You and me both Jones.
Fresh Harvest Oil
There's a lot of excitement starting on the site about creating a fresh-harvest infused olive oil, a method so carefully developed by PsyCro and written up in his thread Olive oil extract update. I've adapted it a bit for my own purposes, but I recommend you read through his instructions. I've cleaned them up a bit in a blog PsyCro's Olive Oil Extraction Method. He's since updated to include using a pressure cooker. I'll share that in the next post, but let's start with the stovetop version. On to the fun.
The plant was cut, washed, and hung to drip dry for about four hours. I stop about an hour after they've been hanging and give the branches a shake to get the water from the wash released. I'll be weighing it for bud-to-oil ratios, and I don't want that additional water mucking up my potency calculations.
Buds were all clipped into the stock pot. This is a 3-quart stainless and for this run I used 350 grams of buds and 437 ml of olive oil. PsyCro's recipe is for 400 grams of bud for every 500 ml of olive oil.
Correction: PsyCro's original measurements were for 400 grams of wet buds to 1 liter of olive oil. I didn't realize I'd inadvertently cut the olive oil volume in half when I began making my own potent oil.
This potency has been extremely therapeutic, so I won't be changing my personal recipe of 400 grams of wet buds to 500 ml of olive oil. You control the potency of the oil by the volume of materials, and this ratio has proven to be a winner in my home and with my patients. I leave it up to you to determine your own strength. PsyCro has suggested it could be made as potent as triple-strength, 400 grams of wet buds to 0.3 ltr of olive oil. That would need to be carefully dosed, and probably wouldn't be something you'd want to use with a novice.
What was left was placed into small jars with open tops and dropped into the refrigerator for a two-week dry under low temp and humidity. Another experiment I'm playing with. It's a technique I learned from Dr Ziggy. It may be a way to retain more of the terpene profile during the drying stage.
Add the olive oil.
Get out the immersion blender and blend away. This take a good while so be kind to the blender. I found short bursts of power a better fit. That's a lot of plant material you're breaking down. Take your time and turn it to mush.
I've since learned that this part of the process can be made easier by adding a cup of water. It gives you more liquid to incorporate the bud into, and you'll be boiling the water off anyway.
I keep going until I can't identify any piece of what I'm looking at, other than "green" and "plant material."
The stainless pot sits in a Dutch oven that gets filled with oil to create a double boiler. A water bath won't get temperatures in the pot high enough to decarb. I use Canola oil. Avoid cheap vegetable oils.
The rings in the bottom keep the stainless pot away from direct heat. Four of them lend stability to the arrangement. We're playing with hot oil here, it pays to be extra cautious.
Turn the fire on low and let the oil get up to temperature. This isn't a process you're going to rush. Block out the next three hours, or more. I've dedicated entire days to harvest through finished oil. The potency is worth the effort, I assure you. I've learned that if you keep the fire low the oil will heat without spiking and you don't have to be so anal about temperatures. As you'll see, when the temperature gets to 212 F decarb kicks in and there's no denying it's working.
This thermometer was a gift from a member. It's become invaluable to me. I recommend you search one out if you intend to be making cannabis oils
You'll be stirring every five minutes or so for the next three hours. After about 10-20 minutes you'll begin to see movement.
When you hit a consistent temperature of 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) set the timer for two hours. According to PsyCro's directions you're looking for a baseline of 221 degrees F (105 degrees C) for two hours. I personally try to keep mine at between 220 -230 degrees for at least 45 minutes of that two hours.
I no no longer time the process. I'm watching the decarb bubbles, as documented below. Once the bubbles stop your decarb is finished.
Initially what you're doing is boiling off the water. Keeping the temps in this range protects the cannabinoids. When enough of the water boils off and the temperature kicks in active decarboxylation it can get dramatic. The depth of this pot was by design. You don't want hot oil and this watery mix to meet. Trust me, I speak from experience.
When it got to this stage, just before that dramatic moment I spoke of earlier, I added a tablespoon of liquid sunflower lecithin. This was at 4:40 PM.
4:41 PM
4:42 PM
4:43 PM
5:19 PM Still actively decarbing, but you can see the activity has dropped off.
5:21 PM, and you're beginning to see oil through the bubbles.
5:38 PM
5:41 PM Close to done now.
5:45 PM You could stop at this point and still have some acid cannabinoids present.
5:47 PM was my stopping point. Just two minutes later and decarb was almost entirely complete.
Strain it out, pressing and squeezing all you can manually.
PsyCro left instructions for reclaiming the oil bound up in the plant material.
Securely tie up the bundle of plant material and drop it into a pot of boiling water. I find bouncing it in the water helps release the oil.
Strain the water into a bowl or another pot and start the process again.
At some point I begin skimming the oil off the top of the water. I found it most efficient to skim into a measuring cup, and then skim once again into a custard cup.
Working like this I reclaimed 1/3 cup of oil from my last batch. There's still water in with it that can be boiled off if you choose. I'm using mine for medicated bath salts, so it wasn't necessary to do so. I have done this and got almost all of the oil I started with back, much like PsyCro's claims. That would've been a tragic loss to have simply tossed the leftover plant material after manually squeezing out what I could. I have made that mistake in the past.
Once the oil is strained, add another tablespoon of liquid sunflower lecithin, stir until it's incorporated and refrigerate for 24 hours to allow the lecithin to disperse and encapsulate the components. Gently bring it back to room temp, stir well and fill capsules or use in edibles. Stir periodically while you fill capsules to assure everything's mixed well. Like the biobombs, the lecithin can separate overnight the first time, though not to the extent it will with CCO.
So why do this labor-intensive method? Well, if you have mites like I did it allows you to save the harvest from the compost pile. Beyond that motivation, there's a strong argument to be made that more of the terpenes and flavonoids are locked into the olive oil, thus potentiating the cannabinoids with a stronger entourage effect. I've made many types of oils, including CCO, and in my personal opinion, this oil rivals anything I've tested.
Don't discount the value of processing on the day you harvest. There's nothing left except the roots, the stalk, the branches and the cooked down plant material. No plant hangs in my small apartment today, as is the norm when I dry before making oil. That was more of a relief than I anticipated.
Another tool in the oil-maker's belt. This is potent oil, loaded with medicinal value from the cannabis, the olive oil and the lecithin emulsifying it all together. You control the decarb, opening interesting possibilities. It's going to be more potent than you're thinking it is, I'll tell you that. What I made was so potent it forced me to change my dosing strategy.
I hope this helps someone gain the confidence to try this method. PsyCro is working out using a pressure cooker, and he's wonderfully pleased with how it's turning out. It's covered in his thread. Have fun with it.
