Minimum Alcohol % Needed to Dissolve Cannabinoids

KonopCh

Well-Known Member
Anyone do green dragon? Any tricks how to make more "tongue friendly" recipe? Can I mix with olive oil or water, or will not blend together?
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
Anyone do green dragon? Any tricks how to make more "tongue friendly" recipe? Can I mix with olive oil or water, or will not blend together?
I have done Green Dragon, but don't care for the greeeeeeeeeeeeen flavor, so make Brown Dragon instead. I simply do a subzero QWET extraction with 190 proof Everclear, and remove enough of the alcohol afterwards to increase the percent cannabinoids to the desired level.

Once you reach the point where there is more cannabinoid resin than alcohol, it becomes more tongue friendly, but you can add droppers of the more concentrated tongue burning mixtures to other drinks to dilute them.

I added a dropper into an 8 oz Frappacinno, and enjoyed the added cannabinoid flavors. Alcohol will mix with fats or water, but if it absorbs too much water, it may start to precipitate cannabinoid resin, which aren't all that tasty by their lonesome. Fats work better for dilution.
 

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gwpharms

Well-Known Member
Anyone do green dragon? Any tricks how to make more "tongue friendly" recipe? Can I mix with olive oil or water, or will not blend together?
Try just oil carried by something like MCT or whatever you prefer. Just boil all that ethanol off and eat the oil.
 

KonopCh

Well-Known Member
@Fadedawg yea, we use it into the liquid drink, coffee or something. But I want to mix directly into green dragon bottles and then consume directly via droplet into mouth.
@gwpharms what if I don't evaporate alcohol, can it be mixed together?
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
@Fadedawg yea, we use it into the liquid drink, coffee or something. But I want to mix directly into green dragon bottles and then consume directly via droplet into mouth.
@gwpharms what if I don't evaporate alcohol, can it be mixed together?
You will have to drop the alcohol percentage to around brandy or sipping whiskey levels.
 

OPfarmer

Well-Known Member
Need some advice.!! Help

My 1 gram concentrate stays nicely suspended in 15 ml of ethonol.

Works great for candy making this way.

However I wanted a tincture too.

So I boiled off 1/2 the ethonol and replaced it with a 18% Port wine.

My caniboids are not fully suspending, sticking to the dropper and what not.

What if I mix the original ethonol/caniboids extract with glycerin and let the Alcohol evaportate?
Then maybe mixnit with Port wine?
 

Chris Edward

Well-Known Member
Need some advice.!! Help

My 1 gram concentrate stays nicely suspended in 15 ml of ethonol.

Works great for candy making this way.

However I wanted a tincture too.

So I boiled off 1/2 the ethonol and replaced it with a 18% Port wine.

My caniboids are not fully suspending, sticking to the dropper and what not.

What if I mix the original ethonol/caniboids extract with glycerin and let the Alcohol evaportate?
Then maybe mixnit with Port wine?
@OPfarmer,

Assuming that you were using 99% alcohol in the original 30ml solution (if I am wrong let me know and I will correct it)

You the boiled this down to 15ml, which broke the bonds that were keeping the alcohol at 99% and now the highest concentration you can keep it at is 95%, this is the azeotrope of ethanol and water
At that point your 15ml of extract contained around 14.25ml of "100%" ethanol.

You then added 15ml of an 18% port wine, with an alcohol content of 2.7ml of 100% alcohol.

Then you mixed the two, which gave you a combined alcohol content of 56.5%...

Which, is too low to keep cannabinoids suspended.

I am not sure where the "shift" point is of how low is too low as I haven't done the proper tests myself, but I would assume that if you soak a tissue in it and try to light it and it doesn't light on fire, it's too low to suspend cannabinoids.
As soon as I get some free time, I will test some more and post my findings here on RIU.

For reference, here is my math:

30ml of 99%
Boiled down to 15ml at 95%
15*0.95=14.25ml 100% alcohol

Then 15ml of 18% is added.
15*0.18=2.7ml 100% alcohol

14.25ml + 2.7ml= 16.95ml

16.95/30(ml)= 0.565
56.5% ABV

I hope this helped.
 

coreywebster

Well-Known Member

ANC

Well-Known Member
@ANC,
For me it's not about "maximum yield", it's about knowing the yield.
I am fine with using VG, or MCT, I just want to know how much cannabis oil is in the VG, that's all...

I am not a fan of surprises.

