The first edibles I ever made simply included ground up cannabis included in a brownie mix. It was nasty. Despite the strong flavor of brownies, the bitter, herbal cannabis flavor was still too strong. I couldn’t finish eating the batch and it made me sad. This is an extreme example and I don’t recommend adding fresh ground cannabis to any recipe. The problem becomes even worse when you are attempting to make dishes with light flavors. Sugar cookies and watermelon gummies come to mind. Infusing these foods will fail if you are sensitive to that herbal flavor.
While you can use concentrates as the basis for your infusions, most folks don’t have ready access to concentrates. Isolates impart no flavor what-so-ever, but we can’t make that at home. Infusion machines are pretty easy, but they don’t help at all with the flavor. So, what is the solution if you want to use cannabis to infuse butter or coconut oil? Water.
Before I detail the process, its important to know that it is the chlorophyll and leaf matter that impart that taste. To a lesser extent, terpinoids and flavinoids also affect flavor. The cannabinoids themselves are odorless and flavorless and, in an infusion, generally the cannabinoids are what you are after. As such, in order to avoid that strong herbal flavor you have to limit the amount of plant material and leeched chlorophyll in your infusion. Let’s dig into the details.
1) Chunk up the cannabis
Using scissors, chop the cannabis into dime sized chunks. I do not recommend grinding as it will disturb more trichomes (losing cannabinoids) and create more loose plant materials to get into your infusion.
2) Water soak and rinse
Place chopped cannabis in a metal strainer and place strainer in a bowl. Cover with room temperature water (reverse osmosis or distilled). Every 8-12 hours lift strainer from water, drain, discard water, replace strainer in bowl and cover with fresh room temperature water. Repeat for up to two days. Water will not affect the trichomes, but will leach out chlorophyll and small bits of plant material. You should notice the rinse water get less and less green in color.
3) Blanch
Prepare an ice bath using the bowl from step 2). Boil water, then remove from heat. Slowly submerge metal strainer (and cannabis) into the hot water and let sit for 5 minutes. Remove from hot water and submerge in ice bath for 5 minutes.
At this point, I recommend moving directly to decarboxylation. This heat treatment will create psychoactive THCTHC is the most famous cannabinoid and is psychoactive. TH... and will also dry the cannabis so that it doesn’t spoil. Move forward with your infusions as necessary. You may use these steps in just about any preparation where you want to reduce herbal tastes. If you absolutely can’t decarboxylate for whatever reason you may, for a short time, refrigerate the wet cannabis in a sealed container.
You should notice that the resulting oil or butter is much lighter in color and doesn’t carry the herbal smell you may be accustomed to. I was very apprehensive of this process initially. I couldn’t imagine why you’d ever want to soak cannabis, unless making water-hash or some such. However, after gritting my teeth and giving it a try I don’t think I’ll do it any other way.
I love my brownies again.
Bon appetit!
— The Lit Farmer —