[learningta]

Curious about whats out there for the guys using alcohol as a solvent.

Obviously you need to soak your plant material in either ethanol or isopropyl to extract the chemicals we're after, I'm curious how people are separating the spent plant matter from the solvent afterwards?

Obviously with the cost of solvent I want to leave as little "angels share" in the spent plant material as possible. Just soaking and draining seems to leave quite a bit of wetness in the plant material.

I'm curious if anyone here has used or had any thoughts on continuous feed centrifuges or belt presses?

Looking at scaling up quite a bit in the near future and every bit of solvent we can keep from going out the door with the spent plant material will be money well spent.

[Mr. Greengenes]

I've heard good things about the quick wash vacuum recovery method and I have some concentrate made that way by my friend, but I have no personal experience with it. The concentrate smells very nice. It has most if not all of the terpenes that were in the original flower. I think I still taste a teeny bit of the ethanol, but looking at the elaborate equipment he has, it might very well just be my imagination.

I use 70% Iso to soak the leftover chips from pressing rosin. The chips are compact and more can fit in a jar than flower. After soaking a day or two, I press it out in a tea strainer. Then put it through a coffee filter and into a bowl to evaporate the alcohol. I've been mixing the concentrate with vegetable oil and putting it into those refillable roll on bottles.

But, have you looked into pressing rosin? I've only had one a few weeks and done maybe 10 squishes, but I'm beginning to think it's very efficient at extracting even at my low skill level. Plus, I think the press is cheaper than the equipment for Qwiso. So far, it seems like I can do about 7g per squish with 3"x5" plates using only parchment paper. Using bags might let me do more.

[PDX Dopesmoker]

I use a french press myself, but I've seen someone's videos of their centrifuge for alcohol extraction a few months ago, its out there if you want it.

[Gry]

Piece of silk and a stick. I use it on 60 grams at a time. I toss the cannabis in a permanent coffee filter to squeeze out the majority simply by pressing it into the filter w/ a plastic lid. Then I dump it on a square piece of silk the size of a large handkerchief. I gather up the four corners and pick it up so the cannabis becomes like a ball. At that point a stick is placed between the four collected corners, so that as the stick is twisted, the silk squeezes the cannabis tighter.
The stick is turned while holding the ball over the solvent container until 'spent'.
With a little practice the process can be done in under 30 seconds as effectively as any of the many potato ricers I have trashed.
The silk and stick was borrowed from a traditional hash making process.