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can BHO mold? if it did can i wash it with ISO?

I made some BHO on July 14th, I only got to smoke it once due to employment (/lack of) drama... i kept it in the refrigerator until mid august, and then was forced to move it to a dark cool closet. I recently got it out and saw some spots on it... i think it is mold (and i am pissed). Has anyone ever had experience with honey oil molding? is this what i have?

I was thinking that I could drown it in 91% isopropyl and let it evaporate... would that remove the mold and leave me with smokable honey oil? (I dont think this will make a difference, but I vape it in a volcano)

IMG_0275.JPG
IMG_0273.JPG

This is a 100x microscope close up of one of the white spots
IMG_0278.JPG
 

NotGuilty

Member
I personally would toss it..... However if that isn't an option for you 99% iso should be okay. Be sure to filter well.

Some nasty things can live in the fridge, E.Coli, Botulism, Etc. I really would hate to see you get ill.
 
Well the sealed glass container was in the fridge, so im not so worried about what was living in there... i dont know where to get 99% iso, the highest i can find is 91% (the rest is just water me thinks), and I wasnt going to filter it, i was just going to put it in the jar and let it dissolve the BHO and then evaporate, will that leave any nasty remains?
 
i have not done anything to it yet... i havent been smoking because i am job searching, so i was going to wait till i was able to smoke it to clean it... is there any way to destroy/filter the toxins?
 

NotGuilty

Member
Only if you knew what the toxin was really.... Its the same as food. the bacteria dies when you cook it, but you can still be ill-affected.

I can understand the situation not having a job and wanting to save it. However since you aren't smoking until you get one, You can buy/make more when you do smoke again :)
 

NotGuilty

Member
Did u toss it? Thr thing is the iso will kill the bacteria sure. but it wont destroy the toxins already produced by said bacteria.......
 
so i washed it by letting it sit in iso overnight, then pouring it through a coffee filter and into an altoids tin and putting a fan over it for a few hours, then to get the last bits of iso out I put it on top of a power transformer for my speakers which gets pretty hot. After that it as still a little more viscous then i remember it (possibly had some iso left in it?), but we volcano'd some of it yesterday anyway. I was pretty disappointed, it did not cloud up the bag very much and the taste and feel were both lacking... i think it is ruined forever... thank you everyone for your suggestions
 

Hamburglar

Active member
My BHO ended up going mouldy too. Recently it's been around 70-80% R-humidity as it's been raining non-stop for about 2 weeks in the UK.

It had a few yellow/white blobs like avalance's bho.

I ended up putting all the BHO into a small glass dish and just added a little bit of 99% Iso. I mixed and stirred the BHO until it all had dissolved into the Iso. I then strained through a coffee filter to remove and impurities and mould spores. It didn't look like I'd be yielding much, and I was ready to settle my losses at this stage.

I evaporated/purged the Iso over a pot of boiling water (from the kettle) for a few hours and scraped the remaining oil with some razor blades. I ended up with pretty much the same amount of oil as what I started with. I'm sure I lost some in the coffee filter, but i couldn't tell just by looking.

The newly refined oil looks and tastes just like freshly purged BHO and it hits just as hard!
 

Chiefsmokingbud

Slap-A-Ho tribe
Veteran
I have yet to see BHO mold. I've had vials sit out,cap on in this tropical climate for 6 mos and never seen anything like that. Not saying it can't happen, I'm sure it can just never seen it. Did you guys by chance have any mold in your grows?
 
yeah i did have some buds that molded a bit... i threw them into the BHO mix with the popcorn and high end trim... i did not even think about that, it probably laid dormant for a while and then popped in to say hi... next time i am going to store it in the freezer for its whole life
 

NotGuilty

Member
So this suggests BHO is not antiseptic, correct? I googled but to no avail...

If so a quick Ethanol wash may be suggested when moldy product is used? should this become commonplace.
 

Hamburglar

Active member
Come to think of it, the BHO that started to mold was made with a 1/2ox of very slightly moldy weed.

Next time I make BHO out of moldy bud I'm definitely going to wash it with some Iso and filter it through a filter.
 

berlinweed

Member
Come to think of it, the BHO that started to mold was made with a 1/2ox of very slightly moldy weed.

Next time I make BHO out of moldy bud I'm definitely going to wash it with some Iso and filter it through a filter.

Why are you willing to risk your health? If it is moldy than throw it away and wait for the next harvest.


BW
 

Chiefsmokingbud

Slap-A-Ho tribe
Veteran
yeah i did have some buds that molded a bit... i threw them into the BHO mix with the popcorn and high end trim... i did not even think about that, it probably laid dormant for a while and then popped in to say hi... next time i am going to store it in the freezer for its whole life

There ya go
 

Ryu

Member
After asking similar questions to this thread in another thread I was recommended to start a thread so as not to be off topic.This thread was also pointed out to me so I thought it a more pertinent place, why spread the info out if there is a place it could fit appropriately?

Earlier in this thread, Not Guilty posted:
"The thing is the iso will kill the bacteria sure. but it wont destroy the toxins already produced by said bacteria......."

Gray Wolf also posted in that other thread:
"No question the spores can be killed with heat, but any toxins they have introduced into the mixture would probably not be at any temperatures safe to process cananbis oil at without destroying it also."

I had not considered toxins the spores could produce.

But rot is one of the few things I have never had beyond 1 random plant but I was given a couple small plants of moldy and mite covered white widow material from a grower friend and asked if I could do anything with it. We made half into iso oil and half into bho and ended up running some more of his cured stash to compare with it.

We could tell the difference between the moldy and non moldy BHO no problems, much cloudier/darker but the iso versions tasted and smelled the same, apart from a slight difference in strength as the moldy plant was chopped a couple weeks early.

I did try an iso wash of the moldy bud BHO and got another similar indifferent iso oil, same with the non moldy bud BHO and again, generic iso oil.
The other thing we noticed is the smoke from WW iso doesn't make his dog sneeze but smoke from the WW BHO does - to confirm, all weed makes the mut sneeze, just not iso oil smoke. Iso has to be stripping, irreversibly way more terpenes than bho?
The dog test still makes me smile

It's a crude test I know but do you think it is possible that the iso and heat kill spores AND any toxins left behind, it's pretty brutal on organic matter. Apologies if my learning scientific mind doesn't have a grasp of how toxins work yet. I have way more stupid questions I have resisted in asking :)

I would love to be able to do a butane wash on some iso to test the final result but apart from making a tiny tube and spraying through iso oil covered coffee filters/cotton wool, everything must be outside too long. I only have privacy inside unless I travel out of town and I don't want to get caught in a car with manufacturing equipment, however small scale it is.

Anyone?
 
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