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- DIY - CBD:THC Edibles
I've been experimenting with making my own CBD edibles, I can't smoke, so edibles are my only option. It's purely medicinal and repeatability is important, so I'm trying to simplify the process on both the production and consumption ends. To that end, for various reasons things like 'gummies' were ruled out, and I settled on capsules as my final method.
After reading that orally ingested CBD's bioavailability is almost 4-fold when taken with fatty foods, I decided to try and make a coconut oil infusion so that I could benefit from the absorption benefits of fatty/oil even if I did not take them with a meal. I've also read at various times that extracted CBD does not have the same effectiveness as CBD taken with the full range of cannabinoids available in the flower. Continuing in that line of logic, the idea of consuming the entire flower to ensure all of "natures" combined properties are present seemed like a reasonable idea. So the initial goal was to decarb and then grind the complete flowers and fill the gel caps with that powder or an oil infusion.
Medical cannabis is still relatively new from a scientific standpoint, and I'm only at the beginning of investigating it. There appears to be surfacing evidence that CBG has unique benefits, and that CBN (non-decarb'd CBD) may supply some benefits. Having purchased relatively inexpensive bulk CBD/G flower, I'm self-testing both. So far I've done one oil batch and one dry batch, mixing both -D and -G and a percentage of non-decarb'd material in each batch. It turned out that the ground up oil infused batch either was not ground fine enough, or there is no amount of grinding that would be fine enough, but the bottom line is I could not find a way to fill the capsules with the resulting goop, and I had to strain it and just use the oil. So that batch is not as complete a "full flower" solution, which in the end is fine.
As is always a problem with me, the use of the word "experimenting" would be misleading, I have no control group, I'm just trying things. Worse, I'm often trying more than one thing at a time. Case in point; with the oil batch I did an 8 hour 180 degree decarb directly in the oil. I mixed the CBD and CBG together in that first batch, having not yet read that they require different times and temps. The recommended heat/time for CBD decarb is 240-290º (depending who you ask) for 90 minutes, and for CBG its 220º for 60 minutes. That said, so far I've found the oil-based caps to have noticeably more impact.
With the dry batch, I tried (for the first time) decarb'ing in Ball jars instead of open trays in the oven, and I varied the heat/time as recommended. I followed instructions for that from a well known website, but I don't feel like those capsules are as 'strong' and don't seem to have as much mental impact, so I'm not sure if the decarb in jars was less effective or there is some other reason -- possibly the infused oil is simply more bioavailable than dry even when taken with "fatty foods". The oil-based pills have a comfortable physical effect, and a mild anti-depression mental impact which is noticeably stronger than the dry caps.
As I mentioned, I'm doing multiple things at once. If I were more disciplined and patient, I would test the CBD and CBG separately, but for now I'm trying the "shotgun approach", throwing everything at it and seeing if I can quickly find a viable solution. The oil method is more labor intensive and definitely messier, but if it turns out to be the better solution, I'll deal with that. The mechanics of filling 100 caps at a time with dry powder is way simpler with less clean up and loss.




There were lots of lessons along the way, but this is already longer than I suspect most people want to read, so let me know if you have any questions. I have more things I want to test in mind (or just things I would do differently), but I have enough to hold me for a while. Oh, as a last note, mixing these with varying amounts of THC based edibles is a whole other process. And depending on the time of day, the amount of food taken with them, how well I slept -- and the cumulative and tolerance building impacts... there are so many ever changing variables that I expect this will be a long term process.
After reading that orally ingested CBD's bioavailability is almost 4-fold when taken with fatty foods, I decided to try and make a coconut oil infusion so that I could benefit from the absorption benefits of fatty/oil even if I did not take them with a meal. I've also read at various times that extracted CBD does not have the same effectiveness as CBD taken with the full range of cannabinoids available in the flower. Continuing in that line of logic, the idea of consuming the entire flower to ensure all of "natures" combined properties are present seemed like a reasonable idea. So the initial goal was to decarb and then grind the complete flowers and fill the gel caps with that powder or an oil infusion.
Medical cannabis is still relatively new from a scientific standpoint, and I'm only at the beginning of investigating it. There appears to be surfacing evidence that CBG has unique benefits, and that CBN (non-decarb'd CBD) may supply some benefits. Having purchased relatively inexpensive bulk CBD/G flower, I'm self-testing both. So far I've done one oil batch and one dry batch, mixing both -D and -G and a percentage of non-decarb'd material in each batch. It turned out that the ground up oil infused batch either was not ground fine enough, or there is no amount of grinding that would be fine enough, but the bottom line is I could not find a way to fill the capsules with the resulting goop, and I had to strain it and just use the oil. So that batch is not as complete a "full flower" solution, which in the end is fine.
As is always a problem with me, the use of the word "experimenting" would be misleading, I have no control group, I'm just trying things. Worse, I'm often trying more than one thing at a time. Case in point; with the oil batch I did an 8 hour 180 degree decarb directly in the oil. I mixed the CBD and CBG together in that first batch, having not yet read that they require different times and temps. The recommended heat/time for CBD decarb is 240-290º (depending who you ask) for 90 minutes, and for CBG its 220º for 60 minutes. That said, so far I've found the oil-based caps to have noticeably more impact.
With the dry batch, I tried (for the first time) decarb'ing in Ball jars instead of open trays in the oven, and I varied the heat/time as recommended. I followed instructions for that from a well known website, but I don't feel like those capsules are as 'strong' and don't seem to have as much mental impact, so I'm not sure if the decarb in jars was less effective or there is some other reason -- possibly the infused oil is simply more bioavailable than dry even when taken with "fatty foods". The oil-based pills have a comfortable physical effect, and a mild anti-depression mental impact which is noticeably stronger than the dry caps.
As I mentioned, I'm doing multiple things at once. If I were more disciplined and patient, I would test the CBD and CBG separately, but for now I'm trying the "shotgun approach", throwing everything at it and seeing if I can quickly find a viable solution. The oil method is more labor intensive and definitely messier, but if it turns out to be the better solution, I'll deal with that. The mechanics of filling 100 caps at a time with dry powder is way simpler with less clean up and loss.




There were lots of lessons along the way, but this is already longer than I suspect most people want to read, so let me know if you have any questions. I have more things I want to test in mind (or just things I would do differently), but I have enough to hold me for a while. Oh, as a last note, mixing these with varying amounts of THC based edibles is a whole other process. And depending on the time of day, the amount of food taken with them, how well I slept -- and the cumulative and tolerance building impacts... there are so many ever changing variables that I expect this will be a long term process.