Fanleaf's Cannabutter from fresh frozen trim

[Methods]

Just thought I'd drop in and add a little info that maybe might help with this process. (Maybe this has already been covered and I just haven't seen it, if so my apologies). Full disclosure here I'm a chef by profession so this sort of thing is in my wheelhouse.

All the info about freezing and decarbing is more or less on point and I generally follow the same principles here. Where my method differs slightly is that I add a step and steep my butter in a different manner than a slow cooker.

Take your trim (frozen or not, by all means freeze it as this will not affect your medicine whatsoever), generally I use 1.5oz of trim per pound of unsalted butter infused, and blanch it before decarbing and steeping. I started doing this after giving it a little thought as in my industry often times we will blanch vegetables before actually cooking them as it speeds the process up. This is such an easy step and it makes your end product so much better in my opinion. Simply place your trim in boiling water for about three minutes, remove and strain. Your trichomes are not water soluable as will be still visually evident when you remove your trim from the water so don't worry about leeching any of your canna-goodness off into the water. What this does do is eliminates almost all of the odor and chlorophyll resulting in butter that looks and tastes much closer to what you started with; I dunno about you guys but having a brownie or a cookie taste like weed is a turn off.

Dry your blanched trim (this can be done by simply leaving it overnight in an enclosed area or if you're like me and want to get on with things you can use a food dehydrator for this) and then decarb as stated above, I usually do 40 minutes at 240 F.

After decarbing I actually use a water bath method to infuse my butter. Heat up a pot of water to just below boiling. Get yourself a French press (these are pretty cheap, usually about $10 or so) and throw a pound of butter into it and gently place it into your water bath. After your butter melts cram all your trim into the French press and depress the plunger down till all your trim is soaked. Let this steep for three hours (you'll have to periodically add water, keep your water level the same as the butter in your French press). Voila, your butter is ready and not Hulk green and more importantly will not have any cannabis flavor while retaining all the potency. Your yield will be around 12oz of usable butter after you strain your butter via the French press; this is mostly milk solids that you won't want in your butter anyway. Hope this helps!

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Is there any way you would do a step by step instructional? Ive had a few edibles and the taste is usually a turn off. I have a grow im working on and wanted to do something with all the sugarleaf i collect. Thanks

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[beornn]

Is there any way you would do a step by step instructional? Ive had a few edibles and the taste is usually a turn off. I have a grow im working on and wanted to do something with all the sugarleaf i collect. Thanks

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As it happens I just harvested a few days ago and have a few bags of trim in my freezer, just have to carve some time out to get started on it. I'll try to do a tutorial when I do, probably in the next few days.


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[hawtway]

Hey Beornn,
Great instructions on the cannabutter. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of your upcoming tutorial. Will dry trim work as well as fresh/frozen?
Happy Growing,

 

[DoctorGonzo]

re blanching: thc isn't water soluble, but it is to a degree heat soluble, and blanching at 212°f will effect potency.

Wet trim is best all around, I've found. But dry is usable.

 

[beornn]

re blanching: thc isn't water soluble, but it is to a degree heat soluble, and blanching at 212°f will effect potency.

Wet trim is best all around, I've found. But dry is usable.

It's only blanched for a few minutes, and in my experience has had zero negative impact on the final overall effects relative to when I've done batches of butter without blanching. I just really dislike the taste of cannabis in my edibles so I much prefer this method, so there's no going back to the old way for me .



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[beornn]

Hey Beornn,
Great instructions on the cannabutter. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of your upcoming tutorial. Will dry trim work as well as fresh/frozen?
Happy Growing,

I'm cooking up a few batches as we speak, just need to take pics and document for you guys!


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[beornn]

As promised I've posted a tutorial with my method, link is in my signature. Hope this helps!

