.jpeg
 
I had a jar look green like that in pics. I'm stoned, can't recall which but I put in either in the freezer or dark cupboard for 24 hrs and it lightened up a lot. I think freezer.

I always prefer electric ranges but I know that the oven runs hotter. I compensate with times while baking and temps with oil. At those temps it doesn't go on and off for as long in between, at least.

I bought a canning funnel that has a fine white mesh insert, what a time saver and catcher. I had two jars that I strained the weed thru a sieve, then the etoh/oil went fast thru coffee filters into jars. I combined the two jars' worth into a measuring cup and poured it thru the mesh and funnel, much faster all around. Only good thing about looking forward to cold weather is making oil.

How are you going to finish off the yellow jar? Making tincture, or purging as much as you can of the etoh?
 
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Golden Dragon vs Green Dragon

DeadlyFruit, I think you discovered the reason for the two hour vs 24 hour soak times! An important element of the "Quick Wash" process is that it reduces the amount of chlorophyll and waxes that are extracted into the tincture.

Other extraction methods (Magic Butter Machine for example) produce a "Full Spectrum" tincture that intentionally includes more of the complete essence of the herb. Looks like your second wash after the 24 hour soak produced a Full Spectrum(FS) type tincture. FS extractions are preferred by lots of folks and there's a good case to be made for the "entourage effect" produced by having more cannabis chemistry in the mix.

FS is not my favorite but that's just a personal preference. From your pics, I'd say you have a nice sample of Golden Dragon and Green Dragon tinctures, so please let us know your experience with them.

If you washed 33 grams of decent herb, you're also likely to have a pretty potent product. Here's the math for a rough estimate:

33000mg(herb) * 0.20 (20%THC) *0.75(extraction efficiency) = 4950mg of THC extracted. That is what we have to work with, so even if we flash off all the alcohol the remaining RSO oil will contain all 4950mg. That's why a rice-grain size drizzle of RSO provides a SmashMouth high. I've read that concentrated oil has 600 - 700 mg/ml THC.

It looks like you have about 6 oz of concentrate in the Golden jar which is about 170 ml, so 4950mg / 170ml = 29mg/ml as your starting point dose. A typical dropper delivers about 0.5ml so your single dropper load would deliver about 15mg which is considered a "normal" dose with wide variations between individuals.

As a final note, PLEASE be careful using heat to burn off the alcohol if you need to concentrate. Alcohol fumes are notoriously flammable! Never use gas heat, electric only with a double boiler setup; Better yet, just open the top of the jar and let a fan blow over it. Safe, predictable and easy.
 
The canning funnel sounds really useful. The bubble bag does a great job but the bag is huge so the funnel might be a little easier.

I haven’t quite decided if I will purge all the way to oil or just to a tincture. I will purge it somewhat either way to make it stronger but also because the 90% alcohol will probably burn my tongue off otherwise but not sure about going all the way to oil. My last couple efforts to make oil produced more of a tar/wax than oil so I wasn’t quite getting what I wanted. I assume that was because i purged all the alcohol and only water was left causing the concentrate to harden up. I think oil is just the concentrate with a small amount of alcohol (or added carrier oil or glycerin) left to keep it liquid, isn’t it? Unfortunately it is not easy to see the wash in my repurposed countertop distiller so it is a challenge to see where in the process it is without opening it up. Maybe I’ll recover most of the alcohol in the distiller and then do like grouchy and just run a fan over it for the final purge until I get the desired consistency.
 
Thanks grouchy, the calculations are fantastic. I hadn’t tried to do any of the math yet so you’ve save me the effort (plus I don’t have enough fingers to count that high 🙂).

Unfortunately it wasn’t good bud, it was frosty trim and maybe 20% or so popcorn bud (both cured for a couple months and decarbed in a sealed jar) so it probably won’t be quite that strong, but I haven’t yet purged any alcohol so it will get stronger. I’ve decided to purge the two jars separately so I’ll let you and puglover know my thoughts on each. I suspect it will be the golden that I like more as I am not a fan of the chlorophyll taste but I am curious whether the second but longer wash is stronger or weaker. I just haven’t decided if I will purge down to tincture or right to oil. Forgive me if I’ve asked this already but do you add carrier oil or glycerin to your oils or just leave in enough alcohol to keep it liquid? With my initial poor efforts I managed to purge it down to a tar/wax that is hard to work with. I was thinking of adding oil or alcohol to the wax to get it into a viscous but liquid state.

