Another Tincture Thread - Try it, You'll like it

I have received the lab results for the 45 minute sealed jar decarb and I don't think it could have turned out any better. Very positive and conclusive results. I'll try to get it edited and the comparative analysis posted sooner rather than later. I'm pretty excited about it because it not only proves the sealed jar concept but it also confirmed a couple of other aspects I've been extrapolating for a while now. Stay tuned.

 

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Explore to your heart's content. Remember that you can reduce it more if you want but watch out for a tolerance explosion if you're not careful.

 

That works for me.

 

Sealed Jar Heated Decarb Analysis




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For many people an open dish decarb in the oven is not an option because of the fragrance that wafts through the halls, for some reason or another. After all, I think it's heavenly. Nevertheless, the search has been on to find a stealthy way to accomplish the deed without announcing it to the world, or at least the neighbors. There's been a lot of different ideas but no actual hard data like we have with the open dish.

A short while ago I started to wander that path in order to get a better idea about how good of a job some of those alternate decarb methods actually do. I began with a pressure cooker and a mason jar and while that did fully decarb the material, it took about 2.5 hours altogether and it left a little to be desired.

Boocoodinkydow and CVCC began using sealed mason jars and we began discussing the merits and drawbacks of this method. The biggest selling point was the lack of smell but there is also the question about whether the terpenes that vaporize during the process will condense back onto the decarbed cannabis and retain their effectiveness, once the jar cools before opening. That will be a topic for another time due to budgetary constraints.

One of the main drawbacks of this method is that it can keep the material moist enough to cause separation when making an alcohol tincture. Best results are attained by ensuring the material is a dry as possible and can be placed in the oven for a few minutes at very low heat. This should not affect the terpenes or cannabiniods.

In my first test of this method I used 7g of coarsely broken up flowers within a 16oz sealed mason jar and placed it in a preheated oven stabilized between 240°-250°F with an oven thermometer. I placed the jar on the middle shelf in the middle of the oven for 60 minutes. I chose that amount of time as a guidepost to tell which way to go. It took into account that it might take the internal air temperature longer to reach the right spot or any other scenario that might come up.

Because of things that I concluded from that initial 60 minute decarb I decided to try a similar time as I use for an open decarb, 45 minutes instead of 40 just to keep the samples at quarter hour segments. I suspected the 5 minute difference wasn't going to be much of a difference. There were some big differences between the 45 and 60 minute samples, though.

Now onto the real news and hopefully it won't be too hard to explain. I have created a little chart using the lab results for the raw dried flower, the 45 minute and the 60 minute samples. The values on the 3 samples vary, some of which is due to the vagaries of testing, but there are significant differences between the timed decarbs and that's what I want to highligh.

The raw sample shows us that it has THC, THCA and CBDA with no other detectable cannabinoids. This is indicative of very freshly dried material and it's an open canvas. It's showing us about 13% total THC isomers(12.8 THCA, .3 THC) and 1.9% CBDA.

All the samples are from the same batch but values can vary from one part of a plant to another. I mention this because the THC value from the 60 minute sample is considerably lower than the raw sample and the CBD is higher. While there might be some small difference in the values, it's the conversion rate of THCA to THC and CBDA to CBD that we're really looking at here.

Good news is that the 60 minute sample fully decarbed with absolutely no THCA remaining and nearly all of the CBDA had turned to CBD. There was no CBN created during the decarb either. The other news is that the 60 minute sample lost about 5% of it's THC compared to the raw flower. That is really too large an amount to blame on lab testing and I have seen the same phenomenon before when dealing with longer processing time. However, it could have been lab related so I couldn't say for sure until now. That thought is that once the THCA hits zero, only the further degradation of THC occurs. I'll show you.

The latest sample was the same arrangement but only for 45 minutes this time and I don't think it could have come out better if we had tried. I won't really go into details because the numbers speak for themselves. We have just a little bit of THCA left which to me indicates that we haven't hit the mass destruction point yet. These results look a lot like the open dish results.

Now that we have 3 samples we can get a better idea of the average values of the material and it looks like it should be in the 14-15% range. Of course, we would need many more samples to say for sure but I believe that we can say that the extra 15 minutes in the oven caused us to lose about 5% of our THC. I feel confident saying that due to other data I've seen that this corroborates.

I'll leave you all to look things over and ask questions if needed. My brain is a bit worn from getting this together and I'm afraid I'm about to lose my way if I don't shut up for now. Most of this was background and the chart should tell the story.

 

You have pretty much described my own situation except that I take twice as much bp meds. Two of those are the blood pressure, the metoprolol and the lisinopril. The metoprolol keeps your heart rate steady and it was the one I had the most trouble with when using cannabis. I always felt like I was ready to pass out.

How long have you been on the medication? Blood pressure meds can be really hard to get accustomed to, especially when you're adding cannabis to the mix. There's no reason that you can't continue your RSO therapy but you may want to lower your dose and work up to your normal dose as you acclimate to it. That's what I had to do and am still doing.

Cannabis is great but it's not a cure all for a full life of living and sometimes medications are necessary. It can be a quagmire. In order to succeed you'll need to take it seriously and dedicate some time to finding out how to best adapt it to your specific situation. It will mean getting a bp monitor and checking yourself regularly and when you're using RSO.

We can and will help you get through it but we can only tell you what has worked for us but you're the one who has to try it out for yourself. It's going to be frustrating but that happy medium is out there. I hope that you find some of the suggestions from everyone helpful.