Making BHO from botrytis infected outdoor.

So I've read that you can make BHO from moldy buds. I've got two outdoor plants with a decent amount of bud rot. I've removed everything with even the slightest signs of rot while harvesting but have been left with a grip of buds with like one rotten calyx, etc. The moldy buds are currently bagged up in my freezer waiting for my next move. My plan is to go through it, remove any visible rot i can find, then run the BHO extraction followed with a grain alcohol purge. I've also ordered some 0.2 micron syringe filters to microfilter my concentrate.

I guess I have two questions.

1: Do i need to cut out the moldy pieces since I'm microfiltering the extract through 0.2 micron filter. That should remove any suspended mold particles. of course the flavor could remain which would be undesireable.

2: Should i microfilter the extract before or after the winterization process? it seems you'd want to run the syringe filter after adding the grain alcohol so that it'd flow through the filter. But should you remove the fats first or will the solution be too viscous after sitting in the freezer for a day?

You don't have to cut out the spots infected with mold unless you want to, but obviously you would want to cut the moldy shit from the and run it separately.
Winterization should be performed at the same time as filtration so as to only waste one syringe filter.

The taste of the oil isn't going to be the greatest but if the taste is foul, you can re dissolve in ethanol then put a small amount of activated carbon powder with the solution for about an hour and then filter through a 0.2um syringe filter to remove the particles of carbon.
This will take away most if not all your terpenes but at least the end product will be crystal clear and free of that mold taste.

thanks for your help. when you say filtration and winterization should be performed at the same time I'd assume you mean to winterize, then filter with unbleached coffee filter to remove large material, then run it through the syringe filter, right?

Here's a step-by-step process I wrote up based on a youtube video i watched. Let me know if this sounds about right. Not working with too much butane extraction experience here.

1. Remove visibly moldy pieces from all buds
2. Process into small buds
3. Pack glass tubes
4. Cover tubes with unbleached coffee filters (1 or a few?)
5. Extract with butane into large pyrex measuring cup submersed in hot water bath
6. Unpack tubes and repack with nugs for next bud run
7. Allow pre-ran buds to dry while running next bud run
8. Repeat steps 3-6 until all buds are ran
9. Grind dried, pre-ran buds and run again
10.Allow butane to boil off in water bath
11.When butane is nearly done bubbing, add grain alcohol at ~1 bottle/0.5 lbs starting material
12.Allow the grain alcohol and bho reaction to proceed for ~45 (until solution settles down)
13.Once settled, place grain alcohol/bho solution in freezer for 12-24hrs
14.After wait time in freezer, pour solution through new unbleached coffee filter into glass receptacles (pint glass, cappuccino glass, etc)
15.Place filtering solution and receptacle back in freezer until filtering is complete
16.Prepare a water bath at approximately 150 degrees
17.Transfer the solution using a 0.2 micron syringe filter into a pyrex dish
18.Place the pyrex dish over the hot water bath until all grain alcohol has evaporated (~30 min)
19.Spread oil evenly over surface of pyrex and let sit for ~30 more minutes on water bath or until the solution has dried.
20.Scrape up oil with razor blades while still warm and set aside to cool

Sorry if I overdid it on the steps. Wanted shit to be exact so I don't have to think about anything during the process.

What I meant by saying filtration and winterization should be performed at the same time is it would be easiest to:
1. Make your bho extract, then dissolve in a suitable solvent and freeze it until the waxes have dropped out the solution.
2. Put it through a syringe just like the one in my picture, except fit the syringe with a 0.2um filter.

~The waxes will get caught on the cotton ball and will help keep the syringe filter from getting clogged up, it will also make the initial winterization procedure much quicker.

~The down side is I usually have to winterize my product twice when I use a cotton ball to filter for winterization because your solvent is flowing through the same cotton ball used to filter the waxes so it dissolves a small amount of the waxes you just precipitated, but I honestly don't mind having to winterize twice instead of watching my extract slowly drip through a coffee filter.

