I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or just not using enough weed.
I’ve tried making cannabutter before but it’s a ton of work and all I get is a mild buzz. I’m experienced smoker with high tolerances but people have said that this shouldn’t be a factor with edibles because the active ingredient is different when it’s processed by your liver. This doesn’t seem true on my experience.
I don’t care about taste - I just want to get high. Yesterday I made ‘firecrackers’ with 1g of grinded bud that I had decarbed in 120C (240f) for 40 minutes. I had it covered with foil and was monitoring the temperature with electric thermometer. I then sprinked this on top of a cracker with peanut butter on it and covered it with another one. Again - after an hour I realized I was somewhere at [3] which I could’ve achieved by just smoking a joint with half of that amount of weed.
What gives?
Maybe you are one of those people like me who can’t metabolize THC. I can eat a tray of hardcore brownies and feel a light buzz at best. I don’t understand the bio-chemistry behind it, but we make fine tripsitters. Maybe that’s just our very shitty superpower.
I guess that’s possible but I do get high from them. It’s just that my intention is to go explore the moon but I just end up staring at the launch pad. My GF has had very similar experience with them which is why I tend to feel like the issue is the edibles themselves, not me.
Are you sure your oven is actually 120c?
It might be hotter and your cannabinoids are being vaporised?
Try making some hot cooca. No need to decarb, as the heat from making the cocoa does that. Also, it’s liquid and fat-based, so you’re gonna get all your cannabinoids nicely mixed in there.
The times I was the most high was when I made cocoa. Although I put in like 15x the amount I’d have smoked or something. Hash, bud, trim. (Hash I had made myself from my own plants.) I was young and the internet didn’t have as good of a cannabis culture back then.
I only drank half and I was blitzed for a solid two days.
Too hot, you aren’t cooking a steak.
This is for informational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional. High temperatures can degrade cannabinoids and THC, including:
- THCA: The acidic form of THC, THCA, is particularly sensitive to heat. It can degrade into CBN and CBD at temperatures as low as 50°C (122°F).
- THC: THC itself is more stable than THCA, but it can still degrade at higher temperatures. Prolonged exposure to temperatures above 100°C (212°F) can significantly reduce THC potency. It’s important to store cannabis products in a cool, dark place to preserve their potency.
This is what I don’t get. There’s enormous differences in the instructions I’m getting when I try googling for instructions and I have no idea which ones to trust. This doesn’t seem like the kind of question that there is no right answer to.
- Leafly.com -> 220F (105C) 30 - 40min
- weedmaps.com -> 250F (121C) - 20min
- Herb.co -> 240F (115C) - 30 - 40min
- wikihow.com -> 240F (115C) - 60min
- Dude on Lemmy -> 122F (50C) and never above 212F (100C)
https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/26/14/4113 In this paper it seems to suggest that you would be fine decarbing up to 135°C (or 275°F) but at that temp you would only want to decarb for ~15 minutes (based on figure 8).
Based on figure 7, decarbing at 115°C (or 240°F) for 30 minutes would convert just around half of your THC-A to THC, so 60 minutes would convert around 75%. Most places recommend something around this level because it is easier to not mess up 30-60 minutes than to not mess up not more than 15 minutes, and you don’t need to convert ALL of it in order to get a functional product.
Disclaimer: I have relatively little experience making edibles.
Yeah I guess that 50 minutes around 115C would be close to optimal. The heat on my oven fluctuates a lot so I need to use a digital thermometer to monitor and babysit it constantly. It varies between 110C and 125C when done this way so I’d assume that in less than an hour most of it would be converted.
But if lower won’t degrade it then go lower. I used coconut oil and abv worked great. Just set it in a water bath inside a ball jar in a crockpot on low and the only problem was I made way too much. Only a couple tablespoons go in the levo gummy mix I used and it was good to go.
THCA: The acidic form of THC, THCA, is particularly sensitive to heat. It can degrade into CBN and CBD at temperatures as low as 50°C (122°F).
TIL. TY.
Here’s a super quick way - put a small pan over low-med heat, throw a little flower in and stir it around for a few minutes (like 10 minutes if your weed is fresh, less if it’s old). Stir in some butter, let it melt and continue to saute for a few minutes. Pour it onto cinnamon toast eggo waffles. It’s not going to get you perfect decarb, but if you’re in a hurry and playing with recipes it’s fine.
For better results but takes longer - Jar with weed (broken into smaller pieces but NOT GROUND) in the freezer.
Bottle of 190 proof everclear, spirytus, whatever in the freezer.
Next day- pour alcohol over weed, just enough to cover. Shake, return to freezer, watch a show, shake, strain through a coffee filter into a glass or metal low, wide bowl. Put this on low heat in any electric appliance that heats - rice cooker, air fryer, etc. Plugging this in outdoors is good. Definitely do not do this using a gas stove - alcohol fumes are flammable! Stir occasionally to get oil off the sides of your bowl as the alcohol evaporates. Alcohol boils at 173F and you’ll see big bubbles. When the alcohol is gone (no more big bubbles) you’ll have a dark, thick, sticky goo. Take that to 240F and watch for tiny bubbles. Those are the little ‘a’ falling off your thca. When those slow down you’re done - don’t wait for them to completely stop or you’ll make cbn and get too sleepy. Stir that into any oil for a recipe, or into butter, or put a drop on a peanut butter cracker.
Super extra delicious use - weed butter, drizzled over hot and spicy cheezits, bake until they’re a little browned.
