Another Tincture Thread - Try it, You'll like it

It's just about an inch. Too much and the beaker will float away. Just be sure to place a jar lid on the bottom so that it doesn't rest directly on the pan.

It will eventually lose potency after a while. I keep mine in the fridge.

 

That's probably going to depend on how much THC was originally in the CBD flower. As long as it had been mostly CBD then I don't think there's going to be too much chance of testing positive, especially since it had already been vaped. I think she's safe but the home test should set her mind at ease. She may want to let them know that she does take CBD. I believe they base the "positive/negative" results on the amount of THC found and not just finding it.

There's more of a chance someone will test positive after using a full spectrum CBD product or a strain that's has a higher ratio of THC to CBD. A strain like AC/DC or Ringo's Gift or hemp flower probably wouldn't pose as much of a threat.

For CBD flower and trim the most I've found was about 0.7% and that was with the high-CBD cannabis strains. Hemp has been right about the 0.2% range. Not much at all.

 

No, don't do that unless it's an emergency and you have to skimp. There is a saturation point with the alcohol and you don't want to pack the material in too tightly. You want the alcohol to flow easily and reach all the trichomes. I recommend 12oz of 190 for the initial extraction and 10oz for the rinse if you're extracting from 28g. Out of that 22oz of alcohol you'll recover about 18oz of dilute GD which you then reduce to your desired strength.

I know it's a drag to evaporate off all that expensive alcohol but that is how you get your concentration. If you're going to make large batches then it would be beneficial to reclaim it and use again. If I ever win the lottery I'll do some lab tests to try to pin down that saturation point but from experience it seems that the better tinctures come from the use of abundant alcohol. However, sometimes you have to make do with what you have.
Enjoy your 90° day. It's going to be 110° here in Phoenix today.

 

If it was well vaped I don't think it will pose a problem.

 

Actually, I've heard from a few people since I "approved" the Nova.

I wouldn't use vg for your "mess", which is called RSO, to make a salve. It won't incorporate very well and the vg doesn't make a good topical. I would suggest using an oil like coconut or almond or a combination. It's going to be pretty green because of that couple of days you had it mashed up. Using the cold alcohol and quick processing gives you a nice light green or gold solution that tastes like the flowers used.

You'll find what I believe to be good information on topicals in that Index you saw. It's the "Topical Creations" series and I tried to cover the process for anyone interested in that subject.

I can see color in these photos. Do you see those amber highlights on a few of those trics? It's considered ready to harvest when about 30% of your total trichomes are that color. The rest will be the opaque ones with few being the shiny ones. That's been my understanding anyway.

 

You might want to give it some mild heat after the alcohol has naturally evaporated from it. Not enough to hurt it but just to bond. Keeping it stirred with a magnetic stirrer might be sufficient, though, without the heat. I've never done it, however.

 

No, not at all. Slightly less than the heated decarb.

 

I have the lab results for the terpenes left after a decarb in the Nova. It looks to be quite a few that are retained but I don't know if that correlates to heated or natural decarb results. I'll try to find one of each for comparison. It's not a large percentage but terpenes never are anyway. I'll get the results edited and posted so that we can discuss them.

 

Let's carry that thought a little further with the results we currently have that already give us that content. Let's start with the current Jack Herer that we just sampled.

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@entman should be interested in this since he's the one who spurred this project but so should those with the Nova. I have determined that I really don't have any terpene results post-decarb of the flower. The couple that I have found are tinctures and those values are only 1/10 of the flower so they are not a good comparison. The only good comparison would be to do an oven heated decarb of the same flower to know if there's a difference with the Nova.

However, what I see here is quite a nice lineup of the important terpenes containing a decent measurable value of 12 out of the 19 they test for. While it's true we didn't test the raw terps for comparison, this is the one that's important especially in light of what I'm about to share since this is the actual lineup after decarb in the Nova.

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This is the terpene results for the Darkstar Genesis Project and it shows a sampling of the terpenes as the natural decarb progressed. Due to budgetary constraints I could only give what I thought would be representative so I used the raw flower then the raw tincture and finally the terpenes remaining after 3 months. I considered that close enough to the final fourth month for a good reference.

Because this is a tincture that has been reduced to 4g/oz, the values of nearly everything is going to be 1/10th that of the flower. For example, if this flower was 22%, which is was, then the tincture at this ratio is 22mg/ml. Because of that some of the terpenes might be too low to detect for an accurate comparison but it doesn't take a lot of terpenes to give an effect. They're measured in micrograms or less and the lab software doesn't carry it beyond. There's only 7 terpenes detected in the natural tincture so the Nova definitely gives a broad enough range to rival a natural decarb.

A tincture of this Jack Herer should give a terpene lineup that equals or maybe exceeds the natural, taking that extra decimal point into consideration. That's the test I would be more interested in and it wouldn't take 4 months...that and the oven decarb comparison.

 

The arm is for your thermometer and you should have it. If you didn't want a heated one then a thermometer would be redundant. That's all the arm is for although you could adapt it for other things I would suppose. The thermometer comes in handy if you're making something like syrup that needs steady stirring and temperature control. The knobs on the box aren't calibrated well. Something like this should work.

For some reason we can't post from Amazon so I found this one there for $63.99. It doesn't have the thermometer stand listed although the pic has one but you can always use a clip on one. There are others at various prices.