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

[InTheShed]

Kickn, I re-read your instructions and was trying to figure out what my oil was, strength-wise, but I kept getting stuck when we start converting. Why is it better to measure everything by weight? Who weighs their liquids?

Having to work the fact that EVOO weighs 0.91g/ml into my calculations mean than when working out doses I need to weigh my oil rather than measure it. A 00 capsule holds just under a ml of oil. Do I care what that weighs? If my oil is plugged into OldBear's spreadsheet I know that my mix is 6.87mg/ml. If I'm making oil for my dad's dementia-related behavior issues and I want to make a capsule that's 4.5mg THC and 4.5mg CBD, how does converting my oil into grams help me?

Call me confused.

 

[Canyon]

Kickn, I re-read your instructions and was trying to figure out what my oil was, strength-wise, but I kept getting stuck when we start converting. Why is it better to measure everything by weight? Who weighs their liquids?

Having to work the fact that EVOO weighs 0.91g/ml into my calculations mean than when working out doses I need to weigh my oil rather than measure it. A 00 capsule holds just under a ml of oil. Do I care what that weighs? If my oil is plugged into OldBear's spreadsheet I know that my mix is 6.87mg/ml. If I'm making oil for my dad's dementia-related behavior issues and I want to make a capsule that's 4.5mg THC and 4.5mg CBD, how does converting my oil into grams help me?

Call me confused.

When I make oil from concentrate I weigh the oil to get the dilution. I still have to account for the increased volume. Probably the best way would be to tare a few caps and fill them with oil and get an actual weight per cap. Then base your dilution on that.

I never know.

 

[InTheShed]

When I make oil from concentrate I weigh the oil to get the dilution. I still have to account for the increased volume. Probably the best way would be to tare a few caps and fill them with oil and get an actual weight per cap. Then base your dilution on that.
I never know.

Buy why? What does the extra step to go from mg/ml to mg/mg do for you, except that now you need a tare weight for your capsules? The literature and the videos on dosing are all in mg/ml. What part of what you are doing makes the weight part a necessity?

 

[Canyon]

Amy,
I don't know what the laws are where you are. CBD products are rather easy to find in the States. Can you buy CBD isolate? It is available on the net. Import laws may apply.

Another question, do you want to try a dry ice extraction?

You said you were interested in something like the last oil I made. If you could mix an isolate of CBD into a carrier oil and add that to an oil batch made the way you have made it before, it would add more CBD while diluting your higher THC oil down to an amount that you would be comfortable with for daytime. It would be missing the acids.

It took me several days to come up with the ratios I used for the mix I made and two more to convince myself that I probably had it correct. Then I had it tested. Most of the numbers I post are done with the hope that someone will find something I missed or have wrong. I will turn seventy this month. I have been self medicating for about 55 of that. Math is hard. Avoid when possable.

If you want to try a cold extraction, what I did is documented fairly well. We should be able to walk you through how much of what you need for starting material. Then we can work up a dilution based on your needs.
Best

 

[Kicknitup1]

That was 66 grams post decarb. Actual weight into the oil.

[edit: oh, and I calculate at 10% THC because I'm growing outside and I like to estimated conservatively]

Of course it was. My mistake. And 10% is not unreasonable either.

 

[Canyon]

Buy why? What does the extra step to go from mg/ml to mg/mg do for you, except that now you need a tare weight for your capsules? The literature and the videos on dosing are all in mg/ml. What part of what you are doing makes the weight part a necessity?

I don't think it really makes any difference which way you approach it. Sometimes I can look at something like this with a different approach and get my head around it when I could not before. The lab tests for oil samples are in both mg/ml and mg/g fwiw.

 

[Kicknitup1]

Kickn, I re-read your instructions and was trying to figure out what my oil was, strength-wise, but I kept getting stuck when we start converting. Why is it better to measure everything by weight? Who weighs their liquids?

Having to work the fact that EVOO weighs 0.91g/ml into my calculations mean than when working out doses I need to weigh my oil rather than measure it. A 00 capsule holds just under a ml of oil. Do I care what that weighs? If my oil is plugged into OldBear's spreadsheet I know that my mix is 6.87mg/ml. If I'm making oil for my dad's dementia-related behavior issues and I want to make a capsule that's 4.5mg THC and 4.5mg CBD, how does converting my oil into grams help me?

Call me confused.

I started weighing my liquids because glassware is notoriously inaccurate. I'm talking beakers btw, not measuring cups. A lot of those are way off. The exception is a graduated cylinder which is too hard to get the oil back out of. After I got used to it, it turned out to be easier, all things considered. Like adding Lecithin for instance. It's a mess measuring that in glassware...or even spoons. I just keep adding things to the beaker and tare in between. TIP: weigh your empty glassware & label them. Now I make gummies so Im adding a bit of polyglycol & VG. So, all in all, weight is way easier.

