Inexpensive, Wet/Dry, Veg/Flower, 8-Minute CBD Test You Can Do At Home!

DemonTrich said:

My results from cannatonic 4 cbd HP pheno test.
Using .3g of 60%rh dried flower.

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Sure shows a lot more purple than the Cannatonic I sampled. Definitely higher CBD. On a side note, I have zero information on where the seeds for the sample came from, nor much info about the grow.

Thanks for sharing!

I run the HP (heul Perkins cut). His pheno tested highest out of what He or the previous growers pheno hunted and tested.

DemonTrich said:

I run the HP (heul Perkins cut). His pheno tested highest out of what He or the previous growers pheno hunted and tested.

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Love it. That purple is sure pretty, Yes? lol

Seems useful, thanks for posting.

However, I very much doubt you can get accurate readings of plants in veg. I would think flowers contain far more CBD than immature leaves.

No time to chat. Too much fun running tests. LMAO

Here is a Cinderella99 with no CBD and a 4 weeks into flower MedTree Continuum high CBD.

Back later with more.

TexasTea said:

Seems useful, thanks for posting.

However, I very much doubt you can get accurate readings of plants in veg. I would think flowers contain far more CBD than immature leaves.

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This was my initial thought as well.
If anyone can explain why it CAN, im all ears. Im having a hard time wrapping my brain around this part.

Vegetative material from very low CBD strains has produced zero purple. Vegetative material from high CBD plants has produced light purple. You tell me? I only have one very high cbd strain and a couple non-cbd plants to test. Only the high cbd is in flower.

Anyone growing out some "cbd-rich" plants should be able to see color variations, even from vegging plants. The key is consistency in taking samples, drying, crushing, weighing and shaking times.

The Med Tree Continuum I'm growing is a high CBD, low THC. I think 1:50 or something like that. I'll run some sugar leaves, some fan leaves and some small stems tomorrow.

I'm only about 4 weeks into flower so I'll have to pick some and dry it. I'm not a big fan of oven drying. The tests I ran today were on 1/2 dry that I clipped a few days ago.

I think I remember 15 minutes at 150F to oven dry the samples in the orig 1942 patent. Maybe I'll try that.

A dehydrator you can run without heat works well. I have a huge one, which is a bit of overkill for drying small samples. I urge anyone who can, to run this test on their vegging high CBD plants, especially if you have multiple phenos. Please! I know there are a lot of us who would love to have you share the results.

Glad you're having fun Ringodoggie. It's pretty cool running a simple test like this. Reminds me of high school chemistry class. lol

Douglas.Curtis said:

I urge anyone who can, to run this test on their vegging high CBD plants, especially if you have multiple phenos. Please! I know there are a lot of us who would love to have you share the results.

Glad you're having fun Ringodoggie. It's pretty cool running a simple test like this. Reminds me of high school chemistry class. lol

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I have 5 week old clones in veg. 3 phenos from the mothers I am testing now. So, we can compare the potency of a flowering leaf vs vegging leaf from the same strain and pheno.

I am just getting started. I can't get into my flowering room for an hour or so to trim so I am going to run some tests on the remainder of what I have.

First task is to compare carbon pellets, granules and powder. I tried some powder yesterday and it was not great. The carbon never really settled 100% so it made the results darker than with granules. I am going to try pellets in a minute.

Also, does the shake really have to be 2 minutes? After about 30 tests, my arm got tired. LMAO I tried some 15 second shakes and it seemed to make no difference.

Also, just a quick run-through so I understand.....

The lye heats the alcohol and in essence, extracts the cannabanoids from the pot and (in some small manner) decarb's it. (otherwise, we are measuring CBDa, right?

The carbon is a filter that absorbs (something) and the remaining substance when mixed with CBD is purple.

Yeah, just like high school chemistry. Unfortunately, when I got to college, biology and chemistry made way for sex, drugs and rock and roll. Wish I had stayed in school and took more chem classes. LMAO

I am pretty free today and plan to stay inside and play with my toys most of the day. Raining and shitty outside. If you have any special request, please feel free to ask. I'll do what I can.

Couple things I can add for people trying this....

Gloves and glasses are a must.

A funnel that fits into the vial is awesome. Check out 'gold prospecting' stuff on ebay. That, and the cocaine funnels work well.

A tiny spoon to scoop the carbon and lye. I use a 1/8 tsp from my kitchen. I took some small jars and put some of each (carbon, lye, 50/50 alcohol and 91% alcohol) into the jars and set them on my lab bench right in front of me. This makes it easy to reach everything without stumbling over assorted bags and packages.

When cleaning the vials for re-use, a Q-tip gets inside real nice to swab it. After I rinse mine, I swab it with alcohol and rinse again. Q-tips.

I'll post whatever tips I learn along the way. Let me know if you need anything special.

Told you the powder was messy. lol

The 91% iso makes for a full and complete extraction of the cannabinoids. Less than 2 minutes may work with some samples, I know 2 minutes provides a complete extraction of most any sample. Tweak it for what works for you. The 50% iso may provide additional extraction, however I suspect it's only really useful for dissolving the remainder of the sodium hydroxide. Using the 91%, and then the 50%, ensures the heat never gets very high.

The carbon is for oxygen, not filtration/absorption. Using granules releases the most oxygen per volume, allowing only a small (250mg) amount to quickly release enough oxygen for a fast result. (Original test called for waiting quite a while) Using pellets can increase the amount of time necessary for enough oxygen release to occur. Check it out for yourself.

