Cannabutter

List of contents

Cannabutter is a basic ingredient in the world of cannabis cooking. Spread on toast by itself and with jam, or as a base for the preparation of sweets and desserts, it’s a great way to consume cannabis. Suitable both for therapeutic purposes and for recreational purposes, cannabutter offers non-smokers the possibility of consuming cannabis.

The consumption of cannabis butter

Without a doubt, the most widespread form of cannabis use is smoking (combustion). Lately there has been a plethora of electronic cigarettes and other devices designed to vaporise cannabis, offering a combustion-free alternative to traditional ways of smoking weed (joint, pipes, bongs, etc.). Another form of cannabis use is via ingestion as food, it is perhaps a less widespread form of consumption but just as creative, fun and effective as any other form of cannabis use.

Ingesting cannabis in food avoids any of the respiratory side-effects provoked by smoking or vaporisation. To consume cannabis as food, all that’s necessary is to take the corresponding dose, which will obviously vary according to the physical constitution of each person and the tolerance of each individual to the consumption of cannabis.

Among the many different ways of ingesting cannabis in food, cannabutter is a key ingredient in desserts and cannabis sweets.

In any mode of ingestion of cannabis as a food, one must be very careful with the dose. Knowing the potency of the herb we use is essential if we are to gauge the correct amount to take. We must know if the herb we’re cooking with is a mild, medium or highly potent variety of cannabis.

We should point out that when cannabis is ingested as food, it has a much greater psychoactive effect than when smoked. The effect of cannabis edibles reaches 100% of the psychoactive potential of the herb, compared to combustion which only reaches 40% as a large part of the active ingredients are volatilised.

Each time we make a new batch of cannabis butter, it’s vital that we perform a bioassay, a test to determine the potency. Starting with a small quantity, we increase it gradually, until we’re comfortable with the dose, both for its consumption alone, for example on toast, and to use it as a condiment for other meals or desserts.

The effect or high of ingested cannabis is not as instantaneous as it is when smoked, on the contrary, it may take from half an hour to an hour and a half to take effect. This timeframe must be taken into account before coming to a premature conclusion about the effect of the administered dose.

How to make cannabis butter

All cannabis butter recipes are fairly similar, and the ingredients don’t vary much - butter, cannabis and water. The cooking times can vary between the different recipes, in any case a basic rule is that the longer we cook for, the lower the temperature.

The recipe we are going to illustrate is a basic recipe for cannabis butter with a simple cooking procedure, using this recipe as a base, you can vary some procedures as you gain experience of cooking cannabutter.

If we are new to the preparation of cannabis butter it’s best to start with the minimum dose of herb, it’s always be better to start off in moderation until you gain experience.

For herb we’ll use one of our Philosopher Seeds varieties, Amnesika 2.0. In this case we’ve taken advantage of the some trimmed sugar leaves, which together with small popcorn buds from the lower branches of the plant, gives us a total weight of 20 grams of high quality herb.

The necessary utensils for making canna butter

Cannabis butter recipe

Cannabis butter ingredients:

500 ml water
250g butter
20/50g cannabis trim (if we use buds we will reduce the amount of grass to 10/15 gr.)

Utensils for processing:

Saucepan
Silicone spatula
Strainer
Glass tray

Making cannabis butter in 5 easy steps:

Heating the water and adding the cannabis

1. We heat the half-litre of water in the saucepan, when the water is near to boiling point we lower the heat to the minimum and add the cannabis. The water should never come to a boil.

Add the butter to the saucepan with the hot water and cannabis

2. Using the silicone spatula, stir without stopping, continue at the minimum heat, cooking the cannabis for 5 minutes. At this time we add the 250g of butter, diced into cubes.

Let the water, cannabis and butter simmer together for at least 30 minutes

3. With the water, cannabis and butter combined in the saucepan, we stir with the spatula without letting the product boil. We cook it for half an hour before it’s ready to strain. Remove the saucepan from the heat and prepare the glass tray. Now with great care not to burn ourselves, we strain all of the liquid through the colander and into the glass tray.

Straining the liquid from the cannabis remains

4. Let it cool to room temperature and then place the tray in the fridge for at least 8 hours to allow the butter to solidify and separate from the water.

Let the cannabutter cool in the refrigerator

5. After 8 hours in the refrigerator, the two layers will be fully separated, with the solid butter above and the water below. Now we can drain away the water and store the cannabis butter in a container in the fridge.

After 8 hours in the fridge the cannabutter is solidified and separated from the water

We can’t guarantee how long the cannabutter will last in the fridge, it will mainly depend on the best-before date of the butter we used. The best thing is to consume it as soon as possible - take advantage of your next celebration and use cannabis butter to prepare a tasty cannabis cake or brownie, the team here at Philosopher Seeds already know that we’ll use it for our next birthday cake.

We hope you enjoy it!

2018-10-25 Cannabis Cookery