A Dab Too Far?

Cannabis extracts are huge business in the legal marijuana market across the pond, the ‘pure hit’ on offer from concentrated Cannabinoids provides medical (and, of course, recreational) users with an intense, and long lasting, effect. And, with extracts containing anywhere between 70 and 90% active compounds, it’s easy to see why they’re so popular.

Cannabis extracts are huge business in the legal marijuana market across the pond, the ‘pure hit’ on offer from concentrated Cannabinoids provides medical (and, of course, recreational) users with an intense, and long lasting, effect. And, with extracts containing anywhere between 70 and 90% active compounds, it’s easy to see why they’re so popular.

Check out the online ‘menu’ from any Colorado-based dispensary and you’ll be met with a bewildering array of oils, dabs, wax, shatter and budder, each one looking shinier and tastier than the last… I urge you to do this on google, it’s fascinating!

The extract market is taking America by storm and – while the origins of concentrates can undoubtedly be traced back to the jelly butane hash of the 1960’s – there’s no doubt that the current popularity stateside has accelerated its current impact on European shores.

Now, for those of you that don’t know, Cannabinoids can be extracted from plant material in a number of ways, the most unobtrusive being dry sieve; using sieve screens to separate trichomes from plant material, or water extraction; using ice and multiple micron-level screens (bubble bags) to separate the trichomes. Whilst these methods achieve perfectly wonderful and potent extracts – Ice-o-lator anyone? – to achieve a true ‘concentrate’, solvents or CO2 must be employed to strip the plant material of its desirable compounds.

CO2 extraction is the least toxic form of extraction in the sense that it has the lowest environmental impact. It involves CO2 being kept in a fluid state by holding it above its critical pressure point (hence the term ‘supercritical’ extraction) and forcing it through the plant material. The CO2 acts as a solvent and strips everything out of the material to create the extract. This technique is also used to decaffeinate coffee beans.

CO2 extraction is incredibly difficult to perform without the use of expensive high pressure equipment and, whilst it is commonly used in the US, it’s very much out of the reach of the small scale, domestic producer.

Which brings us onto the more common solvents used…

Solvent extraction techniques involve running or ‘washing’ a solvent through ground up plant material, the active compounds dissolve into the solvent and are then left behind in the form of a concentrate once the solvent has been evaporated away. The most common solvents used are butane gas and isopropyl alcohol, both of which are soluble in water which means that once the initial run has been performed the extract needs to be gently heated either on a coffee plate, oven tray or vacuum oven to get rid of the trapped solvent. This is called purging.

Still with me? Good.

Now at this point some of you may well be thinking to yourselves that heating up flammable and explosive solvents sounds like a one way ticket to losing your eyebrows… and you’d be right. When done in a controlled, well ventilated environment the process is relatively safe, but when the environment isn’t controlled it’s anything but safe.

Underground extraction labs are making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. In Colorado last year explosions in homemade extraction operations hit the newspapers at a rate of around 3 per month, taking up almost as many column inches as reports about meth labs. Baking Bad!

The fear amongst European cannabis activists is that accidents will also begin to increase in frequency over here. Nothing would harm the movement for legalisation and normalisation like a regular flow of Daily Mail-baiting explosions in residential extraction labs.

That’s not to detract from the fact that someone will get seriously hurt in the process. So we caught up with ‘Kev’ an experienced hand at the extraction game and picked his brains about how to get the best extracts without blowing yourself into the neighbour’s front room!

Soft Secrets: Hi Kev, thanks for speaking to us mate. First of all tell us what kind of extracts are you producing?
Kev: Hi Soft Secrets, good speaking with you. We currently make the hemp oil and the shatter. We have been experimenting lately and made different forms of the oils, we have made wax and also some honey oil. It’s time consuming to make, and bit trickier, but worth the hassle in the end.

SS: What extractions techniques are you using?
K: We use two different extraction methods for the different extracts that we produce. If we want to make the shatter, wax or honey then we will us the butane extraction method. If we are making the hemp oil then it is done using the IPA (isopropyl alcohol). The different methods give you different end results. The butane give you a much more purified form of extract which makes it good for smoking, the IPA method also extracts a lot of the plant compounds due to how it has been stripped.

SS: Was it a steep learning curve? Did you have any accidents?
K: I spent two days over in Spain leaning how to make the oils safely, otherwise I wouldn’t give it a go, as too many things can go wrong. No accidents while I was learning. I spent the first day just watching so I didn’t make any mistakes, one mistake could be your last!

SS: Let our readers know your top 5 tips for extracting safely.
K: OK, here are my top five;
• If you are even slightly accident, prone do not try this!
• No smoking or using electrical
equipment (including mobile phones and kettles).
• Make sure you are in a well ventilated area with fans. Outdoors is best.
• Use the correct equipment
• Do not try to rush things by using naked flames at any point in the whole process.

Kev then introduced us to a guy who'd had a nasty accident during an extraction session. Here's what he had to say...

“Hello Soft Secrets, first of all I was using a simple method of extraction, i.e. honey bee extractor, butane gas and a Pyrex dish. The extraction took place in a friends flat.

I was finishing up after quite a big extraction session, many butane gas cans were used and I was about to purge the gas off. Then, my friend flicked the kettle switch and suddenly I was engulfed in a fire ball and explosion! I suffered burns to both arms and face and was in a hospital burns unit for New Year’s Eve and for a few days after.

It wasn't the first time I'd done extraction and I was strait back to the extractor about a week after! I could have done it better by doing it outside and my final words are ventilation is key!”

So, there you have it. Do it the safe way and make sure you don’t end up as a Daily Mail headline.

Safe extracting.