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Here's a link to the original Cook's Illustrated recipe. You'll need to sign up for their 14-day free trial, & there's tons of great stuff on their site. If that doesn't work I'll be happy to type it up for you.
Prepping for a bbq this afternoon (made the pulled pork yesterday & it is unbelievably good), more later.
I made a bit of this clean cannabutter yesterday. I didn't use the recommended 2 grams per tablespoon, only about half that --- used 4 grams of bud with a half stick (4 tbs) of butter.
The washing process really does clean it up a lot! The first wash water got very cloudy, but each wash was progreessively cleaner, and the resulting butter got progressively less opaque each time. Even using the coffee filter, I was not able to get absolutely ALL of the plant material out. There must be some amount of extremely small plant "dust" in the butter that makes it through the filter screen. And not all of the smell is gone either --- there is still a kind of herbal smell. In fact it reminds me a bit of a sage butter I made the other day for a delicious herb-crusted pork loin. Mmmmmmm...pork.
One difference that I tried was to do a first extraction using 2 tbs butter and the 4 grams of herb. Then filter that, save the butter and wash water in one container, throw the "mash" back in the extraction jar with a second 2 tbs of butter and new wash water for a second extraction, then combine both portions of extracted butter and wash water. I always hate to think there might be any good stuff left in the mash, so for almost evey kind of extraction I do, I extract twice and combine the extracts.
Another difference was that instead of using the jar, I used a pyrex measuring cup. I didn't have any glass jars that I trusted enough to shake when full of scalding hot water, so I used the cup and just stirred it really well now and then.
I have a few questions:
Will the small amount of organic stuff still in the butter be a problem if I try a caramel recipe? It really is very little material left in the butter, but I can see it, and I don't want to blow a batch. If I do need to get rid of it, what do you recommend? I could do one more wash and try the coffee filter again, but this stuff already made it through the filter once.
If the caramels aren't going to work out, I will triy a batch of brownies. I tried a new brownie truffle mix from Trader Joes the other day (just the regular brownies, not "special" in any way) and it was delicious! The recipe calls for butter, instead of oil like many mixes do, so it would be perfect I think for using the cannabutter.
If I do make the caramels, how is that usually dosed? For example, I have a recipe for caramels that uses the 1/2 stick of butter that I have made, and it makes a bit more than a pound of caramels. I've never made this recipe, so I'm not even sure what a pound of caramels looks like --- are caramels usually served in 1-ounce pieces? Or maybe 1/2 ounce? Does anyone know how many normal-sized pieces of caramel a pound of caramel makes, and is cannabutter from 4 grams of good weed going to make a reasonable dose per caramel? I'm trying to get somewhere in between having to each a ton of candy to feel the effects, but not so strong that if you each just a tiny piece you end up in outer space. Any advice on that would be great.
The residue left behind after a coffee filter strain is no biggie. You'll need double dose for caramels but that's still also totally fine, especially if you have a sweet tooth- they taste SO yummy that you will probably wnat to pop a couple lol! Just DON'T LET THE SUGAR SCORCH!!!
Thanks for the info. Now I'm torn. I'll have to decide between caramels and brownies. I hope people feel sorry for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by stinkyattic
One more question about caramels: How well do they store? And what is the best method of long-term storage? The recipe I have says they keep for weeks but are best right away. One batch would last me a LONG time. Would it be OK to freeze or refrigerate some portion of them? Seems like there might be some kind of problem with condensation whan pulling them back out of the freezer.
I will definitely avoid scorching! If I'm going to make caramels, I'll need to get a candy thermometer.
Make them on a day when the air is quite dry, or in an air-conditioned room.
Wrap them individually in waxed paper immediately, and put them in mason jars with some rice in the bottom, then put them in the refrigerator. They get melty at room temperature, and tend to scavenge humidity from the air.
Yeah. I feel sorry for you... :rolleyes: lol
Just wanted to add this little tidbit:
Yesterday I went to make some Cannabutter when I realized I had broken my potato ricer the last time I made butter (squeezed too hard) so to the store I went to find a replacement. After going to 4 different stores I could not buy a potato ricer.
Then I came across a french press. I bought it up and put it to use. The very fine screen in the french press filters out nearly 100% of all the plant matieral.
I also bought a permanent coffee filter that was more like a silk screen as opposed to metal.
The result is a 100% clean cannabutter. No plant material what so ever. It is a beautiful pale green/pale yellow green (I haven't even washed it yet. Just the initial cooking) and will probably get even lighter.
I will be making some cookies for a trip I'm taking this weekend and I'll report back with pictures of the butter and the results of my latest batch. Wish my luck.
