Quote Originally Posted by alaricxi
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.

Quote Originally Posted by alaricxi
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?