Hot extraction RSO: Increasing extraction yield

Hi everyone, I've been making my own oil for about a year now and I'm in Costa Rica where its still quite illegal so I have tried to get the most out of my product; I'm not a grower and with limited resources I don't waste anything.

I also used to be an aeronautical engineer before I got sick and my main assistant (my dad) is a chemical engineer so we both have analytical minds and strive for accuracy.

There's no "winging it"; everything is measured and although I'm open to being corrected you better have some science to back up your claims; "Rick Simpson says" is not enough.

1 ounce (28 grams) of bud is yielding with my method 8-9 grams of oil. 1 ounce of cuttings yields 6-7 grams.

I'll go over everything in my following posts.

Will be nice to hear your take on the process. And welcome to IC

The very first time I made RSO it was with a cold wash, we did 2 washes of 60 minutes each and then ran it through a coffee filter and evaporated it with a rice cooker and finally used a coffee warmer and decarbed the oil using an oven.

I got home and told my dad about the whole process, by then I was already vaping to get rid of my morning sickness so my family is already pretty open on the whole thing.

He looked at me funny and says "you know I studied this". The old man starts pulling out books and notes from like 50 years ago. He explained that even 10 years after WW2 some chemicals used in tannery were either not available or still very expensive so they got these things from nature; certain plants, certain tree barks.

So there I am talking about grams and my dad is talking about metric tons.

In any chemical reaction your best friends are temperature and time, queue hot extractions.

The next time I did RSO I let my friend do his cold wash and asked him if I could have the stuff he was gonna throw away. 1 hour wash in a crockpot/slow cooker and by alcohol looked like cold coffee. I mixed it with his and we evaporated it the usual way. Our yield went up about 10%.

Ok well my pothead friends no longer bother trying to make RSO, I get so much more and my decarb is so much better that they just stopped doing it their way. Even if I keep 1/3 they are still getting more.

Step 1: Ground your weed
This is a no brainer but by reducing the size you reduce the air and therefore reduce the amount of solvent used. You also increase the contact area of the product.

A food processor works but a blender is better.

Product that has not previously been dried is harder to blend and may fill the blender blades with resin.

2. Decarboxylation

Why decarb the weed instead of the oil?
Basically it gets hotter and closer to the actual decarb temperatures than oil or liquids. Alcohol evaporates at 76*C (168*F) and will not go over that temperature, no matter how much heat is used. Water 100*C (212*F) and oil around 90*C (194*F).



You need your product to hit a sustained 250*F for either 27 or 51 minutes to do a proper decarb.

People decarb at a certain temp but never bother to check the temperature that the actual liquid is at and just verify the source temperature.

Warning: Decarbing the weed is a very stinky process. Calibrate the thermostat on a portable toast-r-oven using an oven thermometer. Make sure 250*F on the dial is 250*F inside the oven. Some ovens are notoriously innacurate and undercook/overcook things and do this outside or your whole house will smell like weed.

People think they are making more CBD by decarbing for CBD but that's not correct. You either boost THC or get rid of it. By removing the THC the CBD becomes more readily available.

In my specific case CBD really helped but initially I had to be borderline "bad trip" to feel the healing effects of CBD. I had to figure out a way to remove THC and remove the head high since I'm after the body high.

Even on a high THC / low CBD strain I've been able to remove the head high.

Hot Extraction

Quickly after starting making RSO my dad (the chemist) was already telling me how heat would increase my extraction yield. Heat will indeed pull out more stuff but that includes more chlorophyll and plant waxes so if you're looking for honey colored extract this ain't that.

I quickly stopped using things that don't have a thermostat. I hated not knowing how hot the rice cooker was getting or the temperature of my coffee warmer, it had hot spots that reached 280*F (so much for a gentle heating device). If it can boil water its too hot.

I bought a Nuwave PIC induction cooktop. I bought it online I got a 2nd one for free and with it I get precise temperature control from 100*F to 450*F. I even use it to decarb if I'm using a small amount of product like an ounce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPcLn4ZKAtw

Ok so for the extraction, this is like making tea. If your water is cold and you only leave your tea bags for a bit you wont get much. If the water is hot and you leave your bags in there you get a lot more.

