Better Bud Butter

[Medical Marijuana]

We’ve received numerous inquiries about just how one goes about making butter for all of these recipes. Well, folks have been making butter from cannabis for as long as I can remember which unfortunately is quite long. In the 60’s butter was not widely used as cannabis was in short supply and many folks smoked the leaves as well as any flowers (bud) they might acquire.

Even before the widespread use of medical cannabis in the 80’s and 90’s, increasing numbers of folks who had access to significant quantities of leaf, began to use basic recipes to make cooking products including butter and oil. All of these basic recipes involved slow and low cooking of dairy butter (or oil) and chopped leaf (in roughly equal proportions) to produce a deep green butter. This butter could be very potent but tastes pretty terrible. The problem is that butter made from the whole leaf will include both the chlorophyll and terpenes (as in turpentine) from the plant.

The use of Cannabis for medical purposes has spurred innovation and variety in Cannabis products. Many patients cannot or will not smoke. Of course there are vaporizers and tincture (the subject of a future recipe) but butter is the easiest to cook with and food products are not only well tolerated but can be very tasty and add much needed nutrition. The better the butter the greater the application is in recipes ranging from baked goods to soups to stews, to a wide variety of sauces.

This author relies on the "experts" for the following butter recipes. There are a few basic principles to good butter:

1. Use very low heat as to not lower the potency or alter the biochemical characteristics of the Cannabis.
2. Use high quality sweet unsalted dairy butter.
3. Use a roughly 50/50 ratio (by weight) of plant product and dairy butter. With potent strains or flowers instead of trim the ratio can be easily changed to 10/1 (butter to plant). The resulting butter will have lighter color and better taste.

Bud Butter and Trim Butter: Manicure and dry flowers and/or bud trimmings. Grind to a powder with an electric coffee grinder. Melt the unsalted dairy butter first in a crock pot set on low. Gradually add the trim or flower powder with constant stirring. Cook in crock pot covered on the lowest setting with frequent stirring for two to four hours. Before the dark green butter cools, pour through a cheese cloth and squeeze into plastic tubs. Once the butter cools you can cover the tubs and place them in the refrigerator to finish cooling.

Potency: Potency of butter can vary tremendously depending upon the strain and which portions of the plant are used. Adding four to six ounces of powdered bud trim to two pounds of dairy butter will produce extremely powerful butter. Adding 2-4 tablespoons of such butter to a recipe that serves 10 means that each portion is receiving approximately 1-3 grams of Cannabis. Cookies and brownies made with this butter can be even stronger. Most of the good cookie recipes call for as much as 16 tablespoons of butter to three dozen cookies. These cookies are strong. Although patient dose requirements for orally delivered Cannabis are 4-10X higher than when smoked, one can see a portion can be quite potent. Unlike smoked Cannabis, the effects of the butter will appear more slowly and have much longer duration.

Storage: Butter can be kept in the freezer in airtight containers. Butter kept in this fashion can last many months. One should frequently inspect the butter to insure mold has not spoiled it. If mold has developed or the butter has been exposed and become rancid then it is best to toss it. When in doubt, throw it out.

[Boss]

Thanks for this man. I have watched videos on it and stuff, but reading it helps tremendously!

[signman2007]

AAMC: Better Bud Butter

There ya go.....


Edit: Crap I first realized how old this thread was and then realized after I started reading the article that I posted that it was the same exact one ***** posted....never mind I stoned!!!!

[Medical Marijuana]

Damn stoners lol

[4twenty4all]

Glad you brought this near the top of the list, I've been looking for a good butter recipe since the first time that I made them I know it was wrong. I followed a recipe that instructed to use 8 cups of water, 1 lb of butter, and about 1 - 2 oz of trim. It said to simmer for 6 hours then drain water and squeeze the green floaters and that was the butter. I never felt any effects and think that I may have poured the THC out with the water maybe.

So, thanks for this easy to follow recipe! Even though this is an old thread ;-)

[Sprinklez00]

You guys have been to the site already when talking about "better bud butter" but the recipes look so yummy has anyone tried to make some?

AAMC: Cooking with Cannabis

[Scooby]

Does anybody know the optimal temperature for cooking the bud with the butter in order to maximize the THC activation?

