I am glad to see this continues to spark discussion.
Regarding the notion that effects felt from this material are placebo, I have experienced and observed others experiencing some very strong effects on mental process and tactile sensation which is undeniably "cannabis-like" and everyone who has sampled it has reported it to be "clean" and "clear-headed" and has a smooth transition back to baseline mindstate lacking in stupor. The reports being consistent is what helps me validate that what I have felt will translate to what others feel from smoking it.
I have considered the possibility that the lye water is pulling literally anything with a phenol or carboxylate group. I haven't read too much into the actual constituents of cannabis essential oil, though I remember learning that the plant contains limonene and myristicin from Dr. Duke's phytochemical database. Looking into cannabinoids a bit, most of the types of cannabinoids contain a free hydroxyl group and apparently all of them occur initially in the plant as the carboxylic acid. So really, according to the theory here, there is nothing to separate any cannabinoids from any other cannabinoids.
Also, the extract does start to melt when it is on a plate over boiling water. When the lighter hits it, it immediately shrivels up to tiny dots which soak into the plant-matter-cushion. In its heated state it becomes amber-colored. It forms strings as you pull the knife away from the heated plate, as it touches warm air. As it cools it turns to yellow, then at room temp when it is crushed it becomes very light, resembling tryptamine extracts.
I have to say I initially expected the final product to be oily. Prior to this experiment, I had only experienced solvent hashes being liquid, or at best being very viscous. Thank you infundibulum for encouraging and explaining the spirit of experimentation.
Also on one more note, the yield has improved by changing the physical process of extraction from soak to pass-the-solvent-through which results in substantial improvement of yield, though the amounts are definitely only somewhere around 1-2% from fan leaves. Use of trim and tiny buds as starting material resulted in a MUCH higher yield, it wasn't weighed but it was visibly much more than I expected from the amount of plant and work going into it.
And butane hash oil that had been heated a lot before I got to it was tried out but resulted in poor carry-over. I am thinking that this process could be used on bubble hash because it isn't heated, or with scissor hash, or kief. Anything not very processed should serve as an excellent "substrate" for this process.
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Since so much of the responses here were of the "denounce without experimentation" variety, I decided to revive this thread a little bit. I would really like someone else to try this and post their results on this thread.
Basically I have found that the use of a separatory funnel is very important. Extracting the plant matter inside of a glass column takes away much of the effort needed. The amount of water needed can be reduced by using a solution of 2 grams NaOH to 250 grams water.
Experiments using sodium carbonate to pull cannabinoids into water resulted in utter failure (the Noids formed an emulsion layer). Attempts to use citric acid to crash out the cannabinoids failed also, which was because I was unwilling to waste a huge amount of citric on it.
And as for yields: 2 grams of extract can be expected from every 28g plant matter when typical trim (containing leaves clipped from buds, small chunks of buds, and fan leaves) rather than fan leaves alone is used.
Extract appearance: as long as the plant matter is dried and has not been frozen (yuk!) the extract appears light-yellow and grainy (see photo a few posts back).
Also a water wash after extraction from acidic solution and before evaporation of final solvent is a good idea.
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