Making RSO with Everclear and Distiller

[Pinktiger777]

That might work if you don’t care how much plant wax and chlorophyll you will end up with, not to mention tiny bits of weed that will be difficult to remove.
In my opinion, a quick wash does a better job than mashing it. The good stuff comes off and the other stuff doesn’t so much.
As for filters, get a filter bag; it is made usually of parachute like material, with a tight mesh. I have a set that came together for making hash. It doesn’t absorb anything.
However, caution please. Alcohol is a powerful solvent but it is also highly flammable; it has a low flash point and anything, a spark, static electricity, can ignite it.
You must not put your hands or other parts of your anatomy into it or be around it without adequate ventilation and protection for your eyes and skin.
If you use the Magic Butter machine, don’t use the heat with the alcohol.
I use a magnetic stirrer and slowly evaporate the alcohol in a highly ventilated space. At the end, I let the last tablespoon of alcohol evaporate naturally off the heated plate. If I’m using it for vape oil, I add terpenes only, then bring it up in a syringe for application later.

 

[joetherag42]

oh, in case anyone notices... I do have a GAS stove, and NO, I did not use it. I cooked off the last bits of Everclear using a hot plate with the stove's fan on and windows open. Should have done that last step outside as well, but it was windy and I didn't want pollen and dirt/dust getting into the final product.

thanks for your nice explanation of how you make the rso. Very detailed.
there are many ways to make RSO, and they all seem to work no matter how you do it.
I usually do the classic RSO method to make it like rick Simpson showed us years ago. That method overall seemed to work good for me.

I've tried other methods and am going to try the "Small Batch method" for RSO as seen on YouTube. Seems like it takes a shorter time to do it the lady's way.

Another way I just started using is the "SOURCE TURBO" method.
the machine is about $500 and seems to work good for a small batch at a time.
My results have been mixed, because you have to follow the steps carefully.

I also have a Magic Butter machine and that works good. You can use either MCT oil, or Everclear in the process. the only downside to this method is that you loose the Alcohol as you let it evaporate.
I may try a combination of using the magic butter machine, then filter it real good a number of times in the Buchner filter. then pour it into the Source Turbo and try to distill off the alcohol. The source turbo people say it will not work good, but I will see.
I've have ten ounces of Maui Wowie and will start working on it this weekend. Getting ready to start some White Widow for the spring.

I found out today that our friend Rick Simpson had a serious stroke three years ago. He was one of the primary leaders in promoting Cannabis Oil, (RSO). HE is recovering, however slowly. I found this information on his site, Phoenixtears.ca

 

[Rahrtn]

Personally . I'd rather use the distiller. It recovers more everclear , I think . The process is different but the results are the same I think . This is a personal opinion . But... I'm old school ... I decarb the weed in the magic butter kit and let it cool for 20 min . Stick it in a freezer baggie and freeze it . I try to do 5 or 6 runs on the decarb and use it as needed. It's a matter of preference. I have both butter and a distiller . Can run 2 batches of what ever at the same time .. all I can say is experiment. To each is own . As long as the out come is good I could care less .
I decan and pour everclear over it in the mason jars after . Strain etc I guess the best thing is when you dustill it there is no plant in the pot . All there is is lugged. Makes a better distillation and not anything left after .

 

[Rahrtn]

Hey all , gotta ask - why not use the Magic Butter Machine to run the alcohol and weed and render a tincture that you can then distill the alcohol out of leaving the oil ? MBM grinds your bud to a fine matter maximizing surface area to solvent rendering more initially on 1st wash - can strain using mason jar attachment (great device) and rewash on second tincture cycle.

Just started making oil again - have alot of trim and some excess bud and lots of time on my hands.. What I am looking for is a filter that doesn't soak up too much solvent and good stuff and still gets out the micro bits that the MBM produces.

Happy Cookin

MotaMan

I use commercial coffee filters on a an gallon glass jar. .elastic it in place . More surface to strain it and if you want squeeze the filter after over the karge jar . . When done. One filter one jar . When full that your limit for the distiller

 

[MotaMan420]

Thanks for the info fellow members - and best wishes to Rick Simpson - innovator of cannabis oil.

