Multiple alcohol washes for tincture?

cbaumle · Jun 16, 2023

I have a large amount of material (flower and sugar leaves) that I want to extract for tincture. I use the winterization method--Everclear, 15 minutes in freezer, shake a few times, then strain. I then distill it down. I was wondering if I could take the initial everclear wash and use it to wash a second and possibly third batch before distilling. Would I extract less THC from the subsequent batches since I washing with alcohol that already has the THC and other compounds in solution? I'm trying not to have gallons of everclear.

Captspaulding · Jun 16, 2023

cbaumle said:
I have a large amount of material (flower and sugar leaves) that I want to extract for tincture. I use the winterization method--Everclear, 15 minutes in freezer, shake a few times, then strain. I then distill it down. I was wondering if I could take the initial everclear wash and use it to wash a second and possibly third batch before distilling. Would I extract less THC from the subsequent batches since I washing with alcohol that already has the THC and other compounds in solution? I'm trying not to have gallons of everclear.

I get that, but logic would dictate, every time you use it as a wash, you are sacrificing the alcohols ability if you were to reuse. Every use the spirits take something with it, meaning it’s less pure for it purpose. So yes you would most likely loss a bit of yield. But you could do a side by side test with the same ingredients, but have one batch trying what you are suggesting, you may find I’m wrong in my assumption. Just my two cents.

Harpua88 · Jun 16, 2023

Yeah I use tincture to make more tincture. But there's a point where you can't "fit" any more into each fluid ounce. Or it will become thick and gooey then it's not tincture.

Captspaulding · Jun 16, 2023

Harpua88 said:
Yeah I use tincture to make more tincture. But there's a point where you can't "fit" any more into each fluid ounce. Or it will become thick and gooey then it's not tincture.

Ok, makes sense. I fell like I was halfway onto it then.

Oldchucky · Jun 16, 2023

It’s a good question. And with the price of Everclear, I can see why you would ask it. Can’t even get Everclear in Cali. from what I’ve seen, it cost roughly 2 to 3 times as much as 99.9 isopropyl. Which I think is what Nick uses.

cbaumle · Jun 17, 2023

Captspaulding said:
Ok, makes sense. I fell like I was halfway onto it then.

I think I am going to limit it to two washes per batch of alcohol or maybe three max. I will try it and report back if I learn anything interesting.

Captspaulding · Jun 17, 2023

cbaumle said:
I think I am going to limit it to two washes per batch of alcohol or maybe three max. I will try it and report back if I learn anything interesting.

Yeah man I am definitely interested, any thing to make that loot stretch is a bonus in my book, I always make bubble hash and tincture post harvest, so I’m very curious what you find.

Harpua88 · Jun 17, 2023

Oldchucky said:
It’s a good question. And with the price of Everclear, I can see why you would ask it. Can’t even get Everclear in Cali. from what I’ve seen, it cost roughly 2 to 3 times as much as 99.9 isopropyl. Which I think is what Nick uses.

There's other brands. 192 proof grain alcohol. It depends on what your goal is. If it's a tincture, where you want to put a squirt in a beverage, then that's plenty high proof. I wouldn't consume isopropyl, but anything can be nearly totally evaporated off.

Captspaulding · Jun 17, 2023

Harpua88 said:
There's other brands. 192 proof grain alcohol. It depends on what your goal is. If it's a tincture, where you want to put a squirt in a beverage, then that's plenty high proof. I wouldn't consume isopropyl, but anything can be nearly totally evaporated off.

It takes sooooooo long on slow evap. It does make a really nice product though. I need better patience.

Harpua88 · Jun 17, 2023

cbaumle said:
I think I am going to limit it to two washes per batch of alcohol or maybe three max. I will try it and report back if I learn anything interesting.

If you're making edible tincture, you can do 3. Another thing that happens is that at some point you're going to have too much of the good stuff stick to the material. You can only squeeze so much out. Something will eventually have to give where you get diminishing and then very little return. At the point where you've washed as much as you want/can, the remaining material can still be used to make butter because there'll be a lot stuck on it. I've made some damn strong brownies with the final washed tincture material. I find it hits faster too.

