Growing Entheogens

In case of bud rot…

Posted by Growing Entheogens | Filed under Cannabis, Extraction

…go and do an extraction of all the plant material. It’s the only safe way to get a hold on the substances you’ve been growing your plants for.

When I discovered the rot at first   [link here] I kind of panicked. I knew this would be bad, but having smoked a bit from the premature buds two weeks earlier, the idea of having no harvest at all after three months just didn’t work for me. I figured that if I were to extract the THC in some way I would be rid of the mold, and with that the spores. Even if it’s just a little mold you’ve got growing on your buds, you don’t want to smoke it. Inhaling spores is very dangerous and can result in getting very sick, and in some cases even death.

As we all like to live long and prosper, or at least the most of us, I started looking for extraction methods. The two easiest and common known methods I came across were the Alcohol extraction (using large amounts of pure 70% and up Ethanol) and BHO, or Butane Honey Oil. The Alcohol method seemed easiest at first glance because you don’t need much supplies and BHO needs some crafting. Alcohol has a very high tax percentage on it, so when I found good usable butane cans which had near zero-impurities and took the financial factor into account, I chose the BHO method.

*****WARNING*****
Butane is a highly flammable gas and very dangerous to work with!!! Be sure to work outside when using butane in high doses like these. Do not smoke and make sure there is no electricity which can cause sparks nearby. As long as you’re outside and use your head you are going to be just fine, if you don’t, you are going to be another person on the BHO’s deathlist! Don’t be!

The main reason why butane is used as a solvent is because of it’s availability, cost and boiling temperature. Butane’s (C₄H10) boiling point lies at -0.5 degrees Celsius, which means it evaporates very quickly at room temperature.

To start extracting, you are going to need some things:

• a holding vessel for you plant material to let the gas spill through (make one yourself or get one at azarius)
• dried and shredded plant material (buds, leafs, stems, anything you can get your hands on and that has reasonable amounts of THC in it)
• a glass bowl to catch the extraction fluid in
• several cans of butane gas (you can get this at your local stores, be sure to find a brands that has near-zero impurities)
• a small closable vial or a small container to store the final product in

Extraction is easy, but be very careful and think of the warning. Put all the dried, shredded material in the tube (the one you bought or made yourself), close it tightly and put a butane can upside down in the hole on top and press it down firmly.
The tube can get really really cold, and if you open it later on you will see that a lot of the material is frozen.
After roughly 15 seconds (this depends on the size of the tube) or more an opaque fluid will start dripping from the holes into the bowl. I used one and a half can per tube, just to be sure I got everything out I could. Wait for the last drop to fall, shake it a bit and get rid of the material in the tube, fill it up again, replace the filter and repeat this process until you’ve worked your way through all your plant material.

To speed up the evaporation process, place the bowl au-bain-marie in hot water (be careful no water slips into the bowl), and you will see the butane fluid evaporating quickly. What is left behind is a (this varies per plant and/or strain) reddish-brown oily substance. This is what you’ve been working for, the BHO.

To be sure all the butane is out, pop any bubbles that are left behind in the bowl and leave it for a couple of hours. After that place the bowl in the warm water again so the substance gets a bit less viscous. Get yourself a spoon or another clean, not too big object with a sharp edge to scrape the material out of the bowl and into your storage container. It might take some time to get handy at this, but you’ll figure it out.

Tagged : cannabis, extraction, marihuana, THC

Comments (1) | September 15th, 2010

One Response to “In case of bud rot…”

1. DG Says:
   October 1, 2010 at 2:38 am

   When I did this a few years ago I found that the bowl got so cold that it started to form hoar frost spikes on the outside of the bowl and up around the lip to the inside, and then the liquid butane started wicking up the frost and over the lip, to the ouside of the bowl! This meant that the bowl had a thin layer of oil around the outside too.
   Placing it in hot water as above probably would have avoided this.
   I have also wondered about making ice hash out of botrytysed bud – the spores would pass through the cloth – hey, why not make ice hash and then do a butane extraction of the hash? You would use far less butane that way, and as it’s flammable (and a greenhouse gas) less would be better!