:thumbsup:
Stinky, i had a question about the type of bud i use in my cannabutter. If i use a high quality bud, (around here in CT i get something called beasters which is equavlent to probably decent headies, its indoor indica strain im pretty sure) then can i use less bud and a larger amount of butter then the ratio you suggested? Would this give me a decent, long lasting high still? Or is it just worth it buying an ounce of mids and using that to make cannabutter at the ratio you suggested. I fear that im not going to feel the effects of the cannabutter and not make my butter potent enough.
Thanks :rastasmoke:
Thanks for the advice. I'm leaning toward the caramels, not the brownies. I think I'll make the special caramels and a batch of just regular brownies to eat when I get the munchies. I'm gonna get fat.Quote:
Originally Posted by stinkyattic
Hi bsmack and welcome!
Let's talk Beasters. I loathe them- really, truly, despise the damn stuff. Now, I'm up in MA and what we get as 'Beasters' can mean one of 2 grades of Canadian, and only one is correct:
Both are smei-compacted, but not bricked.
Both have a very uniform and rather furry appearance.
Both are grown indoors in Canada, but there the similarities end.
There's a grade of bud I've seen tagged as the Beast that is actually really nice, with VISIBLE SURFACE CRYSTALS and a perfectly nice high. It's actually not Beasters at all; it is grown further East and comes over in the St. LAwrence region. I like it, and I have a couple zips right now, lol! It's not really 'Nooks' because it is indoor herb, but it's desirable. I pay $800/qp for it and consider it a really respectable substitute for when I run out of homegrown.
The one that is TRULY Beasters looks pretty but if you inspect it carefully, you see that the surface seems to have few to no crystals on it, but if you break it open, you find that some ARE visible... WTF! you might ask? Simple. These things are grown by mostly gangs of SE Asian immigrants in British Columbia, in warehouses, from a strain called M39, which was bred for yield yield yield- did I mention yield?- and is actually upposed to run 9 weeks, but they chop as soon as bulk is attained, dry kinda half-assed, and then -this is the kicker- tumble the buds in screen drums to let the trichomes fall through. Basically, real Beasters are a byproduct of the hash trade, if you look at it that way, lol! Also, the early harvest means an uneasy up high with a hard crash.
If you have the former, save it for smoking.
If you have the latter... yeah. Go ahead and cook that shit like Iron Chef. And the ratios of butter:bud weight will actually me the same. While that STRAIN may be a higher % THC than a birck commercial strain, the trichome removal evens the playing field a bit.
Otherwise, I'd go with a lower-priced brick product of your choice.
Thanks a lot for the info. Damn i wish i would have the knowledge about them as you apparently do lol. Im pretty sure the beasters i get are the ones that you said you buy when you run out of homegrown. The beasters that i get i know are grown in the USA and go for about 850 a QP so it sounds about right. You can also see the trichroms all around the bud and inside so im not too sure if its tumbled to make hash before i buy it lol. Ill post a good picture when i grab some next time and let you decide. I wish i could get some better quality bud but for the price its a deal imo. So if i used an ounce of mids then i would be using about 14 grams of butter correct?
All of this talk of caramels, brownies etc is making me hungry.
Might throw the chef's hat on tnight...Belieeeee' Dat':jointsmile:
Stinky you are my idol :thumbsup:
All hail Her Dankness!!!:jointsmile:
mmmmm...cannabutter... sounds so good! When one gets the butter made, can you bake with it? :0 Does the Thc evaporate in temps of 350 F in the oven? I know people are saying this works. I really want to try this. Thanks Stinky.
What if you don't have a potato ricer or cheesecloth? Basically the step where I go from 1 jar to the other, what else can I use? Thanks for this genius method Stinky, I can't wait to cook.:hippy:
Any help? I wanted to make this today but not until I get some advice. PLEASE?! :hippy:Quote:
Originally Posted by FourTwenty4Life
I used a permanent coffee filter, the kind that looks like it is made from a gold-plated screen.Quote:
Originally Posted by FourTwenty4Life
Do the cuttings need to be totally dry to make cannabutter?Quote:
Originally Posted by stinkyattic
To dduo, no the weed doesnt nesicarily have to be completely dry, but most like after you decarboxylize it it will be pretty dried out my friend. I would recommend decarboxylizing it as it causes all the carboxyl groups attached to the thc to evaporate(or whatever) and that inactive thc-a becomes active thc!
So, if you decarboxylate your weed, you sohuld have no worries abour the dampness of the weed. Usually, the not so dried weed isnt properly cured, as the carboxyle groups actually evaporate over time. But either way, dampness of your weed is completely irrelevant, because if you can smoke not so dried weed and get baked, then you can certainly cook with it :jointsmile:
I don't know what I did wrong, but this didn't work for me.
