Fresh Frozen Ethanol Extraction Spent Material Photos

PDX Dopesmoker · Sep 29, 2018

I was kind of surprised at the number of intact heads I spotted in these pictures. The buds were in the Everclear for 5 minutes of soaking & agitation in my deep freeze at about -25ºF or maybe a pinch colder.
Does anyone know if the alcohol is able to leech the oil out without destroying the trichome head or do the intact heads represent resin that was missed by the solvent?

troutman · Sep 29, 2018

I suspect intact an trichome means not fully extracted.
Try again for 10 minutes and 15 minutes to compare.

PDX Dopesmoker · Sep 29, 2018

troutman said:
I suspect intact an trichome means not fully extracted.
Try again for 10 minutes and 15 minutes to compare.

Thats a good idea, I might try it again as soon as the next plant comes down. The alcohol after extracting was very pale and the oil I scraped up was too, I guess I can probably go longer without getting too green.

Dawn Patrol · Sep 29, 2018

IME a quick wash is just that, it does not extract everything and I've seen the exact same thing from my washes.

Over the years I've arrived at this approach. I keep all trim and larf separate by strain and then make dry ice hash with my smallest micron bag.

This is kept for hash for smoking since it's strain specific.

Then I shake the same material with a 220 bag and this product is often combined with complimentary strains and is used for tinctures.

All spent material at that point is combined and extracted into one large batch of coconut oil for salves.

This approach may not work for you but it works well for me.

For adaptation purposes, the 220 bag product could probably be used for edibles if you don't use tinctures.

If I didn't make salves, I'd probably just discard the remaining material TBH.

Gray Wolf · Sep 29, 2018

PDX Dopesmoker said:
I was kind of surprised at the number of intact heads I spotted in these pictures. The buds were in the Everclear for 5 minutes of soaking & agitation in my deep freeze at about -25ºF or maybe a pinch colder.
Does anyone know if the alcohol is able to leech the oil out without destroying the trichome head or do the intact heads represent resin that was missed by the solvent?

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They weren't extracted. You need to run longer.

Klompen · Sep 29, 2018

Is there a reason you're using Everclear? ISO is a lot cheaper and a much better solvent IMO

GOT_BUD? · Sep 29, 2018

Klompen said:
Is there a reason you're using Everclear? ISO is a lot cheaper and a much better solvent IMO

My guess is Everclear is food grade, where ISO is not.

Some of us care about that.

MJPassion · Sep 29, 2018

As long as your material ramains below waters freezing point there shouldn't be any water solubles extracted. Is it possible that extraction temps could be raised, closer to waters freeze temps, in order to facilitate a more complete extraction?

Just an idea. I'm no extract expert.

Klompen · Sep 29, 2018

GOT_BUD? said:
My guess is Everclear is food grade, where ISO is not.

Some of us care about that.

If you're removing the solvent after the extraction than Everclear actually leaves behind more contaminants than ISO does. If you're using it as a tincture then using grain ethanol makes plenty of sense.

PDX Dopesmoker · Sep 29, 2018

Klompen said:
Is there a reason you're using Everclear? ISO is a lot cheaper and a much better solvent IMO

Exactly, using Everclear makes it more challenging and adds the panache of conspicuous consumption to the game as well.

PDX Dopesmoker · Sep 29, 2018

Gray Wolf said:
They weren't extracted. You need to run longer.

Thanks, I took the CLS class from your group a few years ago and we were taught some detailed information about trichomes, but not specifically if the solvent can bypass the cuticle or if it enters via the neck of the decapitated trichome head, however it seems like common sense that it would be a lot easier for solvent to get inside a trich head via the neck than by traversing a frozen cellulose barrier like the cuticle. Do you think that increasing the agitation to knock more trich heads free could be an alternative to soaking longer?

PDX Dopesmoker · Sep 29, 2018

MJPassion said:
As long as your material ramains below waters freezing point there shouldn't be any water solubles extracted. Is it possible that extraction temps could be raised, closer to waters freeze temps, in order to facilitate a more complete extraction?

Just an idea. I'm no extract expert.

The melting point of that frozen water drops pretty swiftly when you combine it with ethanol, I already picked up a pretty significant amount the way I did it the first time around. Evaporating the solvent away in a very thin film saved it from being a sticky mess, but the milky stage of the evaporation was a lot more than it normally is with dry material.

PDX Dopesmoker · Oct 1, 2018

Here are photos of a 15 min soak with agitation halfway through. The fluid was a darker shade of pale yellow this time, just slightly starting to verge on green & hopefully it has more oil in it this time.

jump117 · Oct 1, 2018

Probably these are ideal trichomes with a uniform, durable and intact wax cuticle that ethanol cannot dissolve, but butane can.

PDX Dopesmoker · Oct 2, 2018

jump117 said:
Probably these are ideal trichomes with a uniform, durable and intact wax cuticle that ethanol cannot dissolve, but butane can.

That seems pretty realistic, maybe I should try a butane thermos attack eventually too. I've been wondering if maybe the Everclear I've been using might be getting saturated, especially with the water picked up from fresh frozen material reducing the alcohol's ability as a solvent. Tough to tell exactly since I didn't weight the material beforehand or measure how much alcohol I used and since I have no idea what the saturation point of hash oil in -25ºF Everclear is that further obfuscates the issue.
On the bright side the first little batch was strong, tasty stuff and now I got another half g or so to scrape up.

PDX Dopesmoker · Oct 2, 2018

Here is a photo of the thin film partially scraped up, its got a nicer color than I was expecting for 15 min on fresh material.

troutman · Oct 2, 2018

Do I hear 20 minutes next time? :biggrin:

PDX Dopesmoker · Oct 2, 2018

troutman said:
Do I hear 20 minutes next time?

No, the next one was 3 minutes continuous agitation. After I put the Everclear in the jar with the flower and closed the lid, I put on an oven mitt and put my arm down to the bottom of the deep freeze, closed the lid on my shoulder as much as I could and shook the jar for the duration of Motorhead/Girl School "Please Don't Touch" (2:51) before straining and filtering the fluid. Looks like there are more decapitated trichs this time, also this was the greenest fluid so far.

GOT_BUD? · Oct 3, 2018

PDX Dopesmoker said:
Here is a photo of the thin film partially scraped up, its got a nicer color than I was expecting for 15 min on fresh material.
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How did you get that from everclear?

I've tried it a couple times but always end up with RSO. Which doesn't work in a pen cart.

That's really good looking stuff

PDX Dopesmoker · Oct 3, 2018

GOT_BUD? said:
How did you get that from everclear?

I've tried it a couple times but always end up with RSO. Which doesn't work in a pen cart.

That's really good looking stuff

Thanks, I just use GW's basic QWET technique. Cold material and cold Everclear keeps most of the water and water soluble stuff out of the final result.
I scraped up the most recent batch and it looks about the same as the one in the photo, maybe a shade more yellow and with a little bit more particulates and it seems like i got more oil per unit bud.

Fresh Frozen Ethanol Extraction Spent Material Photos

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