Everything else you said sounds perfectly fine, but considering your going to probably be using ethyl alcohol to winterize when you purge the alcohol, do so in a hot plate full of sand if you can.
The alcohol will pickup a lot of steam if you use hot water to purge off the alcohol.

thanks again, blunter. the hot plate full of sand is a great idea. Do you suggest any particular temp? I don't have a laser thermometer so I can't really monitor the temp of the oil. I guess I could pick one up if they're inexpensive, otherwise I'm nearly tapped out investing in moldy plants. Regarding the cotton ball, that's a good idea to speed up the filtration process. It doesn't seem you'd be pulling much more plant material through the cotton than you would when passively filtering through a coffee filter. either way the extract solution would be flowing through the precipitate. Unless of course your experience has been different... I'm working on speculation here.

Dudeness said:

thanks again, blunter. the hot plate full of sand is a great idea. Do you suggest any particular temp? I don't have a laser thermometer so I can't really monitor the temp of the oil. I guess I could pick one up if they're inexpensive, otherwise I'm nearly tapped out investing in moldy plants. Regarding the cotton ball, that's a good idea to speed up the filtration process. It doesn't seem you'd be pulling much more plant material through the cotton than you would when passively filtering through a coffee filter. either way the extract solution would be flowing through the precipitate. Unless of course your experience has been different... I'm working on speculation here.

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Your not wrong, the point of filtering like this is because it's extremely fast and just as effective as using a coffee filter, as an added plus you can squeeze the shit out of the cotton ball to get every last drop of solvent and like I said the solvent will pick up some of your precipitate because it's passing right through the precipitated waxes on the same side of the cotton ball so the solvent will dissolve a small amount of the waxes and the product will require an extra winterization procedure with a new cotton ball before the product is really free of waxes.
As for temps, most around here would recommend about 100-110 degrees with moderate airflow above the dish for several hours, at this point the goal is to retain as much terpenes as possible and still evaporate all your solvent.
A laser thermometer could be had from Home Depot for like $40.
Also if you make bho with the moldy shit then you won't have to worry about plant material to filter out.

*According to Fadedawg, aspergillus cannot be filtered out in a .2um filter and can cause severe allergic reactions in some people so it is necessary to identify what kind of mold you have and be absolutely sure that it's not aspergillus.

Blunter the kid said:

*According to Fadedawg, aspergillus cannot be filtered out in a .2um filter and can cause severe allergic reactions in some people so it is necessary to identify what kind of mold you have and be absolutely sure that it's not aspergillus.

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You can filter out the mold filaments and spores, but not any aflatoxins produced. Composting molds like Aspergillus produce aflatoxins, but molds growing on living matter, like Powdery Mildew and Botrytis do not.

Just the fillaments and spores can give some people a Type 1 allergic reaction, so even if they don't produce toxins, they should at the very least, be removed.

I'm reasonably certain it's botrytis I'm dealing with but without access to a microscope I'll not no for certain. From what I understand, Aspergillus is more of a concern during the curing process because of the conditions within a closed jar. Considering this, I'm not gonna cure and will just dry and blast. This is all for personal use so, at the end of the day, I'll be the one ingesting the material and dealing with the consequences.

I got a few plants outdoor plants that I'm losing to botrytis too and as I've been cutting out the moldy shit, I've been running it all and saving it for when my syringe filters get here so I can make this wax smokeable

I followed your lead and ran my moldy shit last night. I realized there was no point in waiting for all of my supplies if I had the capacity to blast it now and thwart the rot. I threw it in the freezer while i was cutting it out (figured the cold temps would keep the mold from spreading much further) so there was a little freezer burn, especially on the plant that came down last saturday as opposed to thursday. I certainly noticed a better return on the more recently chopped plant, although that could be mostly from the extra 5 days it had to mature. Got my filters in the mail but I've still gotta run down to oregon for some grain alcohol. This is my first time running fresh bud. Can't wait to test it out.

Do you usually grind and rerun your buds after your initial extraction? I know a lot of people do this with dried material but wasn't sure about fresh herb (especially with the rot). My plan is to freeze, grind the shit out of it, and blast it into a separate receptacle from the one pictured above. I figured there's a greater likelihood this run will come out tasting funky so i thought it best to keep them separate.

