No, not really, but there is some use of lab equipment. I've had quite a few people ask me about cooking oil and when I try to explain how I make mine, I get blank stares. So now I'm making up a big thread so I get even more blank stares!
Cannabis Cooking Oil for People with Too Much Time On Their Hands
First we'll need a nice big separatory funnell
Then we need an oil press. Now, I don't grow olives, so I don't have access to a press. So we'll be using a heavy duty steel potato ricer.
Next we're going to get a funnel that fits in the top of the other funnel
Finally you'll need something to filter with. I used to use cheesecloth but it tended to soak up the oil and retain it and it would randomly spit out too much sediment which made washing longer. Now I just use a spare bit of 110 mesh nylon screening.
We're missing something. . .Oh yeah, the raw ingredients. Here's a nice pot of trim, stems, vaped remains, basically all the trash from around the house that wasn't turned into hash. It's been cooking down for several hours. I tend to wait till everything is nice & mushy. I stir regularly while it cooks.
The basic idea here is we're going to first take our cannabis/oil/water mixture and press it through the ricer. That will remove the vast majority of suspended cannabis and will also help extract every last bit of oil. In some cases my end result has a decent amount of plant oils of a marked different weight/color than the cooking oil I used, so it's fairly obvious I'm actually stripping out plant oils/etc. When you put in a cup of oil and get a cup and an eighth back, you're doing something right.
Your end result should be a container full of oil/water and a few compressed pucks of compostable love.
So now we have a container full of water & oil and crap. We need to clean this so we can remove most of the "off" taste, especially if you're going to be using this to cook things where that taste may ruin the dish (some dishes are enhanced by that green earthy flavor however, don't always assume you should clean or have to clean that oil). To clean it we're going to pour it past a double layer of the mesh into the separatory funnel. Here's how that will look.
Here's what the filter caught.
Now, we have a funnel that lets oil float to the top while water & heavier solids float to the bottom where the stopcock lets you drain them off. As you can see here, denser fractions are settling out of the oil to the bottom.
Now, once you've poured off the nasties, you can cook with the oil as is, or you can fill up the funnel with clean water & agitate. Each time you do this some of the water soluble contaminants in the oil will come out with the wash water. Here's an idea of what the wash looks like in four consecutive washes. As you can see, by the 3rd wash it looks essentially clean but it will have a faint smell and taste. I generally stop at 4 washes because the faint taste that remains won't have any effect on the dishes I tend to prepare.
This also works great on butter, but you have to make sure to wash with very hot water in that case to keep it flowing.
So that's how I make oil. Questions?
Cannabis Cooking Oil for People with Too Much Time On Their Hands
First we'll need a nice big separatory funnell
Then we need an oil press. Now, I don't grow olives, so I don't have access to a press. So we'll be using a heavy duty steel potato ricer.
Next we're going to get a funnel that fits in the top of the other funnel
Finally you'll need something to filter with. I used to use cheesecloth but it tended to soak up the oil and retain it and it would randomly spit out too much sediment which made washing longer. Now I just use a spare bit of 110 mesh nylon screening.
We're missing something. . .Oh yeah, the raw ingredients. Here's a nice pot of trim, stems, vaped remains, basically all the trash from around the house that wasn't turned into hash. It's been cooking down for several hours. I tend to wait till everything is nice & mushy. I stir regularly while it cooks.
The basic idea here is we're going to first take our cannabis/oil/water mixture and press it through the ricer. That will remove the vast majority of suspended cannabis and will also help extract every last bit of oil. In some cases my end result has a decent amount of plant oils of a marked different weight/color than the cooking oil I used, so it's fairly obvious I'm actually stripping out plant oils/etc. When you put in a cup of oil and get a cup and an eighth back, you're doing something right.
Your end result should be a container full of oil/water and a few compressed pucks of compostable love.
So now we have a container full of water & oil and crap. We need to clean this so we can remove most of the "off" taste, especially if you're going to be using this to cook things where that taste may ruin the dish (some dishes are enhanced by that green earthy flavor however, don't always assume you should clean or have to clean that oil). To clean it we're going to pour it past a double layer of the mesh into the separatory funnel. Here's how that will look.
Here's what the filter caught.
Now, we have a funnel that lets oil float to the top while water & heavier solids float to the bottom where the stopcock lets you drain them off. As you can see here, denser fractions are settling out of the oil to the bottom.
Now, once you've poured off the nasties, you can cook with the oil as is, or you can fill up the funnel with clean water & agitate. Each time you do this some of the water soluble contaminants in the oil will come out with the wash water. Here's an idea of what the wash looks like in four consecutive washes. As you can see, by the 3rd wash it looks essentially clean but it will have a faint smell and taste. I generally stop at 4 washes because the faint taste that remains won't have any effect on the dishes I tend to prepare.
This also works great on butter, but you have to make sure to wash with very hot water in that case to keep it flowing.
So that's how I make oil. Questions?
