Cannabis Capsules â?? A step-by-step guide.

EmoRebellion-
Glad to hear you're interested in trying this recipe. I'll warn you that there are a lot of variables involved here and there's a good possibility that you'll have problems before you have success, but if you can wait in there and stand to lose a little, you won't be disappointed. That said- I'm not exactly sure what burr grinder is, but from wat I can tell, they're quite large. It most likely will be difficult to clean out because you want to grind up your weed super fine. I can't stress that enough. You want to grind that weed up until it's DUST. If you can Identify it as weed pieces before you add it to your oil- it's not ground up enough. For that reason, if you use a huge grinder, you're going to spend forever cleaning every last morsel of that special dust out of it. My advice- buy one of these:

Linens 'n Things - Krups Coffee Grinder

It's the one I use myself. If you're obsessed with this thing working on the first try, then go with mobyone's advice, and use way less oil. Start with a small ramekin, or maybe a cut out section of a mini muffin tin, and put it in the bottom of your crock pot. Use half a teaspoonfull of oil or less, heat it up on high until it's melted, and add like a half gram of powdered weed. Keep adding weed until, like mobyone said, until there's enough oil to reach the top of the weed without being able to see a skim film of oil on top. Then cook that bad boy for 3-4 hours on high. Stir once or twice at even intervals. Once it's done, harden it in the fridge, and eat some pieces of it. If you did it right, about half of your 'cake' will get you more wasted than you've ever been. Once you get a taste of success you can start playing with your weed/oil ratio and cooking times/temps to get it right for you.

The biggest problem with evryone not having enough success with this thing, is that we all want to end up at the same concentration in our final product, whilst all using the same recipe, but we're all using different kinds of weed. The above described method should more or less guarantee that you'll get really high, but if you want to use this recipe to save weed, then you're going to have to undergo a substantial amount of research yourself. Everyone wants the same results from the same recipe with the same temperatures and cook times, but since we're not using the same grade ingredients, that's just not possible... I hope this helps...

-Mark

OK- So I've been having problems with this recipe from the start as some of you may know, and I've had some success as well. In order to better explain this to some others who may be confused, I came up with this analogy.

Making these capsules work can be compared to making yourself a cup of coffee in the morning. Just like you dissolve sugar into your coffee, you are trying to dissolve THC into your liquid oil. It's important to remember that this is only a PHYSICAL change and not a chemical reaction... Sure, the heat from the crock pot or oven or whatever may act as a catalyst to complete the curing process, and thereby complete some incomplete metabolism of the psychoactive components (of your weed) along the way, but for purposes of example, we're going to ignore that effect.

Secondly, it is important to understand why we use oil in the first place: Everything you eat first goes to your stomach. DUH. From there, solids go to the intestines, and liquids go to the liver. When you take one of these pills, you must not think of yourself as "eating" the THC, but rather "drinking" it. Since the melting point of coconut oil is 70F, your body heat is more than enough to melt it shortly after entry, so it's in liquid state and goes to the liver and not the colon. Remember, we're trying to get as much of the THC in your weed as possible to dissolve into the oil so that it goes to the liver ad NOT the intestines. If you read flames explanation, the reason is because the Liver not the stomach, small intestine, or colon, metabolizes the THC differently than the digestive track does, and actually does change the THC chemically. Marinol/dronabinnol works almost exactly the same way BTW, which is why it's not uncommon to see people who take it legitimately to either use less or claim they can't use it because it gets them too high, even though the dosing amount per pill is rather small. For that (the explanation about the liver) reason, you should consider any THC that doesn't dissolve in the oil to be wasted since it's not concentrated enough to have much effect at all once it goes to the intestines.

Getting back to the coffee cup analogy. When you make a cup of coffee, you can add sugar to it, but if you keep adding sugar to the coffee, you will reach a point where it doesn't matter how hot the coffee is, you simply can't melt any more sugar in the coffee- it'll just stay slushy at the bottom. Once you've reached this point it doesn't matter how much you stir or how hot you get your mix. It simply won't absorb any more sugar unless you add more coffee first. This is because you have reached the maximum point of solution, where the coffee physically can't absorb any more. By definition it is saturated.

