Decarb advise

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
I don't make butter but you will get more chlorophyll in your end product as you break down the plant matter. I do as little to my flower as possible when I'm doing my ethanol washes.
 

Skoal

Well-Known Member
No. Decarb in the oven with whole buds at 240F for about 25-30 minutes. You grind the decarbed bud up afterwards.

I’ve never had issues with this method
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
going to decarb 1oz of bud tomorrow to make butter. Never cooked before. Do I grind everything up super small? Get all the trich exposed
Ya, decarb is heating up the material to convert THCA into THC. When you "shumerk a bewrl" (workaholics lol), your lighter does the heating or "de-carbing" or "activating" for you, but you're not going to light your brownies on fire to eat them so you have to convert the THCA into THC a different way, ie oven ect. Your body gets high off THC, not THCA so much, so you want to convert it otherwise you're going to be missing out on some potency.

Here's a chart showing different decarb temps...
decarb-chart-768x432.jpg
Most go with 250°F for ~30min because it's easy to be consistent, but if you go with 293°F you can do it faster, looks like 293°F takes about 7min...


Here's a table breaking it down further...
decarboxylation-temperatures-times-768x432.jpg

If it were me..
1. De-carb 30min @ 250F
2. Make oil with decarbed herb
3. Add oil to butter to make "cannabutter"


Make oil...
1. Freeze down decarbed herb & 99% ISO
2. Use 99% ISO and soak frozen herb for 45s - 1min in a jar of it with enough ISO so that the top layer of herb is barely submerged.
3. Strain mixture through coffee filter
4. Pour into glass pan/bowl
5. Place glass pan/bowl in pot of hot water so it floats (double boil the ISO off).

Chlorophyll is water soluble and tastes like shit, so you want to use a solvent with as little water as possible (Everclear or 99% ISO, 91% ISO works too and is better than Bacardi 151 if your location is anti ETOH). I use ISO because it's cheap and medical grade. If there's no water in the solvent then the chlorophyll can't get picked up. If there still happens to be some water in the purest solvent you can find, the cold temps caused by freezing your decarbed herb and solvent will keep the water suspended as ice or very close to 32F, so that it dissolves less of the chlorophyll. Also, the short soaking duration helps reduce the amount of possible chlorophyll contamination as well.

If you can filter quickly and keep the solvent cold enough (means getting your filter station set up before you pull your ingedients out of the freezer) then you'll end up with a light golden liquid that darkens as you purge the solvent off. I use a double boiler because it's pretty much bulletproof for me (though I use a fry pan for my base utensil that holds and boils the water, and I don't boil, I just keep knob on simmer so you see whisps of steam every once in awhile), but some will just lay it up on a shelf in a closet for a few days and come back to it that way.

I have found that the higher the purge temp, the more difficult it was to get a "shatter," it always seemed to be runny-er, if I kept purge temps under 109F I had a more solid type of "shatter."

If you do get a tinge of green in your filtered wash, just shine an intense light on it for awhile (I just turn on the stove light as its purging if I got a twinge, 30min and it's normally good), the more green the brighter the light or longer the duration, but it changes its green color to amber. Not noticed much for taste difference though. If my wash was green it was always harsher than the naturally gold washes.
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
i see that the boiling water bath method requieres 212F. so there i have to put the weed into an airtight jar glass? another question is: can i use a rice cooker for this method?
The determining factors in how efficiently you decarb is based on the temperature & duration that the temp persists. I'd not use a rice cooker as I don't know what catalytic effect the added pressure will have.

I think the all around easiest/most effecient way is probably baking it. You can bake oils too.
 

majjy_rane

Active Member
I don't know what catalytic effect the added pressure will have.
thats what bothers me either... because i saw on a video once that they did it the same way in a sealed jarglass and putted it into a pot of boiling water... i actually thought the jarglass would blow up or something... thought you had more experience about it...

I think the all around easiest/most effecient way is probably baking it. You can bake oils too.
my biggest concern about it is the odor thats the idea behind this airtight stuff... so if i would bake it with an oven i don't have, my neighbour on the groundfloor who is ironically by the police and my landlord would smell it for sure and either kick me out or turn me in with the evidence of what is in my appartment.
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
thats what bothers me either... because i saw on a video once that they did it the same way in a sealed jarglass and putted it into a pot of boiling water... i actually thought the jarglass would blow up or something... thought you had more experience about it...


my biggest concern about it is the odor thats the idea behind this airtight stuff... so if i would bake it with an oven i don't have, my neighbour on the groundfloor who is ironically by the police and my landlord would smell it for sure and either kick me out or turn me in with the evidence of what is in my appartment.
Ahh, I see.

Hmmm... Well, one way would be to use an inverter, toaster oven, and car, but that may be out of the question as well. I'd say if these are your circumstances, perhaps you're already "right" and doing an air tight decarb may be your best bet.

The mason jars will deform at the lid allowing pressure to release around the ring/lid interface, but if you heated up the jar in the water bath without the lid on first, you may be able to get away without any deformation. You could do a test run with 0 weed in the jar initially and determine if you'd be ok or not.

Without the lid on the jar, the air inside will swirl around and won't want to stay inside the jar, though whatever air is currently inside will be locally hotter than the surrounding air, I'm assuming if you were to essentially wait till the jar and all of its contents (glass & air) reached the max plateau temp, and then after put the lid ontop, that the pressure difference between the 2 states might be managed by the confines of the jar, a test would let you know definitively. The jar with the smallest volume to lid surface area will most likely be your best bet. The glass is not tempered so under extreme temperature differences it will shatter. Don't put cold jars in boiling water.

I think I'm actually comprehending what you were asking about the pressure cooker for now. If the pressure in the cooker during operation was equal to the pressure the hot air inside the jar exerts on the glass walls and lid, then you'll have a pressure difference of 0 between the 2 areas, thus the pressure cooker would "save" the jar. But idk what pressures are inside the cooker and what pressures are inside the jar. You'd have to do some chemistry to get an idea.

Ideal gas law:
PV=nRT


Its been awhile but I think you'd have to use this to calculate the pressures. Volume is finite, and can be found, temp is the boiling point of water, "n" is # of moles of the gas, air is a mixture of gases so you'd have to track down the raw gasses that compromise "air" and then the % composition of the raw gasses in the "air," and then back calculate the % of moles per volume of each individual gas and then plug & chug to find the patrial pressures for each of the gasses and total them all up to find total pressure. It'll only give an idea as the system is dynamic, ie I believe as the water evaporates the air volume increases, and I believe the composition of the air mixture changes as water is evaporated as well, so it's just an idea. You could also just spend $2 (jar cost) and test it (without weed inside first) without doing all the math lol


EDIT:
Also, doing the jar pre-heat method might work even better in the oven than compared to a double boiler. The surrounding air in an oven will be hotter than the surrounding air in a double boiler and this less exaggerated air temp (between outside jar and inside jar) would be most likely beneficial to the process. Less pressure differential.

Though ultimately any way you do it, you'll probably want to transport the sealed jar quickly to your "safe area," because as soon as it cools it will create a vacuum inside and then you may be at risk of implosion. Testing first, is the best way to go imo.
 
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