Oil and THC

BongoJongo

New Member
This is kind of for the science people out there but is it true that oil(veggie,olive,etc) breaks down the trichs and thc is released that way. Meaning you don't need to heat anything to make weed oil. I saw one of the videos in the video section and it was about cooking. They said oil breaks down trichs and the thc is released. Just wondering if thats true and I have been wasting much time trying to make oil(and lots of weed).
 
THC is fat soluable. Meaning it WILL break down and be absorbed by fats. Any type of fat. Heat IS required to release the THC however, the oil absorbs the THC, it doesn't make it release.
 
Yeah, I believe the oil does just absorb it. Think of brewing a cup of tea. When you put the teabag in the hot water, the antioxidants and flavor of the herbs or tea leaves are absorbed into the water, not released into the abyss. Matter has to have somewhere to go, even if it is liquid. What you have left is a soggy teabag, with the remains of the herbs or leaves, with little to no flavour or antioxidants left because they have been absorbed into the hot water.
Basically when you use hot oil it has the same effect on cannabis. Water doesn't work- marijuana is not water soluble. Heat is also needed. But it's basically the same thing as making tea, the same concept.
 
O ok thats what I originally thought but NDW posted a few cooking videos and one said that the oil just breaks down the trichomes and the thc is then suspended in the oil but I guess not.
 
Ok, THC is "fat soluble," which means that it can be "absorbed" by fat in the same way sugar is absorbed by water when you stir it up.


As for the heating argument, wikipedia's page on Leary Biscuits explains it best (and with actual referances) -
Wikipedia said:
t is also a widespread myth that THC must be heated to "activate" it. However, heating a cannabis food/drink preparation actually makes it more potent. What actually happens is that additional THC is formed from the chemical breakdown of inactive carboxylic acid THC derivatives present in the cannabis. The carboxylic acid derivatives are inactive themselves, but when heated they readily lose their carboxylate group as carbon dioxide, and active THC is formed. In some instances, heating can actually double the active THC content of the original starting plant material [Iversen, 2000].

Aside from these added benefits of heating, when you cook (i.e. heat/mix) pot into a fatty substance you make the mechanism for absorbtion much more efficient. That is, your body abosrbs fatty lipids much more readily (we have evolved around absorbing lipids) than cellulose (fiber), which is what most plant material is made up of (-sorry for the image- but think of corn in shit).

EDIT: So in short, you don't need to activate Delta-9-THC, which is present in raw cannabis with heat. The preception that you do need to comes from the fact that you need to heat carboxylic acid THC derivatives (which are not psychoactive) to make them regular THC.
 
One Three said:
THC is fat soluable. Meaning it WILL break down and be absorbed by fats. Any type of fat. Heat IS required to release the THC however, the oil absorbs the THC, it doesn't make it release.
Nope, sorry, that's not necessarily true. You can make tinctures of almost pure THC from alcohol - (which THC is also soluble in, in addition to fat) - something like 95% pure or more, that requires no heating and you only need to take a few drops to get high.

See my explanation about "heating to activate" above. Well, really it's wikipedia's explanation.
 
I love this website, it has inspired me to learn more about cannabis than I could have ever hoped for.
 
Tinctures are entirely different because the alchohol actually breaks down the plant, why do you think to make them you have to use very very strong liquor. If you put a few buds in cold oil, nothing will happen. Well, you will have wasted good bud, and a bit of oil at that.

I did not say you needed to heat it to "activate" the THC. But you do need to heat it to cause the bud to release that THC. The Tea analogy HappyKid used is a good one, good luck making tea with cold water.

So yes, THC is always active. But to release it INTO the soluble solution, heat is a much needed component.
 
So if you have a plant with like 20% THC and you mix it with cold oil according to wikipedia and if i mix it with hot oil I will get 40% at most? I guess thats why the video says they use good sensimillia
 
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