I do have a designated pyrex for this. It doesn’t always come off easily, but you won’t cause any damage if you work slowly and carefully when you scrape it up. Srape slowly with careful leverage in straight lines across the pan.
The only thing that really risks scratching the pan is using the razor blade to scrape the rounded corners. You can just leave the corners, it won’t waste much. Anything that you can’t safely scrape up without damaging the pan, you can scrub it off pretty easily with some everclear on a paper towel.
Thanks for the tips my friend, I am definitely gonna be giving this a go soon. I may end up checking the Goodwill’s and resale stores to maybe find a designated dish as well, just to save my wife the headache haha.
Two more questions about this. One: about how big is the Pyrex you use to strain the alcohol in? Would it be better to use one that’s larger, so the alcohol stays sort of “shallow” or whatever?
And how long does the evaporation process take? Or when should I start looking for this
since I’m gonna be using CA Everclear and all haha.
I have tomorrow and Wednesday off from work. If I have the time, I’m gonna try this on one of those two days, really looking forward to it.
Edit: shit, one more question haha. What do you store it in?
Definitely, the bigger the pan and shallower the alcohol, the quicker it can evaporate. the more surface area the better. I also recommend setting up a fan several feet away to blow over the surface, that will speed things up without cooking off the terpenes.
I usually use 9x9’s because I can fit several of those in my drying area, so it’s convenient when I’m processing a few different strains at the same time. For big batches I have a 16x9.
It’s hard to give a ballpark for this because it varies so much depending on humidity, temperature, and air circulation. For a really really big batch, it could be the next morning. I think thats usually how it went when I was making big batches from my prop 215 grow. For smaller batches it could be within 6 or 8 hours.
Just take a peek at it every 4 hours or so if possible, and check on it again in the morning.
It’s been a while since I used california everclear. but the same thing happens even with 190 if the alcohol evaporates unusually quick and leaves behind some water content, or if there is some water content in the batch from the plant matter or iced up jars in the freezer.
So with my current process I’m seeing it after about 6 hours when temps are high and humidity is low.
A small mason jar with short sides, regular mouth or wide mouth. You want a good air tight lid to keep it sealed when you’re not using it, and low enough that you can get in there easily with a dab tool to get it out. After you scrape it up, the texture and appearance will change as it crystalizes and fuses together. Sometimes the texture is gooey but usually it turns to crystalized shatter. So you probably will need some kind of dabbing implement to get it out of the jar.
That’ll be perfect. It might have lost some terpenes from being so dried out, but it should extract very cleanly.
Really? That large? Okay, good to know. I was considering using our little 3x5 Pyrex things haha.
I thought about that, but I wasn’t sure if it would blow the alcohol fumes all around the house. Or whatever. I’ll bust out a fan, though, for sure.
I just drove all over the neighborhood, hitting up liquor stores left and right looking for Everclear. I even went to a fucking Total Wine and More. Apparently even the 150 proof is difficult to find; they’re all selling 120 proof now. But I finally found one that had three pints of 151, bought all three. They told me they’d order some more if I wanted, so I’ll just go to that store from now on.
One last question (for now haha): when you said that you use a lemon squeezer, are you using that to press the actual soaked flowers through the coffee filter and into the Pyrex? Do you sort of “wring” the plant material out, too?
Anyway, I’m fucking stoked! This sounds like it’ll be so much easier than the buckets and screens (which I’ve never used even though I’ve had the screens for years haha) and the press (which I hated so much I sold it).
Yeah you want a pan sized for a batch of brownies at least. It would also be hard to scrape it out of anything smaller than a 8 or 9 inch square. It’s also important that the bottom of the pan is perfectly flat, not ridged or textured in any way.
the fan should help with the fumes. But definitely make sure you set it up in a well ventilated part of the house. You don’t want to be breathing too much of that.
What you really don’t want is for the fumes to build up into an invisible cloud of flammable alcohol vapor, but that’s something that only happens when people try to cook the alcohol off at high temperatures.
