DIY: crock pot Alcohol Reflux: resin Extractor, tincture Refiner, alcohol Distiller

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DIY: crock pot Alcohol Reflux: resin Extractor, tincture Refiner, alcohol Distiller




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Crock Pot lid with hanging coffee basket


1 hour of reflux extraction:


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I followed a forum link to the Cold Finger Extractor by Eden (diagram and link below) and three things came to mind very quickly:

1. The diagram brought up an instant image of the evaporation/rain cycle poster in my grade 4 class 35 years ago;
2. I figured I could make one in less than an hour from kitchen items;
3. They were charging $395 for the equivalent of a Pyrex coffee pot, Pyrex cone shaped dish, and a metal coffee basket. About $385.05 more than I paid for a much tougher 16 cup Pyrex measuring cup at Canadian Tire and $389 more than i paid for the crock pot above.

http://www.edenlabs.org/home_light_commercial.html

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A reflux extractor is very simple:


In a closed system the alcohol is heated above it's boiling point (79C) but below water's boiling point (you gotta look that up yourself);

1. the heated alcohol rises as steam until it hits the ceiling of our reflux system (upside down crock pot lid), the water stays liquid in the heated reservoir below;
2. we put ice/snow/cold water on the top of the reflux apparatus (crock pot concave lid turned upside down) so when the alcohol steam hits the cold glass/plastic it condenses and gravity pulls the water droplets down the convex upside down crock pot top until;
3. the alcohol droplets collect at the bottom/center of the upside down cover and drip downward to the metal coffee screen basket hanging from the cover;
4. The dripping alcohol (still warm), which is a higher percentage than the alcohol in the reservoir (but not 100% alcohol), drips through the marijuana in the coffee basket carrying: dissolved resin, terpins, chlorophyll and some plant matter into the heated reservoir below.
5. As well, alcohol steam will rise and work through the marijuana in the coffee basket. (the same way water steam in a coffee maker will rise and go through the coffee grinds and drip bitter coffee after a pot is done, so we remove the coffee grinds as soon as the hot water drips through).

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Now we can: refine the alcohol tincture; remove the honey oil for use elsewhere; and/or distil alcohol. This step couldn't be simpler:

1. Change the coffee filter for a sold metal cup. Done.

The alcohol (and some water) will collect in the cup, most of the water will stay below in the heated reservoir with the resin, water, chlorophyll, terpins and plant mater. If you are refining or extracting honey oil remember to add hot water to the reservoir after the alcohol is extracted to the cup, you want to keep the chlorophyll, terpins and plant matter in solution while letting the non water soluble resin sinks to the bottom. Put things in the fridge until the water is cold before pouring the water out – so all the resin falls out of solution.

The alcohol collected in the cup will be of a higher percentage than what you started with and will be much cleaner than the reservoir but you may want to distill it again, after cleaning out the reservoir, to make it taste better and to raise the percentage of alcohol. After several reflux distillings we can take 40% vodka up to 60% or 70% - a higher percentage will take a more complex reflux device.

I'm going to refine my tincture and do a butane extraction on the remaining grinds in the basket to see how efficient the reflux extraction was. I'll post some results later today. Anyone who gives this a try please post your results, pics and any advice you can give us.

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Items needed: (substitutions can be made, don't go out and buy anything until we go over what you can replace items with – ie crock pot – coffee pot with screw off handle and spout (flat rimed); flat rimmed Pyrex bowl, plate, cooking dish; stove)

- Crock pot
- Coffee basket
- Wire / screws to connect coffee pot to basket
- Floating kitchen thermometer Fill your crock pot with water and check the temperature at the different levels - we need 80C+, the higher we go the quicker the extraction; if we go too high we evaporate more water.
- Ice
- Towel (to remove the melted ice water from the lid, stay low tech)
- I'm adding an I-bolt for a handle for the concave side, the screw has to hang below to hold the basket.
- Rubber washer to ease tension on the glass cover if you reverse the handle. If you have a glass knob handle just make a wire noose to hang the coffee basket.

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Explosion, Fire, Disaster beyond Saving Private Ryan's beach scene warning!

Alcohol is flamable in it's liquid form at 50%, or 100 proof that the press gang isn't watering down the crews rum. It is explosive in it's gaseous form - the alcohol steam we are refluxing. If a flame hit's that gas - or any gas escaping from the extractor - you are going to have an explosion. No smoking, no flames, no other heat sources, no electric sparks, no wearing wool on a dry day.

Don't become a statistic.

This is a relatively safe reflux apparatus because - very little pressure can be built up (the lid will pop up), there is no open flame, there is very little alcohol gas produced in the volume of a small crock pot. BUT operator recklessness will cause a problem.

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I'll be back with results from refining, distilling and running a butane extraction on the plant matter to see how efficient the reflux extraction was. I'll post design improvements and cooking dishes we can substitute for the crock pot and lid - the deeper the "cold finger" comes into the heating reservoir the quicker the extraction (more cold surface area for alcohol condensation). Anyone who has suggestions, advice or a better design please contribute all you can.

