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Best way to handle hash/oil?

Get_Higher

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 11, 2010
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I recently started making my own alcohol hash oil and after trial and error, mixed results and lots of learning, i have a decent method to yeild a pleasing product. However, said product, even when taken directly from the freezer in a pyrex pan, heats up enough with the most minimal contact from razor blade to bowl that i get sticky, waste product and time, you get the picture. Aside from coating the hash oil product in keif, what are some tips to keep it off my fingers? Could this be an issue of "curing"? When i say minimal i mean it, sometimes just the radiant heat or heat conducted thru the blade is enough to end up with a sticky blade and fingers. I rarely touch the "chunk".
 
I haven't worked with ethanol extracts, but when dealing with large amounts of distillate we use a heat gun, hot plates, and tubs of warm water just to keep everything at a nice warm temperature so the oil moves around better. There will always be a loss and the best extractors learn how to recover that and sell it as cartridges lol, but seriously it's impossible or not worth your time to get everything.
 
Right on, thanks. Ive learned quite a bit in the short time since i posted over the course of about 5 runs. What type of distillates are you referring to? Do you mean a product like isolated thc? And when you say the oil moves around better, do you mean to transfer to another container from the "pan" you dried/finished/cured it in?
 
Yes to both of those. Only reason I mention distillate is because it's really viscous so it's not to easy to work with, but your product might be even stickier.
 
It depends on how you made the extract. Did you use a freezer to precipitate the waxes and filter them off? Did you just rinse the bud with ice cold alcohol? what type of alcohol are you using? Was the bud cured or fresh?

What ever you're using it likely contains water probably in a small amount but still enough to remain in the extracted material.

One thing you can do is just heat it in the oven like you're making beef jerky. That would dry it out and make it harder. It would also result in less flavor so it's always best to perform the extraction with an alcohol that has 0% water content.

Like I said you really want to start out with 0% water for a firmer end product but if you already made the mistake then you just need to slap it in the oven on the lowest heat and leave it cracked open. Just stir it around once in a while until it stops getting thicker and then you're done.
 
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Thanks guys :) and inwas using 92% iso cold and placing glass in freezer while filtering if i felt it was warming too much, tho my method of filtering keeps most if the plant matter out 9f the filter while lots of alcohol remains anyway. Could you school me a bit on precip of the waxes??
 
Thanks guys :) and inwas using 92% iso cold and placing glass in freezer while filtering if i felt it was warming too much, tho my method of filtering keeps most if the plant matter out 9f the filter while lots of alcohol remains anyway. Could you school me a bit on precip of the waxes??

I would love to! lol.

The best way I found was to use mason jars. The kind of jars with the flat circle piece and then a rim that screws down over it. These jars make it really easy to go from freezing the alcohol to filtering it because you can clamp the filters down with the screw on rim instead of the flat circle piece. Using the jars this way really simplifies the whole process and everything stays as cold as possible. Doing it this way I was able to get rock hard shatter so hard it I could powder it into dust. You can actually pre cool a jar with a filter under the circle piece then take off the circle piece right before you start pouring and filtering out the waxes.

Also there is 99% iso out there I think walmart has it. Dirt cheap too.

Using 95% ethanol is better because you don't have to worry as much when some is left over in the final product. Isopropyl alcohol is toxic so the extract needs to go on some pyrex, spread out thin, heated up, and stirred around to drive off as much iso as possible (also water).
 
^I agree using Ethanol is definitely better if you can afford, but it's much more expensive and hard to get in some areas. I wonder at what scale it really becomes worth it too recover that ethanol.
 
I have since switched to everclear :) thanks again. Definitely gonna use the lid and filter method you described, solid method.
 
I have also always made sure to drive off alc with heat in pyrex as i am not unfamiliar with "kitchen" or "clandestine" chemistry ( ill just leave it at that) but wondered if i was losing potency as i was sure i was losing terpenes.
 
If you happen to have a vacuum pump then I would recommend getting a buchner funnel. They will cut down the time required to filter exponentially.
 
Yeah I think it does cause some of the terps to go away. Sadly. I don't think there is a really good way to get rid of all the solvents and water without losing some terps because they have similar properties to ethanol and iso so anything you do will result in some losses. You don't lose hardly any THC though unless you're heating it too hot.

Use of butane is different and results in more terps because it boils and such lower temperature than the terps (you also need to purge under vacuum). I think diethyl ether is also better but I have never used it because it's so expensive or hard to acquire.

Honestly the best solution that I can come up with (and I don't know 100% if this would actually work) is to let the ethanol evaporate on its own (in a pyrex baking pan for more surface area). Once it's looking like it's all evaporated then I would spread it out thin and hit it with a blow dryer just enough to get it to the desired consistency (stir it around and spread it out with a razor or something).
 
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Im most def looking at the pump, funnel, glassware, heating element, thermometer the works. Im using some good starting material, too notch nugs for my neck of the woods in a non legal state, with that in mind, do you guys have a fav weight or weight to alc ratio to run?
 
Ive also done a really ghetto butane run years ago with some trim a friend had laying around as i was trying to convince them to throw some kill in after he sae it would work...sadly he didnt think it was worth it. Do any of you guys blast as well?
 
I think extraction with butane would result in better extraction product IF you can purge the butane from it before you use it. you need a vacuum pump to do it. best deal for vacuum pumps usually come with a chamber too.

Only problem with butane is it's not healthy to breath in, its flammable, the final product will likely always have trace amounts of butane in it no matter how well you purge.

If youre not in a legal state then you are really pushing the limits of the law by blasting. if you get caught the freakin geezers would treat you like a meth cook and you would likely get a jail or prison sentence.

Making dry sift hash is simple and free (after you get the screen). Left overs can be extracted like you already have been doing with iso.
 
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Lots of companies have gotten butane below 0 ppm. It's really simple if you have the equipment (Closed-loop system) and the drive to learn. Plus you inhale more butane in your place of work than you probably do from a dab since most commercial buildings have butane exposure limits. I would be more concerned about other contaminants. If they didn't distill the butane their could be a lot of nasty shit in there that extractors generally refer to as "mystery oil"

The toxicity of butane is low. Huge exposure concentrations can be assumed in butane abuse. The predominant effects observed in abuse cases are central nervous system (CNS) and cardiac effects.

It was concluded that 10,000 ppm (10-min exposure) was a boundary for drowsiness. An intraspecies uncertainty factor of 1 is considered adequate because the concentration-response curve for CNS-effects appears to be very steep; thus, interindividual variability will be relatively small. Also, no noticeable irritation was reported at concentrations up to 100,000 ppm (probably for a few min), and a larger uncertainty factor of 3 would lead to unrealistically low AEGL-1 values.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201460/
 
Even if it's 0 ppm it's still in there... Also I'm very sensitive to butane exposure just small wiffs cause drowsiness and difficulties thinking. Sure it's considered safe to take in very small amounts of butane according to some shit but simple fact is butane is not good for your brain and that counts even in tiny amounts.
 
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