Quick & Easy Guide: How to Clean Your Grinder and Produce Quality Cannabis Concentrates

How to Clean Your Grinders & Make Quality Concentrates

This is a safe and easy guide to using isopropyl alcohol to clean your grinders, flower jars, and bubble bags. Through this method, the isopropyl alcohol rinse will make your gear look as good as new. And it will leave you with quality cannabis extract. This method uses the popular QWISO Method.

QWISO - Quick Wash Isopropyl (a.k.a Iso-Hash, Quick Wash Hash) is a very easy and effective method to strip the trichomes from the flowers of mature cannabis plants to produce high quality concentrates and extracts.

Any Well-Used Gear That Needs To Be Cleaned:

• Grinder(s) 
• Kief, Bud / Nug or Flower Jar(s)
• Bubble Bag(s)

What Supplies you will need:

• Isopropyl Alcohol (91% or 99%)
• Parchment paper
• Razor (two makes this process easier)

Total time: ~ 3 - 7 Days 

• The total time depends greatly on how much isopropyl alcohol is used. This method does not involve heating, but rather passively allows it to evaporate. Which could take up to and even more than 7 days to be completely evaporated.

Step 1: Rinsing the Gear with Isopropyl Alcohol

The first step is to wash the gear that is covered in trichomes. It could be a well-used grinder that is clogged, flower jars that are covered in kief, and even bubble bag screens.

How to Rinse your Nug, Flower, or Stash Jars:

Jars are the easiest to rinse and clean. Just fill the jar approximately 25% of the way. Seal it back up and begin shaking it vigorously. You want to continue doing this until all of the walls of the jar appear to be clean of trichomes.

How to Rinse a Grinder:

Grinders are also fairly simple to wash. You need to rinse and clean each part of the grinder individually. And it is best to do so in either a tupperware or plastic bag. Fill the container to about 1/3 the volume, and shake it until that part of the grinder appears clean. If done well each component will look brand new.

How to Rinse Bubble Bags:

Bubble bags don't require the entire device to be rinsed. You only need to focus the wash on the screen areas of the bubble bag. We have had a lot of success simply dipping the screen part of the bag in a container filled with isopropyl alcohol.

Lift and dip, lift and dip until the bag has been cleaned of any trichomes left over from the last ice wash.

Cannabis Infused Isopropyl Alcohol Solution

Once the isopropyl alcohol has stripped the trichomes from the device or jar, the solution will change in coloring.

The more densely the concentration of trichomes and plant matter the darker the solution will appear. This greatly depends on the volume of isopropyl used. This solution can appear relatively clear if there is a much higher ratio of alcohol to trichomes. And it can also appear greener to even black if the solution contains any other plant material such as chlorophyll and plant waxes.

A solution that is dark golden in color and free of any plant particles (hairs and leaf) is ideal at this step in the QWISO process.

We were not able to keep the solution free of plant particles. This was acceptable for us.

For a purer solution and final product, using a coffee filter will be a very effective tool. We opted to not use a filter as you will inevitably lose some of the final product in this step.

Before the Iso wash

After the Iso wash

Step 2: Evaporation & Storage

Pour all of the cannabis isopropyl alcohol solution into your baking dish. You can use more alcohol on the jars and devices to ensure that you are not leaving any trichomes. 

After all of the solution has been added to the dish, you will need to give the solution time to evaporate. 

Although this sounds like an easy step (and it is), you need to ensure that the dish is stored in a well-ventilated area that is free of any heating sources. This technique is safe as it does not require you to put the flammable liquid over a heating source to rapidly evaporate the alcohol. 

This process can take anywhere from 72 hours to over a week. It really depends on the total volume of alcohol used through the earlier steps.

Do not proceed to the next steps until the product is fully dry. If it appears wet or even oily, the product is not ready and you need to check back in no less than a day.

Step 3: Collection of the Final Product

Once the product has dried fully, you can use a razor to scrap the final product into a ball. This process is made easier if you use 2 razors. One to remove the hash from the glass dish, and the other to remove the has from the first razor.

This process can be difficult at first and also quite messy. It is best to collect the hash oil concentrate in a cold setting, as the concentrate will possess oil qualities when it becomes warm.

It may not look like much. But that golden even honey coloring is exactly what you are aiming for.

Parchment paper is a great medium to store the hash concentrate on. If you cool the hash in a refrigerator, the paper can be used to squeeze the hash into a thin pancake. Which can be an easy way to divide up the hash for use later.

Should there be a lot of left over product on the dish that you are not able to remove using the razor. You can go back to the earlier steps, using more isopropyl alcohol to pull the hash back into solution.

Final Product:

We have squished the ball into a thin pancake to show the golden amber color of the hash. This coloring shows up when the hash is backlit. The purer the product the more golden yellow it will be. 

For us this is pure enough as it will eventually be converted into edibles.

We store this in the refrigerator, but it could also be stored in a freezer. 

And just if you are curious how much can you expect to yield from your bud jars?

We rinsed 12 jars used to cure our flower. They were still covered in kief.

From those jars we were able to produce a hash concentrate weighing in at 1.0 gram.

Determining Strength and Potency of your Cannabis Concentrates

The best way to understand the approximate strength of your extracts, is to know how much cannabis you are starting with. It is very hard to get a starting quantity from cleaning your grinders, jars, and cannabis accessories (i.e. bubble bags). However you can weigh the final product. 

Assume that hash, wax, concentrate you just made, contains no less than 50% THC. 

That way you can determine that a gram of this concentrate is close to 2 times as potent as 25% THC flower. IF NOT MUCH MUCH STRONGER

Our recommendation, is to always start with a small dose. If that amount proves to be less than adequate, only then increase to another dose. Better safe than sorry.

Additional Notes

• We didn't use heat for this method. If you would like to use heat to speed up the evaporation process, please use extreme caution.
  DO NOT PERFORM THIS TASK INSIDE YOUR HOME
  DO IT IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA, FREE FROM ANY HEATING SOURCES
• Use caution when working with the razors. The concentrates are fairly sticky and could make you lose your grip on the blade. Take it slow and be careful with your movements.
• Filters are a great way to keep your concentrate free of particles. You may end up losing some THC in the process.
• If you have plastic devices you want to wash. Please do your own research on how isopropyl alcohol reacts to it. Some plastics can tolerate isopropyl alcohol, others may breakdown from contact. Do your own due diligence, before washing your gear. For your own safety and the longevity of your devices.

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Happy Growing!!!

MM's