I've easily squeezed 7+ grams of weed into 1oz of liquid, and that's before evaporating. I don't know what the limit is but if you get 14+ grams of weed into a 1oz dropper bottle, that's a lot of doses.

Harpua88 · Jun 17, 2023

Captspaulding said:
It takes sooooooo long on slow evap. It does make a really nice product though. I need better patience.

Use a double boiler on super low. The alcohol will simmer/bubble before the water does, lower than 212/boiling point. But really low heat, and not for a long time. It will evaporate faster.

Captspaulding · Jun 17, 2023

Harpua88 said:
Use a double boiler on super low. The alcohol will simmer/bubble before the water does, lower than 212/boiling point. But really low heat, and not for a long time. It will evaporate faster.

Thank you for that kind sir.

cbaumle · Jun 19, 2023

Harpua88 said:
If you're making edible tincture, you can do 3. Another thing that happens is that at some point you're going to have too much of the good stuff stick to the material. You can only squeeze so much out. Something will eventually have to give where you get diminishing and then very little return. At the point where you've washed as much as you want/can, the remaining material can still be used to make butter because there'll be a lot stuck on it. I've made some damn strong brownies with the final washed tincture material. I find it hits faster too.

I've easily squeezed 7+ grams of weed into 1oz of liquid, and that's before evaporating. I don't know what the limit is but if you get 14+ grams of weed into a 1oz dropper bottle, that's a lot of doses.

OK; I just did 2 but next time I'll try a third. You are right about losing a lot of the good stuff stuck to the material. From another hobby, I have a supply of 80% neutral spirit (aka moonshine) and I am going to use that to rinse the material and then make a parallel batch of tincture from that. I have a small lab distilling apparatus and I can reclaim some of the everclear as well as the moonshine, but overall, I lose about half from residue, evaporation, etc. I just bought another 1.75 liter of everclear for about $40.

Harpua88 · Jun 19, 2023

cbaumle said:
OK; I just did 2 but next time I'll try a third. You are right about losing a lot of the good stuff stuck to the material. From another hobby, I have a supply of 80% neutral spirit (aka moonshine) and I am going to use that to rinse the material and then make a parallel batch of tincture from that. I have a small lab distilling apparatus and I can reclaim some of the everclear as well as the moonshine, but overall, I lose about half from residue, evaporation, etc. I just bought another 1.75 liter of everclear for about $40.

Is it a Golgi apparatus?

Here's one I get sometimes, It's certainly just as effective. Of course, don't worry about evaporation, only the alcohol evaporates and concentrates the tincture more, but yeah at some point you can only "fit" so much into a certain amount of liquid.

Captspaulding · Jun 19, 2023

Harpua88 said:
Is it a Golgi apparatus?

Here's one I get sometimes, It's certainly just as effective. Of course, don't worry about evaporation, only the alcohol evaporates and concentrates the tincture more, but yeah at some point you can only "fit" so much into a certain amount of liquid.

Harpua88 · Jun 19, 2023

cbaumle said:
OK; I just did 2 but next time I'll try a third. You are right about losing a lot of the good stuff stuck to the material. From another hobby, I have a supply of 80% neutral spirit (aka moonshine) and I am going to use that to rinse the material and then make a parallel batch of tincture from that. I have a small lab distilling apparatus and I can reclaim some of the everclear as well as the moonshine, but overall, I lose about half from residue, evaporation, etc. I just bought another 1.75 liter of everclear for about $40.

Good lord you have a friggin lab! ;)

The thing about tincture is......what's your goal? It seems like making the best tincture means the absolute most resin you can strip off an into your grain alcohol. Well, if that is the goal........so you can what? sneak as many doses across enemy lines as you can fit in as little liquid? Do you want a dose to be like, 3 drops? At some point you would just eat converted extract, or an edible. If you want a tincture, an alcohol based "squirt" that you can squirt into a hot cup of coffee or tea, that will hit you fast.......then what's the difference if it's a full squirt a half a squirt, 2/3 of a squirt......I like it in a glass of good beer too. Especially an IPA. It will float on the top, and weed and hops are similar and go together well.

