hollywood_cole
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2008
- Messages
- 43
a couple weeks ago, i made a tincture by doing the following:
1) take about 4 grams of finely ground bud, spread thin on a pyrex baking dish and leave in the oven at 260 for an hour to decarboxylate the THC.
2) remove bud from oven, place in mason jar, cover in boiling water. close jar, shake, strain off water, repeat. (the idea being to get rid of whatever water soluble things i could, since the cannabinoids aren't water soluble). press out as much water as possible from the plant matter.
3) in the jar, cover the wet plant matter in about 8 oz of slightly warm 99% isopropyl alcohol. shake, drain alcohol into pyrex dish. repeat with the other half of the bottle of alcohol.
4) let the alcohol evaporate. i did this by running a hair dryer above the dish for a little over an hour and then letting the rest evaporate on its own over the next couple days. a few days later, there was a little bit of liquid in the dish, and it didn't smell like alcohol at all, so i assumed it was the 1% water portion of the 99% alcohol, and left it in the oven to evaporate a bit faster (at 260, the lowest temp i can get, for about 20 minutes).
5) scrape up the crude hash paste in the dish. i'm left with something that's very dark brown and about the consistency and stickiness of caramel. it takes up maybe the same volume as one and a half US quarters. i try to redissolve this in 151 proof grain alcohol in a glass dropper bottle. i notice that it actually doesn't go into solution very easily.
so my questions are:
1) i know that this could vary from brand to brand, but assuming all the isopropyl alcohol was evaporated off (which i'm sure it was), is it likely that there's anything left to be worried about? the bottle didn't mention any ingredients besides isopropyl alcohol, and didn't say anything about being denatured, so i'm assuming i'm probably OK. i've done a number of small doses of my grain alcohol tincture over the last week (in drinks or just directly out of the dropper), and noticed no unexpected irritation or anything. i'd guess i was taking about 2 ml at a time, probably 3 or 4 times on any of the evenings i did it.
2) what's the deal with the hash paste not easily dissolving in everclear? i thought cannabinoids in general were easily soluble in ethanol, so i dropped a little ball of the scraped up resin in a little dropper bottle of everclear... and it just kind of sank to the bottom. after letting it sit overnight, i was able to shake the bottle, and watch it break up and dissolve quite a bit, but there are still tens or hundreds of undissolved little bits floating around in the bottle. any idea what this stuff is, and whether there's an easy way to get it to dissolve? if i have to, i could get 99% ethanol, evap off the everclear of my current solution, and redissolve the paste in 99% ethanol. but i was trying to avoid that for convenience's sake (the reason i didn't just use 99% ethanol for the original extraction is because i'd have to get a friend of mine to obtain it for me). for what it's worth, i did notice that when i slowly added 151 proof ethanol in the pyrex dish and worked the hash paste into it with a razor, it seemed to dissolve more readily.
still, what i've got isn't bad. i was hoping i'd get something where i could put a few drops on/under my tongue, and have it be like taking a couple smoked hits of the same stuff. and it's definitely not that strong, but it works, and still comes on faster than normal edibles.
also, the balance of effects is a bit different than any other method of consumption i've tried. it's more subtle and mellow than smoking or eating or vaporizing. there's a bit of the usual psychedelia (though less than with smoking), and definite music appreciation enhancement, but no rush like a huge hit off a joint or bowl... and while there's body buzz, it's also not as prominent/strong as with normal edibles. still, to a large degreee, it fills the craving to get a little stoned. and while it's calm and sedating, it doesn't have that same (almost narcotic) planted-in-one-spot quality that strong indicas do. actually, adding a couple droppers full in a cup of coffee puts me in a nice place for cranking out some code, kind of like when i can pace myself on a small bowl hit or two every half hour or so. i'm not sure whether this is because of the small bit of alcohol in the mixture, or some odd THC/CBD ratio (since i have no idea what portion of the THC was decarboxylated, and what portion may have vaporized off, though i was very careful to keep temperatures well below 300 degrees F throughout, and the wiki page says THC has a boiling point of 315 F). so i'm also wondering if anyone has any theories about that part of things.
