How to Make Cannabutter (With Ease)

               In this cannabutter recipe guide, I’m going to tell you how to make cannabis edibles with very little equipment! We’ll go over how to decarboxylate weed, the process of water curing cannabis, and how to properly cook cannabutter, all in this guide!

           It shouldn’t cost very much, and you’ll likely already have most of these tools at hand. If not, get creative! As an alternative to butter, you can make cannabis edibles with coconut oil, olive oil, sunflower seed oil, or other fatty replacements as well; just substitute butter for an equal amount of either oil.

To start, here’s what you’ll need to cook cannabis edibles.

Things you’ll need:

• Oven
• Baking tray and baking papers
• 20:1 ratio of butter (or oil) to cannabis – 200 grams butter for 10 grams of herb, or 4 sticks of butter (~1lb) to 1 oz of herb. This doesn’t need to be exact.
• Pot/saucepan
• Water
• Grinder
• Cheesecloth/fine mesh strainer
• Bowl for storing finished product.

Water curing (optional)

               You can either do this before or after decarboxylating; it doesn’t really matter. This process will improve the taste of your cannabutter, getting rid of that roasted popcorn/herb flavor that some may be opposed to. It’s quite simple, and here’s how to water-cure weed:

How to water cure weed:

• Fill a glass jar or container with clean water and cannabis
• Shake and let rest for around 30 minutes to an hour.
• Strain it out and watch the nasty-colored water drain out.
• Fill the jar with water and herb again and repeat the last steps until you get no color change.
• This can take around 2-4 hours, depending on your cannabis, how thorough your process is, and other factors.
• Once there is no color change, empty out the water and let your herb dry out in the oven at around 120°C/248°F.

Decarboxylating

So what is decarboxylating? Well, it’s the process of activating cannabis for use in cooking, often at around ~105°C/220°F See, eating the raw plant won’t do much of anything at all except just waste some precious flower. That’s no good at all!

What decarboxylating does exactly is convert THC-A into THC. Keen enough, THC-A cannot be metabolized by our body in the way THC does. So, this step is essential to getting potent cannabis edibles. No decarb, no fun.

                With that in mind, here’s how to decarboxylate weed for use in edibles:

• Place whole or ground cannabis buds on a baking sheet on a baking tray.
• Set oven to ~105°C/220°F or a little higher just to be safe. Don’t pass 150°C/300°F.
• Let sit in the oven for 30-45 minutes. Better to be safe and let it set for 45 minutes if you didn’t grind your herb beforehand.
• Remove and let cool afterward. Your herb should be dark green/brownish
• Grind/crush herb if it isn’t already
• Proceed to the final steps!

Cannabutter Recipe

               Okay, so now you have your delicious cannabis all decarboxylated and water cured, and you’re ready for the last steps! Making the butter itself! This is quite simple, but you really don’t want to go wrong here and mess up your entire batch.

Here’s how to cook cannabutter:

• 1:1 ratio of water and butter in pot/saucepan. This means 1 cup of water to 1 cup of butter. These ratios aren’t too important as long as there’s enough butter to extract all the goodness from your herb.
• Boil water first before adding butter and cannabis and reducing heat to medium-low.
• Cover pot and let simmer at medium-low, at roughly 80°C/180°F. Don’t have it warm enough to boil!
• Let cook and mingle for 2-3 hours, stirring intermittently.
• Once done cooking, remove from heat and let cool until warm to the touch.
• Place cheesecloth/mesh strainer over storage container, gently pour
• If excess water exists, store the container in the fridge until the butter is solid, and then drain the excess water.
• All done!

So now you have your finished product, how do you go about using it? Well, there is a variety of different ways to use cannabutter; it’s all very easy. For home cooks and baking enthusiasts, you can make the ever-loved cannabis brownies or cookies for easy consumption.

Maybe it’s a good idea to test your butter on yourself before cooking with it to see how potent it is. The edibles high is much stronger than your usual smoking high.

Cannabutter FAQs

Why is the high from weed edibles so much stronger than smoking?

Why is the edibles high so different than smoking? While smoking lasts 3-4 hours or so, it feels like edibles last more than twice as long. How come? Well, it lies in simple chemistry. Through smoking, you get exposed to dozens of different cannabinoids like THC, THCV, CBD, and many more.

