Sous Vide Cannabutter?

MyCollie

New Member
I'm interested in making Cannabutter via water bath. I'm a cancer survivor and I have other health problems that cause intense neuropathic pain at times. To be honest my experience using cannabis is minimal. I know to be very cautious with edibles though.

The steps are to decarb in a sealed bag (instructions for this can be found on youtube) and then make the butter (butter, cannabis, soy lecithin) in either a canning jar or more likely a sealed bag. From what I understand the method works well but I was curious if anyone else has done this. The result should be highly potent canna butter. Some people use coconut oil instead of the butter and lecithin.

Thanks.
 
I could see this working after the decarb is done. I'm not sure how they got the herb to decarb in the sous vide bag since the temperature would have to be much higher than boiling. But its an interesting method for sure.

Canad420, I beg to differ. I have been decarbing with a sous vide precision cooker (an Anova) for a little while and it works great. You do NOT have to get the temp up to or over boiling to achieve a near perfect decarb. A side bonus to using this method is that there is zero odor in your apartment or house when you decarb this way. There is also zero danger of ruining your weed by over heating it in an oven that gets too hot. Even though your oven thermometer might say the temp is 240 F, it may actually be much hotter and ruin your valuable medicine.

Here is the address for a very informative YouTube video on decarbing with a sous vide cooker. It changed how I decarb forever:

The fellow in the video uses three MM samples. One sample is not decarbed at all, the second is decarbed at 200 F for one hour in a sous vide cooker and the third sample is decarbed at 200 F for one hour and forty minutes in that same cooker. This is done in Oregon and the experimenter in the video sends all three samples to the lab to see to what extent the decarboxylation has occurred. You will see toward the end of the video (it is 6:24 long) that the batch that was decarbed in the sous vide at 200 F for one hour and forty minutes is totally decarbed.

One of the really fun parts of doing this is that you get to see high school chemistry in action. Here's what I mean. The MM is vacuum sealed in a Food Saver bag to prepare it for decarboxylation in the sous vide cooker. That vacuum sealer really does a good job of removing most of the air. The bag is so tightly sealed that it feels hard because of the lack of air inside the sealed bag. As the bag stays under the 200 F water it begins to fill with "air". It gets so puffed up with the "air" pressure that it often starts a stream of bubbles which last through most of the process. What is happening is that the THC-A is giving up oxygen atoms and carbon atoms (hence the name decarboxylation) and they are combining to make CO2, which we call carbon dioxide - a gas. That is why it seems like a science experiment to me. When you take the bag out of the hot water at the end of the cycle, it will slowly shrink back down to its former vacuum sealed size. Amazing.

So I don't want any one to think that you need temps in excess of 212 F to achieve total decarboxylation. You do not. I have tried a lot of different methods and this sous vide method is by far the best. Has any one else out there used this method?
 
You certainly can double bag it to be on the safe side but my experience has been one of zero leaks so far. I use the FoodSaver V2244 Vacuum Sealing System. My weed is in an open zip-lock sandwich baggie inside the FoodSaver bag.

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It uses very heavy duty (and expensive) plastic seal-able bags and they have never given me any leakage problems. Plus, as I explained in my description of the "high school science experiment", there is lot of pressure built up on the inside of the bag due to the formation of the carbon dioxide. Water can't and won't enter against those pressures.

Additionally, it probably wouldn't matter if your weed got wet anyway. If you plan on sticking it right into a Magical Butter Machine or an Easy Butter Maker after decarboxylation there would be no problem. In fact, the Easy Butter Maker instructs you to add water to your butter before it is passed through the weed. Many cannabutter and cannacoconut oil recipes call for including water in with the oil/butter and the weed, only to be removed later after you've completed the extraction process. Personally, I like to keep water out of my weed. But scientifically, it doesn't matter as long as you take it out later. Good luck and have fun. I am!
 
I got a giant commercial vacuum sealer at work. I might try this out next time I make butter. I'd just double bag so nothing would get out lol.

I may be missing something but I tried sealing some nice big buds in our vac sealer a few years back and it is easy to crush your bud. No problem if it does not matter to you.
 
I have done a few more rounds of decarboxylating with the Anova sous vide cooker. First of all I am not sure of the effectiveness of adding lecithin to the recipe. Maybe that's an entirely different discussion but I seem to forget to include it about half the time when I make cannacoconut oil or cannabutter - and I'm not able to tell the difference. Anyway, yesterday I decarbed three bags at once in the sous vide cooker. They did their usual thing of blowing up like a balloon but then I heard an unusual noise. I knew right away that one of the bags had burst from the build-up of internal pressure. I looked into the pot and sure enough one of the bags was deflated. I wasn't sure if I should pull it out or leave it in. I decided to leave it in the pot for the full one hour and forty minutes. Let me also add here that I always have my medicine inside a zip-lock freezer bag inside the vacu-sealed bag so I knew that there was some measure of protection. Long story short - the medicine was a bit damp but other than that it was fairly unscathed. When I checked the other two bags, I found that the medicine inside them was ever so slightly damp as well. It didn't feel wet but if you squeezed it between your fingers, instead of crumbling the way dry weed will crumble, it compressed. Every time I make these kinds of observations I learn a new details of the process which helps to improves the product.

