Decarboxylating some cannabis leaves for tea

in #cannabis5 years ago

Hello, and welcome to my page!

A couple of months ago, I picked a bunch of the big leaves off my Cannatonic plant to try to encourage more side branch growth. I didn't want to just throw them away, that seemed like a waste of plant material. I decided to dry them and try using them for tea. This is the post I wrote about that.
https://steemit.com/cannabis/@canna-amber/cannabis-leaf-tea-experiment

After some further reading, I found out that in order to get the full benefit of the CBD compounds in the leaves, you need to process the leaves with a certain amount of heat to make the CBD compounds available to the body. This also is necessary for the THC compounds if you have cannabis that has a lot of THC in it and you want that to be available in tea. The heat process is called decarboxylation. This heat process neutralizes the acid molecule that is attached to the CBD and THC compounds to make it bio-available.
The tricky part is to not boil off the terpines that are also in the leaves. Some of the terpines will start to boil off at about 235 degrees or so, so you want to keep the heat under that. However, you need at least 220 degrees. The trick is to get the oven set at about 225 degrees so you have enough heat, but not too much.
Then you spread a thin layer of the cannabis material on baking paper on a baking pan, or you can use a glass baking pan. Put the pan in the oven for at least a minimum of 30 minutes. It takes a while for the heat to have it's effect on the compounds in the cannabis material. 40 to 50 minutes is better, but if you leave it in too long, the terpines start to degrade, and may produce an unpleasant taste when you use it.

This is the jar of dried cannabis leaves that I worked with.
DSCN1748.JPG

I did the decarboxylation process out in the greenhouse in the oven of the camper stove that I have there for my canning. This is what I ended up with after the process was done. I had to do 5 pan fulls to get all of it done. It was much drier and a bit less bulky when it was finished. In case you're curious, I keep the bong out in the greenhouse. :-)
DSCN1974.JPG

I took video of the process that I used to decarboxylate the cannabis. Hopefully I explained the process decently in the video. This is the youtube link for the video. This video is unlisted on my youtube channel, so you can only watch it through this link.

Thanks for stopping by my page to check out this post!

Adobe_Post_20190801_160304_1.gif
canna curate banner.jpg
banner palnet.png
banner2.png

Sort:  

got a friend who I will tell about this, glad you had oven temperature sorted because i would have burnt it probably :)

I was surprised at how well that little propane fired oven held it's temperature. I didn't expect it to be that good.

Best method I found for me is to use my espresso machine and pack it full of fresh flowers. Gets it to boiling and decarb levels but probably doesn't convert it all. I run it at least twice through and that usually seems to do pretty well. Tastes incredible as well!

That's actually a pretty good idea!

Oh how I wish I could have some tea... My poor body so achy. They charge so much for it and I'm not allowed to grow unless I move 25 miles away from a dispensary and It is hard to do. Kids, school, doctor appointments... Just cannot and they know it. I bet it is fantastic! Much luv Amber

CBD products really are more expensive than they should be.

Oh hell yea they are. Nott fair really.

Congratulations @canna-amber! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You received more than 1000 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 2000 upvotes.

You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.21
TRX 0.25
JST 0.038
BTC 97111.20
ETH 3382.29
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.20