Harvesting for BHO?

Fuck Snails

Active Member
I'm planning on blasting my whole harvest and just gettin shit over with quickly. :hump:

Soooo...
any tips on harvesting for good bho?

My theory involves harvesting sooner than you would if you were growing for the flowers..considering I'm looking to extract the THC rather than smoke it after it's started to turn to CBN...right?

Thoughts?


Snowcap
 

qwizoking

Well-Known Member
Just make sure you leave everything on, no sense on trimming. Other than that there's not really much I can think of that would help. It would also make sense to me to harvest early, they degrade a lot in the whole process again I would also wait until 100percent cloudy as this is when thc is at its peak.. Just my 2 cents

If you do this to an entire harvest I would love to see, I've never done more than an oz or 2
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
Ostensibly, fresh frozen extraction of clear trichomes should give you the highest THC content, followed by cloudy, and then by amber.
 

qwizoking

Well-Known Member
If you do it while they are still all clear won't you lose some? I thought when they were clear they were growing and then they flip to cloudy when the swelling stopped and then slowly amber as they degrade
 

biglungs

Active Member
early harvest makes a samller yield that is a pit cloudy and stays oily very hard to get stable even after a long vac
 

Fuck Snails

Active Member
This is great information. So we're all kind of leaning towards the notion that fully clouded trichomes indicate the best time to harvest for bho.

As to what the post above says about an early harvest is there any information that supports this ?
Not trying to omit any methods or possibilities without hearing them out first!
 

biglungs

Active Member
This is great information. So we're all kind of leaning towards the notion that fully clouded trichomes indicate the best time to harvest for bho.

As to what the post above says about an early harvest is there any information that supports this ?
Not trying to omit any methods or possibilities without hearing them out first!
no info just personal experience
 

Guzias1

Well-Known Member
Ostensibly, fresh frozen extraction of clear trichomes should give you the highest THC content, followed by cloudy, and then by amber.
im giving this a try!

i just cut down a couple plants tonight.. So, i took aside about a 1/2 oz.. chopped up the buds. and put the choppings in a ziploc bag, stored in the freezer.. in 48+ hours, i will then quickly pack my tube and blast it with trimmings from the freezer as i go..



I also just harvest 6 oz ( dried for 10 days) .. i chopped up 4 oz, down to tiny chunks with my hands and scissors for bho.. i would like to further break down my tiny chunks, but I dont want to turn my trim into powder.. i was thinking of throwing my trimmings into a blender, then do little blend pulses...

thats what i have to work with.. and knives and cuting sboards :]

any other suggestions on how i can further break down my buds/trimmings? or is the blender the way to go?
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
Yield is probably better with older material, but yield of THC was his goal as I understood it, and THCA is ostensibly higher in the younger material.

Early harvest of fresh frozen material also certainly seems like a lower yield, because we are typically comparing it to yield from dried material. If you divide your yield by .2, to reflect moisture content, it will come out closer to the yield from dried material.

We have always ended up with a hard varnish like shatter from fresh frozen, using thin film vacuum purging, at 115F and -29.9" Hg.
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
Thin Film Vaccuum Purging?
Purging in thick films in a vacuum blows up muffins, but in a thin film the bubbles break the surface and escape.

We purge our raw oleoresin in a Petri dish, and allow it to spread out into a film less than 1/8" thick. Winterized ethanol solution starts at about 1/4" and purges to about a 1/6" of hard shatter.
 

Fuck Snails

Active Member
Oh Okay I was imagining a larger dish since you said you try to get a thin film...thanks for the info!


Back to the main topic...should I use super dry material? Crushed? Can it be a little moist still?
 

Guzias1

Well-Known Member
use dry materaial, but, know this, the younger the better..

you can use fresh buds, but i would rec not doing so, unless you are really wanting a super pristine material... takes correct prep work, and blasting..

go with dry, very broken up materiel. i wouldnt go as far as grinding it down to a powder, but down to a coarse leafy texture..

crushed and dry sounds perfect..

ALSO! only do one tubes worth at a time, you may have small outcomes initially, but getting used to the process is key, or else you are going to ruin a lot of good material..
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
As you are using butane, which is non polar, you can grind the material, but avoid any grinding process that produces fines. We scrub through a 10 mesh sieve instead.

Butane will absorb up to 32 ml/L water, so If you run still fresh material, it should be frozen first and the butane chilled to about 0F.

We prefer to grind it at about 10/15% moisture content, because if you get it too dry, it is frangible and fragments during process. In addition if you remove that last moisture content, most of your lighter terpenes will exit with the water.
 

650baquet

Active Member
As you are using butane, which is non polar, you can grind the material, but avoid any grinding process that produces fines. We scrub through a 10 mesh sieve instead.

Butane will absorb up to 32 ml/L water, so If you run still fresh material, it should be frozen first and the butane chilled to about 0F.

We prefer to grind it at about 10/15% moisture content, because if you get it too dry, it is frangible and fragments during process. In addition if you remove that last moisture content, most of your lighter terpenes will exit with the water.
So leaving moisture in the material can allow the butane to absorb "x" amount of water, at this point it will pull other stuff with the water too right? Like chlorophyll? Just making sure I'm assuming correctly.
 
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