So, I would be more apt to extracting the oil, then adding a given quantity to some VG or MCT, then I know how much I am getting.

Speaking of getting "too knackered from licking off spoons..."; been there, lol...
Let's just say that RSO can be tasty and a little goes a very long way...
I was thinking of this discussion the other day... I saw at the vape shop they now sell this little concentrate THC tester that is about the size of a small scale.
If you are very concerned about dosage, this would be the way to go for high accuracy measurements. It wasn't super expensive.
 

ANC

Well-Known Member
For anybody that finds the taste of cannabis oil disagreeable, I'd straight up recommend trying the VG tincture method.
There is no way medicine is supposed to taste that good.
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
A goo
For anybody that finds the taste of cannabis oil disagreeable, I'd straight up recommend trying the VG tincture method.
There is no way medicine is supposed to taste that good.
A good point! Potency is limited, but a good cold extract tastes like wild honey, with a myriad of different flavor heading off in all directions.
 
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ANC

Well-Known Member
Yes, it is less strong by volume. it is still incredibly cheap to make compared to say ETOH extraction.
Just take 3 drops for every one you would of RSO.
 

Chris Edward

Well-Known Member
I was thinking of this discussion the other day... I saw at the vape shop they now sell this little concentrate THC tester that is about the size of a small scale.
If you are very concerned about dosage, this would be the way to go for high accuracy measurements. It wasn't super expensive.
Do you know the name of the test kit?
 
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ANC

Well-Known Member
tCheck Infusion Potency Tester

tCheck Infusion Potency Tester (tCheck 2) is a device that brings infusion potency testing to the home. The ability to test alcohol based tinctures, olive oil, butter, and ghee. From the start to finish, tCheck Infusion Potency Tester takes 45 seconds to test your potency.
 

Chris Edward

Well-Known Member
tCheck Infusion Potency Tester

tCheck Infusion Potency Tester (tCheck 2) is a device that brings infusion potency testing to the home. The ability to test alcohol based tinctures, olive oil, butter, and ghee. From the start to finish, tCheck Infusion Potency Tester takes 45 seconds to test your potency.
The thing about the portable testers, like tCheck and MyDx is that they compare your results with what they have in their database and then what gets displayed back to you is "the closest match", which in my opinion is useless because the specs for the strain aren't static. Even two or more samples from the same plant can have drastically different results.

The major differences between the two testers are that MyDx costs like $800 and the little test inserts are like $2 (but I think you can do 2 tests per insert) and the $70 sensor needs to be replaced every 6 months.

The tCheck is like $280, plus another $200 for the concentrate tester, the test insert is reusable, I don't believe there is a replaceable sensor, but there is a hidden $30 a month subscription fee otherwise the tester will just give you a Compound By Volume (CBV) value, which is all the cannabinoids combined and is totally useless, so they know you will pay the $30 a month so you can see how much THC and CBD you have.
I believe the tCheck 1 used to have you mix either the flowers or concentrate into some solvent and then put it in the sample tray, but now in the tCheck 2 model this is a $200 add-on.

One tester that has mostly been overlooked, is the SCiO, which is $300 and will test pretty much anything over about 1%.
The company claims the spectrometer wavelength isn't set up to test for cannabinoids, but I have read about how some folks have used it, though there isn't much available.
You see SCiO charges a small fortune for their development license ($800), which is totally stupid because the entire platform of their tester relies on third party apps and so SCiO is penalizing those who want to showcase the potential of the product.
It's bad business logic, because no one is going to spend $300 to buy the damn thing if all they can do with it is test the brix value of tomatoes or do simple manual programs that can tell the difference between obviously different objects.
Either that or it is some dick move to keep the product as some "elite commodity", which is great way to go out of business.

There are a few open source spectrometer projects, but I haven't been able to take the time to find one that is decent.
One day I would like to build one of these, if anything just to play around with it.

The tCheck is better then some of the other testers I have seen which are these overblown briefcase sized versions of the pocket spectrometers and have price tags that are in the (tens of) thousands and even some of those give you a "closest match..."

Anyway, I am sorry to go off on some tangent about the testers, but if there could be a meter that combined the best of the tCheck with the best of the MyDx, then that would be worth $800 or so...

In closing, here's a tester that will set you back almost $24,000 and requires about $100 a month in maintenance costs.
https://alliedscientificpro.com/shop/product/cannabis-thc-cbd-smart-analyzer-luminarytm-beacon-21342
This one at least gives you an actual measurement and not "the closest match."
 
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