Loved the visual step by step… what all did you end up doing with the total sludgy goodness on the silicone tray…maybe what a gram or two or 3?
The alcohol is onetime use, right?
Only encounter I’ve ever had with everclear was some trashcan punch somebody make when we were kids.
I got about 3.5 grams from that wash.
I use the Source Turbo now and it reclaims about 92% of the Everclear. If you just evaporate it, yes it is a one time use. The Source paid for itself in about 5 uses
Good write-up. I already use EverClear to extract flavor components from my 50 year old calamondin (miniature orange) to create arancello. This is my first ‘modern’ grow, and harvest time is near. Prior grow attempts in '69 and '81 were not entirely successful. But it’s legal now…
As a chemistry major in college and a hospital lab tech for five years, I still have a bit of glassware, including an all-glass condenser. So I was wondering if I could concentrate and then distill the solution, ‘de-carbing’ and recycling the ethanol in one process. Hate to waste anything…
Cheers
I’ll be curious to see the answer to this ut my thoughts are that since ethanol boils around 178°f it won’t get hot enough for long enough to properly decarb.
i would be very careful the temps you maintain for distilling. And as a lab tech you probably know the lethal gasses that are evaporated off at which temps. as long as you don’t get your concentrate above 240F you shouldn’t burn any potency off. i just don’t know how you are going to scrape the extract out of a glass condenser. that’s for you to tell us 
Yeah…I considered that. According to what i have read, de-carbing happens in the range of 180 to 200 Celsius, so yeah, point taken. Could still use the condenser to recover the ethanol as it is boiled off. Might even make a nice flavor component in my arancello… At one time, I has some pyrex lab dishes for the final steps of evaporation.
Back when I was working in a hospital lab in the early '70s, we used 190 proof ethanol to rinse glassware. (Detergent residue would screw with the tests.) Untaxed, it was cheaper than milk. Even used 200 proof as a reagent, USP grade, no less…
Cheers
Another good point, but then only ethanol should be ‘traveling’ through the condenser. A gun cleaning rod would clean any residue in the condenser tube - as long as I’m not too "aggressive’. (My condenser dates from the '60s). One of my 'round tuits to to make a still, using an old pressure cooker as the pot.
hmmm… hate to say I don’t know enough about stills or chemistry stuff. I decarb the weed at 240f… In the Source Turbo, it’s much like a pressure cooker in that it eliminates the air inside making the ‘boil temp’ is at 240f.
The Source operates well below the ignition point of the Everclear. Flashpoint for the Everclear is around 100f
@72Rover As the solution is zeotropic (i.e. contains a mixture: alcohol, water, THC, trace lipids, etc) it won’t boil at an easily defined temperature, but a steadily rising value defined by its composition. But yeah you could attach your condenser for the first recovery stage and condense the alcohol vapors, maybe cutoff when you reach about 210F as at that point there would be little alcohol left (or while its still liquid enough to transfer for final purge). An tincture type liquor might be interesting, but you’ll probably be best off putting the yield into your next extraction. Temp is well below target decarb temps so that would have to be handled separately.
That said, there’s no reason why you couldn’t make your own alcohol, that’s what I do. I wouldn’t recommend using your vintage glassware (envious!) for that as it doesn’t have the capacity to be efficient. Trending into a different hobby there, but my 3" x 54" copper reflux column will easily turn out a gallon of azeo an hour. Which is makes life really simple for extraction because the alcohol is basically free and I don’t bother to recover it.
Apologies if I’m preaching to the quire.
Thanks for the reply. Back in the day as a hospital lab tech, my time was split between doing actual diagnostic tests (mostly electrophoresis in multiple forms) and R&D - trying to find new or improved methods for existing techniques. Back then, the only way to differentiate between high and low density lipoprotiens was electrophoresis, so the lab director wanted me to develop something better. Which I did: time to publish! But then some other guy came up with something much better. A whole summer wasted… He also wanted to do research into amino acid chromatography to detect a pattern supposedly indicative of schizophrenia,that is until I discovered that particular ‘pattern’ in his ‘sample’. Another few months down the tubes…
My current “still” is a two liter “florence” or boiling flask, with a thermometer at the top of the column, just ahead of the condenser. But you have given me a few items to consider. Guess it’s experiment time… As an organic gardener for four decades, I don’t like to waste anything - like all the leaf matter from my most recent crop.