MotaMan

 

[MehGreenThumb]

@joetherag42 glad the post helped. This stuff is so effing potent that I still have some of the syringes from that batch! In fact a buddy of mine visited a few weeks ago and we took some. I put a drop of it in a capsule filled with organic coconut oil and keep a bunch in the freezer for special occasions. We each took one and I was beyond high for hours. Be very careful dosing this stuff. When you smoke, you don't get nearly the hit you do with these extracts. My rice sized grain portion was a Mike Tyson punch to the face and I smoke often.

If I didn't have too many toys already, I'd very seriously consider getting the "Noids" device. Look for it on Amazon. It can decarb and infuse, and has a spout that will reclaim the grain alcohol. So you basically make FECO, pour it out and evaporate off the last little bit of alcohol.

The downside - you can't process huge mason jars... but such a tiny amount goes such a long way I think it's a great solution. I've never used it, but if I didn't already own the distiller, I'd get that Noids.

 

[gr865]

@joetherag42 glad the post helped. This stuff is so effing potent that I still have some of the syringes from that batch! In fact a buddy of mine visited a few weeks ago and we took some. I put a drop of it in a capsule filled with organic coconut oil and keep a bunch in the freezer for special occasions. We each took one and I was beyond high for hours. Be very careful dosing this stuff. When you smoke, you don't get nearly the hit you do with these extracts. My rice sized grain portion was a Mike Tyson punch to the face and I smoke often.

If I didn't have too many toys already, I'd very seriously consider getting the "Noids" device. Look for it on Amazon. It can decarb and infuse, and has a spout that will reclaim the grain alcohol. So you basically make FECO, pour it out and evaporate off the last little bit of alcohol.

The downside - you can't process huge mason jars... but such a tiny amount goes such a long way I think it's a great solution. I've never used it, but if I didn't already own the distiller, I'd get that Noids.

I made my first batch of CCO/RSO a few years ago, used a water distiller and it was incredible. I had purchase 225 grams of CCO from Oregon to treat a medical condition and after doing that I decided to make my own for my maintenance doses, of 2 to 300 mg per day. To date I have made at least 500 grams of CCO. When I make a new batch of oil my GF is my taster, I give her 0.5 ml of a 1 to 5 CCO to coconut oil. And I keep a bottle of on hand for when quest come to visit and everyone loves it.
I am 75 years old and I truly believe that everyone over 50 should take a minimum of 100 mg per day for wellness.

 

[OrganicGH]

Thank you for sharing your experience! Can you say how it reacts differently between none and too much alcohol?

Since alcohol is evaporating at just I’ve 70 Celsius and water at 100 Celsius the temps at evaporation. Will rapidly rise over 90 Celsius demonstrating that virtually all the alcohol has evaporated. At 100 Celsius only the water is boiling off. Higher temps are just cooling off the terps and burning the oil.

 

[OrganicGH]

Where does that put you, around 3-5mg THC per drop?

That’s been the average. Ideally I need to run the potency of the oil first before dilution to determine how much olive oil to add.

 

[Rahrtn]

Rule of thumb.... I gram of rso oil per 100 grams of coconut oil
I get aporox. 3.5 grams of oil per ounce .
When the process is just about done I take the coconut oil a put it in the warm distiller or butter .. and let it "clean" the bottom of the distiller
You pretty much know what a gram looks like by then . Been doing it for a few years now. Never had 1 complaint

 

[MehGreenThumb]

Rule of thumb.... I gram of rso oil per 100 grams of coconut oil
I get aporox. 3.5 grams of oil per ounce .
When the process is just about done I take the coconut oil a put it in the warm distiller or butter .. and let it "clean" the bottom of the distiller
You pretty much know what a gram looks like by then . Been doing it for a few years now. Never had 1 complaint

Yeah, it's easier to dose if you infuse it. I usually just push a small 'dot' and tap it on a basil leaf or into the capsule. Thing is, sometimes you pull away a bit more than you were going for depending on how quickly the RSO is cooling off.

 

[MotaMan420]

You can store your oil in oral syringes - just have to warm it up for an easy flow . And you can dose it out per ml measurement increments on syringes. I just made a bunch from just trim - it gets ya goin but no sucker punches as opposed to oil made with just flower. Getting my skills back with the mountain of trim I have from summer harvest before I attempt to put a qtr lb or more of my flowers thru a process.

