Don’t want to smoke or vape? Boardroom breaks down how you can still feel the effects while making your own cannabis edibles from the comfort of your home.
If you love cannabis edibles, learning how to make them at the crib could save you a whole bunch of money. Sure, you’ll be sacrificing product diversity and the expertise that comes along with the professionally-made products you buy in weed stores, but in the end, homemaking edibles is a great way to develop your relationship with the plant as well as yourself.
First, let’s define what an edible is, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: an edible form of cannabis when one doesn’t want to smoke, dab, or vape cannabis to enjoy its benefits. There are many different types — gummies, chocolates, rice krispie treats, hard candies, and that’s just a handful. Literally, any food can be made into an edible, depending on how you infuse cannabis with it.
So if you’re interested in making some cannabis edible at home, below are a few simple ways you can do so.
Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.
Methods of Making Homemade Edibles
There are a few different ways you can make edibles at home. In the end, it ultimately comes down to what type of base you infuse and at what point you want to cannify your foods/treats.
Cannabis infusion machines
There are a few different ways to infuse edibles at the crib with a few different infusion devices that can do the whole process for you. Great options such as the Ardent FX machines and the Levo Oil infuser are there if you want to save yourself some time and logistics.
Cannabis tinctures
Another good way to turn anything you want to eat or drink into an edible is to drop a little cannabis tincture over them. Tinctures are cannabis-infused alcohols that you can use to make both infused foods and infused beverages. They come in little droplet bottles to allow dosage control.
Cannabutter and cannabis oil
If you want to make edibles at home the old-fashioned way, making and cooking with cannabutter or cannabis oil is tried and true. They require precision, practice, and patience, but they’re both pretty easy to make. Below we’ll give you some simple steps to follow for the process.
Truly, the options for your base ingredient are endless. Butter and coconut oil work great, but you can also use olive oil, yogurt, flour, sugar, honey, and more.
How to Make Cannabis Edibles at Home
If you’re going to make your own treats to eat and get high, the classic cannabutter is a great tool to have in your toolbox.
Here’s what you need to make cannabutter:
- Baking sheet
- Parchment paper
- A pot
- Mesh strainer (or cheesecloth)
- Storage container
- 2 sticks of butter
- Cannabis flower
Step 1: Choose and grind your cannabis flower
Choose a cannabis strain that you’re familiar with so you can know how the effects may hit. Lay some parchment paper over the cookie sheet. Grind up your cannabis and distribute it over a cookie sheet. You’ll want a quarter-ounce to a half-ounce of dried cannabis flower, depending on your desired potency.
Step 2: Decarb your ground bud
Decarboxylation is the process of activating the THC in your cannabis. It is achieved by heat. Take your sheet of ground cannabis flower and toss it in the oven at a temperature between 220-240 degrees Fahrenheit. Then let it sit for a smooth 25-35 minutes while keeping an eye on it to make sure the flower doesn’t overcook.
Step 3: Melt your butter in a pot
On low heat (so the butter doesn’t burn), melt up your sticks of butter in a pot. Also, add a cup of water to help regulate the temperature and avoid burning the butter.
Step 4: Add cannabis to your butter
Add the decarboxylated flower to the melted butter and allow the cannabutter concoction to simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring periodically and not letting the buds hit the bottom of the pot, or else they’ll burn. Never let the pot come to a boil.
Step 5: Use a strainer to remove the plant matter
Next, pour your infused butter into your storage receptacle — whether that be a jar, Tupperware, or glassware. To do so, pour the mixture over a mesh strainer to separate the flower particles from the butter. You may also use cheesecloth to do this part of the process. After that, refrigerate the concoction for a few hours to let the compounds settle.
Step 6: Infuse your foods and enjoy
You can use the butter to make your food, like using cannabutter instead of regular butter to make a pan of brownies. Or you can simply add it on top of a food that’s already been prepared, like smearing it over a roll or melting it down into a bowl of spaghetti.
NOTE: It will be hard to know the exact dosage of whatever you make, so start slow with your consumption and monitor the effects.
Why Do Edibles Get You So High?
The reason edibles are so potent is often a question on people’s minds. You can sometimes smoke a whole joint and still not be as high as eating a 10-mg edible.
It’s because you’re consuming different versions of THC. When you smoke/dab cannabis, you’re consuming Delta-9-THC and ingesting the chemical orally into your bloodstream. When you eat cannabis, the THC is broken down in your stomach, then converted into a different type of THC called 11-Hydroxy-THC.
Without getting too technical, 11-Hydroxy-THC is a more potent and longer-lasting version of THC. It’s the reason you can eat an edible at 9 pm and if it’s potent enough, still wake up high at 6 am the next day. So remember to test your newly-made edibles in a small dose before overindulging and having an undesirable experience.
