Tons of questions, first time making edibles.

There are some basic principles to keep in mind that will help to produce good edibles.
Decarb is absolutely essential, or there won't be much potency: 240 F for 40 min with a verifying thermometer, or better yet Ardent Lift/Nova.
Once the herb is decarbed, it is as potent as it can possibly be, and the trick is to get as much of that maximum potency into the blood stream, thru the unreliable digestive system.
BrassNwood's excellent method tackles the digestion problem by cooking the herb into oil with the aid of the emulsifier lecithin.
The amount of lecithin, and the cook-in time don't need to be exact.
The baking process itself can do most/all of the cooking-in of the lecithin, and foods themselves contain natural lecithin-like emulsifiers. I've made many successful batches without lecithin, but it cost little to use it.

Most edible makers infuse butter first, but that loses about half the potency to the straining process.
Much simpler, and about twice as potent, is to simply grind the decarbed herb to powder, add it to the recipe oil, along with some lecithin, and a brief cook-in. Whole herb bothers some stomachs, so this won't work for everyone.

Typical good herb is about 15% thc, so each gram herb used will supply about 150 mg thc to the finished product.
The baking process can over-decarb, so keep time/temp to a minimum.

I bake carefully weighed cookies (10-12 grams each) in min-muffin trays for about 10 minutes.
A convenient amount of herb is 1/4 gram per cookie/brownie, which will be about 40 mg thc per cookie. A new user might need only 1/4 cookie, but experienced users might need 2 or 3. A convenient amount is 7.5 g herb to make 30 cookies.

A quicker alternative is to use BNW's method with nutella/nut butter instead of oil to make an edible that can be spread onto bread/crackers. I always use this method to test potency of new herb, using about 20 g nutella for each gram decarbed herb powder.

 

Agree with everything said above.
ive just started making tinctures,my pal brought me a bottle of everclear from u.s its bloody awesome.
I grind weed up then i decarb on 150c for 40 mins,then knock oven off let it cool and crush under a spoon into a fine powder then add to everclear butter or oils.

 

BNW is an exceptional case.
It's unusual that anyone would need more than 100 mg thc.

Top shelf herb is claimed to be above 20% thc, but those claims are often due to a single test of the prettiest cola from a large harvest. 15% is a safer assumption, and even if 20% is correct, then it's easy to use only 75% as much.

You might change your mind about what methods are easiest after trying to fill scores of capsules.
Here are my ratings of ease (1 = hardest, 10 = easiest):
1. Nutella spread 10
2. Capsules 7
3. Baked goods 5

Everyone is different, so I can only tell what works best for my friends and me.
For us, the more heat after decarb, the less sleepy the medicine. THC is the sleepy stuff for us, not cbn, which gives me jitters and insomnia compared to plain thc.

If you are new to edibles, one of those 40 mg cookies will probably knock you out.

 

This is correct. Most people I know get blasted off of 30-80 mg, but for some reason, my brother, fiance and I all need between 100 - 200mg for good effect. It is definitely something to start slower with and work your way up. You don't want to eat to much and then be uncomfortable

 

You can use BHO very easily. Just decarb it until the bubbles stop then add your oil/butter/alcohol/whatever until it blends in. Then make your edibles/caps/tincture. Easy peasy and you control the dosage.

 

Any method that correctly decarbs, adds lecithin, and then some heat will work. Even eating decarbed herb will work, just not as well.

Your idea of adding a decarbed concentrate to oil, and then baking is what a lot of people do, and it makes very clean, potent edibles.

The verifying thermometer is needed because many ovens are unstable, and decarb is very temperature sensitive. I use Ardent Lift to decarb to avoid this.

Immediately after decarb, the herb is as potent as it will ever be if it were lab tested for potency. But it won't be as digestible as it could be, so most of that potency can be wasted. The lecithin and post-decarb simmering help make the herb more digestible so that more of the available thc gets into the bloodstream.

