Hey everyone,
Just thought I’d share a picture of my most recent batch of honey oil. Any interest in finding out how to make it? What the difference between honey oil and cherry oil is? How it’s used? Hit me up with questions!
This came in from another thread:
Can you talk about HOney Oil. Never heard of it…
I sure can! I’ll give you a quick introduction and if there is enough interest, I can expand with a video or some pics of the process.
Cannabis concentrates can be made many ways. This process involves soaking cannabis in 99% isopropyl alcohol, then evaporating that alcohol. Honey oil goes through a process called winterization that helps to remove unwanted substances, like plant waxes, fats and chlorophyll. The result is a much cleaner and clearer oil. Cherry oil skips the winterization process, and is thus much darker, resembling molasses more than honey.
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Can you talking about soaking it in Iso-Pro alcohol or if you are planning on making a video … that would be great
The process is the same for either honey oil or cherry oil, and the process can be repeated 2-3 times with the same starting material. The grade of your finished oil will diminish with each successive run, but for many is still viable. So here is a rundown of what I do.
Using sweet leaf and popcorn bud in my mix, you can use your best buds or your trim, it’s up to you.
- Place both the 99% isopropyl and the cannabis into a freezer for 24 hours min. Cannabis is in a glass mason jar with sealing lid.
- Remove both from the freezer and immediately pour the iso over the cannabis, covering 3/4 of the jar.
- Seal it up and swirl to ensure all of the cannabis gets a chance to have it’s turn in the solution.
- Pour the solution through a coffee filter onto a pyrex dish. My 1st run is a 20 second soak, 2nd is 2 minutes.
- Place a fan over the dish and allow the alcohol to evaporate. (This can get smelly)
- Using a razor blade, scrape the oil into a small glass container like a shot glass.
- Place the shot glass in front of a space heater on high until the bubbles stop. (Careful, the oil will expand and possibly spill here)
- Place into your final storage container.
You now have made your 1st batch of oil! If it was frozen it’s honey oil, if not it’s cherry oil. Congrats.
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@Stephen that’s awesome thanks for the info, what are the return ratios? From your experience anyway? Another question what is the consistency like? The picture there looks more like a sap than oil to me
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Is it safe to consume considering it’s soaked in isopropyl alcohol?
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Alcohol will evaporate cleanly
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@Stephen any update / guide on how to do this? I recently bought a Source Turbo and will look at doing some extraction / recovery on my next batch. My goal would be to make an oil with a carrier oil - likely MCT. Hope you have a “For Dummies” guide. 
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I’m really looking forward to trying this once I’ve grown a plant and have some trim to try it with! Thank you for this!! I believe this is what a good friend of mine smokes in her vaporizer, can you show the cooled consistency? Sorry if you did in the video, I watched it a few times but you have to know that I was a little bit lit every time.
Also, the cherry oil…?? I’m a little confused about that… I went to do some more reading about that and I read that cherry oil is when the wax and a couple other things are removed by more complex processes, no? Is this a simpler cherry oil?
Thirdly, how do these oils compare to distillate? (which google has shown me no easy shortcuts to make, phooey!) I am currently vaping some straight distillate in a (not sure if I can drop name brands here) high quality vaporizer meant for vaping oils and concentrates but sometimes I feel like the distillate is too thick and I think I would get better hits, and better effects, if I could somehow make it more viscous. Had I been smart enough to purchase some sauce or something to mix it with when I was out of town at the dispensary where I purchased the distillate… hindsight. Suggestions? Sorry if this ran too much off topic! Love the info and love the video that went with it!! Was so surprising how much you were able to scrape out of that pyrex dish!
Angiebaby
To make proper distillate it takes (fractional distillation) equipment and helps to have a background in chemistry. It can get quite complicated when “done right” and is not easy to do (safely and) inexpensively, as a more advanced still with multiple fractioning columns is usually used to also isolate the terpenes in addition to the THC and other cannabinoids.
