Understanding Vireo’s Extraction and Distillation Process

In the last episode of the Vireo video series,  we discussed the difference between THC and CBD and how they work differently with our endocannabinoid system.

Watch that video or any other episode on our YouTube Channel! 

Today, we have Sales & Marketing Manager, Eric Miller giving us a tour of one of Vireo’s state-of-the-art labs to show patients how and why we extract and distill the cannabis oil we use as the basis for many of our products.

Watch the video HERE or read the full transcript below!

Full transcript:

Hey everyone, it’s Eric from Vireo. Today, I want to give an overview of the extraction process we use in some of our states. The act of extraction is taking the plant material, flower and separating out the resinous oils. After an extraction you are left with waste plant material and a concentrated oil filled with desirable phyto compounds. The concentrated oil is the base component of what we use to make our medicines. There are many types of extraction techniques and they each have their pros and cons. Common extraction techniques include sub and or a super critical CO2. Hydrocarbons such as butane, ethanol and mechanical, such as press rosin. Today we’re going to talk about super critical CO2 as well as how we get that oil to a distillate. Here’s an example of a super critical CO2 extraction machine. This machine can take common CO2 gas and temporarily change it to a super critical fluid that acts more like a liquid by adding a bunch of pressure and some heat.

The super critical fluid can then be run through the plant material to extract the beneficial phyto-compounds. Okay, so these chambers are where we put the ground plant material, the ground flower, the super critical CO2 fluid washes through that, and then the concentrated oils collect in these chambers here. Often not only beneficial compounds such as cannabinoids and terpenes come out in the concentrated oil. There will also be some undesirable stuff such as plant waxes. We want to remove those, especially for products intended for vaporization. We do this through a process known as “winterization” to winterize the concentrated oil. We mix it with a high proof alcohol to make a solution. The solution is put into a subzero freezer where the waxes will coagulate or clump up. We can then run the solution through a filter, which will catch the clumps of waxes leaving a more purified solution of oil and alcohol.

We must get the alcohol back out of the solution. So we evaporated off and a machine called a rotary evaporator. We put the alcohol oil solution into this chamber. The alcohol evaporates and condenses in this chamber and then recollects here. We can reuse the alcohol to reduce waste. So now we have a refined oil for some products in some states like oral solutions and soft gels. This is the final input oil because it’s a broader spectrum. For other products such as vaporizable oils. We take it a step further and distill out the very specific compounds we want in our formulations such as THC and CBD. The result is a very purified oil.

Okay, so here is our distillation machine. Our refined concentrated oil will go into this chamber and then the very specific compounds will evaporate or distill out and collect in these chambers over here. We can mix CBD distillate and THC distillate to make our broad spectrum of ratios. We can also mix in strain specific terpenes to create a variety of options. A method we use in some states instead of CO2 is using a high proof alcohol at super chilled levels from the start to extract the resinous oils. The plant material is washed with the ethanol and filtered out. This then reduces the winterization process and increases overall efficiency. The ethanol is still removed via rotary evaporation. Again, some products will be produced using that oil and some require the extra step of distillation.

Thank you for tuning in and remember to keep an eye out for more content!