Drama free Cannabutter for any level

Nice man, seems a bit simpler than the way i have been going around it.

 

Once you've learned the basics on how to process your canna correctly, one brownie made from batch which used an entire plants trimmings will knock you out, in less than an hour after eating it!
It's a good start and I always encourage people to experiment, but for now, there are a lot of issues here.

Here's where you could stand to improve your methods the most: Drying your material.

Not only is this important so you can better judge your dose/quantity used, but it is crucial in order to cause cannabinoid conversion, without heat-processing in pure oil for 24 hours. Converting the cannabibnoids to their active/delta form is required, in order to achieve the most of your potency.
Under normal circumstances, we convert the contents of our herb, by drying it out with a lighter (combustion) when smoking, or a vaporizer. In their unaltered state, however, those cannabinoids are virtually impotent even if extracted from the plant matter and eaten alone, in quantity.

Only very minimal, trace amounts of glandular material will be activated when cooking wet plant matter, especially for only 3 hours. That is roughly the minimum, when using well-decarbed material.
Right now, without decarbing and especially without even drying, (which is all decarbing and cannabinoid conversion amounts to, excessive drying, removing the carboxyl chain in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor), when you skip those steps, by the end of the process you're only seeing anywhere from 1/3, to as little as 1/5 of the effectiveness in your material. And the rest? It's wasted.. gone.
It's not still in the plant matter, although there is always a bit of active and occasionally some unactivated potency left after straining, when processed properly; it's in your 'oil', but unable to be digested, without further processing.

For people who need to make the most of their meds, it's crucial they avoid such brief processing methods. Having material which is at least smoking-dry to start with is good, but even if the material is 'dry' you need to fully decarb the glandular material which takes only 20 minutes in the oven, reducing the oil process to roughly the time you've already used. But if you skip out on decarbing, conversion in warm oil takes place only after roughly 15-24 hours.

Any less, and you're just eating essentially raw glandular material, which is impossible for your body to fully break down and put to use, in the amount of time it has to do so.. think about how certain vegetables appear 'untouched' when they come out the other end, and they are much more easily digestible, than glandular material.
Before adding it to your oil, you'll also want to grind your material to a near-powder. This releases the brittle glandular material trapped inside, creating less work for your oil, and less waste left behind in the plant matter.

Adding water, to plant matter which you're attempting to dry out in oil, is also not going to help matters.

Adding water is an old-fashioned/outdated technique, used simply to prevent your oil temps from rising too high. Many of us old timers, used to waste a good portion of our stash by adding so much water to our canna oil, it makes the process take ages to finish, if it ever does completely, without damaging or destroying some of the earliest cannabinoids to be converted and broken down.

What you need to do instead, especially if you don't want to pre-decarb, is use pure oil or clarified butter (also called 'ghee'). Clarified butter is normal butter, which has been separated from the water it once contained. It's important you don't have any water in your mix to slow down the process, it's just going to require you to heat the canna for longer and longer before it's finished, and that's not what we want.

Instead of adding water to your oil:

You can take two cooking pots, one slightly smaller than the other, put an inch or three of water inside the larger pot and rest the smaller one in that. And suddenly, you have a double boiler! And this is what you're trying to simulate, by adding the water directly to your herb to prevent the temps from rising too high, however it is much more reliable and effective, when the water is kept between your oil and the heat source, rather than blended in with the oil

Much of that 'dirty water', happens to be comprised of your -glands-. Based on the same principal as making ice hash, while your oil floats on water, the glands sink and fall below. Knowing how fresh the material was, that's a ton of hash that never had a chance to be converted, or broken down. Using water also encourages much more chlorophyll (unpleasant taste) to leach out into both the water, and the oil itself. This is why it is no longer recommended to use water, directly in with your oil. Evaporation and vaporization is a bad sign when making canna oil, and if you add liquid and there's liquid left behind that needs separating later on, it's a pain.

While we're on the topic of water vapor, steam and odor, you shouldn't need to keep windows or vents open. If you're releasing that much vapor, and enough vapor that you feel effected from it, then you're drastically overdoing the process and wasting a ton of your canna; besides causing damage to your remaining cannabinoids, you're losing the earliest, most readily available (considered to be the 'best') potency to the atmosphere, rather than containing it in your oil. What you need to do is keep your temps low enough, that your seal (which you should make from foil, if your lid isn't 100% snug, and they usually aren't) never bursts... a problem you'll have when using water as well.
It is an odorless process when done right, but a small amount of odor if you can't keep it sealed isn't going to hurt anyone.. unless security is an issue, in which case, just seal-well.

All these seemingly-unimportant little hints, and steps, are responsible for all the dosage discrepancies we see today, with somefolks saying you need three times as much herb when eaten, which simply isn't the case.. unless you're eating under-processed oil/canna. It's a much more efficient method of consuming your canna than smoking, somewhere near vaporization in terms of efficiency, but with a more powerful result.



I hope this helps, I know you were looking for an easy method, and using the correct methods happens to be easier; no water to add or separate later on, no odors to worry about. You're making progress though, and that's only a good thing

 

bit of a newb question but are there any issues with using already cured dried bud w/ the popcorn buds and leaves from a fresh harvest? Is 24 hours enough drying time for the trimmings?