[DuckLucky]

Hello,

I am in the process of making an alcohol tincture. I am a brewer, so the idea is to add the tincture to beer...

I just want to make sure that alcohol tinctures are effective when consumed in beverages instead of being administered sublingually?

NOW CRITIQUE MY METHOD!

I used 94% tasteless alcohol from my local liquor store.

1-Grind 7G of dried purple power plant bud
2-Bake at 300F for 4 minutes
3-Prepare bath of boiling water
4-Pour 4 oz (~100ml) of alcohol into glass jar, with an open lid
5-Lower glass jar into hot water bath, and heat the alcohol to a temperature of 150-165F
6-Add weed, maintain temperatue at 150-165F for 20 minutes
7-Strain weed
8-Add ~200ml of hot water to the alcohol
9-Raise alcohol/water/weed mixture to 185F, until all of the alcohol has boiled off (do not bring to boil, keeps temps <100C)
this process took me about an hour, at which point I the alcohol was no longer visibly boiling.
10-refrigerate
11-Siphon green waste water from the jar leaving resin residue on bottom of jar.
12-Add small amount of alcohol to dissolve resin residue.

Anything wrong with my method here? In the future I would repeat steps 10 and 11 for a total of 3-4 rinses.

This method is supposed to extract the thc, and refine it. The tannins and nasty weed flavour stays in the water, but the thc falls to the bottom.... It took about 60 minutes of maintaining the alcohol/water mixture at 170F - 185F before there was no longer any visible boiling of alcohol.

[eloquentsoution]

do check the cannabis resin thread. search for graywolf processes used at skunk pharm research if you want a scientific process.

sounds like you are trying to make a concentrate rather then a tincture. never seen and alcohol extraction done quite like that, boiling with water. you can eliminate the need for water by using a quick wash rather then a refluxed type of process. it sure eliminates a lot of work plus produces a fine product.

[darklands]

I'm not trying to be a dick, but this method sounds incredibly complex and time consuming. Instead of adding water to the alcohol mixture as a way to remove chlorophyll and other water solubles, I think you'd be better off starting with kif or powdered hash instead of bud. If you don't have access to kif, then a quick wash of chopped, decarbed bud in a small amount of Everclear (just enough alcohol to cover the bud) yields a potent tincture without any boiling or reducing.

I find that decarbing at 300 degrees F for four minutes is effective. Preheat the oven to 300, then turn it off before inserting the weed/kif.

[darklands]

One more word of advice to DuckLucky: The resins in tincture are extremely sticky and will adhere to all surfaces, so if you intend to add tincture to your beer during the brewing process, be prepared to lose a lot of it inside your brewing vat and bottles. Cleanup will be a bitch too. I always take my tincture in a small glass of whole milk because the fat in the milk helps prevent the tincture from sticking to the glass.

[DuckLucky]

Originally Posted by darklands

I'm not trying to be a dick, but this method sounds incredibly complex and time consuming. Instead of adding water to the alcohol mixture as a way to remove chlorophyll and other water solubles, I think you'd be better off starting with kif or powdered hash instead of bud. If you don't have access to kif, then a quick wash of chopped, decarbed bud in a small amount of Everclear (just enough alcohol to cover the bud) yields a potent tincture without any boiling or reducing.

I find that decarbing at 300 degrees F for four minutes is effective. Preheat the oven to 300, then turn it off before inserting the weed/kif.

You're talking about using the cold extraction method...There are a few problems with this method, mostly that it takes 4-8 weeks to extract all the thc, which I don't have. I'm not interested in quick and easy method of extracting a partial amount of the bud's thc, and having alcohol soaked weed to deal with. I'm also under the impression that using the hot extraction method is more efficient.

...I am adding water to the alcohol/cannabis mixture for the sole purpose of removing as much unwanted flavors as possible, because I do not want to affect the flavor of my beer. You can most certainly make a potent tincture without doing this, it would be Green Dragon, and even with the cold method it will taste like shit.

I don't have kief or hash, and frankly I wouldn't waste it on a tincture if I did...

You have a very good point regarding loss of resin during the brewing process. It would be unwise to add THC to beer during the fermentation process, as a high percentage of the THC would be lost to yeast cake. I therefore intend to add the tincture during bottling. It did occur to me that some of the resin may stick to the bottles themselves, but I think it should be minimal. I may be wrong on that final note however, this is an experiment.



FYI: this shit is fucking potent...I don't have an eyedropper so I can't be sure of how many ml I consumed, but I took what I'd estimate to be 2-4 drops and I was FUCKED!

The tincture I made still has a cannabis flavor to it, although it is MUCH milder than Green Dragon. When I added it to a beer, the flavor was detectable, but just barely...it did not have a significant impact on the flavor of the beer. I think that the next time I do this, I will do a two or three rinses with sterile water to further refine my tincture.