Main concern is losing potency in the process - some here use a cold extraction method and others use low temp heat to help the solvent remove the goodies. But reading and rereading the information presented here shows me the the basic process has changed little since the 70's.

Solvent recovery has increased with some of the gadgets we have at our disposal.

Happy Growing

MotaMan

 

[munoz124]

Maybe I'm talking to myself here, but for anyone following along or finding this later...

I started with 6oz of larfy buds / trim that I had curing for the last few months and 1.75L Everclear.

I decarboxylated it using sous vide at 200°F for 1h 40m. It was in two vacuum-sealed bags, and those were in a ziplock bag. I put some rocks in the ziplock to weight it down and zipped it after submerging most of the way in the water - to push the air out. Then put some more rocks on top. Tinfoil over the top of the pot to retain water. It was all going along fine until maybe 1h give or take into the process when the bags floated up to the surface anyway. The ziplock got a bunch of water inside it (no big deal) so I replaced it with a new one. Getting everything submerged again took quite a while and given that the water and rocks were 200°; it pretty much sucked.

The weed itself remained dry to slightly damp. I popped the weed into the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes. The Everclear had been in the freezer over 24h already.

I dumped the weed into a large glass jar and poured most of the everclear over it. Then I stirred and mashed is using a silicon spatula. Had I been using ISO, I'd have gone for a quickwash, but Everclear isn't as efficient so I spend a good 5 minutes breaking it up and mixing it. I'm sure I extracted a bunch of plant material in addition to the cannabinoids, but that doesn't bother me too much.

I poured the everclear (now tincture) into a large pyrex measuring cup through both a cheesecloth and a metal strainer, then poured the rest of the everclear over the weed for a 2nd wash.

Next I put 2 coffee filters over a new jar and poured the tincture through it. This is the part where using the pyrex with a spout was supposed to prevent me from making a mess. Nope. I got super sticky tincture all over everything. If you ever want to feel like spiderman, just get a lot of that tincture on your hands and jars and touch anything.

The product actually filtered pretty quickly - maybe 2 hours. Much of the plant material settled to the bottom of the pyrex. I poured gently (into the filter) and scooped the tincture out using a shot glass, so as not to disturb it too much. That made less work for the filters, which also caught a ton of material, but didn't clog so much they stopped working. Also, I scraped them off between pours.

After filtering the tincture, I dumped it into the temperature-controlled distiller. I was using the distiller to reclaim the everclear, but it was apparent I'd already lost a TON of it before even distilling.

I ran the distiller a handful of times over the last week to "clean" it of any factory residue. I was surprised how long it takes to distill water compared to a tea pot, and was expecting the Everclear to distill much faster, but not quickly. Not the case. I set the distiller outside, turned it on at the lowest temp, and it started distilling within a few minutes. Of course, the spout and container were unaligned, so I lost more everclear.

Having used a rice cooker in the past, and expecting the distiller to be a tad slower than that, I got distracted on the phone... Bim bam done, the distiller made really short work of evaporating off all the Everclear. I had intended to stop distilling with some alcohol remaining, then transfer to pyrex to finish on a hot plate. BUT - oops. I let it go until it turned itself off. When I opened the top, I'd "burned" some of the oil and it was really thick.

I poured it out into a small glass dish, and scraped off more I could with a silicone spatula. The distiller is ... well, I have to decide if I want to clean it so I can use if for water, or if it's only be used for making oil. There's a decent amount of product that's just stuck to the inside. I poured in a bit of the reclaimed everclear to see if I could absorb more product. Might turn that into a tincture. Anyway, I didn't measure the final amount of Everclear I reclaimed, but it wasn't much. I regret using the distiller. Maybe if I had a still, or lab tubes and beakers I'd have reclaimed more? Hard to say. There's just a lot lost in the process prior to distilling. Maybe if you use a rice press to squeeze out ever drop from the weed and cheesecloth; but that's another dirty super sticky item to deal with.

I moved the oil to a hotplate to "finish" it. I was going to heat off the remaining alcohol, watch the bubbles, do the spark test. Of course I was impatient and heated it too quickly. It foamed up making a zillion tiny bubbles. I pulled it off the heat and combed through the bubbles to pop them. Then cooked it on a much lower temp, but that was pretty much it. No more bubbles. I did a few spark tests, and the oil was clean.