1) take about 4 grams of finely ground bud, spread thin on a pyrex baking dish and leave in the oven at 260 for an hour to decarboxylate the THC.
2) remove bud from oven, place in mason jar, cover in boiling water. close jar, shake, strain off water, repeat. (the idea being to get rid of whatever water soluble things i could, since the cannabinoids aren't water soluble). press out as much water as possible from the plant matter.
3) in the jar, cover the wet plant matter in about 8 oz of slightly warm 99% isopropyl alcohol. shake, drain alcohol into pyrex dish. repeat with the other half of the bottle of alcohol.
4) let the alcohol evaporate. i did this by running a hair dryer above the dish for a little over an hour and then letting the rest evaporate on its own over the next couple days. a few days later, there was a little bit of liquid in the dish, and it didn't smell like alcohol at all, so i assumed it was the 1% water portion of the 99% alcohol, and left it in the oven to evaporate a bit faster (at 260, the lowest temp i can get, for about 20 minutes).
5) scrape up the crude hash paste in the dish. i'm left with something that's very dark brown and about the consistency and stickiness of caramel. it takes up maybe the same volume as one and a half US quarters. i try to redissolve this in 151 proof grain alcohol in a glass dropper bottle. i notice that it actually doesn't go into solution very easily.
so my questions are:
1) i know that this could vary from brand to brand, but assuming all the isopropyl alcohol was evaporated off (which i'm sure it was), is it likely that there's anything left to be worried about? the bottle didn't mention any ingredients besides isopropyl alcohol, and didn't say anything about being denatured, so i'm assuming i'm probably OK. i've done a number of small doses of my grain alcohol tincture over the last week (in drinks or just directly out of the dropper), and noticed no unexpected irritation or anything. i'd guess i was taking about 2 ml at a time, probably 3 or 4 times on any of the evenings i did it.
2) what's the deal with the hash paste not easily dissolving in everclear? i thought cannabinoids in general were easily soluble in ethanol, so i dropped a little ball of the scraped up resin in a little dropper bottle of everclear... and it just kind of sank to the bottom. after letting it sit overnight, i was able to shake the bottle, and watch it break up and dissolve quite a bit, but there are still tens or hundreds of undissolved little bits floating around in the bottle. any idea what this stuff is, and whether there's an easy way to get it to dissolve? if i have to, i could get 99% ethanol, evap off the everclear of my current solution, and redissolve the paste in 99% ethanol. but i was trying to avoid that for convenience's sake (the reason i didn't just use 99% ethanol for the original extraction is because i'd have to get a friend of mine to obtain it for me). for what it's worth, i did notice that when i slowly added 151 proof ethanol in the pyrex dish and worked the hash paste into it with a razor, it seemed to dissolve more readily.
still, what i've got isn't bad. i was hoping i'd get something where i could put a few drops on/under my tongue, and have it be like taking a couple smoked hits of the same stuff. and it's definitely not that strong, but it works, and still comes on faster than normal edibles.
also, the balance of effects is a bit different than any other method of consumption i've tried. it's more subtle and mellow than smoking or eating or vaporizing. there's a bit of the usual psychedelia (though less than with smoking), and definite music appreciation enhancement, but no rush like a huge hit off a joint or bowl... and while there's body buzz, it's also not as prominent/strong as with normal edibles. still, to a large degreee, it fills the craving to get a little stoned. and while it's calm and sedating, it doesn't have that same (almost narcotic) planted-in-one-spot quality that strong indicas do. actually, adding a couple droppers full in a cup of coffee puts me in a nice place for cranking out some code, kind of like when i can pace myself on a small bowl hit or two every half hour or so. i'm not sure whether this is because of the small bit of alcohol in the mixture, or some odd THC/CBD ratio (since i have no idea what portion of the THC was decarboxylated, and what portion may have vaporized off, though i was very careful to keep temperatures well below 300 degrees F throughout, and the wiki page says THC has a boiling point of 315 F). so i'm also wondering if anyone has any theories about that part of things.
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