I love my Magical Butter machine. I am actually on my second one now - the MB2e. The good folks at the Magical Butter company do recommend decarboxylation prior to infusion but they describe the oven method which I feel is a bit risky to the quality of the medicine. They also say that you shouldn't pre-grind your medicine before you put it into the machine because they have a built in grinder. This is where I disagree and here is why. Last time I infused cannacoconut oil I found that the weed had not gotten totally chopped up in the MB2e machine during the infusion process. This seemed odd to me because of the heavy duty blender that is built right into the Magical Butter machine. Then I remembered that the medicine I had put in there was slightly, slightly moist from the sous vide decarb. It is now my theory that it didn't get fully ground up because of that softened condition that it was in when it went into the MB2e. So here is what I do now. I let the bags that come out of the sous vide bath cool down. Then I open them up and remove as much twig material as I can and I toss the nuggets into a bowl. The buds dry out enough to work with in just a few minutes. Once I have all the big lumber removed I proceed to grind it up in a Secura Electric Coffee Grinder and Spice Grinder. I use the spice grinder cup and grind all the medicine just before I dump it into the oil in the MB2e. I got this machine from Amazon and it cost $28. It is fabulous. Besides the spice grinder bowl being perfect for preparing the weed for oil/butter infusion, the coffee grinder bowl is perfect for preparing your weed for vaping or smoking. There are awesome herb grinders out there for over $150 but this little Secura Grinder is a steal at $28. I don't grind the crap out if it but I do grind it enough so that there aren't any nuggets left by the time I toss it into the MB2e.

So there are some of my latest observations on the ever changing and fast moving world of medical marijuana. I'll keep experimenting with cooking/infusion methods and seeking out new and fun equipment to play with. And I ask that you do the same. This is a great place to share our observations and get new and improved ideas.
 
It worked. Followed the instructions and used lecithin. 1/4 Death Star & 6oz coconut oil.
:goodjob:

Hey MyCollie - i'm glad to hear that you tried it and it worked out for you. Was it potent enough to do the job for you? I am still trying to figure out how much cannabis to use to make 16 ounces of cannacoconut oil. I have been putting in a full ounce of weed for each 16 ounces of cannacoconut oil but now i am thinking that maybe I could use less weed per 16 ounces. I have been reluctant to try it since I know that my current formulation works well. Once a testing lab opens up near me I will bring in samples and find our scientifically which ratio works best and wastes the least amount of weed. After all, wasting weed is a sin.
 
Way too strong. I guess I'm a light weight but I made the mistake of not waiting long enough... (Even though I said I would wait). A little under 1/2 teaspoon did me in for 12+ hours.
 
Hi there! i'd love if someone could explain me why do you have to do decarboxylation, i've read that you have to break down the THC-A into active THC but aren't you doing this while cooking or mixing your cannabis with your butter or oil? also, this is the first time i see that someone does it at 200F and this sounds logic because every other decarb methods i've seen, do it above the 215 F and i feel like you are burning the cannabis and seems completely useless and dumb.
 
...but aren't you doing this while cooking or mixing your cannabis with your butter or oil? also, this is the first time i see that someone does it at 200F and this sounds logic because every other decarb methods i've seen, do it above the 215 F and i feel like you are burning the cannabis and seems completely useless and dumb.

There is no need to decarb if you are going to use the cannabis in cooking and baking, or for smoking or vaping. All of those activities raise the temperature of the cannabis high enough that decarboxilation occurs during the cooking or smoking or vaping. When you smoke or vape the cannabis, the temp from the flame or vaporizer is high enough to do the decarbing on the spot as you use it. Decarbing is used when the cannabis isn't going to be exposed to high enough temperatures during consumption. The Magical Butter Machine is great but the temperature setting of 160 F for making cannabutter and cannacoconut oil isn't high enough to fully decarb the weed. If you are, for example, making cannabutter or cannacoconut oil to put on toast or vegetables or whatever, it would need to be decarbed first for the best possible results. Please keep experimenting and please keep reporting your result to us here. Thanks!
 
Canad420, I beg to differ. I have been decarbing with a sous vide precision cooker (an Anova) for a little while and it works great. You do NOT have to get the temp up to or over boiling to achieve a near perfect decarb. A side bonus to using this method is that there is zero odor in your apartment or house when you decarb this way. There is also zero danger of ruining your weed by over heating it in an oven that gets too hot. Even though your oven thermometer might say the temp is 240 F, it may actually be much hotter and ruin your valuable medicine.

....

So I don't want any one to think that you need temps in excess of 212 F to achieve total decarboxylation. You do not. I have tried a lot of different methods and this sous vide method is by far the best. Has any one else out there used this method?

Yes, watched same video, since then, have used this method exclusively to decarb the flower and to infuse the butter I use for edibles. The most kick-ass edibles I've ever made. By far. Dude nailed it.
 
That's a great video, especially in that he actually tested his results.

After watching it a couple of years ago, I tried decarbing in just a double boiler (i.e. a jam jar immersed in boiling water in a two quart sauce pan) and it worked fine (though I didn't send it to a lab, it did the job ;)) even without the expensive kitchen gadget.

Now that I have a better oven with good temperature control, I just decarb on an open cookie sheet at about 220 F for 100 minutes. At that low temperature, the volatile components pretty much stay put, so the house doesn't stink. Just FYI.
 
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