Decoding The Holy Grail: Terpene & Cannabinoid Retention: Decarb to Extraction

BCDD,
I am rather sure that most of us here will follow your adventures. I know I will. I have become as interested in what terpenes can do as I am in retaining cannabinoids and terpenes. There are members here that will be eager to help with your projects.

Early in this thread I said that I did not want it to have too narrow of a focus. I wanted it to go where those who participate want it to go. If you are concerned that you are exceeding your welcome or hijacking a thread, you are not. What you are doing is informative and interesting.

What we have been doing moves rather slowly waiting for plants to get ready for harvest and the cost of tests. Bandwidth is not much of a concern from me.

Thanks for the complements in your post.
Best,
canyon

What he said. :battingeyelashes: Let the thread go where it leads you. I open rooms that are rather organic in their evolution, and I have no problem with the direction you're taking Bucudinkydow. Obviously Canyon doesn't either. If you open a new thread you'll definitely have interest, but feel free to continue the conversation here too.
 
I don't know what to make of this.

I cooked a little jar of crumbled bud and olive oil. Ran it through my standard time and temp process and left it in the oven to cool. Promptly forgot about it.

MDW, unaware of all the above, fired the oven up to 350F for baking something or other. Nothing unusual there. But she doesn't know my oil is in there. We don't store anything in the oven so no need for her to look inside first.

Fast forward to I come home and do a OMG my canna oil is in there. Total time added was the preheat- 10 minutes ? - and just under a half hour at 350.

The oil was bubbling / boiling vigorously. Set it aside to cool down and did my usual straining.

Expecting the worse, I cracked the jar the next morning. It smelled slightly burned but not horribly so. A nutty, toasty flavour.

Took my usual 1/2 ml sample under my tongue and waited.

The sample reacted faster than usual - just a few seconds. The effects were also stronger than usual - maybe double?

Thinking I had killed every useful compound in it, I was pretty surprised to have the 'strongest' oil I've ever made.

Who knew?

I have some extra Carnival I can play with. What measurements did you use, if any, and what time and temp do you use as a standard? Do you recall how long it cooled in the oven before the wife turned the oven on?
 
I have some extra Carnival I can play with. What measurements did you use, if any, and what time and temp do you use as a standard? Do you recall how long it cooled in the oven before the wife turned the oven on?

Hi Sue - I use 2 grams hand crumbled bud bits in 40 ml of oil. In a wee mason jar with tinfoil top with 1 pinhole. Middle of the oven on the rack - no plate or pan under it.

I put it in the cold oven, heat it up to 220F, run it 110 minutes at that temp, then turn off the oven. I let it sit in there until cool.

In this case it was several hours in the oven after it was turned off. At this point the oven was set to 350F and fired up.

Hope this helps.
 
Good morning gang!! Just wanted to stop in and give a warn hug to all and say I hope everyone has a great Sunday! Sue I haven't been around enough to say hello to you personally so Hi . hun!! Hope you're just a shiny as always ..
 
Re: Decoding The Holy Grail: Terpene & Cannabinoid Retention - Decarb to Extraction

I'm posting this part here as feel it is relevant:

Summary

[Yes, I am putting the Summary of the pain cream production at the top for a reason. I will also repost the entire content in Magnus' Thread and this Summary in the 2 Holy Grail Threads because I believe it is apropos. If it is inappropriate to do this, someone please tell me and I'll refrain in the future.]

I used some of this cream on the hyper-sensitive spot on my back and the Spot that Sue and others have described on the neck (only a little here). Within a short while I felt some relief from the pressure on that spot on the back (more than I get from the Daytime caps I am taking about every 6 hours). A short time later I felt a much stronger buzz, a definite high feeling. This was much more than from the Daytime cap and much more than I expected from a cream applied to my skin.

And all of this after my concern that perhaps I had over-decarbed. I had decarbed the material separately in pint jars for 110 minutes (Kickn told me afterwards the Nova uses 75 minutes with specific heat-up and cool-down time). Then infused (part of it twice) for 110 minutes. Then heated up in double boiler to melt beeswax into final result. There should be quite a bit of degradation, right? I know there had to be loss of terpenes and breakdown of some too. So what gives?

First, we need to throw out that chart that keeps popping up on this forum. This has been written about in several threads, that other studies contradict it, that other experience contradicts it, that anecdotal evidence contradicts it, but the chart keeps reappearing, as if it were the holy grail of knowledge. We know it isn't and we must get the word out. Oldbear's current experience just proves this point - that people are worrying about the wrong thing. Perhaps we should be increasing time and/or temperature drastically to convert more THCA and CBDA (or just add CBD in at the end, which I forgot to do in my Daytime caps).