Maybe it’s the recipe? After decarbing put butter and the weed into a pot, cook very gently for as long as you have time. Once you get annoyed from waiting, it’s ready.
I did this a couple of times and then just normally baked brownies with it. 2-3 hours after a brownie with 0.1-0.2 g and I am flying to the moon.
How much and how often do you normally smoke? I typically roll around 0.4g in my joints and that’ll get me at [4] at best so my tolerances are quite high.
My understanding has been as well that the THC needs to be infused with oil for it to work optimally and simply just eating decarbed weed would be inefficient. However the recipe I used this time insisted that just eating it with something fatty would be enough.
I admit the times I smoke regularly are over for a couple of years now. Tolerance is a thing, but my experience with edibles is that the effect is not as strong. The last time I baked the brownies I had 80% left because I expect them to be weaker. I gifted them to different friends who each smoke daily, they were very happy with the effects.
However, I think solving the THC in fat is the most important step of all. I baked a couple of times without decarbing before in the oven, I got high af as well. Try to focus more on the butter and be cautious with the heat (butter should very slowly make bubbles while cooking). I would be very interested to know how it goes.
Making edibles is definitively more effort than smoking. But it’s more healthy and you can make a lot of butter and freeze it if you plan to consume this way long-term.
This is the way. Furthermore, this is also the first step in making homemade moon units: infused marshmallows — and there is no other s’mores after that. You’ve been warned. Have fun!
you know, I would recommend decarbing your herbs in a vaporizer. That way you get high the first time. Then keep and collect the leftovers and when you have enough for a tea spoon, sprinkle it on anything you like. Not much taste left, slightly crunchy.
Super easy to make and nothing going to waste. Works every time.
I have tried making edibles from AVB several times but I barely feel any effect from it. I think the issue here is my tolerances. What gets an occasional user super high doesn’t do much for someone whose been a daily smoker for 10 years. I think this is why there’s so much variety in all these instructions as well; people may have wasted 80% of the THC during the cooking process but still get incredibly high from the end product because it doesn’t take much anyway. They don’t know that they did something wrong because it still got them high.
Well, if you do it this way, you can’t least be sure that you wasted any the during the creation process. And you are free to use as much as you want.
If you want to work on your tolerance, a few months of abstinence will do wonders there. If you can stomach that.
Sure, but this thread is about getting the most out of home-made edibles. AVB is much less potent than properly decarbed flower.
Sounds like you’re screwing up the decarb somehow. Try a water bath decarb instead. You’ll get a slightly lower potency but i’ve never had problems extracting this way. Put your weed broken up into some butter. I use 20 grams weed with 250 grams of butter. Add 2 cups of water. Boil that for 90 minutes while keeping an eye on it. Pour that into a plastic jar that can withstand the heat and let it cool. Stick it in the fridge to let the water and butter separate. Remove the butter puck from the top and get rid of the water. You can add more water and boil the butter a second time to wash and clean the butter a bit but this step isn’t necessary every time. Fin.
I decarbed it now the same way I did yesterday but after that I put it in butter and double boiler for 2 hours. I’ll see if I notice any difference to yesterday. If not, next time I’ll probably just skip the decarb and go straight into the double boiler and hope that few hours in 100 degree C (212F) butter is enough to decarb it.
It doesn’t need to boil for hours. 90 minutes is long enough. Also you can make small batches of like 5 grams and 50 grams of butter. That way you’re not wasting so much weed.
I’m experimenting with batches of 1 gram. I don’t have the luxury on wasting a ton of weed on cannabutter. I guess I’ll see which method gets me most out of one gram and then scale that up the next time.
Just ate a sandwich with my most recent batch that still had the flower in there and everything. Tastes like crap. Absolutely horrible. Will report back.
EDIT: Meh.
Grind, place parchment paper on baking pan and spread ground bud evenly, decarb at 220°f for 1 hour. Done.
Eat as is, with cbd oil, infuse butter/oil, or directly incorporate into edibles.
Make cannaoil capsules. That way you can find the dose that works for you. I had a similar issue when making edibles in the past. Now I just eat however many caps I think it will take.
Dosage is not really the issue here. It’s that I have no idea what’s the correct way of making them and not lose half of the THC in the progress. For decarbing the weed for example, when I ask 10 different people how to do it I’m getting 10 different answers.
Cooking is more art than science. Everyone’s experience with learning how to cook with cannabis slightly differs. So does their understanding of the process in general.
So yeah you’ll hear 10 different slightly different ways to do things like decarb. Is it 230f or 240f? 45 minutes or an hours? Nobody really knows the exact perfect digits, i think. I believe the world works in averages. So the details tend to not matter as much as some think. Pick the method that seems best for you with the appliances you have on hand and do the best you can. If you keep at it and do the process over and over you’ll nail the extraction better each time.
I personally trust this guide video for making cannabutter. The tek was developed by a real weed cooking scientist and the resulting butter made was sent to be lab tested for active thc.
It won the competition over other tested teks with highest thc. So thats some points for legitimacy in my mind.
I can vouch that if you follow the decarb step in that guide you will end up with nicely activated herb. Here’s the text version in case you don’t want to watch a YouTube vid.
For what its worth, I began with cooking butter over a stovetop in a saucepan with decarbed herb. Its very hands on and you need to watch the simmer.Then I did the crock pot tek with coconut oil with this method and I’m telling you its the way to go. Never messing with a sauce pan again just turn the crock pot on low and stir every hour.
