Making a Cannabis Tincture: Alchemy at It’s Finest

I’m a fan of shakes, smoothies, and fruit juices. I bought a $300 blender when I was in college, and I view that as one of my best ever purchases. That thing is still going despite the hundreds of protein shakes and fruit smoothies I’ve made. It’s a Breville, if you are interested. I have a vegetable juicer (also a Breville, cause brand loyalties, bitches!). We even have an orange juice squeezer which Erin makes me use for her sometime. I pickle and ferment vegetables. I make my own simple syrups for cocktails (I currently have basil, mint, honey, and lemon in the fridge). Why do I tell you all of this? To let you know I take making potions and playing with alchemy quite seriously. Enter the cannabis tincture, AKA The Green Dragon.

Green Dragon? What Are You Smoking, Shane?

Nothing. That’s the entire point! 

You’ve no doubt heard of edibles: weed gummies, space cakes, and magic brownies.

A tincture is cannabis in liquid form. In this case, an alcohol solution. Liquids are nice because they are easy to measure out, and each batch is consistent. Edibles, in our experience, are more of a wild card. Yeah, two 50g of portions of brownies from the same pan should have a similar dose, but that dose will have different strength based on stomach contents and other digestive variables.

Taara and James (of Sex Uninterrupted) and I have gotten into conversations about the ability to gauge the potency of weed. They are “better” at smoking than we are. They claim they are solidly able to judge their high when they smoke. Erin and I are bad at it.

Better now that we have a Arizer Extreme Q desktop vaporizer (another solid purchase; review coming soon). But we’re still bad at it. 

However, once I know how strong a cannabis tincture is, I always know how strong it is. 1 mL is 1 mL.

And that’s useful info when trying to dose Erin’s cocktails.

AVB: Already Vaped Bud

The key to my tinctures is AVB (Already Vaped Bud: cannabis leaf that is left over from smoking cannabis with a vaporizer). If you don’t have a vaporizer, you can decarboxylate your bud by cooking it at 220 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly 30 to 45 minutes. This is necessary to activate the cannabis for digestion (that being the super easy explanation). Or just vape it and keep the remnants of your vaping sessions.

I keep mine in a pill canister.

I could just eat this, but then we’re back to the inconsistent edible issue. I’ve read it should be consumed with a fat source for better uptake. Easy mode: Mix with peanut butter and eat on a cracker. I have made cannabis-infused coconut oil (to be used to make edibles or to eat as is). But mostly I use it to make my tinctures.

Cannabis Tincture Step 1:Grind It, Soak It, Let It Sit

My collection container has AVB from whatever strains we smoked (which recently has been Sour Diesel, Girl Scout Cookie, and OG Kush). 

For this tincture, I used 3g of bud and blended it to a fine powder in the Cuisinart food processor.

I put the finely ground bud into a jar and added just enough Everclear grain alcohol to cover the grinds. I then placed the jar in my freezer.

I hear you are supposed to get the jar out every few days and shake it to mix the solution. But I put the jar in the drawer that is part of my freezer door, so every time we open our freezer, the solution gets stirred up a bit.

This time around, I prepped two solutions. I let one sit for a month; the other is still going.

Cannabis Tincture Step 2: Strain It and Test It

Now we just need to get the plant particles out of our solution. Easy. All you need is a funnel, a jar, and a coffee filter. It takes a lot of squeezing to get all the alcohol out of the bud. I got about 4 mL of tincture out of it, which seems like not that much.

So it could be potent.

So I guess I need to test it.

In this case, I got my first trial by rinsing out a measuring cup with soda and drinking it. And I got a pretty decent high off that.

I need a better, more scientific method to test my tincture. Like actually measuring out a dose. 

For our first attempt, I’m trying 0.1 mL. Erin’s going for .05 mL. I got a little buzz off of it. Her more so. More testing is required.

Cannabis Tincture Step 3: Getting the Potency Right

My goal is to have a tincture at which 1.0 mL is a solid high for me. From there, I can play with moderate (.7 mL), light (.4 mL), and even microdoses (< 0.1 mL). I have options.

As it turns out, this was not my strongest tincture. Perhaps it needed to brew longer. Perhaps I’m cooking the bud too much in the new Arizer. My older batches vaped in my Pax, possibly at a lower temperature and being cooked for less time.

As it turns out I need about .5 mL to really feel it. Which means I need to dilute the solution by half to get the same high from 1 mL. There’s 3 mL of the tincture left, so I need to add 3 mL of Everclear for the right strength.

Cause that’s how math works.

Go Forth, Fellow Alchemists!

That’s the quick and easy guide to making your own cannabis tincture. It’s a great way to get a few extra doses of THC out of your vaped bud. We find it easier and more consistent dosing than other digestible forms.