Do i have to dry my trimmings to make brownies?

No, I've heard good things about cooking with fresh trim. I know a lot of people who freeze their trim to keep it fresh because they prefer it that way. Are you planning to make a butter or oil extraction first or just toss the trim straight in the batter? I'd recommend the oil or butter.

 

I used dry trim bur you can use fresh. I've heard that freezing your fresh trim fr a few hours an then running it will do wonders for the purity in your hash

 

freezing the trimmings allows the thc crystals to break off intact instead of smeared agianst the leaves during extraction, ending up in more thc in the batch.

 

It should not only be fully dried, but it should be decarbed and activated before cooking with it.. meaning, it needs to be dried even further than you would normally dry that material, if you planned on smoking it! When working with lesser material, preparing it properly is just as crucial as if you were using quality bud, that is if you don't want the entire effort of working with so much plant matter, for so little oil, to be a waste of time.

Cooking with wet plant matter also pulls in loads of unnecessary salts, plant waxes and chlorophyll into your oil... all the stuff that makes a, normally-delicious canna oil, taste quite nasty.


You should ALWAYS work with fully dried, and activated material. Otherwise, you'll need to be prepared for a longer wait while cooking, and a likely disappointing outcome.

 

can you please explain how to do this?? im sure lots of blades want to know

 

The long simmer used to make butter/oil decarbs the cannabinoides just as well as the oven method in my experience.

The "unnecessary salts, plant waxes and chlorophyll" don't evaporate. They're still on/in the dried trim.
They still transfer to the final product whether the trim is fresh or dried.

If you really want to eliminate all that shit water-cure your trim, dry it, freeze it and make qwiso. Then add the resulting qwiso hash/oil to your butter/oil and make your edibles.

I find all that above unnecessary and imo it doesn't matter if the material is fresh or dried when making edibles. I don't even decarb if I'm letting the bud/butter simmer for a few hours. I tried it before and noticed no difference.

On the other hand I do like to decarb my hash for smoking. Seems to make a little difference. Which is a little strange to me as the heat from a lighter should rapidly decarb the hash. It does but not fully maybe? And why do I notice a difference in decarbed hash but not decarbed bud? Weird.

 

Most of that doesn't make a whole lot of sense! To say that pre-decarbing or causing activation is somehow less necessary when making edibles, than it is when smoking, is quite backwards indeed. Have a read around, there is a ton of good info here. You should start with the stickies.

We decarb, to activate the herb. While we've discussed many times here, that it is certainly possible to decarb in oil, activation occurs much more readily, quickly, and most importantly more evenly, in a dry environment, than it does in oil... but when water is involved, it almost virtually stops in its tracks! In this case, even after extended heating, your resulting potency is relying almost solely on the material which was already active prior to beginning the process.

Decarboxylation, is the process of removing the carboxyl group in the form of carbon dioxide, and water vapor. Trying to decarb in a water-oil mix, is like trying to fry a slice of potato, into a potato chip, in a broth made of water and oil; it doesn't happen!

When smoking or vaping, you're decarbing the herb by applying heat, as you smoke or vape. Applying heat, then allowing it to sit, doesn't make any difference when you go to smoke it later... except in that case, you're speeding up the natural degradation process! When we jar and cure our flowers, decarboxylation occurs at a gradual, and slightly irregular pace. Shortly after, degradation occurs. Without infusing into oil and performing a sort of liposomal encapsulation (this is when your 'solvent', the oil, breaks down and coats your 'solute', cannabis glandular material, in a protective layer, forming a solution), immediately after activation occurs, the longer it sits, the more the degradation process will continue. And activating it immediately before smoking, is redundant. It's only done with fresh product in an effort to speed up the cure process, but it's certainly no substitution for a proper cure.


