Decarboxylation questions and some

I would do an ice water extract with all trim, popcorn nugs, and even some of the mid-level nugs. Then after getting a nice amounts of hash...you could decarb it, or you could just throw the chocolate in a double boiler and dissolve the hash in the chocolate. Bam, cannabis chocolate!

 

yo shady so i wouls highly sugeest you use coconut oil, this is a coconut saturated fat that easily absorbs the THC, i would suggest you use something like a crok pot to heat the coconut oil with cannabis at atleast 200F for like atleast 4hours, i have no experience making it so im not sure on how long to leave if your heating it at 200f, but you definately dont want to go ove 250f because then youll start to loose cannabinoids.

 

It's as simple as making canna oil or hash oil, and adding it to your favorite chocolate.



We also create our own milk, dark and white hash chocolates using canna oil, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, powdered
milks, sugars, and vanilla. I'll sometimes even make them with agave and/or coconut nectars, and slip in healthy extras, like the
ghosts pictured below.




How much you'll need, or what ratio of herb to oil, and whether or not using hash or a concentrate when making your oil is
necessary, really depends on you and what you're going for. Tolerance levels and the daily intake of one patient to the next varies
dramatically, by mere fractions of a gram, to grams and grams per dose.


You only need to determine how much you'll need per dose, and how much chocolate you want to eat in one sitting just
to get where you need to be. A little simple math will tell you what you'll need.
Just keep in mind when determining your dose, that edibles can produce stronger and longer lasting effects than you'd have
by smoking the same amount of material! Most people eat the same or a little less than they'd smoke in one session, or in one
day for heavier users, in order to achieve lengthier and more profound sensations.



You *can* use cacao/cocoa butter when making your oil if you want an 'authentic' milk-free and unadulterated chocolate
(well, unadulterated except for the 'herbal presence' ), however for the best absorption and delivery you should be
using coconut oil, or worst case scenario, clarified butter, for their saturated fat contents and also equally, if not more
importantly, their short and medium chain fatty acids.



Decarboxylation is just referring to the activation of the cannabinoids in your herb, you're using dry heat to speed up the release
of the carboxyl group/acid in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor, this makes THCA into THC, CBDA into CBD,
and so on... the same happens when you vape or smoke your herb. Both carboxyl/removed and carboxyl/intact
cannabinoids are very medicinally valuable, but decarboxylated (carboxyl/removed) cannabinoids are what recreational users are
virtually always after.




These will get you going, from the CannaPharm sticky. The concentrate tutorial provides good instructions on how to use time/
heat-exposure to control and achieve the desired results (the effects are still very much 'strain dependent', but you can manipulate
the process to produce closer to an up, cerebral, 'high', or a more narcotic and couch-lock 'stone', from the same material):



BadKat's Highly Activated & Bioavailable, Med-Grade Canna Oil (starting with flowers/bud/trim etc)

Med-Grade Canna Oil





BadKat's Highly Activated & Bioavailable, Med-Grade Cannabis Concentrate (Edible & Smokable recipes included...
similar to Phoenix Tears/RSO & BHO, but bioavailable & made with food grade/drinking alcohol)

-Medical Grade Cannabis Concentrate-





BadKat's Highly Activated & Bioavailable, Med-Grade Hash Oil (starting with dry-sift hash, same as capsule recipe, oil can
also be used for cooking)

Med-Grade Hash Oil




For more info, on 4/20/2013....

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkbclJ5wZKk"]BadKittySmiles - GrassCity - Cannabis World Summit - Comment to WIN FREE SIGNED BeeLine Hemp Wick! - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCwRh3SZD-w"]Cannabis World Summit & BadKittySmiles - "Sneak-Sneak Preview"! - YouTube[/ame]



The steps for decarboxylation are in each tutorial, in short you grind well, and in a wide dish or oven bag you spread it as
thin as possible (keep to a half inch or less), cover in foil or your oven bag, and bake in a preheated oven at 220 F for 20 - 35
minutes, on the shorter side for older/aged herb, and longer for a freshly dried harvest (additionally cracking the door and
allowing the material to cool gradually for ten or so minutes, before removing to cool further on the counter).

