Behind The Science

Hey guys!
I'd like to make a thread where i could show you guys what i'm up to most days, like the breeding that i love to do most and the challenges I come upon doing it. Also Ill post up all my odds and ends like test grows, flower pics, tips and tricks i've learned along the way, cloning, organics and just the random seed pops i do to give you a "behind the scenes" look at the laboratory and the grow life of Mystic Funk.

If anyone out there is running any of my gear, feel free to post it up here and if your not and you just want to follow along or chat about any of the strains or random shit going on in this thread, hit me up!





first up is my Double Dubb line that i'm working... This is a cross of Sour double and Blue power with a little Mystic twist. The reason i made this cross was to make a regular version Sour Double line that i could preserve and to hopefully add to this great cut.
i've done a few test runs with the offspring and i'm liking what i see so far.
There are many subtle differences in the line due to it being such a young line and some further selections are needed to weed out and undesirable traits, mostly the lower yielding plants and ones that tend to stretch too much for my liking but other than that, most of the plants have a very strong skunky/fuel aroma, good resin production and structure.


i just finished up my latest test run of these and the buds have had some time to cure a bit for the smoke test. this will be the final determining factor of what plants will be bred onward.
like i said there are many phenotypes in this line and i'll mostly talk about the ones that stood out to me because that's all i care about and the rest will be chucked aside. i'm only looking for the most outstanding plants to breed with.

out of the lot of seeds popped this run, #12, #18 and #25 were the ones that stood out to me the most and i'll go through each one and give a little report on what each one is like.


#25 was the first to be tested because i liked the structure and it had more of a skunky/chem aroma than the others. i'm a sucker for skunky weed and i had to test this one first.
the flavor on #25 was thick, fuely and smooth, it could still be tasted long after the hit was gone. the high was pleasant and relaxing, it gave me that feeling behind the eyes like some pressure valve was released and i would just melt into the couch. this is a nice one for sleep.

Double Dubb #25



#18 was tested next because i needed to keep some kind of order to the testing so i wouldn't forget which one did what seeing that i started with #25.
this one was one of the frostiest phenos out of the lot and it also has a very strong odor but it's more like a rotten fuel smell. this is not be confused with a stale fuel smell, more like a body rotting and someone pour diesel on it but forgot their matches. it's loud!
the high on this pheno was much more potent than #25 and it would creep up on you after a few minutes. it gave me a full body buzz that lasted a long time. it was also hard to build a tolerance to it. pretty much it got me blasted every time.

Double Dubb #18



#12 this pheno was also one of the frostiest out of the bunch and it has more of a traditional Chem or Sour Diesel aroma with some skunky undertones.
The high on this one is in it's own league compared to the others i've tested in regards to potency. this one is a two hitter quitter for me. i first smoked it like the others and ended up staring off into spacing trying to remember what i was doing and i couldn't follow what was going on in a TV show i was watching. the simplest tasks seemed so difficult to do, i had to think about it hard as i was doing them in fear of messing it up??? lol! yeah i was very spaced out and my body felt foreign to me as i was drifting off in a daydream.... i tried this one again the next day just to make sure it wasn't the circumstance that left me feeling the way i did and i didn't hit the pipe as hard this time and i got the same blasted spaced-out feeling.
this one is definitely not one i want to smoke in pubic as people walk by and see my face melting off while i'm sitting a park bench. people might think i'm doped up hard drugs or something. LOL!


Double Dubb #12




mind you, each of these tester phenos were fully seeded which will hinder resin production, yield and potency....



peace!
-mystic

DIY THC and CBD testing at home.

DIY THC and CBD testing at home.

I don’t know if most of you guys know about these simple test kits you can make at home, but you can test for THC and CBD cannabinoids at home with some pretty simple lab supplies and chemicals that you can buy on eBay or Amazon for cheap.

These are great tool to have around if you are breeding for a curtain cannabinoids or want to test something you just bought.

These are color indicating tests. You will start out with a somewhat clear liquid and it will change to blue or purple depending on the test. I will talk about this later.