If you think of the THC in the weed as the sugar, and the oil as the coffee, this is the point you want to arrive at: Oil at 100% saturation, so as to ensure every gram of oil contains as much activated THC as it possibly can, and at the same time, you want as little THC remaining possible left in the powdered weed, since the powdered weed will be digested and not metabolized by the liver, and can therefore be assumed as having the lowest contributing factor. Getting a standardized figure for exactly how much weed to use with how much oil is almost impossible because we're definitely not all using the same grade weed and most of us can't even get a bag of the same stuff twice in a row... Hash would be better for this recipe because it has a high THC content to begin with, but in my part of the country at least, it's almost impossible to find...

Anyway- the problem with reaching 100%THC saturation in your oil, without leaving lots of THC behind in your weed, is that you won't be able to tell when you've achieved these results by any physical means. Mobyone suggested using just enough oil to barely cover the weed, and the idea worked for me but I didn't save any weed. I'm guessing that I was able to saturate the oil I used 100% because there was plenty of wasted THC left behind in the powdered weed as well.This would explain why I still got REALLY high but didn't save much weed over smoking. The moral of the story here is that this recipe WILL work when executed with care and control, BUT in order to start seeing the 'savings' anyone serious enough to do this on a regular basis will have to do a substantial amount of tweaking to get the 'magic formula' for them.

Another physical phenomenon that no one in this thread has given any consideration to is the property known as 'diffusion.' Remember- the cooking portion of this exercise is PHYSICAL SCIENCE not chemistry. The chemistry which drives this thing takes place in your liver, not in the kitchen. Remember that. Anyway, diffusion refers to the natural tendency of things to transition from the point of greatest concentration to a state of concentration equilibrium on their own. Examples include:

Putting a drop of food coloring in a glass and not stirring it: the color will eventually mix itself
Leaving a jar of scented oil open on a counter top until the whole room smells (ever heard of a 'reed diffuser'?)
and so on...

So based on that physical property, there is bound to be some THC left in your weed no matter what because according to the properties of diffusion, the THC is in it's greatest concentration while it is in the ground plant material, and is 'diffusing' into the oil from the weed in order to reach a concentration equilibrium. By equilibrium what is meant is that if you sample a regulation amount of the mix, you should have he same potency of THC per weight, no matter whether you sample a section that is mostly oil, or has lots of powdered weed ground up in it. Or in other words, even if you could calculate exactly how many micrograms of THC you were starting with, and you were able to do the math and figure out how much oil to use in order to saturate that amount of oil 100% with that amount of THC, you still won' get the oil 100% saturated because some THC will need to stay in the weed in order to satisfy the rules of diffusion and reaching the so called equilibrium, where the concentration of THC throughout the homogeneous mix MUST be the same no matter which portion of the mix you sample. This SUCKS because some of the THC, by definition, HAS to stay trapped in the weed, where it will inevitably be wasted because it is digested and NOT metabolized by the liver where we want it to be.

In order to express this concept a little more clearly- imagine if weed was legal and Walgreen's was renamed Allgreens lol. So anyway you go down to your local pharmacy and buy a gram of this oil, which has already been saturated 100% with activated THC- with all the powdered weed removed. If you put that oil in a container in a crock pot, and added ground commercial HEMP (with NO THC content), and try to work this recipe in REVERSE you will probably slowly dissolve a small amount of your THC from the oil into the plant material in order to satisfy the rules of equilibrium- equal concentration THROUGHOUT a homogeneous mix. In theory, you could strain off the ground hemp material, dry it, smoke it, and get high. This is just an example for purposes of clarity to explain the physics at play here a little better, so don't try it. What I'm trying to say is that you'll never remove 100% of your THC from your weed, but you do need to figure out the point at which you're getting diminishing returns by adding more oil, and stop adding oil at THAT point.