The reason we avoid using wet plant matter, and water butter methods, and have evolved now to the point of using clarified butter, and pure vegetable oils, is because even the smallest fraction of water will pull in loads of unpalatable, inert plant matter, and it reduces the efficiency of your edible solvent. Using pure oil, or clarified butter, produces a very clean tasting, amber-brown hashy oil, rather than the lime green but still-pale 'butters', achieved using the old fashioned and less-efficient methods. This is also why those old fashioned methods, and cooking with green plant matter, require so much additional time. Back in the old days, we'd let our water-butters sit under a gentle heat for up to 20 - 24 hours, before achieving the most potency possible. But during this additional time and exposure to heat, you're degrading the more volatile cannabinoids which were first activated and made bioavailable earlier on in the process. You're left to either stop very short of the complete process, to spare degradation, which results in reduced bioavailability and consuming inactive cannabinoids, or you must continue until degradation occurs in the earliest cannabinoids made active and available.

It's unfortunately not the 70's anymore, mixing water with our oil during processing, was only even done and recommended as a somewhat futile attempt to control temperatures when cooking over a open flame or hot burner... when in fact, the material is still making near-direct contact with that heat source from below.

Ideally, if you can't afford the proper equipment, and for some reason can't use an oven, you should be using a home made double boiler using a larger, and smaller pot. The larger pot contains a few inches of water, and your smaller pot floats inside this, containing your decarbed plant matter and pure oil. In this way, you not only don't need to combine your water and oil to control the temps, but you have an actual buffer or layer of protection between your precious cannabinoids, and your heat source.

People have been making edibles inefficiently for decades (and man has been eating raw hash and flowers, for thousands of years!) with, to those making them, decent effect. This is why we have so much dosage discrepancy, and so many failed edible stories. Those people who are used to the rapid and effective delivery of medical grade oils, will feel little to no effect at all from the common firecracker, quickie-oil, or water butter methods, almost regardless of the amount of material consumed. Patients whose bodies have had access to the best edibles, are accustom to a certain level of bioavailability, to which the lesser methods simply can not, and do not, compare.


I specialize in producing edibles for the medical community, especially for those suffering from digestive disorders, who have low absorptive ability (when it comes to everything from nutrition in food, to edible cannabis, to pharmaceutical medications). The same methods which finally make edible cannabis a possibility for those patients, also vastly improves the efficiency of absorption, or bioavailability, in those patients or recreational users blessed with healthy, or 'normal' digestion. Those who do this professionally and on a wide scale, know that our edibles won't be as accepted among the medical community, if we use inferior processing methods.


Hope this helps!

 

Nice write up badkittysmiles very informative!

 

 
Thanks, this makes a lot of sense!
 
Could you (or someone) please elaborate on the above method? Mostly, how hot should the oil get and for how much time should the plant matter cook in it?   

 

In my opinion, decarbing is a complete waste. I've failed at least three times doing it. You're better off drying and curing as usual. Then cook into high fat butter for at least six hours on low heat and a little water.
 
Badkitty has a good rep here but sometimes I wonder if the likes are really from experienced growers/bakers...
 
Sometimes you need to do your own math and learn the hard way.
 
BTW, decarbing is bullshit when you cook for over three to six hourshours.. Did I say that twice already? Cure your shit for two weeks and dont worry about burning up your months worth of work.

 

Rod - If you go to the top of this section of Grass City, the Incredible Edible Herb section, you'll find the CannaPharm in the pinned threads up top. The first post in the thread has been updated to help folks find a Table of Contents, a link to the new BadKat's CannaPharm website, and direct links to the individual oil tutorials on GC (there are three basic guides, one for starting with hash, one for flowers, one for concentrate/s), as well as the video tutorials I produced for the Cannabis World Summit last year. In the tutorials you'll find the appropriate temperatures, good starting oils and butters to use, and how to use length of processing time to produce different effects... don't be overwhelmed by the options and possibilities!
 I do try to explain a lot of the "why", behind the "how", for those who are curious and those who need to know, before they can move on, why a certain process is performed a certain way. But the actual steps are easy and basic enough to fit on a standard recipe card, and the whole process only involves about 10 - 15 minutes of your actual effort. The rest of the time is spent waiting first while your herb gently decarbs, and again while your oil gently heats and becomes bioavailable.

 A day of oil making for us is usually either very social, or it's a relaxing time filled with books, movies and bongs. It's not at all tedious, or even very time consuming on the part of the person making it.


 Wow, I just realized that 2011 is when this thread is from! So much has happened since then.


 Here's another way to find my work these days... the guys at High Times published an article on my work, at the beginning of the month!