I followed the recipe, except I used what I am guessing are smaller canning jars than you use (1 pint, I used two). I used at least 14 grams of low-grade bud as well as an equal amount of vape duff with 1.5 sticks (12 tablespoons) of butter. I used a potato ricer as well as a permanent coffee filter to strain.
The only thing I did differently is I let it go an extra hour or so on the extraction, still shaking the container every 20 minutes or so. (I couldn't remember what time I started and figured I'd be better off going too long than too short). I never let it get past a gentle simmer. I also did the separating in the fridge in a pyrex container instead of the canning jars, but that shouldn't affect anything.
I ended up with around 8 tablespoons of very "grassy" smelling green butter. By grassy I don't mean weedy, I mean the smell was more like lawn clippings than marijuana.
Since this is the first time I've ever done this, and I thought I'd have pretty good potency, I began by eating 1 teaspoon on toast a half hour apart until I felt effects. By four hours I was up to 2 tablespoons and I was feeling nothing. I then ate another tablespoon by making little balls with it and swallowing it with a gulp of water. In the end I ate about half the butter, and at best effects were very mild, and might have even been wishful thinking. By the 4th hour of feeling nothing I started hitting my vaporizer.
Tonight I decided to finish off the butter a little faster, and I hadn't eaten anything in about 8 hours. With half the butter left, I ate two tablespoons at once on toast (instead of spreading it over two hours), then about 45 minutes later another tablespoon, and about 45 minutes after that I ate the last tablespoon.
Effects, if any, are extremely mild. I'm warming the vape as I type this.
What could I possibly have done wrong?
I tried this with 74g of vape leavings and 2 sticks of butter approx- 227g.
Since 74g is actually quite a lot I had to use a large double boiler. I just put a trivet in a pot and covered it with water. Then placed the pot with the h2o saturated VL and melted butter and simmered. Stir. Stir. Stir every time I walked by.
Which was easy as I was making gumbo too...
I did four "washings" and ran the resulting tea through a French-press each time. Each was chilled and butter lifted away. The first run returned 70g of dark-olive green butter. The next three progressively less but with the same green hue.
I've ended up with 128g of butter so far. This morning the VL went back into the boiler but was boiled with more water to try and extract the remainder of the fat. Chilling now in an ice-bath. Looks like I'll get more out.
I tried about a 1/2 tsp licked off my fingers last night. Washed it down with some home-brewed Pale Ale. Wow. Even though I was already "vaped" I definitely felt effects from this. Despite the deep green color the butter is fairly neutral in flavor with a pleasant "nuttiness" present...
This is a real boon to those that vape. Tried smoking the crumbs before and it is a disgusting experience. Had heard of cannabutter but was unsure about it being very clean tasting because of the nastiness of the VL. LOL Now I can extract the remaining 15% or so out and eliminate waste.
Probably won't cook with the butter as there are concerns about exposing my precious THC to 300+ temps. Ideas on this?
Thanks guys! I'm gonna pass it on to my friends who vape...
An option to baking it at over 300 degrees is to bake at a lower temp for a longer period. So if a brownie recipe calls for a bake time of 20 minutes at 375 degrees. Do it at 250 for 35 minutes, or however long it would take. I've never tried this myself but I have read other posts recommending this.
I've done the same thing as you, only baked the butter with brownies. The brownies were quite potent. Maybe the high heat kills some of the THC, but I can assure you these still had enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by radtek
Personally, I found the extreme "grassy" "weedy" taste to be sort of overwhelming. I'm wondering if there's a good recipe or method to reduce this greeny taste.
This is a great thread and needs way more action.
So if I were to make some of this goodness.... How is the odor while making it? what about when baking with it?
Hello StinkyAttic,Quote:
Originally Posted by stinkyattic
I have a question about washing the cannabutter. By washing it, will it lose it potency as well? Since you're washing away the chlorophyll and plant matter are you washing away the potency?
Thanks!
-VF
Be Safe.
I can answer that for ya bro:D
NO... thc is absorded into the fat of the butter not the water ...the water is used as the filter
Hell yeah! Thanks alot VapedG13.
-VF
Be Safe!
This cannabutter recipe worked great for me. I like it because it uses canning jars while processing. In other recipes, you have it all out in a pot or pan, and not as easy to manage. However, I used two pint jars in a large double boiler. Instead of one huge jar in a stockpot. I got a potato ricer but ended up shooting out hot streams of my slurry as it escaped around the edge of the plunger when compressing, not fun! Save your money if you don't already have a potato ricer, just squeeze it well through some cheesecloth, much better control.
One great trick I thought of while doing this that worked great:
When you are putting the canning jar in the fridge to allow the butter to solidify, tighten the lid and set it upside down so that when the butter hardens, you can pour out the water, which will now be on top, without requiring you to poke a hole through the mass of butter. It also allows you to scrape/wipe away any patches of nastiness that get through the coffee filter, which should've settled at the water/butter interface, which is now on the top side of the butter, where you can simply reach into the jar and access it.
