Decarboxylation 101
Decarboxylation 101
My oven temps are marked and set now making shatter set it and forget it. But in the course of discovering how sensitive the oven is, I over heated a bunch of material. It is what is called sap by some dispensaries, but no one wants to touch it. So I looked into other uses, and may have hit a home run!
Anyone who consumes cannabis in any form must subject the material to heat, in order to remove the carbolic acid attached to the beneficial compounds. Whether you burn it in a joint, a bowl, or vaporize it, you are decarboxylating the material. If you just ate raw cannabis you would have to ingest quite a bit to notice any effects.
Decarboxylation starts to occur at 105 degrees, and peaks at 289. At 290 and above you start to convert it all into CBN which is garbage.
I reliably get shatter at 85 degrees with most terpenoids intact. Wax at 105, etc...
I did two tests to verify decarboxylation. In the first test I took an equal amount of sap and MCT oils, and heated it in a double boiler. I kept the temps between 240 and 280 for 90 minutes. While my CBN number is a little high, I now know exactly mg per gram for dilution rates. This test represents roughly .4 grams of starting material.
In the next test, which may be how I decarb all of it, I just put it in my vacuum oven at 200 degrees for 2 hours. The advantage of just placing it in the oven is that I now am not limited with what I can mix it with. I can do either alcohol, glycerin, or oil based infusions/tinctures.
Now for the home run part! I spent an hour with a local dispensary owner and her primary buyer. They requested two strength vials. A 30 ml vial with 300 mg, and a 50 ml vial with 700 mg.
Almost all edibles have stated mg dosages, and I was able to calculate price per mg for the entire menu.
Edibles are on the low end at about .10 cents a mg, with capsules and tinctures reaching .30 cents a mg! I anticipate the 300 mg vials retailing for $60-75 with 15 doses, and the 700 mg fetching as much as $175!
For the math challenged; that places the value of "over heated" oil as high as 15 times the value for shatter!
In a small jelly jar I have 80g of sap mixed with the MCT oil. That should be 60,000+ mg of active ingredient. Even at .20 cents per mg, that is over 10k for material I would have been lucky to get 2k...
Decarboxylation 101
My oven temps are marked and set now making shatter set it and forget it. But in the course of discovering how sensitive the oven is, I over heated a bunch of material. It is what is called sap by some dispensaries, but no one wants to touch it. So I looked into other uses, and may have hit a home run!
Anyone who consumes cannabis in any form must subject the material to heat, in order to remove the carbolic acid attached to the beneficial compounds. Whether you burn it in a joint, a bowl, or vaporize it, you are decarboxylating the material. If you just ate raw cannabis you would have to ingest quite a bit to notice any effects.
Decarboxylation starts to occur at 105 degrees, and peaks at 289. At 290 and above you start to convert it all into CBN which is garbage.
I reliably get shatter at 85 degrees with most terpenoids intact. Wax at 105, etc...
I did two tests to verify decarboxylation. In the first test I took an equal amount of sap and MCT oils, and heated it in a double boiler. I kept the temps between 240 and 280 for 90 minutes. While my CBN number is a little high, I now know exactly mg per gram for dilution rates. This test represents roughly .4 grams of starting material.
In the next test, which may be how I decarb all of it, I just put it in my vacuum oven at 200 degrees for 2 hours. The advantage of just placing it in the oven is that I now am not limited with what I can mix it with. I can do either alcohol, glycerin, or oil based infusions/tinctures.
Now for the home run part! I spent an hour with a local dispensary owner and her primary buyer. They requested two strength vials. A 30 ml vial with 300 mg, and a 50 ml vial with 700 mg.
Almost all edibles have stated mg dosages, and I was able to calculate price per mg for the entire menu.
Edibles are on the low end at about .10 cents a mg, with capsules and tinctures reaching .30 cents a mg! I anticipate the 300 mg vials retailing for $60-75 with 15 doses, and the 700 mg fetching as much as $175!
For the math challenged; that places the value of "over heated" oil as high as 15 times the value for shatter!
In a small jelly jar I have 80g of sap mixed with the MCT oil. That should be 60,000+ mg of active ingredient. Even at .20 cents per mg, that is over 10k for material I would have been lucky to get 2k...