I pulled the oil up into 4 syringes (1ml). Unfortunately, that's all I had left, oops. There's probably another 2 - 3 ml oil remaining, so it's in a shot glass covered with plastic wrap. Given the amount of oil stuck in the distiller, smeared on the glass dish, silicon spatula, in the syringes, and remaining in the shot glass, I'm very pleased with how much I extracted. I didn't measure it but seems to be 7 to 8ml.

(Fun note, I had the shot glass on a 45° angle and let the oil cool. You can press fork prongs into it, pull the fork out and it holds the indentation shape for a few minutes. Sludge!)

I made a huge sticky mess and have a LOT of room for improvement, but had fun and got my RSO; so it's all good.

After I was done with everything, of course, I was eager to test it out and see if it worked. Over the hours of preparing everything, I had gotten a lot of tincture on my hands and oil on my fingertips; so thought I ought to be feeling good. However, wasn't feeling anything. So, decided to do a test and asked my girlfriend if she wanted to try it as well.

Told her "This might not do anything, or it might work and give you a great body high, or it might knock you on your ass for the the rest of the day and well into the evening. No clue..."

She decided to be brave but only wanted a very small amount. I smeared a very little bit onto a basil leaf, and made a parachute for her. Told her to swallow it and be sure not to taste it. She likes basil, so she chewed it up. Ack, so gross! She didn't seem to think it was as horrible as I expected. I made a basil parachute for myself as well.

I set a timer for 30 minutes. When it went off I was just barely starting to feel it kicking in. She said she didn't feel anything. Even an hour later, she said she didn't really notice much -- although sometimes you don't if you're just lounging around; which she was. I was starting to think I didn't give her enough and she wouldn't notice its effects, that it just wasn't that strong, or didn't work. Except, I was feeling it - subtly.

Turns out I didn't mess it up. It kicked in for me and I was feeling great for hours and hours. It hit her a bit differently, and pretty much knocked her out. She took a few naps. The "makes you drowsy" could be from me over cooking the oil in the distiller and again on the hot plate.

It ended up hitting me pretty hard, and I'm not sure if it's due to the amount I took or how much of it I absorbed through my fingertips. Next time I make this stuff, I'm wearing gloves. I'm looking forward to taking another small dose in the future to get a 2nd calibration point. I may gift some to friends and need to let them know if they should take a very small amount or a very very small amount. Haha.

Anyway, I'm happy to report "IT WORKS". I mean, it REALLY works. And based on how little it takes and how long the effects last; I'm thrilled with the quantity I produced, even with all the mess and loss. I'm also glad that this stuff pretty much lasts forever in this state.

Pictures in next post.

im really scared to cook off the everclear, can i do all of your steps and let it evaporate on its own, doesnt matter if i have to wait weeks, i have 2 1/2 pounds of weed and i dont have never made rso, but i want to make and not cook off alcohol, can i?

 

[Joe Brewster]

im really scared to cook off the everclear, can i do all of your steps and let it evaporate on its own, doesnt matter if i have to wait weeks, i have 2 1/2 pounds of weed and i dont have never made rso, but i want to make and not cook off alcohol, can i?

Welcome @munoz124 , Yes you can, Leave in a well ventilated area, in a shallow container. If you use it before all the Everclear is evaporated, it is called Green or golden dragon tincture

 

[MotaMan420]

Welcome Munoz -- how about a water bath? I use a rice cooker and overly large pyrex measuring cup. After using a distiller to get most alcohol out the water bath can slowly and safely (no burn of oil) rid the mixture of the remaining alcohol.. Otherwise you might be waiting a while for natural evaporation of the solvent.

Always do this final process in a well ventilated area -- safety first.

Good Luck
MotaMan

 

[Stellabluez]

I use the freezer method. I decarb at 240f (115c) for 40 minutes. Throw the decarbed cannabis and everclear into the freezer for 24 hours. If you have not already, grind the cannabis and pour enough etoh to cover it in a jar. Put the lid on and shake for 5 minutes. Put the jar back in the freezer for 2hours, remove and another 5 minute shake. Filter and reduce to desired potency. This is psychedelic Sams recipe and has worked every time for me.
I have pics in the tincture section of infused simple syrup, I use the tincture to infuse the syrup.

