heh, went to sign up for an account to post in this thread, turns out I made one 4 years ago and only activated it just now. Mayhaps I've been partaking a little too much :stoned:

So I've got a couple of tips for people trying this one out.

I've noticed a few people are having problems maintaining the temperature of the cook or getting a weak batch. I think I might have a solution to this.
First things first, always do your cook in one of these puppies. These common stainless steel kitchen mixing bowls not only conduct heat GREAT, they won't crack with temperature changes, they are wide with a deep base and of different sizes, don't tip over in a rolling boil, and best of all they float in water. This is great because it's very important to keep that container away from the base of the pan, having the container resting on the base totally defeats the purpose of the water bath and will cause your THC to vape during cooking.

Next up, don't be worried about the max temperature of your alcohol, worry about your minimum temperature. The only thing having the alcohol as hot as it will go (173-180F depending on your purity of alcohol) is cause you to use a lot more alcohol in the cooking process to bring it to 20min. However if you do the process at a too low temperature you will not extract very much THC at all. 10deg too hot is more desirable than 10deg too cold (unless you're desperately short on extra alcohol ofc)

Lastly, if you want to get maximum potency you'll need to do multiple washes on your mash. Now for me it's very important to get as much potency as possible, volume is not so important. My usual way of consuming this stuff is to drop 3 or 4 drips out of an eye dropper onto the top of a nice cone every once in a while. Really gives it a hell of a kick :hippy:
Anyway, to do this with good effect I need to really get every bit of THC into a small amount of alcohol, the usual way of washing tends do actually dilute the final brew so I tried a different way.
  1. Start your second wash as normal, give it then 10 minutes you would normally allow, and then strain it off into a seperate container, if this looks quite clear skip to step 3
  2. Give it a third the same as the second and strain it into the container containing the second wash, this should come out fairly clear, but on the odd chance it hasn't repeat the wash process until your solution is near clear. The remains of all washes should go into the 'wash bucket' we're using.
  3. Pour the contents of the wash bucket into one of the larger steel bowls and place in the water bath, turn that baby up to maximum and vape all the alcohol away, you'll be left with some hash oil, now drop the temperature down to barely simmering
  4. Add the contents of the GD from your main wash, stir until all that hash oil is dissolved*, rebottle your GD and enjoy.

* If you are having difficulty dissolving the hash oil, you should crank up the temps, reduce your main wash to hash oil, then add fresh alcohol to bring it up to it's original volume. The higher alcohol content in the fresh stuff should dissolve that sticky goodness


I've got a couple questions for the more experienced guys too. I'm curious about isomerization, I understand the process of the heat method but not sure at what stage of the GD I should do it. Should I do it before the decarb, before the first wash, or reduce my final GD to hash oil and isomerise that? I would have thought it would be best in the green stage, but I'm not sure if water absorption would have a detrimental effect on the final product
I'm also curious about the acid + heat method, I've heard lemon juice gives little to no effect. I was wondering if I could use citric acid powder supersaturated in hot water to maybe get a more effective acid? If citric acid proves to have no effect whatsoever I was thinking of making another supersaturated solution but with muriatic acid powder. That stuff is also known as hydrocloric acid and should certainly pack a punch.
The big thing that worries me about the acid method is that it wouldn't vape with the alcohol during the cook process, meaning it'll be left in the GD and I'll get a nice mouthful of acid. Perhaps HCl is the breakfast of champions but I'm not game to try. I suppose I could use bicarb soda to neutralise the acidity, but I imagine it'll end up tasting absolutely foul. Anyone got some advice?