Once done, you should have decarboxylated cannabinoids ready to be extracted and made bioavailable.

We decarb beforehand, because it's faster and more reliable than decarbing once encased in oil, which hinders the release of
carboxylic acid. If you rely on the process to occur in oil, you can degrade cannabinoids before their carboxyl groups
have become detached (which is also why, as herb ages, both CBNA and CBN will rise as THCA/THC falls, where CBN is a
metabolite byproduct of THC degrading).



Here's a past post (in context, it's a reply to a topic on a suggested recipe for canna chocolate bars):

http://forum.grasscity.com/incredib...bis-chocolate-bars-pictures.html#post15271999


It's great to see that you have an interest in edible cannabis, and it's a very good start!


Here are a few pointers (many are also elaborated in the CannaPharm sticky recipes that discuss canna and hash chocolate making).



The temperatures in the recipe you found, are way, WAY too high to properly infuse cannabis glandular material with oil.... if you're vaporizing your THC (and a few of your other low-flashpoint cannabinoids) they won't bond to the oil properly, because they are trying to escape... THC has a flashpoint of 300.2F


Even at temperatures just below vaporization of your more volatile cannabinoids, a half an hour is not long enough to create a bioavailable solution...


Simply stripping glandular material from the inert plant matter, and actually creating a solution that your body can absorb, as easily as possible, are two very different things!


And lastly, as far as the canna oil itself goes, the first step was omitted entirely:

Pre-activation or decarboxylation, is not even mentioned or performed!

This is the step that turns your 'inactive' THCA, into the THC we know and love so well. Keep in mind that this takes about 20 - 35 minutes in a 'dry' environment, and even longer once submerged in oil...



Just to be clear, before I go any further, I'm not saying that anything less than 'perfect' doesn't work at all!


When you skip steps and cut corners, you may certainly 'feel something', but it's a far cry from the effects that material could have provided you!


That's why we have so much dosage discrepancy, and so many failed edible stories.. processing matters!



It's important for both recreational users, and especially for patients who can't afford to waste their herb, to understand that if they cut too many corners on their methods, they could be potentially wasting anywhere from half their potency, to several days worth of edible medication, per a single functional, or mediocre dose...

Edibles can be much, much more powerful than smoking the same material, but only with the right processing!

Start cutting corners, and you'll need to begin multiplying the amount of canna required per each dose!




In the CannaPharm sticky, you'll find several recipes and posts for various forms of canna chocolate - hashy chocolate bars - truffles & ganache - and chocolate coatings, with properly made oil, as seen below.



The recipes discuss using everything from pre-made chocolate bars, to making canna chocolate from scratch using cacao, sugar, cocoa butter, milk and vanilla, oil selection.

They also go over whether you wish to have an ideal oil source for absorption, such as coconut oil, which happens to be used in many chocolate recipes today, or if a 'pure' or 'gourmedible' (rather than 'medible'), traditional chocolate bar made using cocoa butter, with the only adulterating ingredient being hash, is the aim.
The tutorials also discuss both light and proper conching, and tempering your chocolate for the perfect texture and so it will set up properly, and how to add milk so it doesn't ruin the consistency of your chocolate, which is very easy to do if the wrong milk (particularly liquid, rather than dehydrated) is added at the wrong time!


A few of the items herb and hash chocolate have been used for in the 'Pharm...


































It's on both sets of wrapped brownies, in the chocolate hashy bars, chunked-up in half the truffles, and the coating on the 'Canna Bombs'.









Healthy Hash Chocolate Ghosts, with omega oils, alfalfa, hemp protein, collagen and more!











Anyhow, good luck, and have fun with your canna chocolate!

 

Yes, you can just add the "plant matter" to melted chocolate. However what I was suggesting was to make ice water hash, which are pressed trichomes. Why wouldn't it dissolve? Hash is an oil and will liquefy when heated.