I first found out about these tests when I saw a guy on youtube selling color indicating cbd tests for the home breeder for around $50 for three tests, so I did some research and found out that this was a well known test that was developed decades ago. It’s called a ‘’beam test’’. I also found out there’s another test that’s called ‘’the Duquenois reagent test” and it was developed around 1930 or so. This test is for THC and the government used it for testing the presence of cannabis in general and not for isolating just one cannabinoid. For example: a drug test or cannabis residue, like in a pipe. They found out later that there were other none cannabis compounds that would react to this test and it was not used later. But these tests will be very accurate for us to test the levels of cannabinoids in the bud we are testing because there won’t be any other contaminates. Both of these test kits can be made for pennies each.



Before I get into how the tests are made I’d like to let you know that some of the chemicals used can be very dangerous if not handled properly, so proper safety precautions are needed so as to not get hurt.

Things you will need to protect yourself:

1# Chemical resistant gloves

2# safety glasses

3# have a place nearby to wash in case of a spill or if any chemicals get into eyes. Something as simple as a large bucket of water nearby you can flush eyes or skin off quickly before running to a sink.

4# all of the chemicals used in this experiment can be washed off or neutralized with water just in case you need to in a emergence.

5# do not use anything metal when performing this experiment! A violent reaction will happen!!! No metal tools or containers can be used, only plastic, glass, rubber can be used….

6# if you don’t really know what these chemicals are don’t try and mix any of them other than the ones I say. Lye is very alkaline and hydrochloric acid is very acidic, mixing them would not be good.

7# Use caution when storing these chemicals. Keep them away from people that don’t know how to use them, it goes without saying it, but I’ll say it anyway. Keep them away from children and pets!

8# do these experiments only in a well ventilated room.

Bottom line is, think first and don’t be stupid!



Ok now that that’s out of the way, on to the fun part! I’ll start off with how you make the extract out of the bud you will be testing.

Things you’ll need:

1# A scale. I think we all have one of these lying around. One that can weigh very small amounts like tenths of a gram or one hundredths of a gram.

2# small plastic or glass jars to mix in

3# 1 or 2ml dropper

4# 100% alcohol/ethanol or as close as you can get. 90% rubbing alcohol will not work it has to be higher than that. 95% or higher. You can buy denatured alcohol at the hardware store.

5# An oven. I like to use a cheap toaster oven so as to not make my kitchen oven smell like shit. But do what you want.



The first thing you’re going to do is take about 1 gram of dry bud to be tested and place it in a piece of aluminum foil and fold it over and then fold all the edges closed.

Place the bud and aluminum foil in the oven for 30 minutes on 220f/110c to decarboxylate the sample..... let cool....
(this is to convert THCA and CBDA into THC and CBD)

Take your crispy bud out of the oven and weigh out ½ gram or .5000 on the scale in a small jar or shot glass. Now get your dropper out and put 5 grams of alcohol in the glass with the bud and mix well. Let that sit for at least one half hour then suck the liquid out and put that in another jar or glass without getting any bud material in the glass. That is your extract you will be testing.



The first test will be the Duquenois reagent test. This is for testing THC.

There are many ways to perform this test; this is just my modified version of this test. The original test called for chloroform to be used to stabilize the mixture and separate the organic layer. But chloroform is some nasty shit. This is the stuff the Nazi’s used to kill countless people. It’s very gaseous and is a silent killer when working with it. I also don’t like buying it for obvious reasons. It can be made with bleach and acetone easily if you know what you’re doing.

Things you’ll need:

1# Glass test tubes or shot glass

2# a dropper

3# hydrochloric acid 37% or higher

4# vanillin which is a synthetic vanilla

5# 100% ethenol

6# amber glass bottles with dropper built in if you want to store the reagent for later use.



We will be making the reagent first.

Weigh out 5 grams of vanillin and dissolve that in 100ml of alcohol then put in amber bottle. That is your reagent.