Dudeness said:

Do you usually grind and rerun your buds after your initial extraction? I know a lot of people do this with dried material but wasn't sure about fresh herb (especially with the rot). My plan is to freeze, grind the shit out of it, and blast it into a separate receptacle from the one pictured above. I figured there's a greater likelihood this run will come out tasting funky so i thought it best to keep them separate.

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Yea, but this year I'm going to see if decarboxylation helps me yield anymore on my already-been-ran fresh material.
I've read that if weed hasn't been given the time to cure, very little decarboxylation occurs to the cannabinoids, so my thinking is since THC-A isn't as soluble in alkanes as THC is maybe my yields on my decarbed rerun material will increase a little bit.
But that wax that you got there looks great and your not gonna be disappointed with the flavor.
I LOVE wax made from fresh material it's always got the best flavor and the lightest color, what strain was it?

I'm pretty new to extracts. Always been a flower guy. So I admit i didn't know what you meant by decarboxylation. After some quick research, it seems, as far as fresh material is concerned, decarboxylating is the way to go. The method I found had the bud being ground fine then spread thinly across a pyrex and placed in a 240F oven for 60 min. I think i might go a little cooler for a little longer to be safe. Sound about right?

The strain is kind of interesting. It's headband though not the clone only variety and not the sour kush variety. My buddy got the seeds from Reserva Privada back when they bread the sour kush with master kush to make something that was genetically similar to the well known clone only strain. He said the genetics were too unstable, which I'd assume is why 707 and 818 are both clone only, so they dropped the master kush and just started calling sour kush (sour diesel x og kush) headband. I'm excited to get another cut from him and see how they are when properly finished indoors. even a week or two premature, the smoke still has the characteristic "headband" sensation.

What about your outdoor guys? anything in particular?

It makes a lot of sense to do an intial extraction on your material before you decarb so you can get all the terpenes, then afterwards you can extract it again so nothing is wasted.
What you said about decarbing material sounds correct, just follow the decarboxylation chart jump117 provided so you can determine the proper amount of time to heat your material at the temperature you choose.
This got a few blue ox (Old Blue x The Ox) and a few black water (Mendo purps x SFV OG Kush) in the back yard, all from seed.

those ladies are beastly.
Considering I've ran the material once already, do you mean to grind then run once more before decarboxylating and running a third time?
Is decarboxylation mainly used for edibles and other non-vaping methods of consumption? I was thinking about it, and it seems when you vape or dab or whatever you'd be rapidly decarboxylating the oil. Or do people decarboxylate material they intend to dab?

Dudeness said:

those ladies are beastly.
Considering I've ran the material once already, do you mean to grind then run once more before decarboxylating and running a third time?
Is decarboxylation mainly used for edibles and other non-vaping methods of consumption? I was thinking about it, and it seems when you vape or dab or whatever you'd be rapidly decarboxylating the oil. Or do people decarboxylate material they intend to dab?

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I appreciate the kind words about my ladies.
It's mostly for making edibles but you can still smoke it because as you stated decarboxylation likely happens at a rapid rate when you hit a dab.
I meant just run the material once, then grind it if it already hasn't bee and decarb it, then run again.
Sorry for the redundancy didn't mean to confuse
Edit: I should add that I doubt your going to need to use more than 500ml of grain alcohol to winterize your whole batch of moldy wax, u gotta take into account how long it's going to take to purge off all that alcohol if your using 1 bottle of alcohol to a half pound's worth of wax.

thanks for straightening that out. I probably should have guessed your meaning based on the fact that I've never read anything about running bud three times.
Some edible bound bho sounds fine by me. I'm sure I'll have my hands full of smokeable extract before the week is out. I have about half my harvest, mold free, drying, and nearly ready for jars. I figured it was best to extract it and filter same as the moldy stuff to eliminate any spores, which there is surely some.
Your right about the alcohol. The video I developed my methods from was based on dried and cured bud. So, the roughly half pound of fresh, premature bud is probably the equivalent of less than a quarter pound of finished and dried bud... maybe less. A half liter should be plenty.

Good to hear you got this all worked out.
It's shitty having mold problems, it's killed me to strip so many buds off my plants just to take care of the mold problem, but I'm glad I know that it's not complete garbage because I can still cleanse it.
I have like a pound and a half dried of moldy shit, but it looks and smells just as good as all my other buds :/