My Experience: AVB Brownies

Thought I'd do a short write-up of my most recent experience with edibles.

I vape almost all of my weed, both for the health advantages & for the reduction of couch lock symptoms. Over the last month or two, I saved up a little over 15 grams of vaped dank, & decided it was time to cook again.

I've cooked with AVB once before, & never with fresh bud. The last time I cooked, I used 21 grams & used the crockpot method of carbonizing & attaching the cannabinoids to fat cells & whatever other chemical shit goes on during the "processing" (sautéing) of the weed. I separated the weed & oil with a cheese cloth, & remember feeling certain that I was losing a significant amount of psychoactives to the oil absorbed in the weed itself & in the cheesecloth. I think this proved to be right, because I only got a mild buzz from a dose of over 2.5g/serving. So for that reason, & also because I only had 15g to use, I chose to alter my methods a little by putting the weed straight into the brownie mix & eating it all, flakes & everything. To make this less noticeable to eat, I used a roller to crush the weed nearly into a powder.

I put it in a pan with some coconut oil on 'low' & cooked it for 10 minutes, stirring constantly & pulling it off the stove for a few seconds every time it started to simmer (which was probably a third of the time, to be honest). Then I mixed it into the brownie mix, & cooked it at the normal recommended temp of 350*. (I know this is too hot & kills some of the THC, but only the very outside of the brownies will ever actually reach 350* so I wasn't worried about it).

Now, for the review:

Taste - There was an obvious odor familiar to anyone who's cooked, but I could barely tell a difference between the hash brownies & the regular ones I had a few days ago. No where near as noticeable with the coconut oil as it was when I cooked with butter. But it could have been the mix as well--this brownie mix has chocolate chips in it, so it has something that is ONLY chocolate that provides a burst of normal chocolate flavor in each bite. Highly recommended for those who don't want their special brownies to taste special.

Smell - I'd be comfortable cooking this at my mom's house, so long as she couldn't see me prepare it. Mixed in with the smell of the coconut oil, I feel confident that all but the most experienced chefs could believe that the smell of the weed is the smell of oregano sautéed in coconut oil or some other weird combination that people might not be familiar with. Once cooked, the smell is the most obvious thing different about the brownies, but still not strong.

High - This is the whole reason why I'm typing this up. The high was so intense, that even now, 21 hours later, I need something to occupy my mind to keep myself from tripping. To give you an idea of my tolerance, I go through around 1/8 per week on my own, but I stay lightly stoned throughout the day & only get baked right before I go to sleep, so my tolerance stays comfortably low. I started out with one brownie at 5pm. 1.5 hours later (6:30), I felt good. Really good. Not especially stoned, just incredibly euphoric (which is how I always feel with edibles). My roommate got home around that time & asked how I was feeling. I told him I felt amazing, but I wanted to trip a little & 2 brownies seemed like the perfect dose at the time. So I ate my second brownie, & he wolfed down 2 at once. By around 7:30, we were both feeling incredibly stoned, giggly, goofy, all that crazy shit you only experience when you're a new smoker & don't know what to expect (only we did know what to expect...it was just so intense that we both reverted back to that childlike state). I put a pizza in the oven & wolfed it down in record time, then made myself a fruit smoothie & got about halfway through it before I started to trip. Hard. Literally the hardest I can trip without getting sick (I had bouts of nausea periodically, but they could be subdued by taking a sip of water & focusing on my breathing). This corresponds with my edible experiences thus far, in that it takes a lot more to get me high, but the high lasts a hell of a lot longer. My peak high, for a normal toke, is maybe 15-20 minutes. My peak high for the brownies was from around 8pm (3hrs in, 1.5 after second brownie) until 9:15 when I got tired of being so high & went to bed. It could have gone on for who knows how long after. I woke up this morning at 6:30 half baked, & for the last 8 hours I've felt a continual light high that's tapering off a lot more slowly than I'd really like. When I start to drift off, I still have sort of 'mini trips' where everything seems a little dizzy for a minute & I have to focus on something. And that's what brought me here. Because I'm at a standstill with my school work & need something to focus on.

So the lesson here is: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if you're already high, don't eat more edibles.

 

I used NOW brand organic brownie mix, found it at my local Kroger grocery store. For preparation, I crushed the bud down as much as I could to expose more surface area (ie more free-floating THC in the brownies, easier to evenly distribute) & put it in a medium sized sauce pan, uncovered, with some pre-melted coconut oil. I put our electric range on the lowest setting possible, which still brought it to a simmer every 10 seconds or so after it got heated, so I would leave it on the stove for until it started to simmer, then pull it off for roughly the same amount of time to keep it from getting too hot. All this was done while stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, making sure to scrape the edges regularly so no bud got charred on the side of the pan. I planned on doing this for 20 minutes, but called it quits at 10 since the bud had already been vaped & was looking nice & dark brown already.

Hope that helps!