And you don't have to even start with liquid measurements or switch back & forth. My oil is now labeled in mg/g rather than mg/ml. Short version: You start out in weight so continue. A quick example- dissolve 1g of decarbed CCO (lets say 600mg strength) into 28g evoo + 1g lecithin + the 1 g cco= 30g. We have 600mg in there so it's 20mg/g. (600mg thc/30g liquid). And a 000 cap will hold about a gram.

If I want to make 10 caps, I weigh out 10g in a shot glass and pull out my oil syringe & squirt it in.

 

[Canyon]

It is one of the hallmark symptoms of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - I'm too exhausted to explain that right now LOL!



Thanks - how do I do that?

Meaning how do I add non decarbed material? Just by adding it straight to the infusion without the oven de carb first?

I missed this.
Er.....Yes, sort of except the heat used in the infusion will still do some decarbing and it is going to be hard to know how much without testing.

I mixed decarbed and non decarbed flowers to get a low THC dry ice and ethol extraction. That was basically air dried. Then I dissolved that in warm coconut oil. What I did was not an infusion of the cannabinoids into the oil. I striped/extracted the cannabinoids with the alcohol. When the alcohol was gone, I dissolved/infused that in the coconut carrier oil.

There was no heat involved above what it took to mix the extract into the coconut oil until I over heated it on a warming burner.

 

[Skullman420]

I do this first with my leaf material/popcorn buds

It's what I am left with after making hash I want to use for oil. So I will already have squeezed like 50-60% of the THC out of the plant material. It's the remaining 40-50% I want to get my hands on and into capsules - At least that is the plan. Guess the recipe changes a little bit then since the material I will use is quite weak

 

[Kicknitup1]

DeVille- To clarify, you want to get what's left in the leaves, right? That pic is not going in, right ? lol.

 

[Kicknitup1]

Kickn, I re-read your instructions and was trying to figure out what my oil was, strength-wise, but I kept getting stuck when we start converting. Why is it better to measure everything by weight? Who weighs their liquids?

Having to work the fact that EVOO weighs 0.91g/ml into my calculations mean than when working out doses I need to weigh my oil rather than measure it. A 00 capsule holds just under a ml of oil. Do I care what that weighs? If my oil is plugged into OldBear's spreadsheet I know that my mix is 6.87mg/ml. If I'm making oil for my dad's dementia-related behavior issues and I want to make a capsule that's 4.5mg THC and 4.5mg CBD, how does converting my oil into grams help me?

Call me confused.

Hi,
In that particular situation you are already at the end so it doesn't matter as much. But to start out mixing a batch, I think it's the easiest easiest way to go. I'll get back to that in a second. But first, back to the capsules. I'm guessing your CBD and THC are combined in the same oil at this point. Because if you are trying to mix two oils at 4 1/2 each then we of course just have to do different.

Since his dose is only 9 mg, and using 2 capsules, I would do it like this- you have 6.87 mg/mL so that's 7.5 mg per gram of oil. One 9 mg dose would need 1.2 g of oil. If I wanted to make 10 pills I know I would need 90 mg of goodies. That means I would need 12 g of your oil (90mg/7.5mg/g). I would put the 12 g in a beaker on my scale and tare it. Then take a syringe and pullout .6 g and shoot it in capsule and tare my scale again. Repeat nine times. LOL

The way you are doing it is probably plenty close and all well and fine. You probably don't know exactly how much you're putting in a capsule but I'm guessing it's close to .85 mL. Doing it my way, I know there's 4.5 mg in every capsule every time. It would be tedious as hell to do that with an eye dropper.

I made some 25 mg per gram EVOO (BHO) and loaded some 000 capsules at 20 mg each. For some reason capsules don't work very well for me but my wife loves them.

Batch Making: For the bulk of the time you can toss the math about that .91 stuff. Just think about how much oil you usually make at a time. Let's say it's 50 mL of EVOO. Divide that by .91 and you get 54.9. So instead of measuring the EVOO by volume you just weigh out 54.9 g. From then on you don't have to think about milliliters and stuff. You know how much your oil ways at the end and you know how much active ingredients went into that amount of weight. Divide it out and that's going to be milligrams per gram from then on. I shoot for 20 mg per gram strengths. But that can be challenging working with buds.

 

[InTheShed]

I think I'm beginning to see the usefulness of the weight here! Especially since you explained the inaccuracies built into measuring ounces or liters in measuring cups, an error rate amplified as we get down to capsules. I'll have to check the accuracy of my digital scale first .

Next batch I'll try the weight method, with your explanation in hand of course!

 

[Kicknitup1]

PM me if you need clarification...or want another column in your spreadsheet. I can set it up, no sweat, then it will convert whatever project at hand and you don't have to think about the math. BUT, I recommend understanding before automation. lol.

