Isomerization process for Green Dragon?

[dragonrider]

Does anyone know if there is a way to isomerize the cannabinoids in Green Dragon?

I've found info about isomerizing honey oil, and I'm not interested in trying that. Those techniques involve a little more chemistry than I want to do. I'm looking for a standard kind of kitchen cooking technique that would boost the potency of Green Dragon, and does not involve solvents like butane or using hydrochloric acid or a chemistry apparatus like a reflux column, whatever that is.

I already use Master Wu's oven technique to decarboxylize the bud before extracting the Green Dragon. Now I'm looking for a similar kind of isomerization technique for Green Dragon. According to what I have read, isomerization for honey oil boosts the potency a lot, so I would like to try to do the same for Green Dragon. The honey oil processes that I have read about involve refluxing with hydrochloric acid, and as far as I understatnd it, that means you cook it in combination with HCl. Later you add a base to neutralize the HCl.

I'm wondering if the same thing could be accomplished with Green Dragon by simmering it with an acidic cooking ingredient like lemon juice or maybe a more concentrated citric acid. Does anyone have the chemistry background to know if this would work? I don't know enough chemistry to know what is really going on with the isomerization process, and I don't want to just try something on my Green Dragon if I'm not sure it will work.

dragonrider Reviewed by dragonrider on 09-20-2007. Isomerization process for Green Dragon? Does anyone know if there is a way to isomerize the cannabinoids in Green Dragon? I've found info about isomerizing honey oil, and I'm not interested in trying that. Those techniques involve a little more chemistry than I want to do. I'm looking for a standard kind of kitchen cooking technique that would boost the potency of Green Dragon, and does not involve solvents like butane or using hydrochloric acid or a chemistry apparatus like a reflux column, whatever that is. I already use Rating: 5

[Coelho]

Man... i did try it once, but couldnt say if it worked, as i had nothing to compare with. I took a cup of alcohol, soaked the weed in it, added some lemon juice to it, then put the cup in a pan with boiling water for 1.5 hours. I put a dish over the cup for avoid the alcohol to evaporate. Then, after it i mixed this alcohol with some soda and drank it. Of course, the effects were amazing, but as they always are when i drink green dragon, and as i dont drink it very often, i couldnt compare it to know if the process had worked.

What i do, and works, is to isomerize hash oil. The weed i have is indica, and so the hash oil i extract from it. Then, i put this hash oil in a small glass with water, put this small glass in a can with boiling water, and let it for some 2.5 hours, adding water to the small glass when it evaporates. After it, the hash oil is much more sativa-like, and almost nothing indica-like.
I would suggest you to make green dragon from hash oil. Just mix the oil with alcohol until it dissolves, and you have green dragon! Doing so, you could isomerize the hash oil first, and then make the green dragon.
Also, you can make hash oil from green dragon. Just let all the alcohol evaporate, and what will be left is hash oil. Then, you can isomerize it, and after it, re-dissolve in alcohol.
Anyway, if you do some other experiment, i would like to know... im a bit of alchemist myself, and love to experiment with weed, so if you have any good idea, post here! And good luck! :thumbsup:

[dragonrider]

Coelho, thanks for the reply!

Do you know if the isomerization process is due to heat alone, or does it need the acid? I already bake the herb a little bit to decarboxylize it before extracting it, and then there is some heat during the extraction too. Do you think your heating process is decarboxylizing left over THCA to THC? Or do you think it is isomerizing other less active cannabinoids into more active isomers of THC?

I might just have to try simmering with some lemon juice during the extraction and see what happens. As long as someone has done it before without actually destroying their green dragon, I'm willing to give it a shot and compare it to the batch I made without lemon juice. A controlled experiment! If I do it, I'll post results.

When you say heating the oil makes it more of a sativa-like, not so indica-like, do you mean a lighter, less sleepy high? I like the lighter kind of high with some psychedelic aspects, not so much the deep, stoney, out-of-it, sleepy kind of buzz. I still like a strong high, just not totally out of it. What kind of high do you get out of your heating process?

Thanks for the info.

[Coelho]

Coelho, thanks for the reply!

