We are indeed privileged to live in a modern age when appliances not only make our lives easier, but are themselves smarter and more efficient than ever before. Coffee makers, food processors and microwaves are quintessential to home kitchens. Why not then, with marijuana laws softening around the country, shouldn’t there be a countertop size appliance that conveniently and safely produced high-quality essential oils and extracts?
Why not indeed — the Source Turbo from ExtractCraft lets users create plant extracts & concentrates for uses such as essential oils, medicinal, recreational, and cooking in your home kitchen safely, easily, and odor-free.
The process is relatively simple – plant material is allowed to soak in 190 proof grain alcohol; the alcohol tincture is then filtered into The Source Turbo, and the closed-system device does the rest. Until now, extraction methods were messy and filled the house with a pungent odors. The Source Turbo solved those issues – vacuum pressure and consistent mild heat maintain product quality, and the closed-system keeps odors at bay.
When Colorado-based ExtractCraft brought the Source Turbo to market in 2016, there was nothing else designed for uses to safely extract essential oil at home. The most common method involved using butane as a solvent to strip cannabinoids from the plant. Not only is butane toxic, but the news is full of people being severely burned and even blowing up their homes while messing around with the highly combustible gas.
“Solvents such as butane, if not purged properly, can be toxic; with food-grade alcohol, even if it’s not purged completely, there’s no toxic residue,” explains ExtractCraft marketing & sales director Colby Zeedyk. “By using food-grade alcohol – like ethanol, a person has a safe way to make extracts where they know exactly what is in the concentrate that they may be consuming.”
The inventors of the Source Turbo quickly realized its potential across a wide range of markets from apothecary, home brew and culinary to crafters making natural soap, lotion and salve. The Source Turbo creates a process that a person can use right in their own kitchen to make essential oils from any botanical material such as cannabis, lavender, rosemary, or frankincense. Some chefs are even utilizing the machine to extract the juices from hot peppers for specialty dishes and distilling hop oils for craft beers.
Making extracts from cannabis is one of the most popular uses of the Source Turbo, especially since it can create a smokable wax, oil, or full extract cannabis oil (similar to Rick Simpson oil), the most potent medicine available with the potential to help treat a wide ranging list of ailments including chronic pain, gastrointestinal disorders, sleep disorders, fibromyalgia, arthritis and inflammation.
The Source Turbo produces a high-quality finished product whereas many of the commercially made essential oils contain a high water content – in that situation, consumers are essentially paying for inactive “fluff,” as Zeedyk points out. Knowing the origin and contents is especially important to medicinal patients.
“The medical community typically grows their own, which allows them to pick out the exact strains that they want. Being able to make their own medicine at home, they know exactly what is in the final extract,” Zeedyk points out.
“Home extraction is really where it is at because people will no longer need to buy from a dispensary,” Zeedyk adds. “The process is going away from butane and everything that is either toxic in nature or dangerous to use in extraction.”
Closed-loop distillation equipment is most commonly designed for industrial or commercial use to manufacture product in large volume. Until the Source Turbo, there was no appliance of this type intended for the everyday consumer. Not only is the Source Turbo engineered with a small footprint, it is extremely user-friendly with a single-button operation. It even comes with altitude-specific tuning to regulate heat and a Bluetooth smart phone app to monitor the process.
The Source Turbo manual recommends using a food-grade, grain alcohol of 190-proof-95% alcohol. The device removes the alcohol from the tincture, leaving the pure plant essence, and reclaims the alcohol for reuse in future batches.
Another benefit of alcohol extraction is the high efficiency of collecting terpenes along with THC and CBD. Alcohol extracts terpenes well and the Source Turbo evaporates the alcohol at close to body temperatures to preserve the medicinal value and natural flavor.
Of course, a quality product comes with a premium price. The Source Turbo retails for $599, which might seem steep until you take into account the state-of-the-art technology incorporated into the design and functionality of the machine. It allows you to use trim or lower quality plant materials to make excellent concentrates. The Source is assembled and quality tested at the ExtractCraft facility in Colorado and backed by a one-year warranty.
“The biggest reward for all of us involved with ExtractCraft is making something that allows people to create a healthy living environment for themselves and their families,” Zeedyk says. “We find that people are making ‘medicine’ whether it be for themselves or loved ones, and they’re having great results with the Source Turbo.”
