Hey homies, in this thread I'm gonna break down how I am currently making vaccum purged wax. Wax doesn't have the best reputation in oil circles as most people rush the process, whip the shit out of it and use too much heat, trapping moisture or butane and killing off the terpenes/flavor. I believe my method avoids that and produces a really easy to handle and delicious wax.
It's pretty simple - in a nutshell, we are going to vacuum purge and use a little extra heat on the last round (or 2) in order to make the oil transition to a wax/clay consistency as it is under vacuum, rather than forcing it with excess heat or whipping. This methodology has been consistently producing really awesome wax and I estimate that the terpene loss is minimal as I've put samples of shatter and wax from the same run on the pepsi challenge tip and honestly can't tell the difference, even with the e-nail which really really really lets terpenes in the oil come out to play with the taste buds.
Want to say before I really break this all down, this is not an optimal setup. I'd love to have a vacuum oven or better vac chamber, but it all works and for now and is producing a product I feel comfortable sharing with friends & fam.
OK down to business. I won't cover extracting, ya'll know how to do that or can find it elsewhere. Will add one thing though - do not grind or cut up your material, only cut big nugs down at the stem. I find cuts to the leaf or plant matter allow the butane to extract chlorophyll and waxes that it would otherwise bypass. For example, I've regularly made nug-run quality bho with trim that was only cut at the stem. Grinding or chopping doesn't seem to increase the yield much either, just wrecks the quality.
So here's some freshly blasted errl.
I give it 5-10 min in the water bath on the griddle, which I leave set as follows throughout this entire process (though the oil never gets up to this temperature, just heats the water bath or trays I use for vac purging):
The water is nearly cool when I bring it inside, so this 10 min is just getting the water back up to tap-water hot and giving the last bit of moisture & butane a chance to get out before I scrape up for the vac purge.
Here's a couple of runs I'll be vacwax'n for this demonstration.
Here they are after warming up for 3 minutes on the griddle, just till they get viscous, then a quick stir to distribute the wax in a thin layer.
Your timing here may vary, sorry I don't have an ir thermometer to figure out just how warm I am getting it, but it's gentle as I don't want to heat purge here, just get it warm enough for the vac purge to be effective.
It's pretty simple - in a nutshell, we are going to vacuum purge and use a little extra heat on the last round (or 2) in order to make the oil transition to a wax/clay consistency as it is under vacuum, rather than forcing it with excess heat or whipping. This methodology has been consistently producing really awesome wax and I estimate that the terpene loss is minimal as I've put samples of shatter and wax from the same run on the pepsi challenge tip and honestly can't tell the difference, even with the e-nail which really really really lets terpenes in the oil come out to play with the taste buds.
Want to say before I really break this all down, this is not an optimal setup. I'd love to have a vacuum oven or better vac chamber, but it all works and for now and is producing a product I feel comfortable sharing with friends & fam.
OK down to business. I won't cover extracting, ya'll know how to do that or can find it elsewhere. Will add one thing though - do not grind or cut up your material, only cut big nugs down at the stem. I find cuts to the leaf or plant matter allow the butane to extract chlorophyll and waxes that it would otherwise bypass. For example, I've regularly made nug-run quality bho with trim that was only cut at the stem. Grinding or chopping doesn't seem to increase the yield much either, just wrecks the quality.
So here's some freshly blasted errl.
I give it 5-10 min in the water bath on the griddle, which I leave set as follows throughout this entire process (though the oil never gets up to this temperature, just heats the water bath or trays I use for vac purging):
The water is nearly cool when I bring it inside, so this 10 min is just getting the water back up to tap-water hot and giving the last bit of moisture & butane a chance to get out before I scrape up for the vac purge.
Here's a couple of runs I'll be vacwax'n for this demonstration.
Here they are after warming up for 3 minutes on the griddle, just till they get viscous, then a quick stir to distribute the wax in a thin layer.
Your timing here may vary, sorry I don't have an ir thermometer to figure out just how warm I am getting it, but it's gentle as I don't want to heat purge here, just get it warm enough for the vac purge to be effective.