With this method it won’t be near any heat source. Just don’t do it in a small enclosed space, make sure those fumes can dissipate.
That’s exactly right. First I pour the extracted herb and alcohol into a metal strainer with a coffee filter. After the bulk of the liquid has strained through, the herbal material will still be saturated with alcohol. if the temperature is still cold enough (it usually is) I press the herb with the lemon squeezer to wring out the remaining alcohol and filter it through the coffee filter and strainer. Sometimes I can bundle the herb up into the coffee filter and put the whole thing in the squeezer, that keeps the herb contained and makes things a little less messy. It’s kind of messy handling the wet alcohol soaked herb because it will stick to your hands and tools.
always filter it through a mesh strainer to catch any pieces of herb that don’t get caught by the coffee filter.
If you end up with some herb in the pan afterwards, you can scoop it out with a small tea strainer or run it through another coffee filter if it’s really a lot.
A small silicon spatula is usually helpful at several points during this process.
If it’s a really large batch, I’ll start off by just pouring the alcohol through the coffee filter. I put the jar of alcohol soaked herb back into the freezer momentarily while that drains. If there’s a lot of alcohol, it will drain through the coffee filter much faster without the herbal material in the way. Then I get the jar back out of the freezer, scoop out the alcohol soaked herb with the silicon spatula, and use the filters and lemon squeezer to get the remaining alcohol out of the herb.
The biggest batches I make now are in 1/2 gallon mason jars when the outdoor harvests come in.
Thanks for sharing all of this info!! I’ll be bookmarking/screenshotting this stuff to come back around to next harvest. I’ve always been too scared to mess with anything like this, but you made me a lot more at ease with it. Thanks again!!
Im so lazy I’ve only dry iced some hash anytime I’ve wanted some the last few years. Bubble seems like a nightmare here with the heat and humidity. This sounds perfect. I’ll read through all of it completely before I ask redundant questions. Haha. Cheers!!
Okay, sweet, I think I understand now haha. I’ve got all of those things already, the juicer, the colander, the Pyrex, the weed… This is gonna be AWESOME haha.
Thanks for sharing this, it’s gonna make my life so much better. I really would get super-frustrated and slightly depressed every time I’d throw out freezer bags filled with weed that I swore,”I’m gonna make hash out of this!” and never did.
I’ll post the results on my last grow log and tag you haha.
I make tinctures out of dried, decarbed trim and 190. I’ve recently been using a variation of @Papalag and @Gardenartus methods. It’s a variation because I’m not completely clear on all of their process, so mine is a quick wash done at a slow pace, I guess LOL! I reduce it down to about 1/2, bain marie style. It is very strong.
I had an SSDD meet an early demise at 51 days not long ago, and I stuck it in the freezer. Fresh frozen I guess!
I’d like to give your method a go with this, but I am more than a little confused! Especially about releasing the water content part. How should I try to control that?
And this lemon squeezer you speak of, I’m not familiar. I have a two handled potato ricer, sort of like this
Once the plant mater is frozen and the alcohol has been in the freezer for a few days
Combined the two in a large mason jar and shake vigorously for like 3 minutes
Strain off the mixture to separate the weed from the alcohol
Separately place back in freezer wait and hour is better
And combine once again and shake vigorously for 3 more minutes then your done
I use a kitchen strainer to separate and squeeze out as much of the remaining alcohol out of the weed as possible
I just place a bowl on top of the weed in the strainer and apply pressure to separate
The liquid
No water in this at all
If any water at all once you place jar in double boiler to reduce the tincture all the water will evaporate if there’s any
I haven’t done it yet, gonna try it in a couple hours after I wash my car, but that seems like it’d work. I think you could just put the coffee filter right in there and then squeeeeeze haha. If it’s two-handed, maybe you might need somebody to pour the liquid and then the flower through it while you do the actual squeezing part.
I dunno haha! I’m really looking forward to trying this out today, though.
