ISO Alcohol saturation point?

While experimenting and tinkering with extraction methods for making my tinctures, I have often wondered what the saturation point of 99+% ISO alcohol is..

I generally use 2 ounces of material (good trim & lower buds), using 99% iso alcohol to extract with. Most info I gathered suggested using up to 1L of alcohol per ounce of material, or filling a jar to a level just above the material..

My question isn't how much alcohol should I use per ounce, but instead, why shouldn't I just use the same alcohol twice?

Instead of soaking the entire 2 ounces, in up to 2L of alcohol, why not split it into 2 separate batches (1 ounce each) Place the first ounce into a jar, fill to a level just above the material, extract, strain through cheesecloth, and then use that SAME strained alcohol to extract from the second ounce afterwards? Maybe a splash extra to top things up on the second go?

Thought process being that its a lot safer when there is less alcohol to have to remove at one time..

Anyone with any fact based information? Experience? Am I just stoned and not thinking straight??

One of my most valuable tools extracting cannabis, has always been a microscope to check for intact trichome heads to tell me where I'm at with regard to harvesting them all. You can pick up hand held and UHB units cheap, and it would be easy to run a small sample for empirical answers to your questions.

Saturation will ostensibly be between 30 and 50%, depending on temperature, et al, but it isn't linear in the rate that it extracts. Fresh solvent dissolves resin faster, than partially saturated solvent.

Least amount of alcohol used may be more of a distraction than a benefit, if you are striving for highest quality concentrate. When I extract with ISO, temperature, time and color are the things I watch most closely, because alcohol is cheap and easy to remove.

I keep yield up by checking the spent material for remaining trichome heads afterwards, to see if I need to do a second gleaning run.

RandysGut said:

While experimenting and tinkering with extraction methods for making my tinctures, I have often wondered what the saturation point of 99+% ISO alcohol is..

I generally use 2 ounces of material (good trim & lower buds), using 99% iso alcohol to extract with. Most info I gathered suggested using up to 1L of alcohol per ounce of material, or filling a jar to a level just above the material..

My question isn't how much alcohol should I use per ounce, but instead, why shouldn't I just use the same alcohol twice?

Instead of soaking the entire 2 ounces, in up to 2L of alcohol, why not split it into 2 separate batches (1 ounce each) Place the first ounce into a jar, fill to a level just above the material, extract, strain through cheesecloth, and then use that SAME strained alcohol to extract from the second ounce afterwards? Maybe a splash extra to top things up on the second go?

Thought process being that its a lot safer when there is less alcohol to have to remove at one time..

Anyone with any fact based information? Experience? Am I just stoned and not thinking straight??

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Cannabinoids should be miscible (soluble in every proportion) in 99% isopropanol. I've had 91% iso be miscible with fresh extract.

The one problem I see with your method is that the alcohol will pick up humidity, and the loss of solubility will be a sort of "all at once" phenomenon. Imo your best bet is to use a blasting technique and run the minimum of chilled iso through your weed. If you have the equipment, you can recover much but not all fo the alcohol by distillation.

I can confirm that repouring the same alcohol through the weed column about 5 times produces the most solid extract. And the stuff you get at the end by pouring pure alcohol through a couple times is as solid as the first stuff, just less of it, about half as much. Why it all comes out more solid, I don't know, but when I just pour straight alcohol through several times it comes out tarry instead of solid. At the very end you need to let it drip in the freezer for a few hours, the whole operation being done below freezing, the column of weed and bottles of alcohol frozen for several hours before. Then at the very end you let it sit at room temp to thaw and the last liquid to drip out, which will get greener as it gets to the end. You can get some impure extract from that for personal use or edibles. Then you push the leached weed turd out of the column and flush it, it's worthless. Also, the lid from a bottle of protein powder works well as a cover for the open end of the 2 liter pop bottle column while it's dripping. You need a second cup for the column to sit on when you repour the first cup through.

The procedure is; pull the column with cup out of the freezer, take the cover off, sit the column on the second cup, repour the first cup, sit column back on first cup, pour the little bit of drippings from the second cup in, put cover on, put rig back in freezer. All the while not letting the column fall the hell over. To get it in the freezer I just remove the rack and pile all the food over on one side and sit the rig in the other back corner. With a short cup there's enough height in there.

You'll grab a few lipids/waxes/chylorphyl with iso, even 99% iso.

Personally I like cryo washes. Grab some dry ice, put material, iso, and container your going to work in, in a cooler with the dry ice for an hr or so.

Put material in container, pour iso over material until fully saturated. Add a very! Very small piece of dry ice in container with iso and material. Caution, watch for bubbles from the iso/dry ice mix. Set timer for 5 mins.

Add another small piece of dry ice. Stir very very gently.

Strain material thru a metal strainer, strain liquid thru a brown (unbleached) coffee filter, or a buchner funnel with celite 545.

Then evap iso off.

DemonTrich said:

Personally I like cryo washes.

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DryQUISO? cryoQUISO? CrySO!
Instead of shaking for 90 seconds, simply add dry ice and wait 5 min? then stir and dump, filter & evap as usual?

If you put di in a sealed jar or any co trainer for that matter, KA-BOOOOOOM!!

The co2 off gassing creates pressure that will surely make your container go boom.

This is depending on your container, volume of di, and solvent.

I do a 40 min cryo soak in a 40qt stainless steel stock pot, and always get proper liquid gold etoh/thc wash.