I read a lot of recipes - some saying cook it on low heat, others saying to cook with butter and water to a boil and then "simmer" for a while: What cooking temperature or range of temperatures work the best?

[4twenty4all]

Can you use the fan leaves for butter or is it better to throw them away? I used mostly fan leaves and stems and didn't feel any effect from the first time I made butter.

[Medical Marijuana]

Fan leaves usually don't have trichomes to harvest, so I don't use them.

[4twenty4all]

Thanks *****, that's where my first batch went wrong. It was the fan leaves and not the recipe I used.

[HHGreenHand]

pretty much hit the nail on the head there, *****. +REPS

[GoldChico]

so with a one ounce bag of some regular buds, lets say i used this butter recipe for that, how strong would a batch of brownies be, would that one ounce worth of butter be enough for the recipe???

[Stix]

I'm a bit confused. Last time I made cannabutter I used hash's recipe. It called for 1 OZ of bud to 1 LB of butter. It also required me to add water when cooking the butter. This recipe only says to use butter and bud at a 50/50 ratio. So if I use 1 stick of butter which is 4 OZs I would have to use 4 OZs of trim? That seems like alot.

EDIT. I just realized this recipe only calls for a 10/1 ratio when using high quality bud. I have high quality trim however. I think I'll use 4 OZs of ground up trim to 2 sticks of butter (1/2 lb butter) and see how that turns out. I would imagine it will be some pretty potent butter. I'm still unsure about not using any water when cooking the butter.

[Stix]

Don't mean to hijack the thread but I figured I'd do a "cookie report".

I used 3.8 OZ's of Oasis Trim from 2 seperate grows. I grounded up all the trim using a small coffee grinder I got from the food store. I heated up 2 sticks of butter in the crockpot and quickly realized I needed ALOT more butter. 2 sticks barely covered the bottom of the crockpot besides the fact that 3.8 ounces of finely grinded up trim would only turn that amount of butter into paste. So I added 3 more sticks. So now I have 5 sticks of butter to my 3.8 ounces of grinded up trim. I kept the crockpot on high for an hour stirring every 10 minutes. The next 3 hours I kept it on low stirring every 10 minutes. After evaporation I was left with a little over 2 sticks of butter when I was done. I followed the cookie instructions which usually is 1 stick of butter to 1 batch of cookies. These cookies however must of been a little larger then recommended because the directions say it will make 36 cookies I only ended up with 18. Not to worry though because these cookies were the most potent cookies I have every had. Without thinking, I decided to go ahead and eat a whole cookie. Very bad mistake. I was so fucked up. It was not pleasent at all. I was sick to my stomach and the room was basically spinning for about 3 hours until I passed out. This was definately a narcotic high with extreme naseau when standing up. I even swore I wouldn't touch another cookie again. That didn't last long though. Next day I decided to eat just 1/2 a cookie. MUCH better. I was very stoned but it was nice. No sick feelings at all. The next day I tried just a 1/4. I got high but not quite stoned. 1/4 cookie works well when trying to do things while high.

So here's what I got with 3.8 ounces of grinded up trim.
2 batches of cookies. 18 cookies in each batch. But it only takes 1/2 a cookie to get stoned. so thats 36 cookies each batch. which is basically 72 cookies. Not bad at all.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the coolest part. These chocolate chip cookies came out green. Very green at that. I've maded cookies before but they never came out green. The fact that I chopped all the trim up to dust with the coffee grinder must have something to do with it.

[sonnyc47]

Originally Posted by 4twenty4all

Glad you brought this near the top of the list, I've been looking for a good butter recipe since the first time that I made them I know it was wrong. I followed a recipe that instructed to use 8 cups of water, 1 lb of butter, and about 1 - 2 oz of trim. It said to simmer for 6 hours then drain water and squeeze the green floaters and that was the butter. I never felt any effects and think that I may have poured the THC out with the water maybe.

So, thanks for this easy to follow recipe! Even though this is an old thread ;-)

hey thc THC is not water-soluble, so the cannabis must be steeped in a fatty substance such as melted butter, oil, cream, or whole milk.
so ya didnt lose a thing