Think of this like a teabag- you can make a cup of tea with it, but if you save it, you can make a second cup of weak tea because it's impossible to dissolve all of the tea components into the water because of equilibrium. The first cup of tea will be the strongest, but each cup brewed from the same bag thereafter will be logarithmically weaker than the previous cup. It's not a direct relation. I'm working on another theory that you can strain the weed particles back out of the oil and make a second batch from the same weed that will be as strong as the first batch by using less oil. Think of the teabag again- you can brew a strong cup of tea the first time, but you can make tea with the reused bag that's almost as strong as the original tea by using less water the second time... In order to do this with powdered weed, the project may require expensive sophisticated filtration equipment which would make the process impractical, but I'm hoping that understanding how it works will help everyone out in the first place... If there was a way to strain your ground wed back out of the oil without losing the oil, then re-cook the weed using 1/3 as much oil, I'd bet you could stretch your yields without much affect on potency, but technology does not allow us to perform that kind of filtration with any degree of efficiency so it'll have to stay a theory.

This whole project is best explained using the teabag analogy- you're trying to make the greatest quantity of the strongest tea possible from ONE teabag, but you don't know how potent the teabag is in the first place. I hope this helps others to understand what's going on here a little better, and doesn't serve to discourage or confuse. What I'm really trying to say is that anyone serious of this should experiment with a constant amount of the same weed, and a constant temperature and cook time, and vary the oil content to determine the ratio which will work for them. If you've read my other posts, I'm planning on doing this myself within the next month, but I'm strapped financially right now... Best of luck to those who are going to try this- don't give up! it's worth it in the end :) Also, if anyone here has a degree in chemistry or whatever and would care to clarify what I've said; my ears are wide open.

-Mark

Ok. Sorry to reply to my own post, but I'm not done here lol. I'm sorry I don't have any cool pictures to help captivate your attention but bear with me here- I think I'm on to something. My windows pc has a nasty trojan mcaffe can't seem to peel off and my windows pc also keeps thermally overheating...

My first batch was executed the same way mobyone suggested- with barely enough oil to cover my weed. It came out black and got me and my wife plenty high, but wasted about a gram of weed which equals no savings...

Based on my theory of solubility however, I made a second batch. This time I started the same mix I made before, but after the oil turned dark and all, I added about 30% more oil. The oil was dark green when it was finished, but not the same brown. In the end, the mix didn't get me as intensely high as before, but it did work, and it produced a different high. (same weed used for both batches btw) A more of a couch lock spacey quiet high as opposed to an intense head high. Also it seemed to spread out over a longer time period- probably because my liver was keeping up with the slow steady trickling release of a less dense dose over a longer period of time.

My theory is this- you can adjust the type of high your mix will produce, but you are also limited to how fast your liver can metabolize the psychoactive components of your mix. Think of it like trying to push water through a funnel. It's limited by the maximum flow of the funnel. The more watered down with oil and less concentrated overall your mix is, the less heady the high will be. I think this is because your liver doesn't somehow process the THC first or last, but rather as it arrives throughout the mix. My belief is that the intense head high is produced (obviously) by your brain being flooded by as much THC byproducts at once. Also, another variable nobody else considered is that the waiting period before you get high, how high you get, and how long the high will last are also affected by your own individual body metabolism, which is also affected by diet, exorcise, and whether or not they smoke cigarettes- that is, a morbidly obese individual will have to eat more and wait longer to get high because their metabolism is slower, but their high might last longer because a slow metabolism will take longer to burn off the THC byproducts. Inversely; A skinny person who can't seem to gain a pound no matter how much they eat, will have a higher metabolism. That person will probably need to eat less and wait less time to get RIPPED but because their metabolism is so fast, the resulting high probably won't last as long as it would for others...

What does this mean to you? Experiment on your own using your own methods and your equipment. Once you find the happy midway point that works for you, play with it to adjust the resulting high! Less oil should produce a more intense 'heady' type high with lots of activity, and take less time to kick in. On the other hand- adding more oil to your verified (control) recipe will cause your liver to slowly trickle its way through the same amount of THC, thereby never producing the overwhelming head high that others desire, and instead, dragging a 'decent buzz' out over the course of more hours... Add too much oil though, and your mix will be too diluted for your liver to process the ingredients fast enough to give you any high whatsoever... A good parallel would be if you smoked one bowl by yourself and got somewhat high for an hour or two, versus spending an hour or two smoking the whole bowl- you just won't get as high. Well... with this recipe, too much oil and you won't get high at all because the liver is more sensitive to this time factor.