The trick to get oil as clean as possible, or as close as possible to distillate, is:
- use fresh material (not really old stuff that’s been degrading to cbn over time)
- use dry material (100% dry, no water content)
- keep temperatures as cold as possible (-20C or more is best, the colder it is the longer you can wash; medical freezers or deep freeze can be better than a fridge freezer but depends on make/model/etc)
- keep washes as short as possible (between 20 sec to 3 mins) if temps aren’t -40C or so
- some people use dry ice to get temps this low, which allows for much longer washes – have heard of 24h+ washes without any “greening”
- if using a fridge freezer it just means you need to be fast (like a ninja) when the materials are being combined/mixed/filtered so they don’t warm up too much during the process
- possibly employ filtration (AC+DE, silica powder, clay, etc)
- this is entering the chemistry arena again and requires more tools/equipment (funnels/filters/beakers/pumps)
- need to be careful doing this as not to introduce new (or unsafe) impurities, cheap filtering medium can be unsafe to use
- for most people, it’s better to just do multiple runs through a qualitative filter (or stack up coffee filters) than to experiment with AC+DE but I thought it important to mention in case you come across it in your research. I’ve heard of people using any old AC+DE from amazon but that comes with risks (due to the quality of materials, it’s very likely not lab-quality or intended for this sort of filtration).
To answer your questions more specifically:
It’s much easier (and cheaper) to make a more basic concentrate like oil, which is not distilled to the same extent but is relatively close in function/effect.
I always thought the difference between honey oil and cherry oil was THC vs CBD, so there’s probably some “depends who you ask” factor here.
Here’s some pics from my last run, from some grobo-grown trim (Jack Herer):
I only filtered the alcohol once during this run and also used a heat mat (and a vacuum chamber) to speed up the purging process (to get the end result faster), which both caused it to become a bit darker than it usually would’ve had that not been done. Better initial filtration (multiple runs) and slow air-purge will keep it looking more yellow and less brown, though the quality of source materials also plays a role in that. I use a nut milk bag as you can see, so in a sense it is already twice-filtered but usually I would filter it once or twice more with filter paper (or coffee filters) before reclaiming and purging the alcohol.
Before it hardens up (to a glass-like shatter) it can instead be warmed up and whipped (repeatedly over the course of a day or two) every so often and that will change it to be more of a “crumble” consistency instead of a hard glass, though this property is different from strain to strain and not all will behave the same.
One thing about alcohol extractions is sometimes they will never harden up like glass and retain a sticky/sappy sort of consistency. This usually is due to how well the fats/lipids were filtered out (winterization) and to some extent the makeup of the source material (thc/cbd/cbg/cbn/etc). Keeping it cool when not in use helps to make it easier to work with.
Hope that answers some of your questions, I’ve been meaning to post these pics to my grow thread for a while now.
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Here are some pics made from (exactly an ounce of) shake from multiple grows that was well over a year old and just sitting in closet. It doesn’t look the best but it’s very strong and doesn’t taste bad at all.
This was after ~48 hrs or so of purging in vac chamber:
Folded it up to get it into a smaller manageable chunk:
Final result:
This can be kept in a chunk if cool, or it’ll melt into a puddle if warmed enough. Given enough exposure to air it’ll eventually go hard/glass-like but it won’t last that long. 
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Wow, those are some awesome pictures!! Thank you so much, and I absolutely love your detailed answers!
Do you think I should try to thin out my distillate with anything? Is it safe to do so or am I better off leaving it alone? It’s in the cartridges already, it smokes… It’s just not as effective as it could be.
Loving your kismetic end weight.
Better off leaving it alone.
If it’s inside a cartridge already it’s been mixed with terpenes and possibly thinner (most likelly, unless it is rosin oil) so there’s no real need to thin it out any further.
If it’s in a plastic or glass syringe then it might be possible to dilute it a bit (with terpenes or a viscosity mix like this).
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I put it in the cartridge myself It’s straight distillate, not thinned out, plunged straight from the syringe into my carts.
And thank you for that link!!! That looks like exactly what I need! Great site!
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I think it should be noted here that isopropyl is very flammable, and has a flash point of 54 degrees farenheit… People should definitely take caution with using it as any type of flame or spark could cause a fire in your house…
Not as likely to happen as if you were using butane to extract stuff but it’s still a possibility…just don’t want people to be out there willy nilly extracting stuff from cannabis and not understanding the risks
Using water to put it out is not smart either if it does catch fire.
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Start with dried and cured or just dried?