Lecithin in coconut oil - clumpy???

[HighonPottery]

Looking for advice on this -

First time making a larger coconut oil batch with dry lecithin.

Took 1/2 jar coconut oil (around 1-3/4c) and added 119g decarbed trim, and around 1qt water. Crock pot low for 6hrs, 4hs, 2hrs, with full cool and freeze in between. Filtered out, pressed, cooled to separate oil, then did 2 washes to remove more chlorophyll. At the very end I heated up my 1-3/4c with 4 Tbsp lecithin granules (smashed into powder) to dissolve. There was sediment, so I filtered it through fine metal coffee filter and jarred it up in 2, 1/2pint canning jars.

The issue - this morning looking at my jars, the oil is not completely solid like I thought it would be, or like it was after fridge, or even plain coconut oil at room temp. There is visible "beads/pearls" in the oil, almost like swelled lecithin granules, and the top is somewhat runny like honey, it's weird.

Going to try reheat and see if it goes away.
Also going to do another batch today with remaining half of coconut oil jar. Perhaps with not so much trim and add the lecithin in earlier might keep this from happening?

Summary - oil was beautiful before lecithin, now looks like shit. Probably still potent as shit at 4.25g trim to 1Tbsp coconut oil ratio!!! Maybe I'll save this first attempt for myself instead of as holiday gifts.

 

[CannaBrix]

I use coconut oil with soy lecithin granules. It is not a powder but these weird consistency bead things.

First off I would like to tell you that the "master" of edibles (Bad Kitty) is STRONGLY against cooking the cannabis into the oil WITH water. The water is supposed to be very bad for absorption or bio-availability. Personally I haven't noticed a difference, but I think I believe her.

Now to your question:
After I cook my oil, I try to wash it with water. I melt it back down with fresh water, and put it into the fridge and let it separate. I like to not touch it or move it while it is setting.

When the oil hardens I separate the solid 'puck'. I have noticed that a light, grainy layer sits between what is reminiscent of oil and the water. Is this what you are talking about?

This layer does not remind me of coconut oil, nor water. All the researching I did led me NOWHERE. People talk about that happening with butter, but I think it is the milk solids.

 

[HighonPottery]

No it's not the layer you're talking about. It looks like a jar of fish roe/eggs, lol. Pretty sure it's swelled lecithin that didn't emulsify.

I think this is the issue: strained lecithin particulates as it went into jar - 2nd jar likely got more lecithin as it concentrated in the filter, and as I used a spoon to help it flow through. I just re melted the jars and mixed both parts to equalize concentrate. When hot it was super smooth. Sitting in fridge now, hopefully comes out homogenous.

I haven't read enough on water use during oil making. I've always done it with butter to remove chlorophyll taste. Also I needed more liquid to cover trim than oil volume could provide. I did do two washes.

Was reading up on lecithin granules - seems maybe soaking in water for an hour, then blending might do the trick...or perhaps just longer heat time before straining, since it was only maybe 30 min.

 

[HighonPottery]

Before. After stirring with a stick clumps broke up, so I heated it up. Waiting to see results.
Keep in mind I did filter this oil after lecithin. Put solids (maybe 1/2tsp) into some honey for my tea.

 

[CannaBrix]

Check out this link: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=205263
and this one: http://www.badkatscannapharm.com/#!interesting-reading/c1la3

And if you don't feel like looking through, here is BadKitty answering to Sam Skunkman (who tried to act like he knew more than this girl).

I'm not sure if you read the thread? I do process in oil, until the glandular material becomes a liquid bioavailable (minuscule particulated) oil, within the cooking oil, sparing any effort of processing the hash beyond decarboxylation first... not sure which thread you were reading It is liquefied to the point that it is highly bioavailable, and useful topically.

Before any heat processing, my hash is first sieved through a 100 micron screen and anything larger is smoked, or discarded, I find this suitable enough for cooking.

You should never require 1 - 2 grams of 'THC' (I'm assuming you mean cannabinoid concentrate) per edible to become stoned or medicated, unless something either went very amiss with the process, or you simply require that much when vaping or smoking. I have a high tolerance and all, but several grams of concentrate when smoked or vaped, is more than enough for me!