 

I finished a batch of Green Dragon-infused oil last night, using 7 grams of Jager OG buds, and it came out great. I used hemp oil instead of olive oil this time, which made a huge difference in terms of taste. The cold pressed hemp oil has a very clean taste that covers up most of that slightly bitter hoppy/grapefruitiness of GD that not everyone likes, but the infusion now somehow has a very slight sweetness to it that neither the oil or GD had before.

I've made about 7 GD batches over the last year and felt that this version of it affects me differently- harder hitting but a more sustained edible feeling than others I've tried. Of course, I used an 80/20 indica dominant strain so that might be it, but I'm not sure since I previously made GD with a similar heavy indica and the body effects weren't as pronounced as this (even though smoking that strain had more of a body high).

The nice thing about solvent transferring to oil is that I no longer have to worry about watching evaporation levels or the slight difference of overall yield from batch to batch since oil doesn't evaporate and you can just add the 3 oz when you're ready. I also finally tried pre-wetting the paper coffee filter with some everclear before straining the GD, which made a huge difference in terms of yield and even the speed of the GD filtering through. I will always do that from now on, but I'll make sure to do it in a bowl so that the entire thing is soaked through first.

My only issue with using hemp oil is that the GD stuck to the glass during evaporation wouldn't dissolve back into the oil as easily as I've seen other extracts do, especially when using coconut oil which works great for that. I think I'm going to make a 50/50 blend with liquid coconut oil next time and see if that helps. Can't say I lost any potency to it though, since this stuff feels stronger at the 3 oz dilution than any other GD batch I've tried. The stuff I used, although a well grown indoor, isn't the highest quality I could've gotten either so I expected it to be weaker.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the way it came out and I'll probably try it again the next time I'm close to running out. I'm working through my first 1oz bottle, but I might experiment and add OG Kush terpenes and even some cbd oil to the other two later on and compare the effects. Thanks for the advice, PSam!

I added a couple pics of the infused oil. You'll notice that it's greener than it normally would be, because of the hemp oil.

GD infused hemp oil by eljumito posted May 17, 2018 at 4:18 PM

GD infused hemp oil (Jager OG) by eljumito posted May 17, 2018 at 3:51 PM

 

I'm a stoned dumb ass and meant to put this in Another Tincture Thread.

 

Hallucinating Hash Capsules for Hemp Heads

Hash Master 5000 - Dry Ice Method, Hash Oil Capsules, Everclear Tincture

Both threads are still fairly short and most of the important info is in the first 4 or 5 pages anyhow.
BNW

 

You have come a long way dude, bravo@!! Lots of good solid info....

 

T

Hey ive made green dragon 4 my pals dad with cancer using everclear my pal brought me from u.s.
Try adding a couple of orange zests to your green dragon, ive done it and it perks the terps tight up.
someone on here said its better fot you as the different terps mix and are dissolved better.
I dunno about that but it i know it tastes a whole lot nicer.

 

Thanks for the tip! I just ordered a bottle of blueberry strain terps that I'll try adding to my tinctures when I get it but I also like the idea of adding orange zest. I've always wondered if a drop of orange essential oil to tinctures would work as well.

 

Question:
IF you use the nova decarboxylator (and if it's supposedly perfectly decarboxylated.)
If you add the decarboxylated herb to coconut oil and strain it will it become less 'perfect'?
I say this because their website states that you don't need to add it to oil, you can just sprinkle the weed on pizza etc. I believe that but was wondering if you wanted to infuse it into oil will it lose potency after..

I hope i phrased it right. From my understanding decarbing happens even if the herb is in the coconut oil.


This has been boggling my mind for the whole day, my headspace is i followed badkittysmiles cannaoil recipe,

BadKats CannaPharm: Medical Grade Oil, Cannabis Capsules, UV GLOWING Hash Candy, Canna Bombs more

and i heard about this machine,


and i have questions now lol