Extracting Kief to Oil

[villain420247]

I have just over a LB of kief to process...having only done qwet and butane (including absolutes), I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations on processing pure kief.
I saw a post from GrayWolf from a year or so ago where he was saying that you can do a longer soak given that it's kief, but anyone got any recommendations on how long?
Guessing that I can split it up between a few smaller mason jars, add 190proof everclear to just cover the volume of kief and can let it sit for a while and filter it and purge it with heat/then vac...but any advice is much appreciated. TIA

 

[m314]

I'd try several short extractions with ethanol. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes each. The first extraction will be the best, but the 2nd and 3rd should still be good.

Let the last one sit around much longer, a day or two if you want. You can skip the evaporation step with the lowest quality extraction. Just keep it as an oral tincture.

 

[chuckyoufarley]

i dont think i ever seen a post where a person has a pound of Kief ,HOLY CRAP thats a lot of kief .must have taken awhile to accumulate that much .wow.it would take me a long time to get that much from my kief box from gypsy hahahahhaha .did you have to use a tumbler or someting similar

 

[Avinash.miles]

I made a thread not so long ago about making bho from dry ice keif... went pretty unnoticed but i think its a decent technique, especially for processing large quantities of trim into keif then into oil:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=272412

 

[villain420247]

I made a thread not so long ago about making bho from dry ice keif... went pretty unnoticed but i think its a decent technique, especially for processing large quantities of trim into keif then into oil:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=272412

Fuk yeah - thanks Avi!

 

[villain420247]

i dont think i ever seen a post where a person has a pound of Kief ,HOLY CRAP thats a lot of kief .must have taken awhile to accumulate that much .wow.it would take me a long time to get that much from my kief box from gypsy hahahahhaha .did you have to use a tumbler or someting similar

I am running it for a friend and he popped over with a gigantic jar of nothin but kief it's crazy - I'll take a pic.

 

[Gray Wolf]

I have just over a LB of kief to process...having only done qwet and butane (including absolutes), I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations on processing pure kief.
I saw a post from GrayWolf from a year or so ago where he was saying that you can do a longer soak given that it's kief, but anyone got any recommendations on how long?
Guessing that I can split it up between a few smaller mason jars, add 190proof everclear to just cover the volume of kief and can let it sit for a while and filter it and purge it with heat/then vac...but any advice is much appreciated. TIA

Starting with kief, you can use warm alcohol to speed up the extraction and shake it vigorously to keep the boundary layers removed and the extraction going at maximum efficiency.

If you use much heat to evaporate away the alcohol, you will partially decarboxylate it. Cold boiling under vacuum will prevent that.

 

[Avinash.miles]

Here's a tube just blasted, mixed dry ice sift keif and plant matter mixed in layers.

 

[AlterEgo860]

is that before or after the butane went threw? im guessing before?

 

[Avinash.miles]

before

 

[villain420247]

Avi - I assume that ran without issue? Looks like a nice tube

Did some prelim experiments yesterday (had already started before I got GWs reply) and had some good/interesting results. I'll do more next weekend and try a few different recommended techniques.

Here are a few pics and results:

first the giganto jar of kief-

This was the result of an ethanol wash (190 everclear) for only 45 seconds (I did another for 45 min and another for 30 sec...kinda similar results)...I am almost certainly screwing that process up though based on subsequent intel from GW - like at the very least I am using heat to evap the alcohol before going under vac and using heat there too, so despite the shatter type consistency, I assume I have decarb'd that at least a bit during the initial purge?:

And this was the result of the straight kief run in an open column. I used a little bit of sugar trim/larf on the top and bottom to avoid it packing out and it ran through great.
Like Avi said in the other post - it comes out darker than when running plant material...like cloudy in my case, and the yield was 25-30% in a single wash. and what was interesting (anyone that has insight - please share, I like learning ) is the way it finished out - like it kinda porous vs. settling down to a viscous oil. As in - the muffin lifted and settled some - but not fully and it almost created a honeycomb cookie, but not in the sense of a traditional honeycomb that is wax consistency. Both of my tester runs popped out like this out of the vac:

This is a run of some GSC sugar trim that I did over the weekend as well. It came out nice. 17g. Tastes like oranges

I'll do some more next weekend using some of my new insight and advice from y'all.
Thanks everyone!

 

[Avinash.miles]

thanks for sharing your results....
and yes that blast went off without any problem... it's a BIGASS tube, shot like 6 cans thru it, got about 20 grams.

 

[chuckyoufarley]

WOW is all i can say about that

 

[CatManDoo]

So @villian420247, those bottom two runs are with butane and the top darker one is with ethanol?
I understand that you overcooked the top run but wouldn't an alcohol run come out darker anyway because it will carry what small amounts of chlorophyll there is in the kief from tiny bits of plant matter? Or is that amount negligible in the case of kief ?

 

[villain420247]

So @villian420247, those bottom two runs are with butane and the top darker one is with ethanol?
I understand that you overcooked the top run but wouldn't an alcohol run come out darker anyway because it will carry what small amounts of chlorophyll there is in the kief from tiny bits of plant matter? Or is that amount negligible in the case of kief ?

Correct - the top shatter patty is the ethanol...but (from reading and listening to GW more), it seems that the chlorophyll pickup should be minimized due to the well sifted kief and any plant matter should get picked up by the coffee filter I'd figure?
I 'think' it should be possible to get a nice amber shatter from the ethanol wash...I just haven't done it yet. But I have also been doing 99% of the purge under a double boiler that is getting reasonably hot (much hotter than I do with the butane/vac process anyway) and didn't realize that I could put a deeper pool of alcohol in the petri dish in the vac chamber and it would boil off under vac (although not sure how long that process takes). Interestingly though - the ethanol washes I did on the kief were dark right away...the only runs I have done with ethanol before came out really clear in the alcohol until I cooked the purge.

 

[CatManDoo]

OK Cool. Iv'e got a some extra kief from a couple dry ice shakes that I am willing to compare with alcohol and butane extractions plus vac purging also. Hopefully I don't eff up the science class lab-journal part (lol) but I'll keep you posted on my findings. Just trying to help out. peace.

 

[CatManDoo]

By the way, alcohol purging seems benign but I have noticed an unpleasant effect in my little house when vac purging alcohol. That shit's toxic just like any other solvent. Ventilate. I say I say Ventilate..

 

[m314]

By the way, alcohol purging seems benign but I have noticed an unpleasant effect in my little house when vac purging alcohol. That shit's toxic just like any other solvent. Ventilate. I say I say Ventilate..

I don't mind breathing a little ethanol vapor. Some bars have machines now where you can get drunk inhaling from an alcohol vaporizer. The toxicity is in the dose; it's only harmful if you have too much. I'm more careful about ventilation when purging isopropanol oil.

 

[nakadashi]

Before and after (total yield 24% on the best grade, 17% on the worst grade). Did this with straight kief in a terpenator, 350g at a time.

 

[mack 10]

^Dam! Some fat jars of kif in here, Some even sicker concerntrates.