Does grinding bud down to powder mean you can use less alcohol?

The main purpose of using alcohol is to keep the volume of the medicine to a minimum by stripping off cannabinoids, and leaving the voluminous non-active stuff behind.

Many people use fast, cold alcohol washes, but I prefer long soaks to get all the medicine, cannabinoid or not.
I make lots of tincture, remove all the alcohol, and replace with oil.
When I do that I use 1 - 1.5 L alcohol for 1 oz, and reclaim most of it.
I don't think 500 mL will get very much of the medicine from 6 oz.

Whole herb edibles and pills are just as effective, and require no alcohol.
I'd make edibles and capsules that require no alcohol instead.
I can give some simple recipes if you have interest.

 

According to psam...you need enough 190 proof to strip away the thc. Grinding to powder and then covering sounds to me like you wouldn’t have enough booze for the thc extraction. The tincture thread has tons of info

 

If ground too much it will be hard to stain. Maybe impossible.

 

I grind mine to powder, and have no trouble straining using a regular coffee filter in a funnel.
Letting the mixture settle for about 15 min makes it easy to pour off and strain the tincture.
The powder settles to the bottom, and forms an almost solid mass.
Tall, narrow containers like graduated cylinders work best, but any container will work well.

 

I make oil tincture out of feco using a method similar to BrassNwood's excellent method:
This is a recipe for using the feco from 15 grams decarbed herb powder, and converting it to oil tincture that will fill a 1 oz (30 mL) tincture bottle. Small beakers work very well in the process, because they can estimate volume.
1. Combine FECO, about 5 g Lecithin liquid, and enough oil to make 30 mL.
2. Preheat mixture to 220 F, and bake at that temp for 20-60 min, then quickly cool. 20 min is best if the tincture will be used in baking, 60 min for good sleep.

15 g of decarbed powder from 16% thc herb will have about 2700 mg.
1 dropper-full is about 1 mL, and 1 mL contains about 30 drops, so
Potency = 2700 mg thc / 30 mLOil = 90 mgTHC/mLOil, and
1 drop = 90 mg / 30 = 3 mgTHC

Oil tincture is very versatile.
It can be used sublingually, put into capsules, put into food or drink, or baked with.

Although coconut oil is very popular, I prefer olive, avocado, or any other healthy oil that's liquid at room temp.

 

Your cannabis should not be finely ground. The old reasoning for that was to provide more surface area to help extraction. What it really does is cause that fine powder to absorb more of the alcohol which will then release more chlorophyll and other polar compounds than if left coarse. The alcohol will strip it whether finely ground or whole flowers.

Like you said, it wouldn't leave a lot of alcohol to give a good cover and it will retain more alcohol when you strain. It will be greener and taste more "herbal". You'll reclaim about an ounce less than if coarse.

 

Whether to grind to powder depends on what is desired as a final product.

There are probably things in cannabis that haven't been discovered yet.
So some of us want to make tincture that contains as much of the whole plant, including chlorophyll, waxes, and everything else, as possible to make sure we get those things.

Multiple, long room temp soaks of decarbed herb powder, with constant stirring over 24 hours or so can do this well. When the goal is to strip everything, particle size does matter.

Grinding to powder also makes straining very easy, because the powder forms a nearly solid mass when allowed to settle. The medicine still trapped in the alcohol in the powder can be had with additional soaks.

I usually do at least 2 soaks over 24 hours of time at room temp, using 500 mL each time.
Judging only by color, a first 2 hr soak picks up about 70%, a second 8 hr soak about 20%, and a final overnight soak gets almost everything.

Certainly there isn't a direct correlation between color and cannabinoids, but there is probably some correlation.