So put all your product in an induction compatible pot and set your induction cooktop to 175*F. Alcohol boils at 168*F so it will slowly bring the alcohol/product mix to a boil, this will take about 20 minutes, lower the temperature to 100*F and leave for another 40 minutes. Turn off the heat and put away for 24 hours.

Yes hours, its not a typo. People are used to making RSO in a few hours. This is my medicine, the pharmacy sells nothing like it and the more I pull the better off I am so I start on a Sunday night and every 24 hours I empty out the green/black alcohol and add fresh alcohol.

I'll do four or five 24 hour extraction runs, the 5th one is sometimes not necessary.

If you do not wanna invest in precise temperature control you can use the rice cooker. Just put your product in, cover with alcohol and turn on. When the alcohol starts to boil, unplug, cover and let it sit for 24 hours.

What percentage alcohol are you using? How much alcohol to weed are you using?

I use 95% ethanol which is like 190 proof Everclear but if I can, I use 99.9% medical grade alcohol. Here's a pic:



I use about 1.2 liters of alcohol per ounce.

4. Solids

Because you are pulling so much more stuff you have to take extra care not to expose your oil to high heat. Even if you pass everything through a coffee filter, high heat will create solids and will reduce your extraction yield.

To avoid the creation of solids you want to use as little heat as possible, just above the evaporation temperature of alcohol.

When is it done?

People talk about bubble size, bubble color, amount of bubbles, etc. That's ok but I needed a more scientific way to determine that.

The alcohol/oil mix will not go above 168.8*F (76*C) because anything higher turns to vapor. If you boil water you cannot get it to go above 212*F (100*C), no matter how much heat you add.

The only exception is pressurized water which is why radiator caps are built to withstand 15-18 psi.

Going back the the alcohol/oil mix, as the alcohol content starts to evaporate you will slowly see a rise in temperature that more closely matches the source temperature. A rice cooker can boil water so it outputs more than 212*F and you therefore run the risk of burning the oil.

Since I use the induction cooktop I just lower the temperature to 100*F and leave for an hour.

Alcohol PH and Winterizing, or how to polish your extract.
This will hurt your output yield by 20-30% and is not a required step.

Chlorophyll has of a PH of around 4 (acid) alcohol has a PH of 7.4 (water's is 7) but by heating the product it will make the chlorophyll and waxes more easily soluble in alcohol.

By using small amounts of calcium hydroxide (PH 11.7) you can increase the PH of the alcohol to reduce the chlorophyll pickup. Calcium hydroxide is used in the food industry and in small amounts it is completely safe. Dissolving an antacid in your alcohol might have a similar effect although I'm not sure how much would be needed to increase the PH. You can use litmus paper to determine the PH.

Winterizing

Olive oil from the first press is green and has lots of solids, yet the one you buy at the store is yellow and clear, how is it done? Its winterized or cooled to a certain temperature and then refiltered.

In case of our alcohol/oil mix, pass the whole thing through coffee filters to remove the thicker stuff and place in a sealed container in the freezer for 48 hours. Alcohol will not freeze at such low temperatures but solids will precipitate and go to the bottom.

Refilter your alcohol, you will notice the filter getting full of stuff that previously went through.

UV reacting

The UV radiation in the sunlight will quickly break down the chlorophyll and breakdown products are amber, so the green color will disappears. Simply put your alcohol/oil mix in the sun for 4-5 hours.

Good info. Thanks for sharing the process.

So does this process remove all the THC?

I keep getting asked more often for non psychoactive tinctures

Looks like I got my final excuse to get the nu-wave!

Dankstang said:

So does this process remove all the THC?

I keep getting asked more often for non psychoactive tinctures

Looks like I got my final excuse to get the nu-wave!

Click to expand...

Only if you decarb for reduced THC, this process pulls out everything but the chemical composition of the oil still depends on your starting material and decarboxylation profile.

I've acquired an ounce of white russian strain, not my best choice for the high CBD medical cannabis I'm looking for in this particular case. (Got a patient with Parkinson's asking for CBD)

I will be filming the whole process and sharing the video download links.

ha ha when I seen the nu wave I was thinking the same thing...

Here's part 1:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/f5tdkx4v8cas8vz/P1_prep%26decarb.mp4

Part 2:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/m9my6e9zboz2mep/P2_extraction.mp4

Part 3:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/c2eyw4cl2180aok/P3_filter&evaporate.mp4

Do not try to stream the videos, download the files to view.