Anyway, I'm pretty committed to this project, so as soon as I can I'm going to do as much 'research' (lol) as I can and post my findings. Until then- best of luck to everyone else in your quest to make counterfeit marinol!

CHEERS!

-Mark

Thanks for taking the time to write that up mspofford. It was very informative and gave me much to ponder. Especially since I picked up a few grams of some premium Lavevender kush hash. I wont make it for a few more weeks because I still have plenty left over from my first two batches. But after reading your write up I may tweak the recipe a bit and add some more oil. My first batch may be too strong because it knocks my wife and I out.

I would recomend using or purchasing a 'mortar and pestle' to grind that hash into a fine fine powder. I'm not entirely sure a coffee grinder would work for that. Also, unless you made capsules, you could try to re-heat a portion of your I would recomend using or purchasing a 'mortar and pestle' to grind that hash into a fine fine powder. I'm not entirely sure a coffee grinder would work for that. Also, unless you made capsules, you could try to re-heat a portion of your existing finished finished product and add a bit of oil. Try a sample size amount first so you don't ruin a batch. Don't worry about 'cooking' it too long either- my best batch was cooked a bunch of different ways/times for probably 10-12 hours total... I doubt cooking for extended periods after you've reached 'total saturation' makes any difference, but I bet the extra cook time sure as hell ensures you reach that point.

-M

Mark,

Excellent post. There are a couple errors on the liver-digestion process. First off everything goes through the intestines from there capillaries gather the broken down digested matierals and take it via the portal vein into the liver. That's why it takes so long to feel the effects the THC doesn't just need to get into the blood stream it needs to be filtered through the liver where it's stucture is changed slightly and then it hits the brain. Also the oil is needed because the human body can not digest and absorb all plant material but will readily absorb oil some easier then others and that is why you can get different results using different oils.

Emo,

A burr grinder would be a bitch to clean! You want a regular coffee grinder that you can get into so you can scrape out what sticks to the sides and it will stick. Mr. Coffee makes one that is less then $20 I got mine at Walmart it has a "cleaning system" that helps with the scraping.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lunarose

Also the oil is needed because the human body can not digest and absorb all plant material but will readily absorb oil some easier then others and that is why you can get different results using different oils.

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Thanks for the feedback lunarose. Have you tried this with any other oils? Flameon says ghee or coconut oil are best... Any suggestions for other oils which are different or better? How would you describe the results from different oils. Is it just not as high, or do different oils produce different highs?

-Mark (not really mark hehe)

Hi,

I have tried both olive oil and cocconut oil and really did not notice a difference. Right now I use a mixture of the two. I think oils with saturated and unsaturated fats plus triglycerides are best. I have also used the oils that Cannabrex(sp?) makes especially for making the capsules and I didn't notice any difference with that either. Of course each batch was made with different strains so...... I would have to grow a good size single crop and then try different oils.......all in the name of science of course(G)

I was thinking about what you wrote about solubility and have an idea for an experiment I want to try based on your tea bag analogy. I am thinking of making a small batch using double to oil. After cooking it for two hours I'll drain off as much of the oil as I can and use a syringe to fill the caps with just the oil. Then add the "regular" amount of oil to get the "regular" consistancy re-cook it and encapsulate that.

I made a new batch last night which I'll be trying tonight with a great slow cooker I just bought. It isn't your typical crockpot with a timer and "low, high and Warm" temp settings it has instead a knob with warm and then exact temps at 50 degree intervals between 200 - 400 F. No timer but that isn't important to me because I usually end up sitting there watching the clock and staring at the cooker(G). Anyway the batch I made I had the cooker set at 250 and preheated it (it has a pilot light that tells you when its reached its temp) let it cook for 2 1/2 hours then unplugged it and left it in the cooker to cool. I double checked the temp with a candy thermometer and it was spot on 250. And it was only $25 at Walmart!