I would think if one grids the flower/cuttings etc enough would that be dry nuff? And I live in the high desert, I leave anything out it's horribly dry in an hour, would/could that be nuff? Thanks

 

[Stellabluez]

Great thread, if anyone is interested I came across a site where a lab test was done for potency on different soak times.
I just starting using a water distiller and I like it best compared to the rice cooker not to mention getting most of the alcohol back

High! Can you explain what the what distiller does?
Ok I'll re-phrase, I'm not that ignorant , but in THIS process.. what is the benefit, and is it $$$ equipment? Thank

 

[Regrowth]

@East Coast Marley420 hasn't been online in a while.
It reclaims most of the alcohol instead of evaporating it all. saves money over time because you can reuse the alcohol.

 

[Ascended Master Kief]

Neat info, thanks for sharing, y'all. Looking forward to trying to make FECO for caps, as I'm sure my lungs won't take smoke/vapor forever. An FYI, that big-box-store-named-after-a-river-in-South-America has a stainless steel 5 gallon stovetop "water" pot still (with thumper and condenser and circulating pump) for about a hundred bucks, and it works great with inductive cooktops, which are perfect for working with flammable vapors, and usually have some pretty precise temperature control. As opposed to those all-in-one stills with heaters built in, by putting your heat source external to the unit, you can more easily control the heat, clean the pot, and because it has a design reminiscent of those things on Appalachian mountaintops, you can recover much more of your ethanol.

 

[ffghgfff]

Maybe I'm talking to myself here, but for anyone following along or finding this later...

I started with 6oz of larfy buds / trim that I had curing for the last few months and 1.75L Everclear.

I decarboxylated it using sous vide at 200°F for 1h 40m. It was in two vacuum-sealed bags, and those were in a ziplock bag. I put some rocks in the ziplock to weight it down and zipped it after submerging most of the way in the water - to push the air out. Then put some more rocks on top. Tinfoil over the top of the pot to retain water. It was all going along fine until maybe 1h give or take into the process when the bags floated up to the surface anyway. The ziplock got a bunch of water inside it (no big deal) so I replaced it with a new one. Getting everything submerged again took quite a while and given that the water and rocks were 200°; it pretty much sucked.

The weed itself remained dry to slightly damp. I popped the weed into the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes. The Everclear had been in the freezer over 24h already.

I dumped the weed into a large glass jar and poured most of the everclear over it. Then I stirred and mashed is using a silicon spatula. Had I been using ISO, I'd have gone for a quickwash, but Everclear isn't as efficient so I spend a good 5 minutes breaking it up and mixing it. I'm sure I extracted a bunch of plant material in addition to the cannabinoids, but that doesn't bother me too much.

I poured the everclear (now tincture) into a large pyrex measuring cup through both a cheesecloth and a metal strainer, then poured the rest of the everclear over the weed for a 2nd wash.

Next I put 2 coffee filters over a new jar and poured the tincture through it. This is the part where using the pyrex with a spout was supposed to prevent me from making a mess. Nope. I got super sticky tincture all over everything. If you ever want to feel like spiderman, just get a lot of that tincture on your hands and jars and touch anything.

The product actually filtered pretty quickly - maybe 2 hours. Much of the plant material settled to the bottom of the pyrex. I poured gently (into the filter) and scooped the tincture out using a shot glass, so as not to disturb it too much. That made less work for the filters, which also caught a ton of material, but didn't clog so much they stopped working. Also, I scraped them off between pours.

After filtering the tincture, I dumped it into the temperature-controlled distiller. I was using the distiller to reclaim the everclear, but it was apparent I'd already lost a TON of it before even distilling.

I ran the distiller a handful of times over the last week to "clean" it of any factory residue. I was surprised how long it takes to distill water compared to a tea pot, and was expecting the Everclear to distill much faster, but not quickly. Not the case. I set the distiller outside, turned it on at the lowest temp, and it started distilling within a few minutes. Of course, the spout and container were unaligned, so I lost more everclear.

