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

I have looked a few times and think I may have found what had confused you.


"4. Now that the filtering is finished, put the lid back on and seal it. Set it aside in a dark cupboard until the second run is complete."

This is the only thing that I found and it could be confusing. If this is it, then what it's saying is that, because this is just the first run, you set it aside without any reduction. That is why the lid is put back on. The reduction begins after the 2nd run. I hope this explains any confusion that may have caused and hopefully this is the right answer to your question.

 

Anything I can do to help.

 

Thanks for being open minded. I also have a high tolerance after smoking for 42 years and my personal experience with this tincture and other products made from it has allowed me to cut back my desire to smoke by over 50 percent. To put that in numbers, I ordinarily smoke 10-12 joints, by myself, everyday at least. I have a lot of pain and a habit and it can get expensive since I only smoke top shelf medical grade reefer. On days when I'm doing the tinctures, that number is down to 3 or 4 and sometimes no joints. I've been able to go from an ounce a week to an ounce a month. Since my fixed income has taken a recent hit, that is a real blessing.


If you're comfortable with the process and have the material to use, I think you'll be pleased with the outcome and all the other possibilities that evolve from it by way of solvent transfer into honey, glycerin, oils, butter and others. Whenever you're ready and have any questions just give a shout.


And, by the way, welcome!

 

I would love to do that but I don't know how. I know how to do a signature so do I just put the link in there? I have it on my blog, though. Since it is starting to get some interest that's directly related to this thread, I suppose that I should attach it here. I'll get to work on that. Thanks for the heads up!

 

IMPORTANT DOSING INFO
Sometimes I confuse myself and I did it again when I put this recipe together. As I have mentioned before, I often round off a measurement to make it easier for ratios and this is one of those cases. I wanted to make it easy for others to follow without having to commit too many resources. When I first did this, I didn't have anyone to help and made the full recipe with an ounce. I could very easily have lost that ounce with one wrong move, so I didn't want anyone else to take that risk on my word until they had done it themselves with a smaller batch.

My original recipe is 1oz of reefer to 1 pint of Everclear, and so I just quartered it to get the measures for this. That seems to make sense until you get into the details. For the original measurements, I use a pint jar, 16oz. However, after you add the ounce of weed, the jar will only hold about 12oz of alcohol instead of a pint. The same goes for the quart-after adding 2oz, it will only hold about 24oz of alcohol. When I was calculating the amount of reduction needed to get to my standard strength, I was using the pint measurement instead of the actual measurement, so the potency of this recipe is less than it would be for a full recipe as it stands.

Because it is still quite potent as it is, I won't rework the actual recipe. Here I will give you the info to get it to my strength. The potency of my GD is approximately 2.25g/fluid oz of alcohol. This recipe has an approximate potency of 1.75g/fl oz. I used a larger amount of alcohol proportionately for this recipe so that there would be a good cover for the pot, 5oz. Calculating 1/4 volume of a pint-16oz-would be 4 ounces which is what I advised after reduction. For comparable strength it should have been reduced to 3oz, which is 1/4 of my actual 12 fl oz.

I hope this didn't confuse too much. I also hope to link another thread that tells how to do a solvent transfer to various other mediums including butter and oils and how to calculate edible doses. Coming soon.

 

Honey Elixir
After having giving it some thought, I've decided to post the steps for the honey here so that you don't have to look it up. Plus, the original thread has the full process which includes the GD you have just made, so there's no need to make you read over all that again.

This is real easy once you've made alcohol tincture.
1) Decide how much you want to make. This GD recipe will net you 3-4 fluid ounces, so for a guide we'll use half, 2fl oz.
2) Place your 2oz of GD and 2oz of honey in your double boiler set up and reduce off all the alcohol on a low heat. BKS suggests letting it continue on low heat for an additional period of time so the bonding completes. I think that happens anyway while letting it cool down, but I'm not the expert.

* An alternate way to reduce it if you don't want to do the double boiler for a small amount. Place your GD and honey in a ceramic coffee cup and place it on a coffee mug warmer, a scented candle warmer, or the burner on your coffee maker. It's a little slower that way but is simple and can be put someplace out of the way.

3) As easy as that, you have a delicious honey elixir that's equal strength to your GD although because of it's specific gravity-thickness-you will get fewer doses per fluid ounce than the thin GD. You won't mind. It's great. It has great sublingual properties as well as being great in shakes, smoothies, on ice cream or any other thing you can think of.

If you have diabetic issues and honey isn't for you, the same thing can be done with agave nectar, which has a very low glycemic index. I haven't made the nectar version yet but plan to do so with my next batch.

Updated with video:

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Mine doesn't have an alcohol taste, it just has a little bite, nothing bad. If I had used a rum or something like that, that flavor would have been left behind. I would imagine the clove part of your honey did mask that bite. Clove would be the perfect flavor to cover it, too. Come to think about it, clove has the same kind of little flavor bite to it and it will work well. I think I'll get a little clove honey as well as agave nectar for my next batch. Another idea would be to use gourmet honeys that are made from other crops with their own distinct flavors, like orange, honeysuckle, etc. And, there are other flavors designed especially for honey if you want more.

 

I passed right over the "er" in clover because he had said clove in other communication. But there is clove honey and you can get it in individual sticks at checkout counters all over the place, so that's what I was thinking. Oops. I use clover honey most of the time but right now I have a desert variety made from desert plants. No clover there. But really, there's not really any weed taste that comes out of this process and any products made from it retain their natural flavor. I plan to go to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's and get some other honey from different sources and also see if raw honey can be used with all those natural antioxidants and other nutrients that are filtered out of commercial honey. Just talking about it makes my mouth water. I believe I'm going to go have a dropper now.

 

My confidence in this process got a shot in the arm today. I live in Arizona and our dispensary system was supposed to start last month but they just can't seem to get it together so who knows when. I started looking at this process as a way that I could make a niche for myself with a dispensary. The medical marijuana culture here is still in it's infancy and tinctures are not well known and I hoped to be a part of learning experience. So I made up a few dropper bottles of the honey and took them along with my raspberry flavored GD and glycerin down to the co-op I occasionally use. I left a bottle of honey for samples and the rest for consignment, very low donation. I went back today and got rave reviews and an order for any extra I have in the future. It even caught the attention of one of the local online 420 mags. So I'm a little stoked right now.

 

Thank you, thank you.

 

New tool!

I was down at the Goodwill earlier and ran across this Little Dipper Crockpot for 3 bucks and it is just the right size for reducing a small batch of GD or to transfer to small amounts of other mediums. It holds a pint, 16fl oz, and is just perfect. I saw some potpourri crockpot warmers that were about the same size. I would recommend one of these if you decide you like this process enough to start making it regularly. This one is going to get a lot of use beginning this weekend hopefully. Use a candy or meat thermometer to check the temp a few ounces of water will reach to give you some idea of your range.

I am also going to create a pictorial specifically for this recipe at this volume. I hope to get that going this weekend if I get my trim or it may be next weekend. It will be for this 7g recipe from start to finish.

 

That's why I suggested a thermometer just to check just how hot it gets. Alcohol boils around 187, I think, so you wouldn't want it hotter than that. Any heat will evaporate the alcohol quicker and it should be hot enough for a good transfer. I use a coffee cup and mug warmer for small amounts and it definitely produces good heat. Keep in mind for when you get around to it. I'll try to post anything I find to make this process even easier. With my next batch, I'm going to do some decarb comparisons and I believe I'm going to have quite a controversial conclusion. It could be fun.