Get a test tube and place three drops of your cannabis extract in the test tube followed by ten drops of reagent. Mix well. Now carefully put 10 drops of hydrochloric acid in the same test tube with your reagent and extract. Mix well and wait for color change. This may take up to thirty minutes to get to its full color.

You should see a deep blue or royal purple to black color for a high THC strain and light blue or purple for a low THC strain. Little to no color change or off color means very little to no THC.

This test is best used when comparing two strains side by side or two phenotypes of the same variety so you can see the difference in color to know which one has more THC. (darker=more THC), (lighter=less THC).

I have found that One turned purple and one turned blue which can make it difficult to compare them so I just looked at how dark the colors were. In cases like this it’s best to have a known variety that you can compare to, but most of time you will get purple as your main color.






The beam test: This test is for CBD.

Things you’ll need:

1# Glass test tubes

2# a dropper

3# 100% alcohol

4# potassium hydroxide (AKA) Lye

Dissolve 5% lye into ethanol which is five grams of lye to 100ml alcohol. Mix well.

Grab a clean test tube and put three drops of extract into the test tube followed by 10 drops your dissolved lye, mix well. You should see a pink to purple color in the presence of CBD. It may take up to thirty minutes to see any color change. Pink is low CBD and purple is higher CBD.

I don’t have any CBD samples at the moment to show you, but you will get the same purple color as the THC test.

You can also play with the concentrations of the mixture or concentrate the extract by striping the ethanol and make the test more sensitive for very low THC and CBD.





i just got done growing some Harlequin and they've been curing for the last few weeks and after smoking a few phenos i noticed it got me very high and i wasn't expecting it to. i thought i'd just get a light buzz and feel sleepy but that was not the case. with the few i smoked, i felt a very powerful high and it lasted a long time, more like a couch lock feeling.

so i thought this would be the perfect line to test. it was advertised as having a 1:1 ratio of up to 12% thc/cbd and if you cut them early you'd increase the CBD% which i did in hopes of getting some nice meds.

i had nine different harlequin plants and i threw in a Supercritical sample just for shits and giggles.

out of the ten total samples i found two that showed a purple color change.

looking at the picture from left to right is one through nine of the phenos of harlequin and the tenth one is super critical.
if you notice there is one more after that, that is a very small amount of 99% pure CBD isolate for a control to make sure the test is picking up on the CBD which that sample turned a dark royal purple. this is the darkest color change you'll see with the CBD test.




so the only ones to show a good amount of CBD were #5 and #8. the others just stayed the yellow-ish orange which is the color they all were before adding the reagent to the vial.



i also thought it would be a good idea to test all of them for THC and those are a little harder to read by looking at the picture and i had to put the flash on just so the different colors would show up because without it, they all look black.

the pic is in the same order as the cbd test from left to right one through nine are harlequin and the last one is supercritical.



i'll start off by saying that they all have a fair amount of THC but #2 and #8 look to have the lowest % of THC #1 and #4 look to have mid levels of THC and #3, #7 and #9 look to have the highest out of the harlequin but it looks like the Supercritcal at the end is going to take the prize for highest THC.
Note: that #5 and #6 turned a green color. i have never seen this before and i'll have to retest these two and see if i get a different result.



here are just some of the harlequin plants i ran.
they all were super frosted and i found many delicious smelling phenos from chocolate to melon to bubblegum.









peace!
-mystic

Nice info on the THC/CBD testing, that could be very handy! And nice looking plants!!

nice Double Dubb line...some frosty ass bitches there...what harlequin seed line did you have and how was their potency and effect? I had mr nice cbd skunk/haze and cbd critical mass. besides them smelling unfavorable for me they didn't give me any useful effect either.

Thank you guys!


@palindrome yes this test dose come in handy at times when you just want to know which ones out of a given lot carry higher THC or CBD or if you want to send some samples out to the lab to get exact percentages, you can save a lot of money and only send the ones out you know have the highest cannabinoids you're after.

Palindrome said:

Nice info on the THC/CBD testing, that could be very handy! And nice looking plants!!

Click to expand...

