Isomerization process for Green Dragon?

[dragonrider]

Man... do you drink at breakfast??? :wtf:

Of course! Doesn't everyone drink at breakfast? How do you get the cereal to go down if you don't moisten it with beer?

Actually, no, I do not usually drink at breakfast. I just wanted to be sure there was enough alcohol content in the coffee to transport the THC. And on a House Elf Day, anything goes --- I figure I can start drinking and smoking as soon as I get up, although sometimes I forget to use detergent on the laundry, and sometimes I vacume the same piece of carpet over and over for hours.

[dragonrider]

Quick question: What I'm wondering is if there is any reason why you shouldn't just shoot for doing the extraction for 2.5 hours to do both the extraction into the alcohol and the isomerization all at once?

That way it would only consist of two steps, decarboxylizing in the oven, then extracting and isomerization in the double boiler. (plus sweetening and watering down as desired)

Yes, you could do it the way you described. I was doing it in two steps because I had already made a large batch of green dragon and wanted to see if I could strengthen it after the fact. One thing that I have decided is that maybe doing the isomerization process after the fact is not working, or at least not very dramatically. I'll post the results after I answer your questions.

Dragonrider, I am wondering if there is a reason you broke it into "small hit-sized pieces" instead of grinding it to a powder for the decarboxylizing. What would be the best thing to do?

The main reason is that I don't have a grinder specifically for weed, and I didn't want to use something like my coffee grinder.

I also don't know how important it is for the weed to be thoroughly ground up. I've heard a lot of advice to grind the weed almost into a powder, and some people talk about breaking up the cellular structure to release the THC. But I don't think the THC is really trapped inside the cellular structure --- I think most of it is on the surface. My feeling is that if you use heat, high alcohol content, and enough time you are going to extract all the THC just fine without grinding the weed, and if you do a double extraction, you will definitely get it all out.

You mentioned grinding before the decarboxylization process, which makes me think that maybe grinding would aid that process, even if it is not importatnt for extraction. Does anyone know if that is true? Is it important to have the weed well ground up for decarboxylization?

Another reason I do not grind it is that I use a wire mesh strainer to strain it, and if it is too well ground, a lot of smaller particles go through. I don't like using coffee filters, so I try to keep the pieces big enough to catch in the strainer.

So anyway, I'm not against grinding it, I just don't have a good tool for grinding it, and I don't like straining the powder residue, and I don't think it's that important. So I would say you should do whatever works best for you.

Does anyone else have an opinion one way or another?

[dragonrider]

Indeed... why dont to grind it?

I don't grind it because I'm too busy drinking my breakfast!

[dragonrider]

Ok, here are the final results of my experiment with trying to isomerize my green dragon liqueur.

Yesterday I did the third and final veriosn of the experiment --- took a 1/2 ounce shot of the green dragon liqueur, without cooking it in any way, and added it to my morning coffee with cream and sugar and a shot of Irish Whiskey. Yes, Coelho, I drink at breakfast.

Within an hour, I had a decent high going, but it never got much stronger than the peak at one hour. After about two hours, I decided I wasn't quite high enough to enjoy my laundry and vacuming to their fullest potential, so I smoked a hit, and then everything was fine.

I concluded that the heating and heating with lemon juice do not make a very big difference in the strenght or quality of the high, but they do make some difference. Looking back on the notes I posted, I think the best result was from heating without the lemon juice. I think that high was the most energetic and enjoyable.

One of the problems I had with this experiemnt is that I was not able to do the comparisons close together, so it was hard to remember exactly what each experience was like from one time to the next, and I had to rely on the notes I posted here.

Another potential problem that I thought of just recently is that maybe the green dragon looses some potency over time, so by spreading the experiment out over months it does not give a fair comparison from the first time to the last. I'm not sure if that is a problem or not.

Anyway, for myself for this current batrch of Green Dragon liqueur that I have, I think what I am going to do is usually just take a full 1-ounce shot of the liqueur, because that is what I enjoyed the most. And maybe I will cook it for an hour if I have the time. I was using 1/2-ounce doses for the experiment so I wouldn't get so high I couldn't make comparisons, but now that the experiment is over I will just take a full shot and enjoy it. In fact, I'm going to take it right now! Is it after breakfast yet? Can I have a shot of whiskey with that?

One recommendation I would have for people who want to boost the potency of their green dragon would be to focus on the decarboxylization process. Master Wu posted results in his Definitive Green Dragon thread about using 325F for 5 mins vs using 200F for 20. He had fairly conclusive results that the 325F for 5 mins was better.

And for people who want to isomerize their green dragon, I would suggest trying Coelho's method of making Green Dragon tincture, instead of the liqueur I make, and then evaporating away the liquid so that you have hash oil, and then using his boiling technique to isomerize the hash oil, and then adding back alcohol to reconstitute the Green Dragon.

The next time I make green dragon I will probably decarboxylize at 325F for 5 mins as Master Wu suggested. I will lengthen the extraction boil to an hour or more as Alaricxi suggested, but otherwise skip any other isomerization process. And I will dilute with everclear, water and sugar to make the liqueur that I like.

Does anyone else have any more suggestions on this thread?

[Coelho]

Well... im pretty sure that the green dragon loses its potency over time... the THC is sensitive to light and air... so unless it were stored in a dark place and into a sealed container, im sure there were some loss of THC.
Did you make some green dragon with hash oil isomerized by "my" method? I would like to know if there is a great difference between the effects of green dragon with and without isomerization... when i make green dragon with oil, i only use the isomerizated oil (which gives me a head high when smoked), and yet i always get a heavy body high... as i prefer the mind high, i never tried to make green dragon with non-isomerizated oil (which gives me a body high when smoked)...
And just one more suggestion... dont drink at breakfast... If you want to start the day in great style, wake'n'bake! :thumbsup::rastasmoke::jointsmile::stoned:

[dragonrider]

One more update on this topic. I decided that my Green Dragon liqueur had definitely lost potency over time. As I mentioned in my last post on Nov-29, after I had done the other experiments using 1/2-ounce shots, I took a full one-ounce shot. When I first made the Green Dragon liqueur several months ago, a one-ounce shot was a very very strong dose. But that last one-once shot didn't feel very strong to me. It was more of a body buzz and not as enjoyable. A couple of days ago, I took another one-ounce shot and heated it without the lemon juice. That restored it to a nice energetic high, similar to the original recipe before it degenerated.

So I think maybe my original recipe was about as strong as it was going to get, and heating would not have helped it when the batch was new. But now that the THC is oxidizing or breaking down in some way, I guess the heating can restore some of that potency. At this stage, the high is definietely better after double-boiling the liqueur for an hour.

[maxsuperdanks]

Just so you guys know.... the commercial name for Hydrochloric acid is Muriatic acid.....



I can get 100 percent Muriatic acid with a strong molar rating at any hardware store.....