My experience with cooking edibles and their potency: a semi scientific approach

First off, this site is awesome and I've been lurking here for a while without contributing. So I thought I'd contribute with a question I've had, that I finally think I've answered with my own experience and a bit of research. Also I know this is a really long post and I apologise, but the details are necessary so you can see why I've reached my hypothesis.

So, I'm a medical student, avid chef and love weed. Making edibles is the culmination of three very important pillars in my life. I've been using cannabis for a few years now, but only in the past year have I started edibles. Basically, each time I have made edibles I have attempted to improve from the previous batch. But one batch stood out from the rest. And I think I know why. Here is my timeline:

1. Cannabutter: I made a fair bit of canna butter with a good deal of success. First just in a pan, then I did the butter in water method. Good high, not a great taste though. I decided that I would then progress to canna oil (stores better, more discrete).

2. Cannaoil batch one: My first batch of oil was fucking unreal! I cooked an ounce of pot into 750ml of oil. From that I made about 12 batches of edibles where each batch would get 6 people damn high. So essentially I was getting 72 doses from 28 grams of pot, as in 0.4g per person to get really high. Best highs I've ever had.

Method: oil on water in a slow cooker. Cooked for 12 hours, constantly topping up water. Towards the end water evaporated quicker than I anticipated and I accidentally let the cannabis fry in the oil.

3. Cannaoil batch two: This time, I repeated the oil and water method, but monitored it better and there was no frying. Oil had a better taste than the first batch (less burnt flavour), but the high was noticeably less potent.

4: Cannaoil from Budder: So my research then led me to butane extraction. I did my research and decided (as I rarely smoke anymore) that I would extract some BHO, whip it to budder (not here to discuss whether or not I should have done this, I know there are different schools of thought) and then cook the budder in some oil. Use that oil to make the most potent edibles ever. (As above, I'm aware that some people will say this is stupid, but the scientist in me feels that this process is valid, please bare with me).

Method: Got an ounce of weed, ran three cans of very pure butane through it and got some nice gold. Scraped then whipped to budder (again, do not care whether people think this is stupid or not). Heated the budder in oil via a double boiler until it all dissolved. Made 250ml of cannaoil from about 2.5-3 g of budder (again I'm aware that 2.5g from an ounce means that I've lost a lot, and I did, first time with this method, so I missed some scrape, dropped some, etc.). Then I took that oil and made a batch of edibles (60ml of oil, therefore around 1g of budder). I made 12 brownies under the assumption that it would take 1-2 brownies to get high.

Results: We all got pretty high, but nowhere near as high as the original oil, and we ate double the amount I predicted. WTF?? Then the following night I had some oil on bread (20ml, which = four brownies). And I barely felt it. WTF!!!! Lots of wastage. Not impressedâ?¦

But why?
Why had the brownies worked, but straight oil didn't? Then it clicked: THE HEAT!! So because the THC was extracted from the pot via butane extraction, and then budder'd by a double boiler (never going over 100C), and dissolved by oil on a double boiler (not exceeding 100C), when I ate the oil without applying any heat, I barely got high!! At no point did the THC exceed 100C. So it never decarboxylated. So a lot of it is not psychoactive!!!

So then it led me to think back on that first batch of oil that was so amazing: because I made a mistake and allowed the pot to fry for a bit, more had undergone decarboxylation compared to the other methods (it was also dumb luck that it didn't somehow cook long enough to destroy the THC!).

To further test this, I poured the remaining oil (from the budder) from my bottle onto a pan and cooked it for 25mins, monitoring the temp to ensure it never exceeded 200C (Where THC can be destroyed). Once the oil cooled, I again consumed some soaked in bread. I soaked 5ml of oil for a real good high, which works out to be 0.05g of budder. Therefore if I hadn't of used any of the oil yet, it would have yielded 50 doses. And that's 50 doses with wastage. Which is starting to resemble the yield I had with my first batch of oil.

So my friends I present you this long winded post that outlines how my hypothesis developed, and how dumb luck (as with so many discoveries!) helped me realise the secret to my best batch. So I hope you can all apply what I've learnt through my mistakes to you're own cooking methods.


P.S. In no way am I claiming that I have invented or discovered anything new here, I'm merely outlining how through observation and research that I increased the personal efficacy of my own cooking methods, and felt obligated to share it with you all. Peace.



TL;DR: Asking a question about decarboxylation but potentially solving my own problem.

Much of what you have done has been replicated by many of us. Using the butane method is in my opinion a very good one as it doesn't bring with it the terpines and other bad tasting stuff. Be sure to keep it in hot water untill all of the butane is vaporized though. When making wax/oil usually we don't care if you are going to smoke it cause you're decarbing when you do. But if you never smoke it you need to toast you cannabis first before making medibles. Good luck, get cooking. BTW I've heard that powdered soy lysethine will improve the absorbtion of any medible.

williboy you are a gentleman and a scholar!