Having used a rice cooker in the past, and expecting the distiller to be a tad slower than that, I got distracted on the phone... Bim bam done, the distiller made really short work of evaporating off all the Everclear. I had intended to stop distilling with some alcohol remaining, then transfer to pyrex to finish on a hot plate. BUT - oops. I let it go until it turned itself off. When I opened the top, I'd "burned" some of the oil and it was really thick.

I poured it out into a small glass dish, and scraped off more I could with a silicone spatula. The distiller is ... well, I have to decide if I want to clean it so I can use if for water, or if it's only be used for making oil. There's a decent amount of product that's just stuck to the inside. I poured in a bit of the reclaimed everclear to see if I could absorb more product. Might turn that into a tincture. Anyway, I didn't measure the final amount of Everclear I reclaimed, but it wasn't much. I regret using the distiller. Maybe if I had a still, or lab tubes and beakers I'd have reclaimed more? Hard to say. There's just a lot lost in the process prior to distilling. Maybe if you use a rice press to squeeze out ever drop from the weed and cheesecloth; but that's another dirty super sticky item to deal with.

I moved the oil to a hotplate to "finish" it. I was going to heat off the remaining alcohol, watch the bubbles, do the spark test. Of course I was impatient and heated it too quickly. It foamed up making a zillion tiny bubbles. I pulled it off the heat and combed through the bubbles to pop them. Then cooked it on a much lower temp, but that was pretty much it. No more bubbles. I did a few spark tests, and the oil was clean.

I pulled the oil up into 4 syringes (1ml). Unfortunately, that's all I had left, oops. There's probably another 2 - 3 ml oil remaining, so it's in a shot glass covered with plastic wrap. Given the amount of oil stuck in the distiller, smeared on the glass dish, silicon spatula, in the syringes, and remaining in the shot glass, I'm very pleased with how much I extracted. I didn't measure it but seems to be 7 to 8ml.

(Fun note, I had the shot glass on a 45° angle and let the oil cool. You can press fork prongs into it, pull the fork out and it holds the indentation shape for a few minutes. Sludge!)

I made a huge sticky mess and have a LOT of room for improvement, but had fun and got my RSO; so it's all good.

After I was done with everything, of course, I was eager to test it out and see if it worked. Over the hours of preparing everything, I had gotten a lot of tincture on my hands and oil on my fingertips; so thought I ought to be feeling good. However, wasn't feeling anything. So, decided to do a test and asked my girlfriend if she wanted to try it as well.

Told her "This might not do anything, or it might work and give you a great body high, or it might knock you on your ass for the the rest of the day and well into the evening. No clue..."

She decided to be brave but only wanted a very small amount. I smeared a very little bit onto a basil leaf, and made a parachute for her. Told her to swallow it and be sure not to taste it. She likes basil, so she chewed it up. Ack, so gross! She didn't seem to think it was as horrible as I expected. I made a basil parachute for myself as well.

I set a timer for 30 minutes. When it went off I was just barely starting to feel it kicking in. She said she didn't feel anything. Even an hour later, she said she didn't really notice much -- although sometimes you don't if you're just lounging around; which she was. I was starting to think I didn't give her enough and she wouldn't notice its effects, that it just wasn't that strong, or didn't work. Except, I was feeling it - subtly.

Turns out I didn't mess it up. It kicked in for me and I was feeling great for hours and hours. It hit her a bit differently, and pretty much knocked her out. She took a few naps. The "makes you drowsy" could be from me over cooking the oil in the distiller and again on the hot plate.

It ended up hitting me pretty hard, and I'm not sure if it's due to the amount I took or how much of it I absorbed through my fingertips. Next time I make this stuff, I'm wearing gloves. I'm looking forward to taking another small dose in the future to get a 2nd calibration point. I may gift some to friends and need to let them know if they should take a very small amount or a very very small amount. Haha.

Anyway, I'm happy to report "IT WORKS". I mean, it REALLY works. And based on how little it takes and how long the effects last; I'm thrilled with the quantity I produced, even with all the mess and loss. I'm also glad that this stuff pretty much lasts forever in this state.

Pictures in next post.

I can't believe I read your entire post lmao, it seems like you learned alot from your first attempt, basically couldn't have gone any worse. Great story, next time will be better, I would hope so anyway