You lose the waxes which are ostensibly inert inactive ingredients, plus monoterpenes, which all have their own medical properties, and as noted, contribute to the entourage effect.
You would get the same effect extracting with alcohol, because the loss of course occurs during alcohol removal.
The question then becomes one of perspective, changing the question to whether it removes enough to make the medication less effective, and we have routinely winterized since we've been making Holy Anointing Oil and Holy Shit, both which have their following and record of success, so it doesn't make it ineffective.
Except for the fan leaves, stems, and roots, we extract guts, feathers, and all that is left, all together.
That leaves open the question of just what the optimum levels are, and what would be best, which I leave to the professionals!
Interesting finding after a series of bummers (two days of trying to recalibrate my stock pot vac chamber with home brew PID controller and it seems to be just the thermocouple, substituted the Dork DSV and back to bliss, and then... the extremely low yield from what I thought was a reputable walk in dispensary's nuggs, and to top off the experience, this crazy ass ethanol goop, which at the end of purge drives my pump into some sort of overheat or something spewing fog throughout the house!)
So I have discovered for lack of a better word, "Flubber." It is the pristine separated fraction composed of a 100% ethanol dried flower top soak minus the components of a BHO soak.
It's really, really refined crap.
I soaked in butane, poured off through a 2.5 micron filter to an evaporating dish, added room temp ethanol to the Mason jar for a second soak, and let it slowly drain off through another 2.5 micron filter paper to a second evaporating dish.
The BHO was vac purged at 115F down to the 20,000 micron level until it wasn't showing much reaction, less than an hour. Btw, it was poured off through filter paper screwed under the jar lid when the butane was reading 10F on the side of the jar, up from as I recall 20 degrees lower five minutes before at the beginning of the soak.
The ethanol extract was evaporated in a ceramic Corning Ware dish with a filtered, three inch computer fan causing it to ripple gently in the wash, while underneath bringing comforting warmth was a silicone heater controlled by a Variac. The boil off temp was maintained at ~70-75F, and at the very end before going in the vacuum chamber I raised it to ~95F because the dish wasn't going to get much heat conductance from the bottom of the vac pot. So, I vacuumed it in the dish, then scrapped to parchment paper, and then vacuumed it until it was dead at 115F, vacuumed all the way down, repeatedly. No odor of alcohol, I didn't know you could purge alcohol so completely and easily, anyway it passes my level of subjective scrutiny as regards residual solvent.
Two products from a deep wash of whole cannabis tops.
Two odd findings, other than it's surprising there was any THC left to extract, the half ounce had been stored in a zip bag in a Mason jar in my closet for over two years!
1) The BHO produced the usual mild choke mechanism, good stuff!
But not the black crap (actually held up to bright light can be seen just between thin amber color and 'the blackness,' a red, a might purdy red. Good ole red... dabbed he, she, it up and wtf, no choke response. Period. Flies in your face.
2) The black "Flubber" is very psychoactive, it produces an immediate change in consciousness when dabbed, rather than try to express it even subjectively, may I suggest goths will love it.
Pictured:
The round jar has the black ethanol soak goop.
On parchment is the BHO first soak, and on anther parchment is a small chuck my solid glass Durbin Poison BHO.
Guild 99.9...% THC-A crystals
I'm dabbing at 710F because the black goop is, well goop, and hits better at a higher temp. And even though I fine filtered it, it leaves a wee bit of 'carbon' on the soldering iron tip, but really not too bad, I'm probably going dab it until it's gone, no cough or anything like that...
Wit' all this talk of cannabis shake your booty in
patent leather pumps, maybe I should patent the process, one of the broad claims might be as a pre-procedural tranquilizer. Produces sustained calm with mild dissociation, vapable for those that need instant relief.
So for those who are looking for natural relief, there're seem to be some components in selective processing that are very much a part of the voodoo mix, and who do dare mess wit' it? In that, Rick Simpson is a rad genius. (Just use a better solvent than naphtha/Coleman fuel!)
