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Tincture question

B

bmeuptoo

New member
Actually a couple of questions. First, have any of you tried making tincture or oil just from leaves. I bought one of the turbo source machines, so wasted alcohol shouldn't be an issue. I've read varying results on the web that say the leaves are useful and some say not. Just interested to know if any of you have tried. Next is the re-soak of bud material. I've also read that the alcohol extraction is only about 60% efficient. Would a second quick wash be worth the effort or is the other 40% just not extractable? Thanks
 
Thank you, very interesting link. I'm in an strange position, I don't get to sample my work. I do it for my wife, she has a medical MJ card but I get drug tested at work. Maybe someday. I knew that sugar leaves were good and also some of the small fan leaves have trichomes spilling over. But I guess I'll not waste time on the larger fan leaves. I had just read a while back that even those and the leaves and sex parts of the male plants have some THC content. Thanks again
 
Nothing in the male plant. You are looking for the trichomes. That is the only place the good stuff is.
 
My experience is a 90% extraction efficiency, using the freezer method. I base this on microscopic examination for trichomes of the flower/sugar leaves post extraction and the amount of stripped trichome husks that settle out, as you can see in the bottom of the mason jar.
 

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With no disrespect meant to anyone I don’t believe all of the Cannabinoids are concentrated in the trichomes. Making edibles I find a batch of sugar leaves with little to no frosting can still carry a good kick. This is not backed up with anything scientific - I think frosted weed is a little stronger but not always in proportion to the level of frosting. Unfrosted weed can still be very potent. Regardless of frosting, in addition to the bud I keep the sugar leaves the popcorn bud and the small frosted fan leaves that sometimes form in the bud. I chuck everything else. With that said it would not surprise me at all if male plants and large fan leaves contain a very small amount of cannabinoids.
 
1. I wish I had that much freezer space. ;)

2. Are those bags used for pressing? I have some bags in my wishlist, not sure which micron size to buy. Seems so much easier that way. Thnx!
 
I think the general opinion is that a second wash with a chilled qwet is worthwhile, but not sure of the efficiency levels at each stage. I’ve heard of people going three or more washes but I’ve not tried beyond two. The second wash will definitely pick up thc but it can also pick up more chlorophyll and plant lipids etc. To combat this I use cured trim and I make sure to freeze every part of the qwet process. First wash is 2 hours and the second is 24. I decide based on what they look like if I will mix them together or keep them separate. I also filter a couple times with a lot of freezing in between.
 
Thanks quirk, quantitative info of any kind is hard to come by in this area.

I usually figure 75% extraction after two washes but perhaps your 90% number is closer.

The real puzzler for me with QWET is whether there is a saturation limit to how much THC a given amount of ethanol can extract? Everclear is relatively inexpensive and readily available where I live so I don't bother trying to reclaim it when I concentrate after an extraction. I'd still prefer to use as little alcohol as possible to reduce waste.

For example, I recently made a very potent tincture using two grams of DECARBED bubble hash and a single ounce of alcohol. The result was almost a full ounce of Tincture with about 45 mg/ml potency. Close to zero waste. I'd like to get the same result from dried & cured bud, so the practical question becomes: How little alcohol is needed to fully extract the available THC from an ounce of good quality weed?

Any thoughts on that?
 
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I've been making tinctures for 10 years or so. To try an answer some questions. THC is extremely soluble in ethanol. You would be hard pressed to saturate the ethanol unless u worked at it. I use the Q-wet method with 3 x 5 minute washes. Some people separate the washes for different fractions, I don't just add back into each other. Once you have your wash, u can concentrate is down to a mild or potent ethanol tincture, of keep going, drive off all ethanol and have oil left. You can also add glycerine to the concentrated oil to make glycerine tincture. The concentrate can be used to make edibles.
 
I’ve started recovering a part of my alcohol and storing the remaining wash in a slightly concentrated form until I want to use it. When I am ready to make an edible I pour some wash into a pot and reduce it to almost no alcohol or water and rather than suck it into a syringe to use later I make my edible right in the same pot with the oil. I find my pure oil never turns out as nice as I like and it is always hard to work with so avoiding the need to move it around or keep it fluid means less handling and therefore less wasted oil. I might have had better luck with making my oil and higher alcohol recovery if I had a source turbo (I just use a countertop distiller)but I think my process goes a long way towards reducing the amount of product wastage. I am looking forward to trying this the next time I make butter - it is an extra step but the butter will come out much nicer tasting and less green than simmering the plant material in the butter directly. It should also be more efficient in that the butter won’t be mixed in with the leftover plant material, where the final bit is always hard to squeeze out (I used to pour a bit of boiling water on it to rinse more butter out of it). Using qwet means not having to filter out plant material because it will already be gone.
 