Hopefully I'll be contributing more with them in the near future, now that oils are becoming so popular and now that the concept of improving bioavailability is taking off (edit - Elise McDonough is an especially wonderful woman, a canna enthusiast and an author with the mag, and has invited me to sit on a panel with the HT crew the next time I make it to a Cup ).


 

 
 
 
 

 

Do you understand the purpose of decarboxylation?

 I'm assuming not, firstly because you're confusing it with curing, which is a very different process with very different purpose and outcome, and secondly you're very much underestimating and not taking into consideration just how variable "3 - 6 hours" is, especially without giving folks any actual temperature examples or explaining how to control the heat over such a period of time; on the stove top, cannabinoids aside, a low temp can still burn even the oil itself if not watched carefully and you're not left with a very good margin for error, and a little splash of water (no amounts there either) can be gone pretty soon. Sort of dangerous advice, especially for a patient who may be ready to work with the very last of their herb for the week, or month!


 I mean let's just say, as the above post implies, that temperature plays little to no role whatsoever in processing a functional oil (it does, and a large one): are you suggesting it takes half a given amount of time, or double that time while in oil, to decarb?
 
Three hours going one way, or the other, is kind of a big difference there, ya know?
 
 For instance after 6 hours at 220 F submerged in oil, yes, you'll have decarboxylation essentially completed. However you'll need to take it a little further to be certain, and worse, you'll also have begun destroying a fair bit of your THC in the process, by way of degradation and CBN production.
 The primary reason we decarb dry with good air exposure is to speed the release of the carboxyl group without encouraging too much degradation of the actual cannabinoid, ie. decarboxylation. When submerged in oil, the speed of carboxyl release is hindered exponentially more than the speed of cannabinoid degradation, and metabolites will form, even prior to decarboxylation. This is why CBNA can exist, directly from THCA, and why cannabinolic acid/CBNA is much more commonly found in oils and edibles, and it's why it is quite rare to find CBNA in the unprocessed plant matter, which generally has had consistent air and oxygen exposure to facilitate faster carboxyl release while appropriate storage temps slow cannabinoid metabolite formation. When exposed to air, the likelihood of forming CBNA and its already brief window of opportunity, is dramatically decreased.
 
 While the narcotic sleepy stone provided by the addition of some CBN is what some people and patients do want, for those seeking mind-racy, energetic, cerebral and active THC without being hindered by additional CBN, decarbing in oil should be avoided.
 
  Lastly, at least as far as time frames are concerned...  In only three to four hours, even at 220F you'll still generally have a certain ratio of inactive cannabinoids, and the amount can potentially be substantial if the material was very fresh, if it was grown well, and if it had only just been dried. And if by the time you've finished making your oil or butter, you still have a number of inactive cannabinoids, then they are not going to be capable of contributing to the experience.
 
 
 
  Keep in mind that all of the above, is with a reasonable temperature introduced into the equation....




   Now reduce that temperature, even only by ten or fifteen degrees, and even by 6 hours you can still have a fair bit of inactive material and you'll still begin producing CBNA by that point as your THC/A levels decline. CBN/A is a metabolite of THC/A. At different temps and with different processing times, you end up with a TON of variation and little to no consistency in the outcome of your edibles, which is why we have so many recipes which call for such different processing times and temps, and it's why we have so much dosage discrepancy, and so many failed edibles stories. The good news is that it's also why people who feel they are edible immune, can eventually have hope for success, once they stumble upon the right methods. 
 
 
  "Rep" aside, I speak from experience that came from 1) years of trial and error, with 2) more pounds of cannabis than most folks will consume in a lifetime, and 3) thousand upon thousands of dollars spent on lab analysis, not to mention the successes and the good results reported by thousands of patients around the globe using the oil they made using the tutorials, not to mention caregivers,  dispensaries and medical professionals spanning from LA, to Israel, for instance two of the most simple and basic methods I developed in the late 90's are currently and regularly used by dispensaries in states with strict no-concentrate rules, in order to concentrate potency from flowers into edible form without using concentrates, or breaking local hash laws or restrictions. So while I do specialize in helping those patients who are entirely new to cannabis, the tutorials have also been beneficial (not to mention profitable, as reducing wasted potency and increasing overall efficiency saves their edible and oil departments quite a lot of cash between solvents and plant matter) for many professionals.
 