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I did an distillation with the solution in the reservoir and of 250 ml of vodka (100 ml alcohol) I got 50 ml of stinky but clear vodka. I'm going to get a hydrometer tomorrow and test the alcohol percentage. I added more water and am doing another distillation, and I'm doing an extraction of the fan leaves from the same Pandora's Box bud cicles as the sugar leaves for the first extraction.

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French Press Double Boiler Reflux Extractor

I found a plastic funnel and lined it with a tin foil bladder to hold ice. I used a ridget funnel instead of just tin foil so I could suspend the condensation collection jar. If you build a stand from the strainer (below) you can do without the plastic funnel and have a colder condensor of tin foil.




This is the powder left over from the first extraction, I used about 2 tablespoons of fine powder. I did an iso extraction on the leftover powder after it dried, I'll evaporate off the iso tomorrow to see how efficient the first extraction was. The blue bottle cap for size comparison.


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My larger crock pot with a plastic cover, doing another extraction now.




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Here's my latest distiller version, a 1 3/4" pyrex test tube in a french press. A french press makes a great large beaker, tin foil makes a decent seal. In the front left is the clear alcohol distilled from the green swill in the top two pictures. On the right is the french press strainer cut down to fit as a stand for the condensation collector.

French Press Double Boiler Cold Finger Extractor




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100 Proof of Distilation


I took this picture, the flame is from the reflux distilled alcohol from my first run.

I started with 40% (80 proof) vodka and distilled it to remove the alcohol from the swill, before taking the resin out of solution. 1/2 teaspoon burned for a couple of minutes. I'll get a hydrometer and see how the percentage is changing with each distilation.

Here's a drop of clear alcohol dripping from the test tube cold finger in the french press distiller.



And 100 ml of clear alcohol in the colector, which I'm reusing on another extraction, and will continue reusing.



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I'm going to do some research on the best way to get the resin out of solution without taking the water solubles with it. My next addition to the crock pot extractor is going to be a screen over the basket, so the dripping alcohol will spread over the whole basket and not collect in the middle. The steaming alcohol comming from below the basket does a good job of penetrating the bud upwards for resin extraction.

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"you could reflux the cannabis herb with water first! this would pull a shit ton of that chlorophille out. the pot looks black when you dry it out after you run the water cure on it two or three times to reduce the yech value to something the desparate can at least tolerate"

Thanks for the advice on water curing! I've done some 7 day water cures but never with a steam reflux .... I had been thinking about it but was afraid that I'd loose resin in the hot water. I use a very small amount of bud with the french press reflux extractor, about a gram or two. So if the water does melt any trichs it won't be a huge loss and I should be able to recover most of the melted resin when it cools in the water.

Spectacular idea. If it works, and it should, it will reduce the steps needed to extract resin, distill to remove the resin from the alcohol, distill the alcohol from the green swill.

This is what's left after extracting 200 ml of alcohol (started with 250 ml 40% vodka and 150 ml distilled vodka from a prior extraction), the resin is mixed with the gunk. I made a stand for my collection container and strainer out of copper wire, I find it easier than hanging them. I also took the handle off the french press.



I add water and stir to get any chlorophyll or terpen residue off the resin; put in the fridge over night to let the resin settle to the bottom. Then I siphon off the water - putting it through a paper coffee filter.



The filtered water is in the jar on the right, the erlenmeyer flask has the bottom water with the resin (same [resin settle/siphon water] process again for a smaller container) and to the left is the extraction beaker. The green smear is mostly honey oil.



The erlenmeyer flask from below, the resin settling. I extracted this bunch in the crock pot extractor and most of the resin settled on the crock pots hot surface, sticking. I just poured in some olive oil, disolved the honey oil and poured the oil in a jar. You could scrape if up if you wanted to do something else with it.



Bud pieces after extraction. I didn't grind to a powder to cut down on plant matter getting in the mix. The bud went from green to straw color.



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In a word, Awesome!!!

May I suggest one little modification that may help you from having to run this a few times. What you have there is essentially a continuous distillaton apparatus not truly a reflux still. In a relux still they will use plates/packing or a feed tube that runs back into the column. In order to make this design more efficient you can add some copper mesh to make the column more of a fractionating column which will cause some of the vapor to condense and fall back into the liquid before it hits your condenser (the lid). Using this method will slow the vapor down and give you slightly more precise control of your tempratures and more effectively separate your distilate giving you a higher % of alcohol and a more pure final product. Adding some mesh (which you can buy under the name "copper mesh", or if you buy those copper dish scrubbers (the ones for washing dishes if you make sure they are made from 100% copper, some are just clad which wont work properly)) or increasing the height of the column will both help your final product. If you take the copper mesh and pack the path where the vapor travels up to the lid you will achive this and gain some true reflux in this deisgn. Also as I said adding some height to the column will help as well.

I never thought of this for making an oil extraction but it totally makes sense since you can distill many kinds of alcohol (wine/schnapps/etc) but not beer, since beer contains hop oil (which is remarkably similar to cannibis) and the oils make it into the final product.

