[optimizer]

every cannabutter recipe i see involves a separating of the butter and water as it cools. even if you're not removing the solids, is the removal of the water counting as clarifying, even only partially? i'm mostly asking because i don't think you're supposed to use clarified butter for baking because the recipes are assumibg full butter (which contains the solids and an amount of water along with the pure butter oil). if the simple act of making cannabutter clarifies it, is there a way to make non-clarified cannabutter?

[weedaholic721]

It is partially clarifying the butter, yes. However you lose cannabinoids in the semi-solidified milk fat the forms once removed from the butter. Its the white-ish layer that forms between water and solid butter once refrigerated. When you start with ghee(clarified butter) you avoid loss in the milk fat solids.

[Douglas.Curtis]

No.

Clarifying butter involves hardening of unwanted solids and skimming off of the foam. The clear butter (clarified) is poured through a filter to keep out the hardened solids. I simply skim any remaining foam off the top, once it's solidified at room temp again.

Please clarify your butter *before* making your canna-ghee. You'll be very glad you did so.

[optimizer]

i see that if i don't discard the solids it's not exactly clarified, but do they stay separated if i leave them in? i've heard butter doesn't separate until over 160 degrees. if i don't go over this while soaking the weed, is this closer to full butter?

[Douglas.Curtis]

yes

[wefak]

Hello

I think weedaholic721 is right, the semi-solidified milk fat the forms once removed from the butter

[Natural high]

Originally Posted by optimizer

every cannabutter recipe i see involves a separating of the butter and water as it cools. even if you're not removing the solids, is the removal of the water counting as clarifying, even only partially? i'm mostly asking because i don't think you're supposed to use clarified butter for baking because the recipes are assumibg full butter (which contains the solids and an amount of water along with the pure butter oil).

Processing Cannabis then cooling the mixture and breaking away the solidified fat is creating Ghee, which is just a form of clarified butter. If you want to substitute it for butter in baking, just use 75-80% of of the weight of butter required, and add the rest as water.

[Douglas.Curtis]

Originally Posted by Natural high

Processing Cannabis then cooling the mixture and breaking away the solidified fat is creating Ghee, which is just a form of clarified butter. If you want to substitute it for butter in baking, just use 75-80% of of the weight of butter required, and add the rest as water.

It's not ghee. If it were ghee you would have hard solidified butter on the bottom and the 'foam' you're supposed to skim off would be stuck in the butter.

Unless you simmer the butter for 15-20 minutes at a heat high enough to make ghee (decarbing and destroying the cannabinoids and terpenes), you're not making ghee.

[Natural high]

From Wiki:

"Ghee is prepared by simmering butter, skimming any impurities from the surface, and then pouring and retaining the clear, still liquid fat, while discarding the solid residue that settled on the bottom."

This is what we do when making cannabutter, but with more water and cooling to separate. Water can never get higher than 100deg C in liquid form at atmospheric pressure, so simmering the mixture is unlikely to destroy any significant % of the cannabinoids. Making cannabutter only requires simmering well below boiling point for less than an hour (see decarboxylation graph below).

Edit: The whitish scum that forms under the solidified fat is milk proteins and contains no fats. As the cannabinoids and terpenes are non-polar they will be absorbed into the fat only. The scum can be washed off the solid fat before storing in the fridge or freezer.


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