We now have the ability, and a thread exploring, adding terpenes back in. While this may add to the cost, it may be cheaper to convert more THC/CBD to make a stronger medicine and add this component back in. This at least gives us another option to explore. Especially since we could custom tailor the profile this way.
 
I posted this on our.... er.... Sister thread? Sister thread sounds nice.

Good morning'
I am going to doubble post this one to the Grail thread.

This morning I read all of an article that I had skimmed earlier. It was well documented and seriously over my pay grade with the technical material. The setup was seven 60% CO2 extracted total potency dispensary oil samples. They were tested and then stored in there original containers in the dark at 68f except for testing. Two pages and several charts later, With 99% confidence, "The half-life of total THC in cannabis oils is 7.9months." There was no mention of what effect heat would have on the rate of decay other than a mention that it does near the beginning of the article.

I have noticed that some of the dispensaries are adding 'Use By' dates to there labeling. The first ones were one year out. Yesterday I bought two grams of bud because Friday and Saturday are $10 all strains and I like to try new strains, "Use by: 06/2018". No problem there, but that is less than 6 months.

In there closing comments, they stated "The degradaiion reaction products have yet to be determined."

Another quote, "Initial results show that the total cannabidiol (CBD) level in cannabis oils decays exponentially, similar to THC with a half-life of less than a year."

My takeaway would be, "Don't make too large of batches and keep it dark and cool".
 
GW,
From looking at a flow chart (I still can't keep it all strait.) THC can degrade to CBN and Delta 8 THC with time. CBC can convert/degrade to CBL with time. CBCA, CBC and CBL are not usually found in high quantities.

If decarb temperatures and time are increased enough it would probably start acting as an aging process.

D8 THC is listed as having anti-anxiety properties.

What else could be going on?
I never know
 
I posted this on our.... er.... Sister thread? Sister thread sounds nice.

Good morning'
I am going to doubble post this one to the Grail thread.

This morning I read all of an article that I had skimmed earlier. It was well documented and seriously over my pay grade with the technical material. The setup was seven 60% CO2 extracted total potency dispensary oil samples. They were tested and then stored in there original containers in the dark at 68f except for testing. Two pages and several charts later, With 99% confidence, "The half-life of total THC in cannabis oils is 7.9months." There was no mention of what effect heat would have on the rate of decay other than a mention that it does near the beginning of the article.

I have noticed that some of the dispensaries are adding 'Use By' dates to there labeling. The first ones were one year out. Yesterday I bought two grams of bud because Friday and Saturday are $10 all strains and I like to try new strains, "Use by: 06/2018". No problem there, but that is less than 6 months.

In there closing comments, they stated "The degradaiion reaction products have yet to be determined."

Another quote, "Initial results show that the total cannabidiol (CBD) level in cannabis oils decays exponentially, similar to THC with a half-life of less than a year."

My takeaway would be, "Don't make too large of batches and keep it dark and cool".
Did they say what the decay products were? I know that many of us store our oils and oil based meds in the refrigerator so I wonder what the impact of this would be.

It would be interesting if this is something that could be checked with the tCheck. Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about the tCheck2?

Cheers from the darkside
 
Oldbear & Greatwolf,

People on this board have proven time and again that this stuff is not as sensitive to higher temps as once thought. I believe you are referencing that 1992 decarb chart. I believe it is accurate... for what it is. But it clearly states at the bottom that it's in n-hexane in the open air.

One thing that makes the chart even harder to use is interpolating the chart on out at temperatures below about 220. It would be a long gradually sloping line. Regardless of the chart, what numerous people have proven time and again is that once it is in a solution like olive oil, it is a lot more resistant to heat.

I usually use a mini crock for olive oil extractions. One of them I had just would not run hot enough to suit me. So , to compensate,I wrapped a dishtowel around it and then covered the whole thing with Saran wrap. It ran about an hour like that at over 250 f. This is in addition to the other four hours at about 165. I was pretty sure it would be sleepy time at best. But, much like the rest of you, it turned out to be killer. On that note, I suggest running your extractions around 180 f. Higher I doubt will be more beneficial and lower will make it more difficult to extract the goodies.

