:biden-rember: Popcorn Lung?? I knew a guy named Popcorn Lung once, he ran a mean gang of two-scoop Debbies from the melty side of town

  • john_browns_beard [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    You'll need to grind it up and decarb first, 250F for 25-30 minutes in the oven. This will make your whole house or apartment reek terribly so pick a day when you can open the windows and maybe have a window fan handy.

    For the tincture, you will need:

    • At least 1/8 oz weed that has been decarbed
    • 190 proof grain alcohol
    • A jar that will hold the alcohol and decarbed weed
    • Paper coffee filters and something to hold them in, like a funnel or pour-over mesh coffee filter.
    • Some kind of double boiler setup (I use a saucepan, a pyrex container, and paper towels to hold the pyrex off the bottom of the saucepan)
    • Empty dropper bottle(s)
    • Candy/oil thermometer (optional)
    • MCT oil (optional)

    Put the ground, decarbed weed in the jar with 4 oz/100 ml grain alcohol. I've always used 4 oz alcohol, you may need more if you do over 1/2 oz cannabis but it should be plenty. Shake it up real good and let it sit.

    The internet will tell you that you need to steep it for a long-ass time, often 2+ weeks. As someone who performs extractions and quantitative analyses on ethanol-soluble compounds for a living, I will tell you that this is bullshit bro-science from people who couldn't tell an HPLC from a copy machine. You will have extracted 95% of the THC from the cannabis in one hour, and it won't taste like shit when you're done like it will after two weeks.

    Set up your coffee filter over your pyrex or other secondary container. The internet will also tell you not to use a paper filter, and I will tell you that this is also wrong. Dump all of your weed booze into the filter and watch in awe as it comes out the other end perfectly clear. When the liquid has passed completely through, pour a little more grain alcohol into the filter over the leftover plant matter to pick up some of the residual goodness that didn't make it through the filter (this is called a wash). You can repeat this as much as you want, we are going to evaporate off most of the ethanol anyway.

    Next, set up your double boiler on your stove. It should go without saying, but be careful if you are using an open flame as the ethanol is extremely flammable. Line the bottom of your saucepan with a folded up paper towel. Put a little bit of water in the saucepan, and then put your pyrex with the weed booze on top of the paper towel. Fill the saucepan with enough water that it just rises above the level of the weed booze in the pyrex. Turn the heat on low. If you have a thermometer, put it in the water. You want the water to be just below boiling, around 200F. The wider your pyrex is, the more exposed surface area and the faster this will go.

    Once the water starts simmering, turn the heat to the lowest setting you can. The ethanol has a much lower boiling point than water and will rapidly evaporate. The tincture will get very dark as this happens. Last time I reduced about 125 ml down to <10 ml. If you go too far, the oils will start precipitating out of solution and it gets hard to work with, but you can always add back more alcohol. If you want to keep it as an ethanol tincture, reduce to the point where you can fit the volume in your dropper and you're done! Otherwise, evaporate as much of the ethanol as you can and dilute to volume with MCT oil. Ethanol tinctures are faster acting, MCT doesn't burn your mouth. Either can function like an edible if you don't hold the drops in your mouth and just swallow. Always start with one or two drops and don't take more until the next day until you find what dose works for you.

    The smaller your final volume and the more weed you use, the stronger your tincture will be. My last stated with 1/2 oz (~14 g) pre-decarbed weight of cannabis. I extracted in 4-5 oz (120-150 ml) of ethanol, reduced it down to <10 ml, then added back MCT oil until it was 1 oz (30 ml) and split it into 2 x 15 ml droppers. I'd consider myself somewhat of a lightweight but I typically take 5 drop doses for a nice buzz. Ten drops will have me zooted. Not exact math but each drop of MCT oil tincture will be around 0.03 ml so you can guesstimate how many doses are in a volume.

    • macabrett
      ·
      2 years ago

      Wow, thank you so much, I really want to try this sometime. This post was so informative that I feel like it should be sticked on a comm somewhere.

      • john_browns_beard [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I'll probably turn it into a real post at some point or make an actual video/image guide (it would probably be easier to follow that way). Hope you get good results if you try it!