Excellent idea

Here are a couple of resources if you want to look at how some existing still designs work to give you some ideas on refining your deisgn:

http://www.moonshine-still.com/page2.htm

http://homedistiller.org/designs.htm

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Index: Extraction

Tags: alcohol distilaton

RUI: TheDude
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DIY Crock Pot Alcohol Distiller

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"In order to make this design more efficient you can add some copper mesh to make the column more of a fractionating column which will cause some of the vapor to condense and fall back into the liquid before it hits your condenser (the lid). Using this method will slow the vapor down and give you slightly more precise control of your tempratures and more effectively separate your distilate giving you a higher % of alcohol and a more pure final product. Adding some mesh (which you can buy under the name "copper mesh", or if you buy those copper dish scrubbers (the ones for washing dishes if you make sure they are made from 100% copper, some are just clad which wont work properly)) or increasing the height of the column will both help your final product. If you take the copper mesh and pack the path where the vapor travels up to the lid you will achive this and gain some true reflux in this deisgn."


TheDude that is fantastic, thank you! So effective and so simple to do, and I understand the physical changes, a bonus!

I'll add some mesh during my next extraction. Rather than building the most efficient design I think of ways that people can plug and play with things from around their kitchens - food quality parts. I've made a simple distiller from one 2 litre mason jar, one 250 ml mason jar and a plastic bottle top. Some stainless steel kitchen mesh bent as a stand. Ice goes in the pop bottle cone to act as a condenser for the alcohol vapour. The alcohol vapour condenses on the cold pop bottle and drips off the tip into the glass collection jar.

{TheDude I know that your know all of this, I'm going into the detail that I can for other's reading the thread. If you can expand on my limited knowledge please do, everyone reading will appreciate it. Including me.}

How would you suggest adding mesh to this design - and could we add an extension of some kind to the jar to add column height as you suggested - while staying "plug 'n play"? I've got some one gallon pickle jars but I'm not sure if they're designed for thermal shock. Is there a simple column that we could attach to the glass heating chamber with the screw on lid, while still allowing for simple cooling for vapour condensing. Or a design that you can conceive made of other plug 'n play parts.



I do two washes on 80 proof vodka for the solvent in my sublingual tincture. I use a French Press coffee filter as a stand so the 1 litre glass jar alcohol heater isn't sitting directly on the hot plate, to be sure that the water is never boiled. I wrap aluminum foil around the jar and crock pot as a lid to keep the heat in, and use a floating candy thermometer to be sure that the water doesn't get too hot. I have it set to run about 90 degrees celsius.



I'll switch to a 125 ml jar and insert a food quality mesh between the glass jar collector and the plastic bottle condenser. As I understand the physics - the mesh will make the high boiling point water vapour (100 C) collect on the metal while the cooler boiling point alcohol vapour (78 C) continues up to the condenser. Absolutely brilliant, thank you.



How does aluminum react with alcohol? Aluminum has a higher coefficient of thermal conductivity and Aluminum mesh is much more readily available than copper. Which makes me suspect that there is a reason that aluminum isn't used. I'll do a search.

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"What you have there is essentially a continuous distillaton apparatus not truly a reflux still."

Thank you! I don't know much about distillation, I just learned enough to make high proof alcohol for tincture and moved on. If you could offer some advice for simpler and more efficient designs I would appreciate it greatly! I'm going to include your ideas in Weed Science and the Sublingual Tincture thread linked below.

Thanks again, kudos!

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i love this thread. someday in the near future i'll be trying some version of these techniques out. I just read Cannabis Alchemy - The Art of Modern Hashmaking too, dealing with reflux, soxhelating, isomerization, and more.

what ever happened to baking some cookies??

i mean if you're all into the chemistry shit that's cool, but at least have something resembling an actual chemistry set... that looks like a meth lab....

no offense.... i bet it gets you high as fuck though.

redivider i am not really a sweets person and am getting sick of cookies

i'd rather get the thc without the butter

i want to make sublingual tincture or some kind of very potent oil

dtp5150 said:

redivider i am not really a sweets person and am getting sick of cookies

i'd rather get the thc without the butter

i want to make sublingual tincture or some kind of very potent oil

Click to expand...

if you ever get the sublingual tincture to work let me know how to make it. i don't know how to distil or anything, so the simpler the better!

i am using the crockpot design....flip the lid over...line certain parts with foil....im doing tests now...

i need to get my hands on some petroleum ether. thats the best way to remove just the thc ( no colors, flavors ).

My thing that I did worked. The bud was in a steam basket with risers and the fumes and condensation leeched everything out of that bud so its all brown. Well, I boiled the remaining mixture and added a little more water to boil off the iso.

well what i have left is this super concentrated green gooey shit stuck to the sides of my boiiling container. I smoked some. the taste was HORRIBLE ....i never smoked a weed product that tasted like that.......but two rips i could barely see the smoke and I am blaaaazed. I am going to try some under my tounge? ! who knows. it was all trim.