Recently, in my quest to reduce the chlorophyll taste, and properly inspired by Greatwolf, I decided to knock some trichomes off with dry ice and a coarse steel screen on the cap of the Mason jar. So I froze 5 g of broken up buds. Then I added some fresh shards of dry ice to the jar with the buds and shook the hell out of it. I noticed quickly the keif color changing the plant matter. I was okay with that because I wanted to make sure I got everything anyway. Before I started I obviously had not given us a great deal of thought. Anyway, the dry ice made short work of the brittle buds. After eyeballing the mounting the size of the pile from just 5 g, I started laughing and realizing that it would essentially grind this stuff up just as well as a store-bought grinder. LOL. Long story short, I cut the green matter down by about 60%. Yes, I absolutely went too far. Anyway, the oil did taste much better.but My extraction was not nearly as strong as I feel it should have been. And I think one of the factors was that I was only running it at about 140°. I'm still playing with the heat settingsvon my magnetic stirrer. Bottom line, don't be afraid to jack up the temp a little bit on your extractions. I have heard of people running crockpots around 220. I think that's overkill especially since you're usually doing it for five hours or six. But again, maybe it doesn't hurt a bit.
 
About the tcheck2 .... I am supposed to be getting one soon. They are really fuzzy about how it works and such on the website. I asked about that and they said they had legal concerns because it wasn't as easy for them to fall into the gray area of paraphernalia. I don't want to comment about that anymore right now but just suffice it to say that their answer regarding vagueness satisfied me. They are working to get around the caveat now. I will be talking to them again soon but assuming they don't let me down, I will have the real thing to report on soon.
 
About the tcheck2 .... I am supposed to be getting one soon. They are really fuzzy about how it works and such on the website. I asked about that and they said they had legal concerns because it wasn't as easy for them to fall into the gray area of paraphernalia. I don't want to comment about that anymore right now but just suffice it to say that their answer regarding vagueness satisfied me. They are working to get around the caveat now. I will be talking to them again soon but assuming they don't let me down, I will have the real thing to report on soon.


I still think they owe both of us a freebee, especially you.You spent a fortune setting up those tests. We did burn some good weed though and that was the best brownie I have ever had.
 
Did they say what the decay products were? I know that many of us store our oils and oil based meds in the refrigerator so I wonder what the impact of this would be.

It would be interesting if this is something that could be checked with the tCheck. Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about the tCheck2?

Cheers from the darkside

What I quoted is all that they said. I don't know enough to even say if converting to another cannabinoid would be considered decay byproducts.

I have assumed refrigerated or frozen helps with longer term storage. Based on the scraps I find laying around and try smoking, cold is better.

I don't see why a tChek wouldn't read an actual that could be compared to a starting reading. The concentration may need diluting. I can't remember how high it reads. Kickn would know.
 
Botched batch update
Before the accidental partial decarb I gave my wife one cap with about 10mg total cannabinoids, mostly acids,around noon and another at night. She slept rather well for her and said she felt nothing from the caps. Today I gave her half the dose of the botched batch around noon and was ask if it was going to make her stupid.

"Maybe"

At 2 she announced that she was getting stupid. We talked a while and she decided that what she took was about the right amount for nighttime. Yea.

She said that her anxiety was way down and she need that. I made up 22 half doses. After she is on them a while we can work with adjusting the dose.

Some days you win
 
"I don't see why a tChek wouldn't read an actual that could be compared to a starting reading. The concentration may need diluting. I can't remember how high it reads. Kickn would know. "

The old version went to 15 mg/ml. But you can work around that by diluting and multiplying the results by the x you diluted. A hassle but not the end of the world. Don't know about the new one. HOWEVER, the new one is supposed to have the capability to test buds with a solution. If that works pretty well....you will see progress being made by yours truly rapidly.

With the tcheck, you can test right in the middle of extractions so you know where you are while there is still time to do something about it. Now, if I could test the bud beforehand, a lot of the puzzle falls together.

I agree with Canyon about free ones. They are supposedly giving me a new one. I have been refunded on the old one. I would like to see them give Canyon one also.
We DID burn thru some really top notch weed. And he was the one (let's not forget the all important Mrs. Canyon) who put me up for a week and put them out of the cooking biz. And shuttled me back & forth to the airport in another city....far away. We did learn a lot for sure but not near what we should have to justify all that aggravation and expense.

BTW, I will be sending them (tcheck) a link to this board soon. They know there is a board on here but unless they found it on their own I don't think they have read it yet.
I do know we are making ourselves known on the vastness of the web. Friday I was looking for some info on Google and the top reference was....a quote form me on this board. LOL. Sue said one day that some huge number of people had viewed this board. Their device was supposed to be the cornerstone of our project.

While we are talking about testing, we could have answered a couple more questions if the results had been available while I was still there.
 
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