Do you know if the isomerization process is due to heat alone, or does it need the acid? I already bake the herb a little bit to decarboxylize it before extracting it, and then there is some heat during the extraction too. Do you think your heating process is decarboxylizing left over THCA to THC? Or do you think it is isomerizing other less active cannabinoids into more active isomers of THC?

Well... the decarboxilation (THCA -> THC) happens from heat alone.
I dont know about the isomerization... when i isomerize my hash oil, i dont add any acid, and yet it works. I think just heating for a time long enough can cause the isomerization of the CBD to THC (as they are the only real isomers). I think you need add acid if you want to convert ALL cannabinoids to THC, and not only the CBD.
(BTW, CBD is what causes the indica effects, mellow and couchlock stone... and the THC is what causes the sativa giggly mind high)

I might just have to try simmering with some lemon juice during the extraction and see what happens. As long as someone has done it before without actually destroying their green dragon, I'm willing to give it a shot and compare it to the batch I made without lemon juice. A controlled experiment! If I do it, I'll post results.

Only a note...when you add the lemon juice to the alcohol, the juice added will turn to a whitish spit-like thing... but its not a problem...

When you say heating the oil makes it more of a sativa-like, not so indica-like, do you mean a lighter, less sleepy high? I like the lighter kind of high with some psychedelic aspects, not so much the deep, stoney, out-of-it, sleepy kind of buzz. I still like a strong high, just not totally out of it. What kind of high do you get out of your heating process?
Thanks for the info.

Yes... thats what i mean... the indica stone is the sleepy, mellow, couchlock one... when i heat the oil, the high becomes more energetic, high, giggly, mind high... sometimes its hard to realize that youre high, cause the effects are not so obvious, like, you dont feel the mellowness, mind slowness coming, so you may think youre not high. But, when things start to look funny and you dont know why, then you realize HOW high you are... :stoned:

If you like chemistry, you can look at the link below, that is from where i got all this informations:

Robert A. Nelson: Hemp Husbandry ~ Cannabinoid Chemistry (Ch 6)

So, good luck, and tell us if you made some good discovery! :thumbsup:

[dragonrider]

OK, yesterday I tried some of the things we've been talking about in this discussion, and I ended up spending a good part of my day in outer space.

I took an ounce of the green dragon liqueur that I had made a few weeks ago, added an ounce of lemon juice, and used the water bath method to cook it for a little more than an hour. (One ounce is one good strong dose of the liqueur. If you want to see how I make the green dragon liqueur, I described it in one of the later posts in the "Definitive Green Dragon" thread. It's really good as is --- I'm just curious whether it can be imporoved.)

The water bath was a gentle boil, and I put a lid over the whole water bath saucepan, so the temperature was probably close to boiling water (212F, 100C) for the whole hour. After cooking it, the volume had reduced to just over an ounce, so I added an ounce of fresh Everclear to bring the alcohol content back up. I put the mixture in a cup of hot black tea with some honey to cut the lemon juice and drank it down on an empty stomach --- yum! Then I had the rest of my breakfast.

I got incredibly high.

In a half an hour I was starting to come on pretty strong, and it continued to build for another hour or more after that. For at least two hours I was so high I really couldn't do much of anything --- I managed to take a shower, which felt great, but that's about it. At the peak, I had some visual effects, with a little bit of a shimmery effect on the edges of objects and a distorted sense of distance. I was able to function enough to do a few things around the house after the two-hour peak, but I was high for most of the day, and I even feel a little bit out of it today.

I can definitely say that cooking the green dragon liqueur didn't hurt it any. But I can't be sure that the effect was actually intensified, because I got so high. The experiment is actually flawed becasue a full ounce of the green dragon liqueur that I make will already get you really really high without the extra cooking, and after a point it is hard to tell whether you are any more high this time than you were the last time you were really really high.

To get a better idea of whether there is a difference due to cooking, I'll have to do an experiment using a smaller dose --- maybe try a 1/2 ounce shot uncooked one day, and another 1/2 ounce shot cooked the next day. It might be a little while before I can do that experiemnt and report back. If there is a difference, then it would be interesting to find out whether the difference is just due to the heat of cooking, or if the acidity of the lemon juice had anything to do with it.

