I've got my sugar leaf and my everclear, gonna make me some Tincture. I was wondering about the decarb process, will heating the alcohol mix to 150 or so do the trick, or do you need to bake the sugar leaf at low temp 160 or so??? I've got some I already started that wasn't decarbed 1st...
@SpainExperience is right, 240F for 40 minutes. The tincture you already started will decarb naturally in four months. Put it on the shelf for 16 weeks then give it a try.There is a whole thread dedicated to making a tincture- Another Tincture thread- That';s the best thread for tincture questions. Good luck with it.
Thanks,I've seen other threads, maybe I'll delete this one...don't want to clutter the forums. A couple questions 1st...natural decarb-does it work well, or a poor substitute? Also, when to remove the plant matter, those batches that I'm gonna natural decarb, do I leave in the plant matter the whole 4 mo.? And the batch I did today after properly decarbing 240/40, I was gonna strain after 48hrs or so, I've seen folks say it's done in as little as 5 min and also that you should give it a week. If I can find those answers elsewhere I'll delete this thread if that's doable...
There are a lot of opinions on the tech and many of them give good results. Your tincture should decarb fine on it's own in four months. If it needs reducing you can let it evaporate rather than using heat to reduce. This purportedly save terpenes by not using heat for decarb and reduction. A five minutes wash and additional rinse with fresh alcohol is usually sufficient for about 80% extraction. The rinse with fresh alcohol is critical, much of your THC remains in the mash. Longer soaks are not going to accomplish much and a rinse with fresh alcohol is still needed. The reason for the quick wash and rinse with cold cannabis and alcohol is to inhibit the uptake of chlorophyll and other plant waxes into your tincture. The longer it soaks the more of these are extracted with the THC. There is a place for whole plant extracts as well as tinctures in the medicine cabinet so having the chlorophyll and waxes is not necessarily a bad thing.If you want some of the beautiful clear gold/green dragon tinctures you would do the quick wash and additional rinse. You can save the remnants and when you've accumulated a bit do a depletion run.
still unsure on leaving in the plant matter on the natural decarbing batch...leave in the whole 4mo, or strain and age the liquid only?
You can do it either way. Depends on how pretty you want your tincture to be and how much chlorophyll and plant waxes you want in your tincture. If you eventually strain, do rinse with fresh alcohol. Most tinctures start out pretty dilute and gain potency when reduced. It takes more alcohol to process the cannabis than you want in your final tincture. That's why we reduce volume through evaporation or heat.
Thanks for all the help! I think I'm on to something, got some pretty golden liquid evaporating now!!!