Why not decarb IN the oil?

dabbles

Well-Known Member
wouldn't roller skates work better?
Bowling on ice the ball would go forever. Sounds fun like a more dangerous game of dodgeball.
 

SBNDB

Well-Known Member
I use a levo machine and you decarb first without oil(or whatever you choose),i wonder if the decarbing in oil method is do-able with these type machines?
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Does anyone have a good receipt for gummies? My wife tried once and not terribly successful...
I've found a few recipes but haven't tried any of them yet so can't vouch for how well they would work. For my gummie molds I need almost a litre of sauce to fill one. 192 x 4ml each. Bought all the stuff I need but out of oil until I can get more made up.

Doing a search on here and the web should find you something usable.

:peace:
 

SBNDB

Well-Known Member
Here’s the one i use seems pretty good to me -
4 packs plain gelatin
1 box flavored jello
1/2 cup water
1/2-3/4 cup infused coconut oil
1 teaspoon citric acid
1/4 teaspoon potassium sorbate
1 tablespoons corn syrup
2 teaspoons soy lecithin
1 tablespoon sugar
(Optional- concentrated candy flavoring a few drops or more,your preference)

Combine and stir oil and soy lecithin in medium sauce pan(no heat yet)
Add 1/2 cup water to plain gelatin and let it “bloom”, once gelatin has bloomed , Turn heat on low and add all of the ingredients to sauce pan.
Stir constantly with non metal wisk cooking on low heat for 10 minutes.
Pour in to molds
Place molds in refrigerator for 20 minutes
Remove gummies from molds then return to refrigerator on a drying rack of some kind for several hours (I usually leave them overnight) after that i store in a jar in the refrigerator.
 

The Older Guy

Well-Known Member
I've found a few recipes but haven't tried any of them yet so can't vouch for how well they would work. For my gummie molds I need almost a litre of sauce to fill one. 192 x 4ml each. Bought all the stuff I need but out of oil until I can get more made up.

Doing a search on here and the web should find you something usable.

:peace:
Thank you
 

The Older Guy

Well-Known Member
Here’s the one i use seems pretty good to me -
4 packs plain gelatin
1 box flavored jello
1/2 cup water
1/2-3/4 cup infused coconut oil
1 teaspoon citric acid
1/4 teaspoon potassium sorbate
1 tablespoons corn syrup
2 teaspoons soy lecithin
1 tablespoon sugar
(Optional- concentrated candy flavoring a few drops or more,your preference)

Combine and stir oil and soy lecithin in medium sauce pan(no heat yet)
Add 1/2 cup water to plain gelatin and let it “bloom”, once gelatin has bloomed , Turn heat on low and add all of the ingredients to sauce pan.
Stir constantly with non metal wisk cooking on low heat for 10 minutes.
Pour in to molds
Place molds in refrigerator for 20 minutes
Remove gummies from molds then return to refrigerator on a drying rack of some kind for several hours (I usually leave them overnight) after that i store in a jar in the refrigerator.
Thanks for that. Going to give it a try.
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
As long as people are tossing recipes around, how about some thc pill recipes?

I'll post the recipe I recently made and hopefully others have a recipe or 2 also.
Not bad but a couple of critiques.

When heating in the oven don't remove hot from the oven or all the terpenes will stick to the tinfoil and the sides of the container as they will cool faster and the still gaseous volatiles will condense on them. Just turn off the heat and leave in the oven to slowly cool.

Why do the decarb at the start? Your last steps with everything mixed up and back in the oven could allow the decarb to happen then when more terpenes will stay trapped in the oil. Just keep the heat up to 250 for a while longer.

That's the way I'd do it but used all my keif in a big batch of oil a while back. Now I can just mix the decarbed oil with something like MCT oil and a little liquid sunflower lecithin to make caps.

:peace:
 

Gro-n-again

Well-Known Member
Not bad but a couple of critiques.