Agreed about the alcohol vapour- I generally do anything like that outside and using something that doesn’t involve an open flame. My distiller is pretty safe as it is a sealed container but I still take it outside to use.
 
I bought my funnel and mesh via fleabay. Wally world had them from other sellers online. I actually bought 3 different s/s funnels but the mesh thing works for all, or just over a jar as a final drain. I prefer to use a sieve/strainer to separate the wash and material first. After that last FAST beautiful oil I made I wasn't prepared to properly finish it off. I will use a fan or the pyrex/silpat/pan of hot water method next time. Yeah, Pyur or another brand of wax thinner is used when you melt down wax/concentrates to vape or use in some other way.
 
DeadlyFruit I think the 2nd will be weaker. I'd probably purge it to tincture or capsule it up to ingest. Buy, use wax thinner if heating the wax won't let you work with it. Pyur brand or other options, I avoid pg as a carrier, ingredient. I got lucky in winter, my kitchen window, range top and door to the garage were in a direct line, the etoh vapor flowed right over my double boiler and into the garage.
 
How I prep for the wash. (1) mason jars without lids are placed in an oven, then the oven is turned on to 220 F. When it hits that temp, cannabis is placed in the jars and they are sealed. I hope to capture terpenes that would've been burned off without the lid, but I have no scientific evidence to prove that; (2) after an hour the jars are removed, cooled to room temperature, and placed in a styrofoam cooler containing dry ice. The surface temp of dry ice is -40 F. However I plan to use a slurry of dry ice and isopropyl next time, that will bring the temp down to -55 to -60; (3) the ethanol to be used for wash has been placed in the dry ice at start to super cool it; (4) after 3 hours or so the super cooled 190 proof ethanol is poured over the cold cannabis and gently agitated, placed back in the dry ice cooler. Agitate every 5 minutes for 20 minutes and after 20 minutes remove the jar from the cooler and filter the cannabis+ethanol solution through 11 µm paper filter (twice), then filtered through a 6 µm filter; (info) the filtration is performed using a Buchner funnel inserted into a erlenmeyer flask, the flask is connected to a Rocker 400 pump to quickly draw the solution through the filters.; (info) now I have a wash that is virtually chlorophyll free and it is bright yellow. The ethanol is removed from the wash and recaptured through a distiller. What's left is cannabis oil. The reason why the cannabis and ethanol are super cooled is because as ethanol gets cooler it loses affinity for chlorophyll, i.e., the ethanol won't extract the chlorophyll.
 
PeterMatanzas , I haven’t seen you around these parts in a bit, nice to see you again.

Thanks for spelling out your process, you are really organized! I went looking for dry ice a couple times (to try making dry ice hash) but for some reason it is hard to find around here. If I could find some I would definitely try a super chilled wash.

A question if you don’t mind - Do you completely distill out the alcohol or leave a little in to keep it fluid (or add something else)? What consistency is your oil? I ask because I think I over-purged and ended up with wax the couple times I tried this previously but I had been wanting something a little more fluid. This time I want to figure out before I distill the wash what I am trying to achieve and how. I would probably use a lot of it for edibles or just from a dropper but I may try adding a couple drops to bud in a herb vape on occasion to give it some snap. If I don’t think I can get an oil that is concentrated but still a little fluid then I would probably leave more alcohol in it and go with a tincture.
 
Thanks puglover. Do you know if pyur is edible? I likely won’t dab or make vape liquid I’ll be consuming it in some fashion, although possibly adding a couple drops to bud in a dry herb vape on occasion (if I go all the way to oil - not if I finish with a tincture, which could end up being the weed version of a flaming sambuca 🙂). I still have a few grams of the wax left in my freezer - it is grain of rice level strong - maybe I should cut off little pieces and capsule them but it is like tar and sticks to everything the second you (or a knife) touches it so it would be messy and there would be little hope of weighing the portions before capsuling them. I’ve been thinking of thinning it with alcohol (or maybe pyur now) to make it easier to dispense from a dropper.
 
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