Thanks again!
Hey just glad to see the forum back up. The cheese cloth is good for the initial squeeze but the potato ricer does get a lot more butter out. I used 8 lbs of butter in the most recent batch of cannautter I made. After using a cheese cloth and a potato ricer I was able to retrieve 6 lbs of cannabutter. I think the ricer is pretty important when your are making a lot of butter at one time.
I use 2 oz of quality trim that is 25% popcorn buds per lb of butter.
Keep posting these types of useful tips for the connoisseurs. the real connoisseurs will be really greateful. The charm of the cannabutter can really be enjoyed with the tips.
The key is to wash your butter. It takes time, but well worth the time spent.Quote:
Originally Posted by zchgla
Go to the beginning of the thread and there's a tutorial on making the washed butter. I'd wash it 3 times...still every bit at potent and those I've given the edibles to cannot taste the budder. I speed up the washing process by pouring my washed budder into freezer containers and enslaving my chest freezer for about 3 hours. Still, it takes me about 2 days to make a batch of budder.
I even go so far as to slowly remelt the budder and make 1/4 cup pucks of budder with muffin tins and a double liner. Makes for easy storage and easier from the freezer taking only the amount you need.
Good luck.
When I make a batch with shake it smells far worse than with pure bud.
No one ever talks about the smell, so it's best if there's some open windows. Please take the time to wash the budder, you'll be thankful you did and I'd wash it the 3 times as suggested in the start of this thread.
I confess I'm new to making budder. My first batch I couldn't even eat the stuff I made with it. I should have gone online and didn't and threw it out. I was stupid and threw out a second batch because again I couldn't stand the taste of it. When it takes a stoner an hour to eat a piece of cake, there's a problem. By the third washing, it'll be so mild you may still have some taste, but it will be very mellow retaining every bit of potency.
I only bake with my budder. When I've washed it 3 times, I slowly melt it again and make 1/4 cup pucks with double-lined muffin tins.
so I take it you use the dooble-boiler method to reduce the extraction temperature.
simmer your trim on low with a cover is only a few degrees higher and much easier than the double-boiler (you don't have to top with water)
method and a crock-pot is very easy to do while at work. I like 24 hours of simmer time. Remember the graph for conversion of THC-acid to THC is time & temperature.
So 24 hours cook time gives a good amount of conversion (may be over-kill) Instead of the ricer they make stronger fruit presses but they run around $100. I simmer the leaf a second time in fresh water to remove more butter. I seem to loose too much butter. I just used 2 sticks but only got back one stick when all done. That's 50% loss of the butter and THC I expect.
yah the smell can be real strong and in winter it's tough to open the windows but trim is a stinky cook. this method should help with the closed top but a stove-top simmer is stinky, almost gagging.
There are at least a dozen methods I've seen in the past few years but prefer the "double boil" method Attachment 294746 Don't get me wrong, Stinkyattics' method is very good! Like the double boil cuz it works & way too lazy to change esp @ my age...... he he. My cooking bud is pretty clean & not to many worries on the chlorophyll so. Making a 1.5 pound batch today, any decent recipes that you'd like to share? Peace:thumbsup:
:eat: cooking again, alright, keep some in the marked butter tub,:eat:Quote:
Originally Posted by Esteban1
Has any one tried doing this with a canner? (Big pot, comes with a rack to hold& raise a bunch of canning jars off the bottom. Fill pot with water to recomended level). Preforms same service as double boiler, takes less space, ease of use at sm expence. Never made butter my self, just came from long line of good southern cooks & seems to me mightbe a work/space saver. They usually come with tongs shaped to grasp & hold canning jars.
PEACE
Never tried any other technique. This works so very well don't think I'll try alternate methods. This was my second run & there wasn't one spec of leaf in the butter! Would name it "Budderer" but sure it's taken lol
You could call it 'Estes better budder'. ;-)
~~~~~~PEACE!~~~~~~
I wash cannabutter or coconut oil three times to help get rid of the smell in the oil. I also take 2lbs of butter, heat to 150 or so and only use the clarified butter that results. I toss all the milk solids....it tends to taste funny. I usually use 40 grams or so of the best pot I can find, the last batch was 900 per 1/4 lb. Thats about 200 more than usual, but miles better than usual. I made 70 cookies from 40 grams last batch....thats about .58 grams per cookie or about 112 mgs of THC per cookie. I also had great luck making caramels as well...you can hardy taste the maryjane in the treat. Also always use lecithin in the treats.....it gives a kick, hard, quick to the head, but its about 2/3 as long a buzz. The caramels had too much THC....about 175mg per caramel....two is too many!