 

[Skullman420]

Exactly - The hash I want to smoke. So it is whatever is left in the leaf material I want to get my hands on. When you extract the hash, more or less half of the essential oils remain in the plant material. It's too good to just throw away but too weak to smoke

DeVille- To clarify, you want to get what's left in the leaves, right? That pic is not going in, right ? lol.

 

[Kicknitup1]

Exactly - The hash I want to smoke. So it is whatever is left in the leaf material I want to get my hands on. When you extract the hash, more or less half of the essential oils remain in the plant material. It's too good to just throw away but too weak to smoke

I think I would do and alcohol extraction. Canyon and a couple of the guys have had a good bit of practice at that. So I defer to them on the details. The reason I would not do olive oil is because your concentration is going to be very low in a large bulk of vegetable matter. And, because I believe you said it was trim and such, I would not grind it up any finer than I had to. You would definitely have chlorophyll city. By the time you got enough oil to get it all submerged well, it would be very low in potency.

Which brings a question of my own. Can anyone think of a reason why olive oil would get in the way of the ethanol if you wanted to try to salvage the dregs with an alcohol extraction after an olive oil extraction?

 

[Kicknitup1]

Retrieving that trapped oil after an extraction should be one of our priorities. That is a serious hit moneywise to leave it behind. And yes I know we can put it all in the capsules or in the brownies, which will taste bad and have an unknown concentration. But frankly, I would just like to have my oil back. LOL. I played with a small keif press for a day. The kind with the T handle at the top.well I didn't use the threaded part. I heated the chamber to 220f, stuffed some dregs in there, and put it under the arbor press. This model had a tincture screen in the bottom which is why I bought it. Well I did not work worth a crap. The screen stops up in the first couple of seconds and only a few drops come out even with 1000 pounds of pressure. LOL. Back to square one.

Now I'm thinking of drilling a bunch of tiny holes up and down the side of the cylinder to let the oil drip out at all levels.I really thought the press would work silly me. I was thinking I might increase the potency with all that pressure by squeezing out some of the essential oil that was missed like in a rosin press.

 

[Bucudinkydow]

That's an interesting question, kickn. Never had an opportunity to try that but thinking it through sounds like it might be worth a try. My guess is the residual oil left in the dregs are possibly rich in cannabinoids and ethanol readily mixes with most oils. The presence of the oil may impede any further extraction from the plant material but you should be able to retrieve some of the rich oil. Great thing about ethanol, you can always evaporate it and adjust the potency after the fact. Good luck if you choose to give it a try.

 

[Oldbear]

Retrieving that trapped oil after an extraction should be one of our priorities. That is a serious hit moneywise to leave it behind. And yes I know we can put it all in the capsules or in the brownies, which will taste bad and have an unknown concentration. But frankly, I would just like to have my oil back. LOL. I played with a small keif press for a day. The kind with the T handle at the top.well I didn't use the threaded part. I heated the chamber to 220f, stuffed some dregs in there, and put it under the arbor press. This model had a tincture screen in the bottom which is why I bought it. Well I did not work worth a crap. The screen stops up in the first couple of seconds and only a few drops come out even with 1000 pounds of pressure. LOL. Back to square one.

Now I'm thinking of drilling a bunch of tiny holes up and down the side of the cylinder to let the oil drip out at all levels.I really thought the press would work silly me. I was thinking I might increase the potency with all that pressure by squeezing out some of the essential oil that was missed like in a rosin press.

Kickin I have learned a couple of things from my olive oil extractions. Regarding oil recovery from the mash, an overnight drain works well. When I want to squeeze it, I use filtration bags that are made for making seed oils/milk at home. I think they are called nut bags. They can be twisted like rope so remove a lot.

My leftovers taste quite good actually. A nutty taste. I add this to all sorts of things - soup, smoothies, salads, - and will often grab a pinch as a snack.

Cannabis is a very healthy food. Because it all gets used, I don't worry at all about what remains in the mash.

EDit to add: I don't grind things up. I crumble it by hand. I wonder if that would make a difference for you?

 

[Bucudinkydow]

Exactly - The hash I want to smoke. So it is whatever is left in the leaf material I want to get my hands on. When you extract the hash, more or less half of the essential oils remain in the plant material. It's too good to just throw away but too weak to smoke

I've often wondered why more people don't do an extraction of the leftovers. There's definitely some goody left in there.

Cannabinoids and terpenes are pretty much solely contained in the trichomes and I don't think there's much in the plant matter other than chlorophyll, flavonoids and waxes (put this in the classification of something I think I know but may not). Probably a point of confusion comes from the fact bulbous trichomes, microscopic in size and containing only one to four cells, are actually found on virtually every surface of the plant. While these mini-trichomes seldom have a cannabinoid content greater than 3-4%, it's impossible to reap them mechanically and are still present in the your leftovers. That material is a great candidate for an ethanol extraction!

BCDD

 

[Skullman420]

Will not a good cure get rid of a lot of the chlorophyll? I dry and cure my trimmings just as I would with the buds