This is a fast, easy and safe way to make potent vegetable glycerin cannabis tincture from home. It only takes a few hours and is immediately ready to consume after. This recipe is alcohol free! So if you are one of the many people out there with alcohol sensitivities, or you simply do not want an alcohol based product this is for you. There are many ways to make tinctures each with its own ups and downs. This is not the most potent method but it does produce some nice tincture on the fly.
You will need
- food grade vegetable glycerin (Our solvent)
- cooking oil (Oil bath to regulate temperature)
- Canning jars (store our product)
- Cheesecloth (to filter our product)
- Strainer (Filter support)
- x2 Cooking therometer (Temp control)
- 1/2oz dried decarboxilated cannabis (This also works with trim, kief and shake)
- Tincture Bottles (Optional bottles to store your end product)
- Pyrex beaker (heat safe glassware)
- Silicone Spatula
- Stovetop or hotplate
- Oven (For decarbing our cannabis)
Process
Decarb
First if you have not already done so, decarb your cannabis. To feel the effects of cannabis you will need to convert the THCA into psychoactive THC. On its own cannabis is non psychoactive. In order to do this heat must be applied. This process is usually achieved when fire touches the cannabis as you are smoking. Since we will not be smoking this we need to achieve this effect another way.
- Preheat the oven to 240° F. / 115° C
- Grind up your cannabis in to nice small pieces by hand.
- spread out evenly on a baking sheet
- place in the oven for 30-45 minutes
- Once the cannabis has darkened to a light-medium brown and your able to smell the cooked cannabis its ready to be removed
- It should all be dried, easily crumbles
- allow to cool
Your cannabis is now decarboxilated and its full affects have been unlocked.
Now lets get things ready for our tincture and get started
- fill a small cooking pot about 1/3 – 1/2 full with your cooking oil and place on low heat on your stove.
- Using your cooking thermometer preheat the oil to 220 degrees
- next fill your Pyrex beaker with your freshly decarbed cannabis about 1/2 full. Lightly pack it down.
- Pour your vegetable glycerin over the cannabis and fill until it just barely covers your herb
- Mix it up good
- Now once your oil has reached 220 degrees place the Pyrex beaker with cannabis and vegetable glycerin mixture into the middle of the pot. (The oil in the pot helps regulate the temperature)
- Place your second thermometer into your cannabis mixture and allow the mixture to reach 180 degrees. At 180 degrees cannabis starts to become molten allowing it to be extracted/combined with our VG
- Do not allow the temps to exceed 180 degrees. Adjust the stoves heat as needed to keep the temp consistent.
- Stirring occasionally allow the mixture to cook at 180 degrees for 45 minutes
- After 45 minutes place the stainless steel strainer over your canning jar and line it with a couple layers of cheesecloth
- Remove the Pyrex dish from your pot and pour the contents into the jar. VG is very thick so you will need to pour very slowly and apply pressure with a small Silicone Spatula
- The mixture will look deep brown (This is good sign!)
- BE sure not to discard the plant material. After you fully strained all the VG out place all the material back into the Pyrex dish and refill with more VG until you just barely cover the cannabis.
- Place back into your pot and heat to 180 degrees again repeating the steps from before. Wait another 45 minutes then strain the mixture into your jar.
- Repeat one last time giving us a total of 3 runs.
- You are done! You should now have a nice jar full of some potent cannabis tincture.
The remaining cannabis will look very sludgy and can now be discarded at this point. There are better and more effective ways of making this but those methods take significantly longer (anywhere from a few days – few months). We will cover those methods in upcoming posts. Alcohol based tinctures are also significantly more potent. Some studies report that VG has the capability of only holding 33% the amount of cannabis oil that alcohol can. We will also cover that method in upcoming posts.
What can it be used for?
ALMOST ANYTHING! You can add this to you coffee, make candy, vape it, consume straight, add to tea, add to honey, and more! options are near limitless!
If you are looking to make CBD based tinctures / oils this isn’t the best recipe for that, but it can be done easily other ways. We will cover making CBD vegetable cannabis glycerin tinctures in a future post. If you need help finding CBD oil and tinctures before then, there are many reputable places to find high quality CBD oil on the web.