Until I do that experiment I won't know for sure, but I think the cooking did strengthen the effect and changed it qualitatively too. I don't remember getting any visual effects with the uncooked liqueur, and it seems like the effects lasted longer with the cooked version.

If anyone else has done any experiments along these lines, please post your results!

[Coelho]

Well... your results were much like the mine... i went TOO high to perceive if i was higher than some other time, for comparing... youre right... after you reach a level of highness, you cant know if you are more or less high... anyway, when i drink/eat weed, i see the visual distotions you mentioned... for me it seems like when you look to a swimming pool, and the floor of it seems much nearer than it is actually... :stoned:

[dragonrider]

Ok, I tried refining my experiment a bit by cooking only a half ounce of the green dragon liqueur. Came here about 20 minutes ago and starting posting results, hit some random button after typing for about 20 mins, and my post was gone! Don't know what happened ... so apparently I am high.

Anyway, i'm going to try to recreate the post now. I used a half ounce of the green dragon liqueur this time. Using a full ounce last time made me too high to tell if there was any difference due to cooking, so i'm using less this time.

I put the half ounce of green dragon liqueur in the double boiler water bath and simmered it for about an hour. I took what was left after cooking it, and added another ounce of Everclear 151 to bring back the alcohol content that had boiled away. Then i added that to a cup of good coffee with cream and sugar. Yum! Breakfast of Champions!

Started drinking the coffee about 8:45 AM and finished it around 9:00. Ate some breakfast between 9:00 and 9:30. Was begining to feel high around 9:15. Started first post around 9:30. At 9:50, i was high enough to totally lose the first post. Have no idea what happened, so if it shows up in some random thread, let's assume that boiling the green dragon does not hurt it any, and maybe makes is strong enough so that you don't really know what you are doing anymore...

9:54, decided to try to post again, and that is what you are reading right now, unless i happen to lose this one too, in which case i am going to give up and find somehting else to do for awhile.

I feel really high right now, but not totally incapacitated like the last time i tried the full ounce. I'll post back more results later.

If i don't come back to post more results, do not assume i died! After Shamanic Hippie and Sparknote consumed massive quantites of weed and then never came back to post results, everyone got a big laugh out of the idea that they died. Well, i'm sure they didn't actually die --- they went into another dimension and are trying to get back (or maybe they aren't trying that hard, bacause they are still so freakin high). So if i don't come back, just asume i am with Shamanic Hippe and Sparknote in the other dimension. If so, I will try to send word out somehow. Look for a note tied to the tail of a flying monkey.

[dragonrider]

Ok, I'm back. Did not die or go into another dimension. I am pretty high, but nothing way out of the ordinary.

The rest of the experiment will be to try another half ounce sometime soon and not cook it. Then compare the two to see if there is any difference in how high I get or the kind of high. This is a kind of clear headed high --- feels good and stuff is funny and trippy, but I'm not glued to the couch or ridiculously stupid. Sometime soon I'll try the other method and see if it is the same high as this one.

Alos, just remembered to note for the scientific record: the last time I cooked the liqueur, I also used lemon juice, so to really try all the variations, I need to try once again without cooking, and once again cooking with lemon juice. The sacrifices I make for science!

[subsonicbug]

so what happened with this? I am looking to also get the most out of master wu's green dragon technique, and have come across this post about adding an acid and am wondering how this has increased the GD potency..
dragonrider / cuelho any new comments?

[Coelho]

so what happened with this? I am looking to also get the most out of master wu's green dragon technique, and have come across this post about adding an acid and am wondering how this has increased the GD potency..
dragonrider / cuelho any new comments?

From me, unfortunately there isnt any new comment... i stopped making new experiments with green dragon, cause right now im searching sublingual tinctures, that are much like green dragon, but using glicerin instead alcohol as solvent.
Regarding the green dragon, i also am waiting for dragonrider results...

Alos, just remembered to note for the scientific record: the last time I cooked the liqueur, I also used lemon juice, so to really try all the variations, I need to try once again without cooking, and once again cooking with lemon juice. The sacrifices I make for science!

Oh yeah... im sure this sacrifices are almost too hard for you... im sure you are only doing this for the sake of science... yes... i understand you very well, as i do the same... getting high everyday for testing new ways of weed consuption is indeed an awful sacrifice, dont?