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Best Solvent For THC Extraction
- Thread starter kjb1891
- Start date
Mitakuye Oyasin
Established member
Ice House said:
Funny. I knew a guy who took .5g hash and half a spoonfull of butter in a metal spoon and held it over a flame until it all melted together, then stirred it into a yougurt smoothie. He used to joke that while what he was doing was healthy and natural, if someone would have walked into the room while he was "cooking up his medicine" it would have looked like an entirely different scene altogether. Sometimes you just gotta laugh at the absurdity of things.
*SWIM likes using Butane in a frozen vacuum thermos (Pope Dewar flask) with frozen material for a 1 hour soak. It is very selective and seems to get the goods out and leave the junk behind. Just be sure to use only glass (no plastics) to reduce in and be sure to purge completely so there is no butane gas left in the final product.
*Hexane is a good NP solvent and pretty selective for cannabis goodies 1 hour or less soak and shake
*Ethanol (Everclear or Bacardi 151) works in a pinch for a quick 1-3 minute solvent soak and shake, though it grabs waxes and chlorohpyl. Might not taste as good as the Hexane or Butane end product
SWIM never uses Isopropyl, though lots of people do.
Good luck
landfishd
Rising Star
landfishd said:
Here are a couple pictures of the resin collected with this method. I only experimented using the 160 bag. Next time I will compare with the 120. I looked at some under the 100x scope and it's a bunch of crystals with some green contaminants. Maybe the 120 bag will give a purer return with less contaminants. Not sure, but so far I am really impressed by the ease and the return. Processed about 450 grams of some crap cooked weed (plants did not receive any water under the lights probably for a week at the end of flowering) and retrieved 40 grams in the first 2 minute shake. About 20 grams in some greener stuff.
Edit: Before anyone calls me out, yes I know dry ice is not a solvent.. Still a good method to retrieve some crystals from a bunch of plants though.
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Mitakuye Oyasin
Established member
Great to see and hear about a nice return using this method. I've done the ice water hash extraction and its a lot of work for a little return IMO. Love to hear about easier techniques. Thanks.
Lichen
Rising Star
I had great success using butane - used a bit of pvc pipe with coffee filters taped to one end.
Filled pipe with an ounce of decent bush.
Capped it and made a small hole for butane nozzle.
Squirted about 4 cans through.
Let it drip upon a flat pyrex dish.
Let it evaporate, making sure to pop any bubbles.
Froze it into crystals, and scraped it off the dish with a razor to be stored in a vial.
Would love to try making bubble hash, the idea of butane residues in the end product was something I was never comfortable with.
Filled pipe with an ounce of decent bush.
Capped it and made a small hole for butane nozzle.
Squirted about 4 cans through.
Let it drip upon a flat pyrex dish.
Let it evaporate, making sure to pop any bubbles.
Froze it into crystals, and scraped it off the dish with a razor to be stored in a vial.
Would love to try making bubble hash, the idea of butane residues in the end product was something I was never comfortable with.
Mitakuye Oyasin
Established member
Please do not use PVC for Butane cannabis extractions not any other plastic material. You will end up with nasty petrochemicals in your end product. Glass turkey basters work well and even stainless steal turkey basters work great. Just make sure they are not galvanised and that no coating has been used on them. Glass is always the cleanest. Stainless steal is the second best.
One suggestion as to how to get rid of butane in your end product is to get a cheap vacuum seal product for use with glass jars. Pump and seal (Pump-N-Seal® - Preserve What's Good.) is what I use and its a manual vac pump with little adhesive strips. You take a glass mason jar with a lid that makes a tight seal to the glass, puncture a hole in the metal lid with a thumb tack and place the adhesive strip over the hole. You can then use the pump and seal device to pump out the air from the glass jar. I store all my medicine and lots of food products this way. To use it to get the butane out of the oil you have you will want to have the oil in a glass vial or container that you can heat to 125-140 degrees Celsius. Make sure the top of the glass container with the oil is open. Once the oil has been heated to this temp it will be in a liquid form. Carefully place the glass containing your oil into a small clean glass mason jar and seal it with a lid that has been punctured with a small hole and covered over with the pump and seal adhesive tape. Then carefully pump all of the air out of the mason jar and a vacuum will be created inside that glass mason jar. Any remaining butane should come out of the oil and turn to gas. Continue to pump out the air inside the glass for several minutes until you no longer see the oil bubble or froth. You might need to reheat the oil and repeat this vacuum process several times if you have a lot of oil and/or a lot of trapped butane.