 

[415friendly]

I just spent the evening trying out your method. I used 3/4 oz of fluffy popcorn bud and 1oz of trim and 1 lb of butter/6 cups of water in a pot on a gas stove with a simmer mode (no slow cooker). Simmered on low heat (burner was off at least half the time) for about 3 hours.

Squeezed out the cheesecloth by hand because it was too full to tie and use a tick. Licked the melted butter off my hands, and now, about a half hour later, I'm so stoned I can barely see straight.

 

[Why Doe]

Gonna revive and old thread sorry! I have a few questions. Why do you have to freeze the trim? Can you make this right after harvest or do you have to dry the leaves first? What does decarbing do and why do you have to do it? From what I've seen you don't have to do that to bud.

 

[beornn]

Gonna revive and old thread sorry! I have a few questions. Why do you have to freeze the trim? Can you make this right after harvest or do you have to dry the leaves first? What does decarbing do and why do you have to do it? From what I've seen you don't have to do that to bud.

I freeze my trim because I usually make butter at a later date than when I'm harvesting, I was just showing that freezing had no negative effects on the final product. You can absolutely make butter right after you harvest.

You decarb your trim to activate the various cannabinols (THC, CBD, etc) because it must get to a temp of 240° F in order for this to happen; your butter in a water bath will not get this hot since we're cooking at around 190° F. In fact I've been in a hurry before and skipped the decarbing stage only to find out my cookies were way less potent than usual so it's worth it in my opinion to do this, but as always your mileage may vary.

 

[Why Doe]

I freeze my trim because I usually make butter at a later date than when I'm harvesting, I was just showing that freezing had no negative effects on the final product. You can absolutely make butter right after you harvest.

You decarb your trim to activate the various cannabinols (THC, CBD, etc) because it must get to a temp of 240° F in order for this to happen; your butter in a water bath will not get this hot since we're cooking at around 190° F. In fact I've been in a hurry before and skipped the decarbing stage only to find out my cookies were way less potent than usual so it's worth it in my opinion to do this, but as always your mileage may vary.

Thanks for that information! Do you have to dry your trim first or does it not matter?

 

[beornn]

Thanks for that information! Do you have to dry your trim first or does it not matter?

It makes for a better final product if you do, because you'll end up with water that you'll have to scrape off of your butter if you choose not to dry. I have a good dehydrator that I use, really speeds up the process. But you can use your oven as well, just turn it on very low (>200°F) and dry it on a sheet tray.

I have a post on here where I went step by step on the method I use, hope this helps!

Wet trim/blanching cannabutter method

Wet trim/blanching cannabutter method

 

[Scottsquatch]

Has anyone out there made butter from this thread yet? If so I would love to hear about it.
I know the first time I made it and ate a cookie I waited for an hour and since I didn't feel it yet I ate another.......That my friends was a big no no because the first one hadn't kicked in yet. I got totally wrecked for a day and a half! I though I was on a perma trip. I was glad to come back to earth when it finally gave in.
Since then I have learned depending on what type of cookies I make how many to eat. Oatmeal raisin is 1 cookie. Chocolate chip uses twice the butter so 1/2 to 3/4 of a cookie is good. One Choc chip cookie to 1.5 will tear ya up seriously.

Dude, last year was the first time I had edibles and I made the same mistake as you did. After an hour I had a second brownie. This was sround 10PM that I ate the second brownie. I was tripping balls till about 1PM the next day! I too was quite ready to come back down. That said, I'm still looking forward to making my own cannabutter this summer.

 

[RookieJuana]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to show you my recipe that I make butter with.
I had a hard time finding a recipe for fresh frozen trim so maybe this will help a few others.



For this batch I'm making 2 pounds of butter.

Ingredients; 11.2 ounces of trim, 8 sticks of REAL UNSALTED butter.

11.2 ounces of fresh frozen trim. That seems like a ton but it will dry up much lighter. My trim does not have large fan leafs. Just the smaller ones. Basically when I harvested my plants anything trimmed went in here as well as any small fans that had glands on them.

