Question about moldy weed

[Coelho]

Well, so i just discovered my weed is a bit moldy (with white cotton-like threads around it).
I know that is not healthy to smoke moldy weed, but as i only make hash oil with my weed, i would like to know if there is any problem of doing it with moldy weed. I use acetone as solvent, if it matters anything.
Also, is there something i can do to remove the mold from the weed (like putting it in the sun, or somehting like this)?

[killerweed420]

Nope it works fine. I told my moldy old shake and turn into honey oil using the butane method or I use it in my oil for brownies. A great way to get maximum use out of allyour product.:rasta:

[GreenDestiny]

From reading about this kinda situation, even cooking will not kill all kinds of mold, and those spores can be so microscopic that filtering it would be futile.

I guess if you still wanna try to use it, the best you can do is try to cut off all of the affected areas (and then some) and throw away the moldy spots. And leave it out in a warm place to dry for a couple days to get rid of any extra moisture. If you're not ready to use the buds then throw them into the freezer so more mold doesn't grow.

For your own safety, I still wouldn't advise you to use the good parts of the weed that was infected since it can be on it's way to growing mold but looks fine to the naked eye. As for any weed stored in the same container that looks like it's still good, put it on ice or use it up... chances are they will soon meet their doom as well.

[Orzy]

Cutting out the bad parts wont really do anything. If there is visible amounts of mold on the bud then the whole thing is contaminated.

I've heard butane extraction works with moldy herb.

[cthulhu]

you'd know ISO extraction would work, I doubt the mold could live after being doused in 70+% ISO alcohol (I personally use 99% isopropanol). however, ISO is a dirty way of extraction, it's very hard to eliminate the alcohol completely in the final product. I doubt butane would really kill the mold, but I'd bet it would freeze it, which could help slow the spores from growing in your oil (could likely kill alot of them in the process as well).

I'd suppose it would depend on how you plan to extract the hash. that is a very good question however, being as I soon plan to make hash out of ounces (I should say POUNDS!) of shake I have laying around here, which I'm sure contains some mold (since I too usually try to cut it all out before smoking, noone wants to be smoking visible amounts of mold).

[dragonrider]

Any of these extraction methods (acetone, butane, Isopropyl, etahnol/green dragon, cannabutter, etc) will absolutley kill the mold and any spores that linger. There's no question about that. The only question would be whether there are any mold toxins already in the weed that would extract as well and cause you problems. I don't know about that. I would guess that it is probably safe, but I don't know for sure.

[killerweed420]

I don't know of any organism that would live through 350 degree heat for 30 minutes either. For baking I cook my damp weed in an oven at 300 degrees for 15 minutes to activate it then I cook it in canola oil for 15 mintes then it gets added to the brownie mix and cooked for 30 minutes. I doubt anything lives through that.

[GreenDestiny]

Some stuff that stinky has had to say about mold:

in a response to post by Nugget Lover:
"But baking would kill the germs so I don't see the harm."

-Not germs
-Does not kill all mold spores
-Does not eradicate TOXINS that were already produced by said mold before you tried to kill it

from another thread about mold:

... And no, 'heat' does NOT destroy mold spores. There is a specific temperature required for proper sterilization of infected material. You have to ensure that temperature is attained and held for enough time to thoroughly destroy pathogens. With mold, that's not your only concern. There are also toxins produced by the mold.

... If you have any quantity of moldy bud, IMO the safest way to process it would be into a solvent-extracted (isopropanol or butane) hash or oil product. Personally, I would not smoke or eat it in any other form, including bubble hash, although many people DO add moldy bud to their scrap bag for bubble.


Spores can be damn near everywhere in the environment, so it's impossible to filter them out and it's gonna get on everything. The only thing we can really do is just adjust temperature and humidity, and keep things clean so that we don't give them a chance to start growing mold. Chances are there are spores, dead or alive, on every bud we've ever smoked, but they're so tiny and few that any toxicity would be negligible to your immune system.

Makes me wonder about how many microscopic creepy-crawly bugs are in the weed too like dust mites. MMMMMM good stuff.

[dragonrider]

Killing the mold and mold spores will be easy with any of these methods I think, but like others have said, it's the mold toxins that might already be present that could be harmhul. It's the same situation you might have if you cooked some chicken that had already gone bad. The cooking would kill all the bacteria, so you wouldn't get sick from any living organisms, but you would still get sick from the toxins the bacteria had produced before they were killed off.

In this case of a few mold hairs on your bud, I don't know how serious it is. I'm not qualified to say for sure the best thing to do. But if I were in this situation I would definitely do some kind of extraction --- probably the acetone extraction for honey oil would be fine. Coelho, you sometimes boil your extracted honey oil in water, and maybe that would help to remove any other water-soluble impurities that might remain. And then I would smoke it rather than ingest it.

[Coelho]

OK i have another question... does the mold destroys/decreases the amount of THC in the weed?