When heating in the oven don't remove hot from the oven or all the terpenes will stick to the tinfoil and the sides of the container as they will cool faster and the still gaseous volatiles will condense on them. Just turn off the heat and leave in the oven to slowly cool.

Why do the decarb at the start? Your last steps with everything mixed up and back in the oven could allow the decarb to happen then when more terpenes will stay trapped in the oil. Just keep the heat up to 250 for a while longer.

That's the way I'd do it but used all my keif in a big batch of oil a while back. Now I can just mix the decarbed oil with something like MCT oil and a little liquid sunflower lecithin to make caps.

:peace:
That's just a recipe someone posted here on riu, can't take credit for it.
 
Yeah, it actually makes more sense to do it directly in the oil or butter right from the start. Different guides suggest different ways like using a rack or putting it in a Pyrex dish with a lid on etc. Loads of variables will be introduced there, say if someone put a cold dish and just the weed into an oven, even if its preheated, it will take quite a long time for the dish to warm up and way, way longer for the weed to heat up because the rate of heat conduction through still air in the dish and between the pieces of weed would be so low, even if the bowl is hot. It'd also depend on if you were planning to take the bowl out to cool or leave it in while the oven coasts down.

There are tons of threads on many sites asking about butter/oil weed ratios etc with a lot of confusing things.

There's this gigantic document entirely about weed from a pharmaceutical/chemistry perspective here...

[/URL]

(WHO expert committee on drug dependence, critical review, delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol)

Around page 13 you can see the method by which they decarboxylate their sample material which is dry at 105c for 15 minutes and then 120c for 2h to achieve 95% decarboxylation. They then supercritically extract it and purify it via chromatography. They're doing that because they want a sample of just the thc itself to use for other tests.

The simplest approach if you're after butter would be to just melt sticks in a Pyrex dish with a lid, wait for it all to actually come up to temperature, drop the weed in and leave it to simmer around 120c for 2-3h. One advantage to that is it will help keep the stank down a little with more of the volatiles dissolving into the butter/oil rather than just directly evaporating off. You can improve that even more, the stank reduction, if you wrap some ptfe tape round the top first to help air seal the dish better. "Gas fitters tape", the kind that comes in yellow packs, is slightly thicker than regular ptfe. They both cost tens of cents/pence per roll.

An interesting thing is around page 18 they describe the solubility of thc as being about 0.3g/ml of sesame seed oil. So..... saying you had 10oz (280g) of weed at 28%, that'd be (280/100)*28 = 78g of thc in total. At a solubility of 0.3g/ml sesame oil, you could potentially dissolve all of that into 78g thc / 0.3 g/ml = 260ml of sesame oil. That would be the absolute maximum. Butter sticks are usually about 250g and it has a density of around 0.9g/ml (which is why it floats on water), so 1 stick at 250g*0.9g/ml = 225ml liquid butter. The solubility of the thc in butter wouldn't be identical to sesame oil, it'd quite likely be higher (it tricky trying to find actual lab measurements for that). But what that implies is you could potentially dissolve all of the thc present in 10oz of weed into a single stick o' butter. It's important that the mix is fully heated to decarboxylation temperatures for longer enough not just to convert it to the more active form but the decarboxylated version will tend to be more oil soluble. Heat also drives the diffusion process from the bud to the oil/butter; it's part of the formula for diffusion rate calculation.

There are a couple of problems with using tiny amounts of butter or oil to make super concentrate though. Say if your weed is 28%.... the butter won't absorb anymore from the weed once it's own thc content matches that of the weed. 78g of thc into 250g of butter = ~31% thc in the butter. So whether it's butter or oil you'd need to add some more. The weed will also tend to blot all that up quite a lot as well, the butter stick.

One trick used in labs that I've not seen anyone try is in a lab they definitely normally wouldn't try extracting something right at it's maximum solubility and/or all in one go, because the dissolution / diffusion rate starts to slow way down. The standard lab approach would be to use about three times more solvent than necessary, or a bit more, and to then rinse whatever it is three separate times with about a third of it each go.

