Making a super-concentrated canna-oil using coconut oil

[ysobro]

Hello all,
I know that it's been posted before about the saturation point of marijuana to oil when making canna-oil and also that there's huge variations on what kind of plant material that we're working.

I know that the general rule of thumb that iv'e worked with before has been 1 oz of plant material to 2 cups of oil (4 sticks of butter)

can you combine this extraction technique with the Green Dragon method and have about, say, 1/2 - 1 cup of grain alcohol to the oil/water mixture? The hypothesis here is that the alcohol would extract any extra THC (if the oil was at saturation) and then the heat of the boiling water would evaporate out the alcohol, leaving the extra THC in the oil. Is my thinking flawed on this?

Basically, I'm just trying to see if there's a way that I can make the oil super potent. Thanks for your tips!

ysobro Reviewed by ysobro on 09-08-2009. Making a super-concentrated canna-oil using coconut oil Hello all, I know that it's been posted before about the saturation point of marijuana to oil when making canna-oil and also that there's huge variations on what kind of plant material that we're working. I know that the general rule of thumb that iv'e worked with before has been 1 oz of plant material to 2 cups of oil (4 sticks of butter) can you combine this extraction technique with the Green Dragon method and have about, say, 1/2 - 1 cup of grain alcohol to the oil/water mixture? Rating: 5

[jimmy8778]

you could extract the thc from the plant material into the alcohol first. then completely evaporate all the alcohol off, you will be left with a gooey substance. take that gooey substance and add it to your oil. the best way to get the best saturation is to find an oil that the thc dissolves easily in, there are more types of oils than butter. and then as much thc as possible will dissolve in whatever amount of oil you want it to. and there may be some left over thc that would need to be dissolved in more oil too.

[grumio]

Jimmy is suggesting making hash oil & then infusing that into some sort of edible oil, butter, coconut, etc, & I believe people do that. From what I've read, butane makes the best hash oil. It would be interesting to split a batch of plant matter in half, make bho with half & straight cannabutter with half, then infuse the bho into the same amount of butter, & compare.

As for your hybrid method - innaresting. How bout this - get your water/butter mixture warm, put the herb in a jar & cover with Everclear, shake for 10 seconds, & dump it all in the butter. Proceed with cannabutter recipe.

It might just make it taste stronger (& probably worse) by extracting even more planty stuff than oil would've alone.

Give it a whirl! Post results!

[ysobro]

Hey grumio, thanks for your suggestions! Although I know that BHO is the regarded as the best way to extract I think that I'm just not working with the amount of plant material necessary to make this method worthwhile. My setup was using a stainless steel turkey baster filled with ground up matter and then running the butane through. The yield is so pitiful (<10% if that) that I didn't want to continue. I believe that you've got to be a grower or have access to large quantities so that by proportion you get a lot back. my opinion.

So I did a coconut oil extraction the same way that I do regular butter, except for that I used 1/4 oz for 1/4cup of the coconut oil. (I believe that the standard ratio would have used a 1/2 cup of oil). I used Everclear to rinse out the the food processor and just dumped that into the cooking liquid and let that simmer. There is also water in the mixture just like the standard cannabutter recipe. I let it simmer long enough that I believe that the alcohol gets burned off. (How do I know? I don't. I just monitor the temperature and assume that if ethanol's boiling point is ~160-170F, then when the temperature rises to ~200 that means that the alcohol is evaporated. People with better chemistry knowledge please chime in here)

I haven't tested it yet, but will. I'm thinking of making hard candies with it. (Although I am constantly trying to formulate a method to make the dissolvable listerine strips...see my other thread)

My knowledge of chemistry is limited but I wonder if whatever THC that's extracted into the alcohol gets tossed with the water. Does that alcohol-dissolved THC then become water soluble? or just alchohol soluble? my hope is that whatever thc gets extracted from boiling in the ethanol gets pushed into the oil layer thus making it more concentrated. Who knows!

Damn my limited weed science knowledge.

[Coelho]

The yield is so pitiful (<10% if that) that I didn't want to continue.

What this % exactly mean? That the amount of oil you got is less than 10% of the amount of weed you started with? (For example, you started with 1g of weed and got less than 0.1g of oil)?

(How do I know? I don't. I just monitor the temperature and assume that if ethanol's boiling point is ~160-170F, then when the temperature rises to ~200 that means that the alcohol is evaporated. People with better chemistry knowledge please chime in here)

If the temperature were significantly higher than ethanols b.p., it must have evaporated completly.

My knowledge of chemistry is limited but I wonder if whatever THC that's extracted into the alcohol gets tossed with the water. Does that alcohol-dissolved THC then become water soluble? or just alchohol soluble? my hope is that whatever thc gets extracted from boiling in the ethanol gets pushed into the oil layer thus making it more concentrated. Who knows!

The THC that was dissolved in alcohol does not turns water soluble. A small part of it may remain unsolved but in suspension in the water. Hopefully, most (if not all) of it will reach the oil layer and get dissolved in it.

If you didnt get good results when making a butane extraction, you should do what jimmy8778 suggested and make a pure ethanol extraction, and then dissolve the resulting hash oil in the oil. Maybe it can give better results.