Now
I covered a few cookie sheets in tin foil and spread the trim out evenly on the 2 cookie sheets.


VERY IMPORTANT!!! I have a gas oven and my first butter attempt failed because my oven temp is not what you set it to. My actual oven temp is almost 40 degrees off of the setting you set it on so I highly suggest you get one of these thermometers.

Now, the oven is for the decarb process which activates the THC for food use. This process is fairly temperature sensitive.

Preheat your oven to an actual temperature of between 225 and 240 degrees.
I say actual because for me to get my oven to 240 degrees I had to set my oven to 290 degrees because my oven thermostat is wrong and so I failed my first attempt. I confirmed it was wrong with my new little thermometer and also double checked with my handheld infrared thermometer.

Now, 11.2 ounces is quite a bit of material so if you don't use as much as I did then your time in the oven may be different than mine but go ahead and place your material in your preheated oven.

I had to decarb for 1 hour and 15 minutes just because of the amount of material. Depending on how much you use yours may be done in 30-45 minutes or up to an hour and 15 minutes like mine.


Once in the oven let it go at first for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes are up open the oven and with some tongs turn the material over. Your trying to mix it up just a bit.

After you have turned the material just shut the oven door and mix up the material every 10 minutes after that until your material is done.

How you know when your material is done is pretty straight forward. You can feel when mixing it up it will be completely dry and somewhat crispy and start to take on a brown color. That's when it's done decarbing.

When I pulled my material out of the oven it went from 11.2 ounces to just under 4 ounces. Here is what my decarbed material looked like.

Next
Get your crock pot out and place your 8 sticks (2lbs) butter in the crock pot along with 5 cups of water. You can see the water in my picture.

Turn the crockpot on low to get the butter melted and put the lid on.

It takes quite a while for it to heat up but after quite a while my crock pot runs at about 180-190 degrees on low.

Now add your decarbed material into the butter. It should look like this.

Stir it around using a wooden spoon or something. Get it all wet and if you need more water to make it easier go ahead, it won't hurt a thing.

Let this simmer on low with the lid on for 2.5-3 hours stirring every 15-30 minutes. After 2.5 hours it should look about like this.

At this point your butter needs to be strained and cleaned further if you wish. I use a bowl with a metal strainer and 3 layers of cheesecloth. I had to do to cheesecloth's full because of the amount of material I used.

I forgot to take a picture of the cheesecloth but I lay them 3 layers thick in the strainer above and load the material into the cheesecloth. Once it's loaded I gently wrap up the cloth and while still pretty hot I wring the cheesecloth out by squeezing and twisting as tight as I can to get all of the butter out and into the big bowl. When the cheesecloth is wrung out as good as I can get it I take the bundle over to the sink and under the faucet let it soak as much water up as it can so I can squeeze it again over the strainer and get more butter out of it.
When your done your cheesecloths should look like this..

And your butter and water should look like this...

Now put the lid on your butter/water mix and place it in the refrigerator.
After a while (several hours)your butter will come to the top and get hard and the dirty water will be underneath the butter. At that point you can just break up the butter from the top and call it done.

If you want you can add one more process to make your butter better if you want to take out some of the stronger taste. This will NOT affect how strong your butters THC content is.

Take your hardened butter only and place it in a small pan on the stove. Add a cup or 2 of new fresh water and put on very low heat. Just stir around until the butter has remelted and place it back in the refrigerator. Once it re-hardens this time you will notice the dirty water under your butter will be much cleaner than it was the first time.

I just finished a batch tonight so I will report back with what strength it came out to in my cookies I'm getting ready to bake right now.

I hope this helps some of you! I really do.

Oh my goodness I cannot believe that I found this! Gracious I am so excited! I am doing this! Thank you so much! I'm stealing it!

 

[oopssteptinit]

Ka-ding, thanks fanleaf, this is my second go-around using your recipe, little adjustments here and there cause of issues with oven...... thank you!