Another method is to use some ethanol (everclear or Bacardi 151) and a double broiler with a glass bowl over over some heated water. place the oil and enough ethanol into the glass bowl and heat it over a pot of water and stir it until it turns from a thick oil into a liquid. This should allow all the trapped butane to off gas into the air and free it from the oil. Slowly stir and heat the oil until it gets back into a thick state like it was before. Be careful not to heat it too much or you could burn the oil.
Both methods work well and get out trapped butane that you often cannot see, but is there trapped in the oil waiting to be freed. Its better to be proactive than to have the trapped butane go into your lungs when it is finally set free.
One suggestion as to how to get rid of butane in your end product is to get a cheap vacuum seal product for use with glass jars. Pump and seal (Pump-N-Seal® - Preserve What's Good.) is what I use and its a manual vac pump with little adhesive strips. You take a glass mason jar with a lid that makes a tight seal to the glass, puncture a hole in the metal lid with a thumb tack and place the adhesive strip over the hole. You can then use the pump and seal device to pump out the air from the glass jar. I store all my medicine and lots of food products this way. To use it to get the butane out of the oil you have you will want to have the oil in a glass vial or container that you can heat to 125-140 degrees Celsius. Make sure the top of the glass container with the oil is open. Once the oil has been heated to this temp it will be in a liquid form. Carefully place the glass containing your oil into a small clean glass mason jar and seal it with a lid that has been punctured with a small hole and covered over with the pump and seal adhesive tape. Then carefully pump all of the air out of the mason jar and a vacuum will be created inside that glass mason jar. Any remaining butane should come out of the oil and turn to gas. Continue to pump out the air inside the glass for several minutes until you no longer see the oil bubble or froth. You might need to reheat the oil and repeat this vacuum process several times if you have a lot of oil and/or a lot of trapped butane.
Another method is to use some ethanol (everclear or Bacardi 151) and a double broiler with a glass bowl over over some heated water. place the oil and enough ethanol into the glass bowl and heat it over a pot of water and stir it until it turns from a thick oil into a liquid. This should allow all the trapped butane to off gas into the air and free it from the oil. Slowly stir and heat the oil until it gets back into a thick state like it was before. Be careful not to heat it too much or you could burn the oil.
Both methods work well and get out trapped butane that you often cannot see, but is there trapped in the oil waiting to be freed. Its better to be proactive than to have the trapped butane go into your lungs when it is finally set free.
Lichen
Rising Star
Thankyou so much for this great advice on using a vaccum system - I will do this next time.
Before my first bho extraction I did try to find out to the best of my ability whether PVC was ok to use. There was a lot of mixed views, but I think the consensus at the time was that PVC was ok. Real clincher for me was this chart:
Irregardless, I'd feel a lot safer using glass.
EDIT: To be fair, this Chemical Compatibility Guide gives a totally different safety status.
Before my first bho extraction I did try to find out to the best of my ability whether PVC was ok to use. There was a lot of mixed views, but I think the consensus at the time was that PVC was ok. Real clincher for me was this chart:
Irregardless, I'd feel a lot safer using glass.
EDIT: To be fair, this Chemical Compatibility Guide gives a totally different safety status.
Mitakuye Oyasin
Established member
Yeah, i'd err on the side of caution, especially for something you are going to end up putting into your body - especially through the lungs. PVC is nasty stuff. just the smell of it sets me off. Glass turkey basters are cheap. $10 or less on ebay or amazon if you are doing supercritical through a tube. The Dewar Flask butane soak is pretty amazing. These can be had pretty cheap used - around $100 for a 1000 - 2000 ml one. That can handle a lot of material and will gobble up about 5-8 cans of 320ml butane. Make sure everything is frozen in the freezer for at least 24 hours - Dewar flask, material to extract, plenty of butane cans. The cold and the vacuum thermos keeps the butane in liquid form for a long time allowing a proper soak for the materials. Seems to be much more efficient than the supercritical tube method.
GratefulDad
Rising Star
Acetone dissolves terpenes much better than butane, and if you do a quick 30 second soak, the oil will come out nice and clean. The oil will taste even better than any butane extraction, as well.. The length of soak can determine how clean or dirty the extract will be, as longer soaks will pull out more plant gunk. Most of the smell and THC is contained in the trichome heads on the leaves and buds, so only a quick rinse is needed for making very potent, great tasting oil.