However, our body doesn’t metabolize one specific cannabinoid; 11-OH-THC. When smoked, this isn’t processed and is able to affect us. When eaten, however…

 11-OH-THC, when eaten, is responsible for that ever-familiar edibles high. That psychedelic, powerful, long-lasting, and sometimes overwhelming stoning that can take you by surprise. This cannabinoid is particularly potent and, for newcomers, can even lead to disaster cases where they freak out and end up self-hospitalizing.

Therefore, it’s a really good idea to just test out some cannabutter on its own in some milk or on a sandwich before baking a batch of brownies.

If one teaspoon is enough to send you to the moon, then you definitely don’t want to use a whole cup of butter for half a dozen cookies unless you want to be sent to space with just a couple of bites.

Remember, edibles actually take 30-60 minutes to hit, and even more if you eat them on a full stomach. This can throw newcomers for a loop as oftentimes, someone will eat a weed brownie, feel nothing 45 minutes later, eat a second one in response, and then be terribly high for the whole day and probably evening too.

Make sure you know the potency before you start cooking with it. You can throw a dollop onto pasta, cook weed brownies with it, or really anything you can think of. If you figure it’s too potent, you can, of course, re-melt and reconstitute your cannabutter by simply adding more butter.

Read Also: What is Bubble Hash

Are there any easier ways to making cannabis edibles?

Well, yes, definitely, but then you’re likely going to have to spend some money on that! Devices like the Magical Butter and Levo Oil infuser make the entire process super easy and streamlined; some even decarboxylate and grind your herb for you! If you don’t want to spend all that money, then you have one other option:

 A stovetop espresso maker! Yes, one made for coffee. You’ll still have to decarboxylate your herb before cooking, but the whole cooking process itself will be easier. To do this all, it’ll depend on the espresso maker you have. These are rather inexpensive and are around $20-$40, and found at most home appliance stores or online.

Also, if you have a slow cooker, you can forego the decarb process if you anticipate using high temperatures. You can make your batch of cannabis edibles in one simple fell swoop with a lot less clean-up and prep than the standard procedure.

Ensure you use a type of oil instead of butter, as the butter will burn and taste bad at decarboxylation temperatures.

Read Also: How to Use Cannabis Oil

Cannabis Edibles Potency Calculator

               If you want to be more accurate and calculate the potency, here’s an easy way to do so. Take the known potency of your herb, multiply it by the quantity of herb you’ll use, and divide it by the amount of servings you’ll use. We’ll also account for the loss in potency since it’s hard to extract everything from your herb. We’ll guess 80% extraction.

While this won’t be exact, and you’ll need to know the exact weight and potency of your weed, you can get a better clue than guessing! We’ll use the easy PASER formula.

• P = Potency of weed (15% THC = 0.15, 20% = 0.20, etc)
• A = Amount of weed used in grams.
• S = Servings – If you made 500 grams of butter and make 10 brownies with that butter, then it’s 10 servings. If you use all the butter to make 20 candies, then that’s 20 servings.
• E = Efficiency of extraction. This is around 80% for the most part, so 0.80
• R = Result!

So, P * A / S * E = R

If we have 15% THC weed, use 5 grams of that to make 500 grams of infused butter and make 8 brownies from that, it’ll look like this.

0.15 * 5 / 8 * 0.80 = 0.075

0.15 (Potency) * 5 (Amount weed) / 8 (Servings brownies)  * 0.80 (Efficiency) = 0.075 grams Result in THC per edible. This is 75mg per brownie, which is incredibly strong. For reference, it’s a good idea to start with a 10-15mg THC dose for edibles, which can still be pretty strong!

Closing Notes

               So there you have a simple guide and recipe for making cannabutter! I hope this helped you out and that you’re able to make top-notch cannabis edibles with ease. As always, when dosing with edibles, be careful and start with some low doses first to see how they affect you; cannabis edibles are surprisingly potent and can catch even veteran stoners off guard.

No one wants to green out from weed edibles!

               I hope this helped out, and please, if you have any questions, feel free to send me a message, and I’ll gladly get back to you quickly. Enjoy your fresh cannabutter, and have a good one!