Cheers
Re-reading though the thread reminded me of one of the bits of kit I had on the ‘experiment’ side of my lab tech work: a freeze dryer. It was a manifold for a dozen smaller flasks, attached to a big pot that had an alcohol/dry ice slurry. This would instantly freeze the samples, which would then be attached to the vacuum manifold. The vapors would flow around the pot and freeze before it reached the vacuum pump. Water is most deleterious for most vacuum pumps. I’d love to find a way to freeze-dry the ‘shake’. But then I don’t have a virtually unlimited budget as I did a half-century ago…
OK, so I’ve only done this once before and I thought I would see if I liked it so only bought 1 gallon bubble bags (BAD idea!) but it’s what I have so I thought I’d modify the process a little to make it easier.
If I layer each bag, one on top of the other in a 1 gallon container, there is almost no room left for the ice or the weed not to mention the spoon to beat it all with LOL…
So, here’s what I did…
I didn’t have a clean 5-gallon bucket so I found a bucket that looked to be about 2.5 gallons.
I had about 3 ounces of fresh frozen trim from my Acapulco Gold so I decided to try one with the fresh frozen and a batch with dried trim (both trim bags have a fair amount of lardy buds along with the trim.
So first the fresh frozen… Obviously still in the freezer.
Filled the larger bucket with about 4-6 inches of ice, added the fresh-frozen weed, topped off with more ice and filled the bucket up with cold water… enough to cover the weed and about 3 inches over that.
I let this sit for about 20 minutes.
Now, I used a wooden spoon and stirred the crap out of it LOL! Seriously VERY vigorously… I mean until I start slinging it on my hubby 
… ok just kidding about that.
I beat the crap out of it for almost 20 minutes… it was good and foamy when all was done.
Now I have 2 smaller buckets (about 1 gallon each).
First I use my 220 micron bag in one of the smaller buckets just to get the material and ice out then pour the ice and weed back into the 2 gallon bucket.
Next I put the 160 bag in a small bucket and pour the liquid from the 220 bag in through that.
Switch buckets and put the 73 micron bag in, strain the liquid through that…
You can see the hash on the bottom of the bag
Take that bag out and put it back into the other small bucket and stretch it tight so I can scrape out the hash easily.
Now switch to the 25 micron bag, pour the liquid through that and do the same thing to get the has out of that…
Here is the first run:
I actually repeated this whole process 4 times, each time stirring the crap out of the ice mixture before continuing. Repeat process using the ice, weed and the leftover liquid.
Each run got a little darker… I’m assuming it was breaking down more plant material? Which doesn’t make sense because would that go through the 25 micron bag? 
But here are the results of all 4 runs… you can tell which globs were the first and which were the last…
I put them on one of the drying sheets that came with my bubble bags, that was on a paper towel to help get moisture out.
I let them dry a few days and measured it at 1.97 grams…
Hmmm… I’ll be interested to see how much I get with a little better quality dry trim/buds because I think the bag of dry material had more little buds the the fresh frozen.
Maybe tonight I’ll finish that one
Thanks for stopping by! I’d love to hear how you guys do it! I definitely don’t think I cold justify a bubble has washing machine
I’m going to repeat the next one with already dried material!
Seems like a lot to do for the result.
Two words: dry ice!
Bubble hash washing machine
I’ll post my second attempt… I got a lot more hash. I used dried flower and it had a lot less trim… mainly all my larfy buds from the Acapulco Gold. Dry ice around here is so ridiculously expensive! I thought about it as I was just told so don’t need that much ice, just enough to make the water cold. I might still try it though, thanks!
I can’t justify a washing machine yet… might just try to modify an ice cream maker from the goodwill LOL. Hubby is like mcGyver so I’m sure he can modify it to work and they are at the goodwill all day long for like $10
If I figure it out, I’ll post that! 
I put about six and a half ounces of larfy buds and shake from Hermie plants in a bubble washing machine this is what I got back with two runs
Niiice! How much did you get total? Looks like you just chop it up with a knife? That’s all I did. @JJ520
Yeah that’s all I did dry and chopped it up let it dry a little more didn’t weigh it I got half of a small pill bottle
If I press 10g of dry sift kief how much rosin should I end up with on average