Hi, I've been watching this great thread evolve and have sat back and said nothing. Thanks to Flameon and weedhound and everyone else involved in this thread.. you have changed my world!

This worked for me first time, this is how I did mine.

12 grams of dryed and cured / de-stemmed bc hasplant/grimm (AKA Bigfoot). I ran the buds through a strainer to get rid of ALL the wood, then I put the strained bud in an oven preheated to around 300f for about 5 min just to get rid of any residual moisture that was in it.(no other reason). I then put the 12 grams into an electric coffee grinder and made it into the finest powder possible ( still weighing 12 grams). Most of the powder will come out easily if the weed is properly dry. Got out the slow cooker and preheated 56grams of coconut oil to 80c-85c (low) in a soup bowl, dropped in the powdered bud and gave it a stir. The oil immediatly turned dark green like it was food dye and it looked like most of the powder actually dissolved. I watched the temps for 2 hours not letting it get above 90c, stirring again at 1 hour in. Then I turned the crock up to high and stirred it and left it to fluctuate between 226 f and 228, mixture temp. At this point the smell even smelled right. On the lower temp it smelled like faint coconut but now it was a coconutty / hashy sort of makes you want to eat it smell. At one point it briefly reached 230f ish and now the smell was a hint of a burning. I will always judge the temps with smell now as well as with the thermometer. Anyways cooked at 226 for 1 hr (very slightly bubbling), stirred then cooked at same for another 1 hr 15min, switched the crock off, stirred really well (now looks a hashy brown but no obvious residue in the mix). I then left the thermometer in and waited until it cooled to about 50c, took a 100ml siringe (big bastard with no needle that the nozzle happens to be about the same size as the end of a 00 capsule) and whilst stirring with the siringe, sucked up the whole mixture. There was a bit of residue on the bottom of the bowl but with the quick stirring and sucking at the same time with the siringe, every drop was sucked up :thumbsup:. Now the tricky part is to fill the capsules up right? :wtf:
With the siringe just warm to the touch (mixture still liquid just press on the plunger gently and a bit of residue along with mostly oil will drip into each capsule (about 10 drips to fill a 00). I used a cigarette package with some holes (10) I made with a pen, in it. It worked ok but have now ordered a holder. I Made 10 put them in the fridge, made another 10 ect.

I got 70 full capsules in total form 12 grams of really good quality, dry gear.

Yesterday I did the test.. 1 capsule at 1pm had a good buzz after 1.5 to 2hrs then at 3pm took another. 2hrs later i'm really high by now and at 5pm I took number 3. By 8pm I am almost too high and a bit of paranoia set in but I had some food and closed my eyes for half an hour and was great after that. It is now 1:15 AM and I am still really high now!

Next time I will use a bit more oil because these really are a bit too strong. I have been smoking about 2 grams of this same weed everyday for about 3 months and I thought that I had a high tolerance to it but this is a whole different ballgame!!! :stoned:

I think that making a decent size batch will help people having trouble keep their temps more constant. Also the powdered weed is a must. The mix didn't look like it had any residue and certainly no visible weed in it during the process until i sucked it up with the siringe and even that went up the hole without any real hassle.
Finally, use the best quality weed you can get, the more tricomes (crystals) the better cuz that what getz u high.

Good luck everyone!

Thanks again all and good night!

ps with a ml marked siringe like i used, you can judge how many capsules you will get as well because about .9ml fills 1 -00 capsule.

Subzero. :D

yeah I read somewhere that at 230 F plant matter starts to burn.

and then supposedly decarboxylation happens at 224 F (?) or something. so I figured best bet is between 224 and 229 (just to make sure).

I still haven't really made for sure yet. I want to make a batch at 225, and another at 212 just to test if 212 works. but I've got my hopes on 225.

what sux tho is that using my oven its kinda hard to keep it at 225, it either goes too low or too high, and I want it exactly at 225. maybe if I found a crockpot which keeps it at 225 no more no less...

regards