So why go through all the time and effort, multiple washings, squeezings, etc, etc........if you're just gonna end up using less of the same thing. You might as well make 1 good wash, or 2, evaporate it down, and bottle it up. More important is proper converting/decarbing, the quality of the weed, the ratio of alcohol to material......unless the goal is to impress your friends with how much you can fit in such a small amount of liquid. But then it's really just a contest.

cbaumle · Jun 20, 2023

Harpua88 said:
Good lord you have a friggin lab! ;)

The thing about tincture is......what's your goal? It seems like making the best tincture means the absolute most resin you can strip off an into your grain alcohol. Well, if that is the goal........so you can what? sneak as many doses across enemy lines as you can fit in as little liquid? Do you want a dose to be like, 3 drops? At some point you would just eat converted extract, or an edible. If you want a tincture, an alcohol based "squirt" that you can squirt into a hot cup of coffee or tea, that will hit you fast.......then what's the difference if it's a full squirt a half a squirt, 2/3 of a squirt......I like it in a glass of good beer too. Especially an IPA. It will float on the top, and weed and hops are similar and go together well.

So why go through all the time and effort, multiple washings, squeezings, etc, etc........if you're just gonna end up using less of the same thing. You might as well make 1 good wash, or 2, evaporate it down, and bottle it up. More important is proper converting/decarbing, the quality of the weed, the ratio of alcohol to material......unless the goal is to impress your friends with how much you can fit in such a small amount of liquid. But then it's really just a contest.

I'm retired, have a lot of time on my hands and tend to go down rabbit holes, which led me to this. I use it primarily for sleep. I first started by smoking before bed, and had a little one-hitter in case I woke up. I then made gummies but that became a PIA. Then I made tincture straight strength from the wash, but my dosage was such that I needed several squirts, and everclear is nasty. So I got the still and thought I would concentrate it and also reclaim the everclear. Then that got tedious so I just made capsules with the decarbed weed that I powdered in a coffee mill. At some point, the capsules weren't working for sleep as well, so I tried the tincture again and it works great. This batch I did two washes and distilled it down about 90% and a half dropper knocks me out for the night. I used about 8 ounces of flower/sugar leaves to make about five 50 ml bottles of tincture and less than a half dropper is a good dose for me (so far).

Harpua88 · Jun 20, 2023

cbaumle said:
I'm retired, have a lot of time on my hands and tend to go down rabbit holes, which led me to this. I use it primarily for sleep. I first started by smoking before bed, and had a little one-hitter in case I woke up. I then made gummies but that became a PIA. Then I made tincture straight strength from the wash, but my dosage was such that I needed several squirts, and everclear is nasty. So I got the still and thought I would concentrate it and also reclaim the everclear. Then that got tedious so I just made capsules with the decarbed weed that I powdered in a coffee mill. At some point, the capsules weren't working for sleep as well, so I tried the tincture again and it works great. This batch I did two washes and distilled it down about 90% and a half dropper knocks me out for the night. I used about 8 ounces of flower/sugar leaves to make about five 50 ml bottles of tincture and less than a half dropper is a good dose for me (so far).

And that's all great. Have fun with it. It will all be fun and worth however much time you want to put in to it, until maybe it's not. There are other things you can do too. You can use food grade glycerin, you can try to get rid of a certain amount of the chlorophyll, you can do a water transfer and evaporate the alcohol off.......

lasermonkey · Nov 21, 2023

THC is soluble in ethanol at a 1:1 ratio, so you can rewash over and over without having to worry about saturating the alcohol, it will pick up as much as you throw at it till it becomes a thick syrupy texture, so there's little chance anyone will come anywhere near saturation when washing, the issue becomes a matter of diminishing returns for time spent washing, because it doesn't need a long expose time to do the work, and pickup of higher levels of undesirables, which you can largely mitigate by keeping everything really cold, -20c is a sweet spot that reduces the pickup of waxes and chlorophyll without being really difficult to accomplish as most deep freezes will reach that cold temp. Commerical machines exist that rely on this principle and continually recirculate the wash through spray heads into a centrifuge that pushes the alcohol through the material, this method can result in extraction efficiency over 90%, and nearly 100% if you do a final rinse with clean solvent. So feel free to re-wash till your heart's content, and do a final clean rinse to top out your yield.

Multiple alcohol washes for tincture?

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