@guy brush
i'm going to run the Double dubb clones i kept and flower them out seedless to see how they preform like that. i'm sure they'll yield much better and frost out to the max then.

the harlequin is from bc bud depot and it's their BX4 regular line. this is the third time i've run them and always find interesting phenos in the line but i've also noticed a intersex problem with the line each time i run them. i'm working on selecting this trait out of the line each time i pop seeds and cull those bad plants and let the other pollinate each other. i'm hoping this will work out some day so i can make some crosses with them but for now i'm afraid it will contaminate the line its crossed with.
the effect on the harlequin between phenos are polar opposites of each other. some are very high in THC, some are high in CBD and some are a mix.
the ones with higher THC get me blasted for a long time just like any high grade weed and the high is like a mix of indica/sativa or head/body high.
the ones higher in CBD are a very light high but very relaxing of the head and body. i have knee and back pain from work and it really seemed to dull this pain and help me sleep better.
the mixed cannabinoid profile phenos get me high right away like a THC dominate variety but this wares off quickly and the CBD takes over to dull your worries away. in other words, it's like smoking crack and you keep chasing that high...

Guy Brush said:

nice Double Dubb line...some frosty ass bitches there...what harlequin seed line did you have and how was their potency and effect? I had mr nice cbd skunk/haze and cbd critical mass. besides them smelling unfavorable for me they didn't give me any useful effect either.

Click to expand...

peace!
-mystic

Thanks for the insight.

here's another line i'm working, it's called Bubbagum which is a cross of (Pre98 bubba x purple wreck x bubblegum) and yes it has a very distinct and sweet bubblegum flavor and aroma. i'm up to F4 with these now and 99% of the plants including males have this bubblegum smell.
the high is mostly like the bubba kush which is narcotic like and leaves me couch locked and wanting more.
the flowering times are pretty fast with this one, 8 to 9 weeks on light flip. i like this because i can get a quick turn around crop with this one and the flowers are top notch.

here's the F3 seed run and i found a lot of nice bubblegum phenotypes with this one. these were in mid flower, you can see by the fresh green seeds in some of the buds












peace!
-mystic

holy frost. picture look yummy.
you are doing the testing yourself?

is this some sort of online kit you by to test mj

9DRAGONS said:

holy frost. picture look yummy.
you are doing the testing yourself?

is this some sort of online kit you by to test mj

Click to expand...

thanks man! more frost coming soon!
are you talking about the THC/CBD test? if so, this is a home made test and once you buy the chemicals and vials for cheap you can do thousands of tests for pennies each or you can buy this test online for around $50 a test which is a huge ripoff.



peace!
-mystic

M.Funk... in your description of the testing procedure, you say that you take some of you sample and put it in the oven....

Are you taking a dry sample and putting it in the over to decarb it (drop carbon and convert acid)?

Or, are you taking a fresh/wet sample and putting it in the oven to dry it?

Or, both? LOL

Thanks

Ringodoggie said:

M.Funk... in your description of the testing procedure, you say that you take some of you sample and put it in the oven....

Are you taking a dry sample and putting it in the over to decarb it (drop carbon and convert acid)?

Or, are you taking a fresh/wet sample and putting it in the oven to dry it?

Or, both? LOL

Thanks

Click to expand...

hey, sorry i will edit that to make it easier to figure out.
what i meant was, take dried and cured bud or extract as if you were ready to smoke it and place that in the foil then in the oven to de-carb the sample.
if you skip this step, you will get no color change with the test. i found 220F to be the best temp to de-carb but you can play with the temps and time if you like.



peace!
-mystic

Thanks

I am running the tests in this thread and I have been using mostly samples that are NOT decarb'd. Mmmmm? I wonder if I need to decarb on those tests as well.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=349227

Again, thanks

Looking for some user friendly substitutes that are a little easier to find.

Would <30% muriatic acid work? AKA concrete cleaner? Not sure how much under 30% they mean but this is readily available next to the denatured alcohol at the hardware store.