Dry, before processing, is absolutely required for the best effect.

Any less, and you're wasting precious material, unless you gently heat process in a pure oil source for up to several days. Just as frying a potato dehydrates it, turning it into a chip, you can cause decarboxylation and dry something out much more slowly, in an oil source on a low heat.

What you're doing to cause conversion, is very literally, drying out the cannabinoids.

This is called decarbolxylation, a process that simply put removes the carboxyl chain, in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor, converting the cannabinoids to their active form. This can be done more rapidly with a food dehydrator, or with gentle heat in the oven, than it can be done in even a pure oil, but especially an oil mixed with water.
This is why people use clarified butter when cooking with cannabis, it's a little pointless removing the water from your butter, just to put it back in again!

You want as little water as possible, the water methods are incredibly inefficient and outdated, and their only purpose, was for the lazy cook to have an easy way of monitoring temperatures, to prevent the cannabinoids from burning off.

But superior temp control can be achieved easily, by using a better heat source such as the oven, or a double boiler, which utilizes your water between your heat source and oil, rather than by mixing it in.

This would explain why you need to eat an entire few grams just to achieve a strong edible effect, when a dose from a proper oil, which can make people pass out, is only 0.15g! You should never need to eat more than you need to smoke, unless you're processing your herb in a less-than-efficient manner.

Edible cannabis has the potential to be much stronger when eaten, than it is when smoked, but only if properly processed. This is why there is so much dosage discrepancy, you have people who make the weaker, pale green water-butters, who assume you need to eat three and four times what you'd normally smoke, to achieve the same effect... and this is true, but only with improperly, or under-processed edible cannabis.

Here is a post I shared from another forum, helping a member who had made one of the weaker pale-green butters, explaining the function behind the very outdated and old fashioned water methods:

"Once you've learned the basics on how to process your canna correctly, one brownie made from batch which used an entire plants trimmings will knock you out, in less than an hour after eating it!
It's a good start and I always encourage people to experiment, but for now, there are a lot of issues here.

Here's where you could stand to improve your methods the most: Drying your material.

Not only is this important so you can better judge your dose/quantity used, but it is crucial in order to cause cannabinoid conversion, without heat-processing in pure oil for 24 hours. Converting the cannabibnoids to their active/delta form is required, in order to achieve the most of your potency.
Under normal circumstances, we convert the contents of our herb, by drying it out with a lighter (combustion) when smoking, or a vaporizer. In their unaltered state, however, those cannabinoids are virtually impotent even if extracted from the plant matter and eaten alone, in quantity.

Only very minimal, trace amounts of glandular material will be activated when cooking wet plant matter, especially for only 3 hours. That is roughly the minimum, when using well-decarbed material.

Right now, without decarbing and especially without even drying, (which is all decarbing and cannabinoid conversion amounts to, excessive drying, removing the carboxyl chain in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor), when you skip those steps, by the end of the process you're only seeing anywhere from 1/3, to as little as 1/5 of the effectiveness in your material. And the rest? It's wasted.. gone.

It's not still in the plant matter, although there is always a bit of active and occasionally some unactivated potency left after straining, when processed properly; it's in your 'oil', but unable to be digested, without further processing.

For people who need to make the most of their meds, it's crucial they avoid such brief processing methods. Having material which is at least smoking-dry to start with is good, but even if the material is 'dry' you need to fully decarb the glandular material which takes only 20 minutes in the oven, reducing the oil process to roughly the time you've already used. But if you skip out on decarbing, conversion in warm oil takes place only after roughly 15-24 hours.

Any less, and you're just eating essentially raw glandular material, which is impossible for your body to fully break down and put to use, in the amount of time it has to do so.. think about how certain vegetables appear 'untouched' when they come out the other end, and they are much more easily digestible, than glandular material.

Before adding it to your oil, you'll also want to grind your material to a near-powder. This releases the brittle glandular material trapped inside, creating less work for your oil, and less waste left behind in the plant matter.

Adding water, to plant matter which you're attempting to dry out in oil, is also not going to help matters.

