I've made weed infused butter, olive and vegetable oil and I always run into the same issue - the best I can manage to reclaim is 2/3 the volume of what I put in. I use mason jars in an instant pot or hot water bath and typically use about 40g in 6oz of butter or oil and can only get 4oz out of the pulp. I filter with cheesecloth (or clean old tshirt in a pinch) and the twist and squeeze out as much as I can by hand, making a god awful mess in the process...and if I spill a drop or two my dog is high for hours lol. If I use a cup of butter I get back about 2/3, 1.5 gives me one cup, etc.
Does anyone have a hack or tip for reclaiming more from their extractions?
We make cannabutter 3 or 4 times a month using two ounces of cannabis and seven sticks of unsalted butter in an MBM or similar pot. Total weight of the ingredients is 847 grams. The best yield so far has been 540 grams or 63%. We strain through high quality cheesecloth and then squeeze the crap out of the ball using heavy rubber gloves. After that, we have a citrus press (actually two of them, but only one is used for cannabutter) and squeeze as much out of the cheesecloth ball as possible.
Since moving to Virginia, we've been buying trim from a dispensary in DC because the price of flower is insane. When we lived in Colorado, we only used flower and occasionally had yields in the 560 gram range. And that was without using the citrus press.
From 540 grams, we divide the butter into thirds and bake 45 to 50 cookies per batch. Having tested our cookies against dispensary edibles, we figure ours are around 150mg of THC per cookie. Mint chocolate chip in the photo. One thing I can suggest, leave out chips and nuts for a stronger cookie. They take up space and weight. We use mini chips and only half a bag per batch.