Here's a datasheet on it...

https://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/9b/9b769286-040e-4a42-90bf-5072b27c7990.pdf

Maybe even toilet bowl cleaner?

Again, thanks

Ringodoggie said:

Thanks

I am running the tests in this thread and I have been using mostly samples that are NOT decarb'd. Mmmmm? I wonder if I need to decarb on those tests as well.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=349227

Again, thanks

Click to expand...

Ringodoggie said:

Looking for some user friendly substitutes that are a little easier to find.

Would <30% muriatic acid work? AKA concrete cleaner? Not sure how much under 30% they mean but this is readily available next to the denatured alcohol at the hardware store.

Here's a datasheet on it...

https://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/9b/9b769286-040e-4a42-90bf-5072b27c7990.pdf

Maybe even toilet bowl cleaner?

Again, thanks

Click to expand...

Hey Ringo!

i'm sure the 30% muriatic acid will work fine but you might have to add a few more drops to get things right. i'd try it both ways, one with ten drops and the other with 12 to 14 just to see. i'd stay away from toilet bowl clear, it may have other cleaners or chemicals in it they are not saying and you may get a bad reaction

i'm not sure what the charcoal is for in the other thread but i'm sure there is more than one way to skin a cat. seems like it works though.


what i like about my test is that i make an extract with the sample, then add it to the reagent. this way no chlorophyll will leach into the test and skew the results.
also make sure you use 100% alcohol or denatured alcohol, again because your diluting your mix and chlorophyll will wash into the water that's in 91% alcohol.

from all of my research on making this test, all samples were decarboxylated and i know this has to be done to convert THCA into THC or your test won't change color just like you won't get high from eating raw weed, but maybe it will work without doing it on the CBD test???



peace!
-mystic

Howdy,

just commenting so I don't loose this later and have time to read through it and try it out myself.

Thank you a lot for this, hope it works for me as well!

Mystic Funk said:

thanks man! more frost coming soon!
are you talking about the THC/CBD test? if so, this is a home made test and once you buy the chemicals and vials for cheap you can do thousands of tests for pennies each or you can buy this test online for around $50 a test which is a huge ripoff.



peace!
-mystic

Click to expand...

Holy cow, now way, man thats crazy, can you explain more please do you have a link perhaps?

i not heard of this. am quite interested in learning, plus would be great to be able to test my own stuff, on the cheap.

It not that i want to baffle with bs, more that like you said, you can send your stuff off for testing, then you have to wait. always make more sense to have more control over the process, and also be honest.

thanks for sharing the info, man respect

number 12 dub is so so nice man
that there is shine pure shine

9DRAGONS said:

Holy cow, now way, man thats crazy, can you explain more please do you have a link perhaps?

i not heard of this. am quite interested in learning, plus would be great to be able to test my own stuff, on the cheap.

It not that i want to baffle with bs, more that like you said, you can send your stuff off for testing, then you have to wait. always make more sense to have more control over the process, and also be honest.

thanks for sharing the info, man respect

Click to expand...

all the details on the THC/CBD testing for cannabis are on the second post of this thread but here's the link to make it easy: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=8180934&postcount=2

9DRAGONS said:

number 12 dub is so so nice man
that there is shine pure shine

Click to expand...

thank you, i'm in love with the Double Dubb right now, it's pure fire. i smoked a joint of it the other day and it was like i was smoking a joint of kief laced with diesel... yum! super sticky too, i'm sure if i tried to smoke the whole thing it would have gummed it's self up with resin.
i'll get some more pics up soon of these and some other gear i'm working with.


peace!
-mystic

nice one dude, its a great thread
peace

What role does the vanillin play in this test?

Also, to answer yours.... yes the CBD test works with samples that have not been decarb'd.

And, the carbon speeds of the process. I'm not sure exactly what the extra oxygen does but I ran 2 of the CBD tests as described in this thread side by side except I added a few granules of carbon to one and the only difference was the one with carbon was done in <1/2 hour and the other took several hours to completely darken up.

After sitting overnight, they were both about the same.