E.g. using the butter example, to cook it in a couple of sticks of butter, drain / squeeze it off, add another couple of sticks, drain / squeeze, add the last couple, drain / squeeze. That way you maintain a high diffusion ratio between the solvent (the oil or butter) and the solute, the thc in this case. That could be a bit messy and it may be easier just to do it all in one go. You'd also need to be careful not to overly heat it during the second and third stages, just warm it until it's liquid.

Using the standard guide of about half an ounce to a pound of butter, it'd require around 20lbs of butter to do one plant (~10oz dry bud); ~9kg of butter, 8L, ~36 sticks.

I thought I'd go through the numbers on that because some people go with the quarter, half ounce to a pound ratio but I've seen others mentioning they do six or so ounces (168g) to four or so lbs butter (about 7 sticks of butter at 250g a stick), so an ounce per stick. In theory.... using that sesame seed solubility figure above, you could go all the way to 10oz per stick of butter (assuming the solubility is the same) but one stick of butter is unlikely to actually whet out 10z of dry bud on it's own.

I'm definitely not suggesting people should do that because it'll end up insanely strong but it could be useful if you're trying to process bigger batches and concerned about having massive amounts of liquid butter partying around. You can always dilute it down in an actual recipe right, but you can't make it stronger again so easily. And the best place to store it would be air tight in a freezer, so compact would be nice.
 
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weedstoner420

Well-Known Member
I've been doing it like that for a couple years now. Saves terpenes and gets the last of the solvent out without a vac chamber. Either just oil or pot that's been cooked up in coconut or other veg oils.

:peace:
I'm pretty sure your posts about this turned me on to it, now I always decarb in the oil:

Coconut oil + dried and broken up weed into the crock pot, turn on high until it reaches 220F, leave it there for an hour, then turn it down to low for another couple hours, then let it cool overnight or long enough to where it's still liquid but cool enough to squeeze through a cheese cloth without burning my hands.

I also add CBD isolate (the local head shop sells it by the gram) at about 3 grams per ounce of buds. I find the effect much more mellow and pleasant than with the THC alone.
 

dabbles

Well-Known Member
I'm pretty sure your posts about this turned me on to it, now I always decarb in the oil:

Coconut oil + dried and broken up weed into the crock pot, turn on high until it reaches 220F, leave it there for an hour, then turn it down to low for another couple hours, then let it cool overnight or long enough to where it's still liquid but cool enough to squeeze through a cheese cloth without burning my hands.

I also add CBD isolate (the local head shop sells it by the gram) at about 3 grams per ounce of buds. I find the effect much more mellow and pleasant than with the THC alone.
you just put it in a crockpot?
I've only done the jar in pot of water method.
If i can pour it right in it would make things simpler.
Do you have to keep stirring? Does it burn easily?
 

weedstoner420

Well-Known Member
you just put it in a crockpot?
I've only done the jar in pot of water method.
If i can pour it right in it would make things simpler.
Do you have to keep stirring? Does it burn easily?
Yup, oil + weed directly into crock pot, then heat as I described in my post.

I stir it a few times, maybe once every 30 mins just to clear the bubbles out. Once it's fully decarbed the bubbles will slow down.

My crock pot is a really old one that just has High and Low modes. I dunno what the exact temp settings are, but if I put a pint of oil on High it doesn't get much above 250-260F, even if I leave it on continuously. So no chance of anything burning, since coconut oil has a smoke point of 350F
 

weedstoner420

Well-Known Member
Thanks! That was very informative.


So it would work the same in a saucepan i think. Less temp control but i think i can make it work.

I do need a crockpot somewhere down the road..
No prob! I think a saucepan would work the same, just need to keep a close eye on the temp (I use a meat thermometer for this) since the oil can get quite hot and doesn't boil or simmer like water does.

But yeah crock pot is a great tool for this purpose, and small manual ones can be had for like $15-20 at Target. I would still keep an eye on the temp with that, since it probably varies from one model to the next. But once you do it once and get the timing down for your particular model, just repeat that the next time...
 
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