If you don't know it by now, let me enlighten you - yes, you can get high eating Cannabis. Now, don't grab your stash and spoon, because you've got to extract the THC from the plant in order to make this work.
One of the easiest and most natural ways to get the THC out of your cannabis (other than smoking it) is to make Cannabutter. There are dozens of techniques to create cannabutter, this one is my favorite:
- Decarboxylate the ganaja first! Crush it, don't grind it, just crush it into small chunks. Then put the herb in a turkey roasting bag and tie the end closed. Bake this at 240 degrees for 40 minutes. This will convert the THCa to THC. Let the sealed bag cool for an hour in the refrigerator.
- The basic proportion is 1 pound of butter (4 sticks) to 1 ounce of cannabis, preferably flower but shake will give you great results as well. The higher the THC content of the herb, the more potent the final product will be.
- Grind up your cannabis. I use an old Cuisinart. Don't make it into a powder! Just grind it up and remove any obviously large pieces of lumber.
- Fill a 6- or 8-quart pot halfway with water and get it hot.
- Add your butter and wait until it's completely melted.
- Reduce the heat to around 200 to 210 degrees. Never let it boil!
- Add the herb and stir it up. Leave it uncovered!
- Every half hour or so for the next 5-6 hours, give it a stir. Monitor your temperature so that it stays in the 200 to 210 degree range. It's okay if there are little pockets of bubbles, but a full on boil will reduce the potency.
- Take a piece of cheesecloth and fold it several times. Then cover a large plastic container with it and secure the cheesecloth with a rubber band.
- At the end of the 5-6 hours, pour the entire mixture CAREFULLY through the cheesecloth into the container.
- Slowly and carefully gather the corners of the cheesecloth and pull it off, rubber band and all, from the container. Using some heavy rubber gloves, squeeze all the liquid from the cheesecloth into the container.
- Place the container in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, the butter will have risen to the top and hardened. Cut a small piece out of the butter layer and carefully drain what looks like bong water. Remove the cannabutter and bake! If you're not going to use all the cannabutter, you can store it in the refrigerator. Never freeze it! You will severely lower the potency.
And speaking of potency...
If you want to believe the math - starting with 1 ounce, which is 28 grams or 28,000 mg, multiply it by the THC percentage to get the total amount of available THC and then divide by the number of portions you make.
For example: 25% THC would theoretically yield 7000 mg from an ounce. Divide that by the number of cookies (I usually make 3 dozen) and you would, in theory, get a cookie with 194 mg of THC. In reality, it's going to be less, maybe as much as half, but you won't know for sure until you eat them!
And speaking of eating them...
Rule #1: Medibles require patience. When you smoke cannabis, you feel the effects rather quickly, usually within minutes (unless it's that weird creeper pot that takes you by surprise an hour later.) Cannabis infused edibles can take up to 4 hours before you realize you're stoned. Most of the time, you will feel something in around an hour to an hour and a half. You might not get the full effect though for another hour or two. Wait! Don't eat more because you think you didn't eat enough. Wait!!!