Yeah, I don’t, either haha. What’re you talking about, Horse?
They’re good questions. I hope these answers are making sense haha.
Yeah you wouldn’t have to worry about any water content with dried and decarbed material. this live resin is pretty different using fresh frozen herb.
It should be easy to control. The most important thing is temperature.
as long as your extraction stays at or below 32 degrees, the water content inside the leaves will remain frozen, and it will stay locked in there while the everclear solvent chemically breaks down the resin on the surface.
I recommend doing the extraction by shaking your jar full of frozen herb and freezing cold alcohol. You don’t want to mash it up or stir it. Basically if you tear up the leaves by mashing or stirring, the water and clorophyll will seep right out.
But if you just shake everything up and the bud and leaf stays mostly intact, that will only remove the resin on the surface.
So do a short extraction shaking it up for no longer than 5 minutes, keeping an eye on the temperature and color of the alcohol. You want to filter it while it’s still at freezing temp, and the color of the liquid should be a pale yellow from the extracted resin. Stop if you start to feel the temp rising, or if it starts to turn green.
If the fresh herb has been frozen for a very long time, you may have some freezer-burn which reduces the quality. cell wall bursting from ice crystals forming changes the quality of the herb. Like how frozen spinach is limp when you thaw it, it will never get that fresh texture back. Freezer-burned or limp looking bud will result in a greener and less pure extraction, but it will still work.
if you end up with a bright green batch on this first try, don’t worry too much. it might take a few attempts to dial in, or your bud might have been freezer-burned.
Yeah I think that should work. Looks like it can fit a decent amount. Ideally you would squeeze the whole coffee filter full of soaked trim.
With dried bud you want to squeeze the heck out of it and wring out every last drop. But with fresh frozen bud, you won’t want to squeeze it has hard.
It will be thawing as you handle it, and as soon as it does, that green water will flow out into your alcohol extraction.
So first, make sure it’s still cold enough before you squeeze it.
Then, squeeze gently but firmly, and stop squeezing as soon as you see green flowing out.
If you start squeezing and immediately bright green flows out, you can still save the remaining alcohol for a smaller b-grade batch. just squeeze it into a different pyrex.
(So the arm strength shouldn’t be a problem… I know how that feels too, if I try to squeeze anything too hard now my thumb or my knuckles will partially dislocate.)
After you’ve got it filtered, set your pyrexes up in a well ventilated area with a fan a few feet away blowing over the surface. Evaporating the alcohol at room temperature will help preserve the terpenes and volatile oils, and keep the cannabinoids in their raw, non-heat-activated forms. You may notice the difference in the high.
Thanks for sharing your tincture recipe.
These instructions aren’t for making tincture from dried bud, it’s a recipe for making live resin hash from freshly harvested bud.
It’s a way to get concentrates with cannabinoids in their live, non-heat-activated form for medical use. it also allows you to skip the trimming and drying process if you need usable meds from your harvest right away. You chop the bud and immediately freeze it, the bud hasn’t been dried. Only chopped and frozen. So the freshly harvested frozen bud is still full of all the natural water content of the plant.
Thanks for all that, I get it now, but I don’t have a walk-in freezer I do have a small chest freezer, but man, it sounds like it could get messy, especially knowing me. I’m going to have to read this over, and over, and over. Then figure the logistics… or probably just go do it, lol!
Yeah, sorry for the confusion. Zephyr sorted it out, right?
I am making your style, but didn’t understand the combining part then redoing part, so I was only getting one shake and strain session. Even with that one, it tastes, and works so much better than my old leave in the freezer for a month while shaking every day… and, it’s not green any more.
I just decarbed some dry SSDD trim for a pyrex run while I think about how to do the fresh frozen in the freezer without making a sticky mess
on top of the weed in the strainer and apply pressure to separate
I do have a small chest freezer, but man, it sounds like it could get messy, especially knowing me. I’m going to have to read this over, and over, and over. Then figure the logistics… or probably just go do it, lol!