The reaction does not require heat. As far as I'm aware, it's a reaction between the sodium hydroxide and cannabinoids, further acted on by the oxygen from the carbon. (Anyone feel free to clarify/correct this statement. I really have no clue. lol)

Keep Moving Forward!

Thanks for the clarification.

Here are some early test results........

From left to right....

First is a sample of pheno 1 (the strongest so far based on yesterday's tests). It's a bud from the top of the plant and is mostly pistils and some tiny sugar leaves. This is the best there is and can be the base line for now. Everything is above or (more likely) below this line.

Second from the left is also pheno 1. This is lower buds. Barely developed. Just a few pistils and some real real young bud. This is the same as the next one to the right except I used pellets of carbon in this one and I used granules in the 3rd

Third from the left is as described previously with carbon granules rather than pellets. As you stated, the granules work better.

Fourth from the left is still pheno 1. These are sugar leaves from the flowering plant. Again, to call these sugar leaves is stretching it since it's all from real real low and undeveloped buds and their leaves are barely developed much less have any sugar on them yet. Still, it shows a nice presence of CBD.

Fifth from the left and last sample of this pheno. This is a leaf from a clone of pheno 1. Still in the veg stage and not showing any color at all. Maybe a little yellow, whatever that means.

So, there is your test of a flowering plant and that same plant's clone in veg.

I was surprised that the very undeveloped bud showed as dark as the very top pistils. There is one variable that could be affecting things. I used dry for some tests and fresh for a few others (the pistil tests were fresh).

I'll redo all the tests to confirm these results. I am going to natural dry some samples first.

OK, the next 3.

These are pheno 3. My worst. Tests on this plant constantly shows poor results.

The first one is the basic undeveloped buds similar to what I used in the previous tests with pheno 1.

The first test shows a very light purple. Compare this to the 3rd from the left in the last test group and you are comparing phenos 1 and 3. Same basic plant matter (undeveloped buds). This also confirms yesterdays tests where pheno 3 was much lighter than phenos 1 and 2 using the same basic plant matter (undeveloped buds).

So, in the next test, I thought I would double the amount of cannabis and I used 70mg of the undeveloped bud similar to the previous test.

As you can see, using twice as much cannabis did not affect the results at all. ??? Almost the same color with twice as much pot.

After continual tests of pheno 3 showing light consistently, I considered mulching the pheno 3 clones and only flowering the pheno 1 and 2 clones.

So, I went back and got some nice pistils from the very top branch. Not off the cola (I couldn't do it LOL) but right below it.

I was surprised to see how dark it was.

With pheno 1, the undeveloped buds showed about the same as the top pistils. On the pheno 3 tests the difference between the undeveloped buds and the top pistils was day and night.

So, more stuff to retest and confirm.

Sure is sweet that each test is only pennies compared to the $10 per test the commercial products are charging.

I don't want to get off topic but I wonder what chemicals CB Scientific is using in their THC tests?

More to come.

The information is great, I'm unable to see photos though?

I'm interested to see what completely dry samples of each pheno brings. It's the consistency I'm looking for. Now that you mention it, I'm going to do some samples from different parts of the vegging plant, see if I get variations that way.

Later tonight, after the sun goes down. This way I get consistent light exposure for my photos. lol

This already has a thread. Original posting https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=347984

anyhoo, would be cool for all discussion to be in 1 spot..

Douglas.Curtis said:

The information is great, I'm unable to see photos though?

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Can you see the pics now?

Can anyone NOT see the pics?

I will attach them again.

Something else I just noticed.....

In my pictures, I notice that some of the samples have the carbon settled to the bottom and others it is still floating.

Could this mean anything? Maybe one sample didn't release enough O2 from the C. I am going to order some granules to keep things consistent. I have been crushing pellets and sifting out the powder and removing the big pieces.

Also, my carbon was advertised as "Extreme Activated". Meaning what? More O2 packed into it than regular aquarium carbon. LMAO Is that possible, even?

OK, back to the lab.

it means the charcoal has become full of liquid an no longer has pores full of air. the idea is to use a pellet and not crush your charcoal as if you read the original thread it is explained why.

not sure what extreme means lol, but activated simply means it has bean heated to remove any organics it has absorbed. charcoal filters filter organics from aquariums, smells in the air or absorb booze in your stomach. has great ability to "grab" and "hold" organics such as smells(terps etc) or booze......

Yes, I see the pictures now. Awesome! I'll be clipping some various parts of veg plants and doing some highly accurately weighed wet samples. The digi scaled I linked does grains, as well as grams.

clearheaded said:

This already has a thread. Original posting https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=347984

anyhoo, would be cool for all discussion to be in 1 spot..

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Thank you for posting this, your thread helped significantly in the creation of the test methods I've posted here. It's much more accurate and there's a definite reason for using granules instead of a pellet. Awesome to have you in the thread, thank you again!

clearheaded said:

not sure what extreme means lol, but activated simply means it has bean heated to remove any organics it has absorbed.

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Thanks. So, the process of which they speak is heating?

Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, is a form of carbon processed to have small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions.[1] Activated is sometimes substituted with active.

Unless I miss my guess, the only action it's doing (we're concerned with anyway) is pumping oxygen through the solution as the pores fill with water. Anyone know this for certain, as in being familiar with the chemical reactions going on in the background?