Adding water is an old-fashioned/outdated technique, used simply to prevent your oil temps from rising too high. Many of us old timers, used to waste a good portion of our stash by adding so much water to our canna oil, it makes the process take ages to finish, if it ever does completely, without damaging or destroying some of the earliest cannabinoids to be converted and broken down.

What you need to do instead, especially if you don't want to pre-decarb, is use pure oil or clarified butter (also called 'ghee'). Clarified butter is normal butter, which has been separated from the water it once contained. It's important you don't have any water in your mix to slow down the process, it's just going to require you to heat the canna for longer and longer before it's finished, and that's not what we want.

Instead of adding water to your oil:

You can take two cooking pots, one slightly smaller than the other, put an inch or three of water inside the larger pot and rest the smaller one in that. And suddenly, you have a double boiler! And this is what you're trying to simulate, by adding the water directly to your herb to prevent the temps from rising too high, however it is much more reliable and effective, when the water is kept between your oil and the heat source, rather than blended in with the oil View Image

Much of that 'dirty water', happens to be comprised of your -glands-. Based on the same principal as making ice hash, while your oil floats on water, the glands sink and fall below. Knowing how fresh the material was, that's a ton of hash that never had a chance to be converted, or broken down. Using water also encourages much more chlorophyll (unpleasant taste) to leach out into both the water, and the oil itself. This is why it is no longer recommended to use water, directly in with your oil. Evaporation and vaporization is a bad sign when making canna oil, and if you add liquid and there's liquid left behind that needs separating later on, it's a pain.

While we're on the topic of water vapor, steam and odor, you shouldn't need to keep windows or vents open. If you're releasing that much vapor, and enough vapor that you feel effected from it, then you're drastically overdoing the process and wasting a ton of your canna; besides causing damage to your remaining cannabinoids, you're losing the earliest, most readily available (considered to be the 'best') potency to the atmosphere, rather than containing it in your oil. What you need to do is keep your temps low enough, that your seal (which you should make from foil, if your lid isn't 100% snug, and they usually aren't) never bursts... a problem you'll have when using water as well.
It is an odorless process when done right, but a small amount of odor if you can't keep it sealed isn't going to hurt anyone.. unless security is an issue, in which case, just seal-well.

All these seemingly-unimportant little hints, and steps, are responsible for all the dosage discrepancies we see today, with somefolks saying you need three times as much herb when eaten, which simply isn't the case.. unless you're eating under-processed oil/canna. It's a much more efficient method of consuming your canna than smoking, somewhere near vaporization in terms of efficiency, but with a more powerful result.



I hope this helps, I know you were looking for an easy method, and using the correct methods happens to be easier; no water to add or separate later on, no odors to worry about. You're making progress though, and that's only a good thing View Image "



If you can't tell, I've been specializing in edibles for the medical community, for more than a few years.
Cannabis has been my life's work. I've traveled the globe for years, specifically for the canna community.




I also have a severe digestive disorder, which prevents me from absorbing everything from nutrition in food, to pharmaceutical medications, to edible cannabis, as easily as most people. Many dispensary edibles, made the 'pale green' butter way, do very little for me.

In order for edible cannabis or hash to work well for me, and for others with digestive difficulties, and in order for it to take a smaller, more practical amount of cannabis to achieve the desired medicinal effect, specific, but very simple steps need to be followed in order for the liquefied glandular material in the resulting oil, to be as systemically bioavailable as possible.


And the same process that makes my medicine work for me, can even further extend the use and efficiency of meds, for people with a closer to 'normal' digestion, who can use far less canna to achieve the same, or better effects.


Hope this helps

 

[HighonPottery]

Thanks. Yeah I've read all of her posts before, she definitely knows a lot.

Just checked my oil - all good now! It's a consistent emulsion now. Gonna make a 2nd batch now!

 

[m314]

Liquid lethicin tends to mix better than the granules.

 

[HellsBells33]

Definitely try it without the water. It's not in the recipies that I've seen and I know it doesn't mix well with the oil. Good pictures to show exactly what you are talking about.