What part of your oil is not as nice as you like? Keeping everything cold as possible to hep prevent chlorophyll & lipid uptake is key. Dry ice works well but is hard to get where I am. Keeping some ethanol in the oil to thin it out makes it easier to handle.
 
I have used my version of the q-wet to concentrate 28gm of bud into 30ml ethanol. Total volume of ethanol used for extract was about 800ml. Keep everything cold. 3 x 5 minute wash. Enough to generously cover the plant material on each wash.
 
Puglover1, they are stitchless rosin extraction bags but I use them exclusively to double bag and contain my decarbed material for extraction.
This includes using them to contain my small batch, pressed rosin pucks, which have a good deal of extractable cannabinoids available post pressing. I came up with this method because the straining and filtering of loose material was a beating. For rosin I press 1.5 gram flower balls, using Ultra 35lb, 4"x4" parchment paper squares.
grouchyoldman, I'm using 15 grams of 18%THC flower to 8 oz.(226ml) Everclear, After extraction I use the Source Turbo to reduce to 4oz.(113ml). Two ml of this tinc, plus a half a gram of decarbed bud in a cup of yogurt and in about 1 hour, I need to be close to my bed. Very pleasant, slightly paralytic, mild hallucinogenic, sense of well being, leading to 6 hr. of restful slumber. No more insomnia until I go on my tolerance break
Organic soil auto grower.
 

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I want to press some of my first grow so badly. I haven't touched the nicest buds, hoping to find a 'presser' to barter with or pay. I can do anything with it from there plus like you said the pressed material isn't done. But using those bags instead of straining out material is such a good idea. Can you 'dunk' a bag, re-freezer the ETOH then 'dunk' another bag in the same ETOH? And repeat. Seems like you could have some really strong solution to reduce, and save on EverClear. One ml of an alcohol tincture sets off my pancreas which is why I want to press. Thanks.
 
I think it is getting the balance so that I have just a touch of ethanol left. What normally happens is I have water left, things get milky and clotted. If I blot or evaporate the milky water it leaves wax. I think the main problems are the ethanol is not strong enough and the countertop distiller doesn’t allow me to see the liquid when it is distilling. If I just put it in a pot and gently heat it until almost all liquid is gone and then cook directly in the same pot it saves having to hit the balance. It would be nice to have some fabulous pure oil in syringes but at least this gets me to the end goal of edibles.
 
Sounds like u have water contamination. Are you using 95% ethanol? if not, I would start there. Ethanol naturally takes up water. If reusing same ethanol, after a while it should be re-distilled to remove water to get as close to 95% as possible. 100% is possible, but it takes some advanced procedures to make, and it is unstable and will quickly dilute itself to 95% if not kept sealed from the atmosphere. Also the raw plant material needs to be dry. If you don't want the oil decarbed before hand, dry it in an oven at about 120*F. The cloudy happens when the polarity of the solvent increases and can no longer hold the oil. The oil precipitates out from the polar solvent into the non-polar phase. It is insoluble in the polar phase of the solvent. The wax is being picked up due to your extraction process not being cold enough. You may want to consider a winterization step before concentration. Idk much about the countertop distillers, but from what I have been reading, they are a compromise and not really efficient. If you want to invest in a better distiller, I would go with a ground glass setup. I can't post pix here. See below for pix of my setup.
 
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Thanks Ckbrew I always love the science oriented explanation for how things work, and love the setup! It has kind of a mad scientist vibe going on that I like 🙂

Yes my ethanol is definitely a large part of the problem. The strongest I can buy where I am is 76%. If I distill it in my countertop distiller I can up the strength to nearly 90% but not much higher. Even 90% seems to be not quite strong enough. The countertop distiller is definitely a compromise. It will distill properly but it is not optimized for this purpose (e.g. can’t see into the chamber while it is running and it doesn’t operate under vacuum so it has to be hotter than otherwise). It is a third the price of a source turbo and it kind of works (it helps recover ethanol at least) but if I keep making this type of extraction I may bite the bullet and get an ST. What would you estimate the cost of your setup to be if you had to buy it all from scratch?

I decarb beforehand and the weed is dry and as cold as my freezer can make it but based on my research it isn’t quite cold enough for true winterization. It is better than not doing it by a long shot but not perfect. If I could find a local dry ice supplier I would give that a try but I haven’t been able to find one.
 
@ DeadlyFruit- What is in the pix is not all of the setup. Converts to a vacuum filtration setup. The ground glass is kind of like leggo in that u can put it together in different ways. The stuff in pix probably around $400.00. The only thing I bought new was the glass and heating mantle. The rest is used from flea bay. Are you in the US? If so, you can mail order 95% ethanol. gets expensive though. With my setup I can get 93% from 40% vodka on the first pass.
 
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