 
 
 To me, if this really what you're into anyhow, it seems like the best way to try and brush off or dismiss another person's work, their years of serving the community in the public eye at their own personal risk, as a non-profit, bedriddenly-ill volunteer, who only remains functional due to the very same oil recommended to others...  well, the best way to try and e-trash a person like that, would probably be by providing at least some small bit of comparable, or at least reasonable, information.
 
Something with a little accuracy, and a little consistency.


 Even if we need to "agree to disagree" on most of the above.. which I'm fine with, to each their own and all!...  I think we can both see the humor in someone first admitting that he hasn't exactly nailed down making oil yet, and then advising to use "3 to 6 hours" without providing any temperature guidance besides to go "low" and "cure your sh*t".


 That was not an ideal approach, to say the least!

 
 
 Hope this helped clear things up, good luck and have fun!

 

Decarboxylation happens naturally through the curing process given enough time. Stop spreading false information. I've made edibles hundreds of times. You are wrong. Period.

 

 
Sure it does, but only if A.) you don't store your herb properly or B.) you keep it stored for excessively long periods, that is.

 Decarboxylation is not the purpose of curing, I'm not sure where exactly you got the very strange idea that it was, and smoking already over-aged and decarboxylated herb produces a much weaker high through more degradation, than smoking properly stored and cured material. This is why old herb makes substantially better and stronger edibles, than it does smoke. Old herb that has already experienced enough degradation to cause decarboxylation, can still be gently saved by transferring that potency into oil with low heat for gentle consumption. But causing secondary degradation via excessive heat and outright combustion, on top of excessive age, produces additional degradation and cannabiniod destruction that properly cured and carboxyl-intact cannabis does not produce when it is smoked.
 
 I really suggest that you find google, and start searching some of these terms you're throwing around.

 

And yes, I cook my butter over five hours. No need to decarboxylation then. If you disagree then you are a robot, and I'm sure you know what I mean Badkitty...

 

No way. Cure for two weeks, cook for five hours, forget about decarboxylation. I really feel this person is intentionally misleading people. I have read their posts for years and their edibles look very nice indeed. Try them. I don't care how "popular" they are on here. False information coming from experience here I see, nothing nmore.
 
Who wants competition in their hood right?

 

  Ah I see, competition, because you see this is a contest. That's not a very good way to learn, or help others.

 

  But if I know the regulars as well as I think I do, I'm sure I'm not alone in my amusement here!
 
Speaking of false information, I'm really enjoying how we've gone from:

 

 
To the eloquent..
 

 
And finally we're now at, not three hours, not even six, but a "let's play it safe" five hours and an expert who has made edibles hundreds of times... all in one day.


We're making a lot of progress, aren't we! Years worth in just a matter of posts, even!  
 
 
Not sure what you mean by robot, actually, but I'm starting to get the sense that we have seen plenty of your kind around here....
 
 
For future reference folks, don't fall into the same trap I just did!



 
 
 

 

Hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I registered on this site just to laugh at this conversation
Go Badkitty go 

 

Do i have to thaw my trim before making butter?

 

Thaw, Dry, Decarb (240 F for 40 minutes)
Use Coconut oil rather then butter as it hits twice as fast.
Use NO water
Use Lecithin

Basically BadKats recipe.
Hallucinating Hash Capsules for Hemp Heads

5 grams decarbed Kief, Hash, Concentrates or powdered buds
2.5 teaspoons Coconut oil
1/2 teaspoons Lecithin (any kind)
Heat 220 F for 20 minutes
Freeze (optional)
Heat 220 F for 20 minutes (optional)

Done

Decarb a 1 gram bud 240 F for 40 minutes
Grind to dust.
Place in shot glass
Cover with Cooking oil. Coconut oil is best. Butter is twice as slow to take effect.
Mix well. You want mud so only use enough oil to cover and wet the dust.
Microwave till hot
Let cool
Eat.

Well maybe start with a 1/4 of it. LMAO. 1 gram of Cannabis buds = 150mg of THC or so.
BNW