[DuckLucky]

Originally Posted by eloquentsoution

do check the cannabis resin thread. search for graywolf processes used at skunk pharm research if you want a scientific process.

sounds like you are trying to make a concentrate rather then a tincture. never seen and alcohol extraction done quite like that, boiling with water. you can eliminate the need for water by using a quick wash rather then a refluxed type of process. it sure eliminates a lot of work plus produces a fine product.

I wanted to make an ethanol tincture...The only reason I bothered with concentrating it is that my process of refining the tincture allowed me to do so. It is beneficial to concentrate the alcohol tincture if adding to beer, because 1ml of 94% alcohol will raise the Alcohol By Volume percentage of your 335ml beer by .25%. This will change the profile of the beer, which is not desired.

I am not interested in using butane for a few reasons. The first reason is that I don't have confidence in the purity of these products, nor in my ability to evaporate 100% of the butane. I'd rather use ethanol, because it is already present in the final product that I am delivering, and I am less intimidated by the dangers of working with ethanol. That being said, you could in theory make honey oil with butane with the purpose of adding it to beer, and then dissolve the resin in ethanol, prior to bottling. This doesn't seem like it's much less work than my method, because you have to do more than one wash to extract all of the thc with butane anyhow...

[DuckLucky]

My methodology here revolves around incorporating my tincture to beer. Therefore Oils are completely out of the question, as they mess up the beer's head retention, for one. Glycerin would be possible, but it would raise the final gravity of you beer as it is an unfermentable sugar alcohol, increasing the body and mouthfeel of the beer. To me, ethanol alcohol was the obvious solvent to use, as it is already present in beer. Even then, adding a minute amount of high proof alcohol to your low proof beer will effect the beer's alcohol percentage, and therefore profile.

Basically I don't want to do a quick wash because I'd rather put in a slight amount of work and achieve better efficiency, and I'm pretty sure that a quick wash is less effective with ethanol alcohol than with isopropyl alcohol...It really wasn't that much more effort to use this method as opposed to the traditional Green Dragon method...About an hour of boiling alcohol off, put in fridge and forget about it a few hours, then spend 10 minutes rinsing water. Considering the beer brewing will have taken me 10-15 hours, I'm happy to spend an extra hour to refine my tincture and maintain the quality of my beer.

[Sheriff Bart]

make decarbed amber, dissolve in minimal atm 95%etoh, add measured amts to bottles prior to bottling, condition in bottls like normal, enjoy weed brew

[DirtyCarpet]

I am interested, DL. Sounds like a hella lotta fun! I wonder if there is any benefit in doing a water wash???submerging dried herb (carefully, gently) into a water-filled jar and letting it soak until the water darkened, thus removing all the water-soluables (and then drying again?) before using in such an experiment. I used this water-wash technique many years ago on some shit-tasting homegrown which afterwards smoked, smelled, and tasted like BlankNothingUndistinguishable, and got me higher than the HackGagGreen it was beforehand. Best of luck, PLEASE update your results! Thanks, and.....Peace.

[DuckLucky]

Originally Posted by DirtyCarpet

I am interested, DL. Sounds like a hella lotta fun! I wonder if there is any benefit in doing a water wash???submerging dried herb (carefully, gently) into a water-filled jar and letting it soak until the water darkened, thus removing all the water-soluables (and then drying again?) before using in such an experiment. I used this water-wash technique many years ago on some shit-tasting homegrown which afterwards smoked, smelled, and tasted like BlankNothingUndistinguishable, and got me higher than the HackGagGreen it was beforehand. Best of luck, PLEASE update your results! Thanks, and.....Peace.

Yes it's something I hadn't thought of but I'm familiar with water curing bud. If I make it again I will prepare the bud in advance with a water cure. I think it would help, because as I stated my rinse method is not 100% effective...I'd say it's more like 90-95% effective.

The beer in question is lagering so it won't be ready for another 6 weeks, but I'll let ya know when the final product is finished.

You really don't have to add it to beer prior to bottling though! I brought my tincture to the bar last night and poured some into my drink...it was fine to consume it as such. It was very mild but I could detect it's presence...it certainly didn't lessen the quality of the beer...nfact the slight weed taste complemented the flavor of the hops nicely. Ideally I would go for zero flavor coming from the tincture however.

The advantage to adding the tincture prior to bottling, is that I can calculate dosage more easily. If I have 5 gallons of beer, and I add 50ml to the 5 gallons, then I know the exact effects of 1ml tincture/355ml beer. Also I find it easier to conserve my tincture as such, because I don't like getting drunk, so I will only ever have 1-3 beers in a sitting. It helps spread it out