Good question Knotter,

Here is my logic re: GD with beer or wine (both work equally well). BTW--I have equally good success with just 1/2 a beer.

You are correct that we use a concentrated alcohol (151 proof rum) to extract. You could probably do the extraction with a more dilute alcohol, but you would need a much greater volume and probably more time. Think about the probability of an ethanol molecule interacting with a cannaboid. The higher the alcohol concentration the more ethanol/cannaboid interactions occur per a given amount of time. The more interactions the quicker and more efficient the extraction. This is why we use a very concentrated alcohol.

Now when we actually ingest the GD we are using only a very small amount of a very concentrated solution--typically less than 1 ml. By comparison, a 12oz glass of beer (or 5oz wine or 1.5oz hard alcohol) contains 22ml of alcohol compared to the 1ml of GD.

So here is what I think is happening. There is not enough ethanol in the 1ml of GD to efficiently (and quickly!) carry the dissolved cannaboids through your system if there is anything, like food, in the way. Using a greater volume of solute (ethanol) helps keep the cannaboids in solution and mobilized. This is very similar to chromatography, if you remember your high school chemistry.

I initially came to this conclusion when I observed that, if I drank a beer after peaking (sometimes hours later), I would experience a second, smaller GD peak. This made me think that the alcohol in the beer was mobilizing any cannaboids that got stuck.

At any rate, I almost always put the GD in at least half a glass of beer or wine now. The onset is much more controlled and consistent. I also am able to use less GD to achieve the same result! Presumably this is because there is less loss.

Hope this helps...cheers,
Master Wu

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The Alchemist