My firewall is keeping me from my web host, so I can't post this on my web page. Here it is in Blogger, my backup plan (always gotta have a backup plan.)
Boilerplate: Follow the laws of your state and country in regard to the use of cannabis. This site takes no responsibility for anything that you do, think about, or long for. This is for informational purposes only. Not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease. Your mileage may vary. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Naturally, you're expected to keep your brain plugged in and take responsibility for your own actions.
With that understood, here is one terrific way to make cannabis salve that extracts everything that can be extracted without using special industrial equipment.
I figured this out after reading up on the different constituents and the temperatures they became volatile at, and thinking over what I knew about the sizes and shapes of the molecules involved, and the incredible fragility of the medically useful molecules.
This is available under the Creative Commons license noted on the blog: use it freely, mess with it, sell your own products made from it... just don't try to claim this information as yours or try to keep other people from using it.
The constituents are extracted from the herb at three different temperatures, in three different batches of oil. These are kept apart until the final blending, to keep the extractives inside the jar and in case anything goes wrong. And, just in case you're wondering, you can use each temp's extraction by itself. I find the cold-temp most useful most of the time, but the warm and hot oil sometimes do better, and I find I need to use the full blend for spasms.
Ingredients & tools
Ingredients & tools
If you only have an electric stove at home, you can get a butane camping stove for around $20 at most camping stores, and each $6-7 can of fuel should provide about 2.5 hours of high heat. Or get a propane camping stove, if you do this often.
Most of what's left in the herb is the THC (as far as I know.) It adds extra kick to the spasm-relieving of your salve and, if narcotics work for you generally, it can help more with the site pain.
Alternatively, use this part of the herb for baking or mixing into your food, for more of a body effect -- and extra fiber -- and use just the cold and warm process oils for your salve.
Ingredients & tools
Proportions are not listed, because it depends on what you have, what your body needs, and what you can afford to get.
Ingredients & tools
Using it
I use a small easy-open container to carry it around in. I keep all backstock in the fridge, and only open one at a time. It is perishable, so keep it cold (but not frozen!) until it's within a few days of being used. In the back of my fridge, it lasts several months.
Be sure to wash your carry-container with hot water and plenty of soap in between refills.
I use it in pea-sized blobs, 1-3 blobs at a time for 1-2 body parts. When things are bad, I just slather it on and give up on braining for the day, because after 4 or 5 pea-sized blobs, it does start to retune my brain to Radio Gaga, and I'm pretty high by 8-10. Note that I am a lightweight. YMMV.
Boilerplate: Follow the laws of your state and country in regard to the use of cannabis. This site takes no responsibility for anything that you do, think about, or long for. This is for informational purposes only. Not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease. Your mileage may vary. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Naturally, you're expected to keep your brain plugged in and take responsibility for your own actions.
With that understood, here is one terrific way to make cannabis salve that extracts everything that can be extracted without using special industrial equipment.
I figured this out after reading up on the different constituents and the temperatures they became volatile at, and thinking over what I knew about the sizes and shapes of the molecules involved, and the incredible fragility of the medically useful molecules.
This is available under the Creative Commons license noted on the blog: use it freely, mess with it, sell your own products made from it... just don't try to claim this information as yours or try to keep other people from using it.
Ingredients & tools
I use several different strains in my salve, because it has to keep working for awhile. Multiple strains, and a predominance of outdoor-grown medical-grade varieties, seems to provide the most potency per pea-sized dab, the most stability over time, and the most lasting effect.- 5 different strains (ideally 5, but use whatever you've got), overall sativa-dominant (more CBD), overall mostly outdoor-grown (lasts longer and goes deeper)
- Blend of equal parts grapeseed and olive oil
- Coconut oil
- clove essential oil
- rosemary essential oil
- opt: comfrey herb
- opt: St. John's wort herb or oil
- opt:beeswax
~ - double boiler
- heavy-bottomed pan
- filter (stocking or paint filter or cheesecloth; muslin for final filter)
- cooking spoon/spatula
- candy thermometer
- airtight storage jars
- hermetically sealed glass jars for final storage
Preparation
As you can see, this can be made in stages, with just small bursts of effort at a time.The constituents are extracted from the herb at three different temperatures, in three different batches of oil. These are kept apart until the final blending, to keep the extractives inside the jar and in case anything goes wrong. And, just in case you're wondering, you can use each temp's extraction by itself. I find the cold-temp most useful most of the time, but the warm and hot oil sometimes do better, and I find I need to use the full blend for spasms.
Cold process:
Takes 8 weeks, with a few seconds' shaking every day. You won't believe the transformation that happens in that time. Well worth waiting for.Ingredients & tools
- Use enough liquid oil to cover ground bud or bud-shake somewhat loosely. Give it just a small amount of headroom.
- Ground marijuana bud, bud "shake", or whatever you've got.
~ - Airtight glass container.
- keep cool and dark, and shake it up daily to move fresh oil against the surface of the herb.
- Do this for 8 weeks. It'll get gooey, pale and creamy-thick.
- Strain (pantyhose sock or paint filter) and put in clean, airtight bottle or jar. Stick oil in fridge. Set solids aside for next step.
Warm process:
Takes just over an hour to prepare, then cooling-down and 10 minutes to put it up.Ingredients & tools
- coconut oil to loosely cover the herb
- herb solids from cold process
~ - double boiler with tight lid
- candy thermometer
- strainer (stocking sock is ok, or folded cheesecloth, because of the heavy texture)
- clean airtight glass storage container
- Heat to 175-185F. Stir it every 5 min and cook it gently for an hour.
- Let it cool to the touch. Strain and refrigerate/set aside as before.
Hot process:
Only do this over gas heat, not electric. Most electric stoves will destroy our beneficial molecules, because of the way they handle the heat-modulation issue. (A double-boiler won't help because steam doesn't get hot enough.)If you only have an electric stove at home, you can get a butane camping stove for around $20 at most camping stores, and each $6-7 can of fuel should provide about 2.5 hours of high heat. Or get a propane camping stove, if you do this often.
Most of what's left in the herb is the THC (as far as I know.) It adds extra kick to the spasm-relieving of your salve and, if narcotics work for you generally, it can help more with the site pain.
Alternatively, use this part of the herb for baking or mixing into your food, for more of a body effect -- and extra fiber -- and use just the cold and warm process oils for your salve.
Ingredients & tools
- coconut oil to cover
- solids from warm process
- optional: comfrey leaf
~ - heavy pan
- candy thermometer
- strainer (stocking sock or paint filter is ok)
- clean airtight glass storage container
- Heat oils and canna herb to 305F -- NO HIGHER.
That seems to be the highest you can go before you create burned elements, which seem to kill the whole batch. If you burn this, even a wee bit, even if you think it's only a bit of browning ... DO NOT MIX IT with any of the others. It inactivates the whole batch. This is the voice of sad experience... Just go with what you've got from the cold and warm processes, which have almost all the CBDs and many of the other constituents. - Watch it like a hawk. Stir often. Cook for up to 20 minutes.
- Add the comfrey herb, which is soothing and healing to the skin and helps heal bruises and scratches. It's going to be a bit messy. Just mix it in by thirds, and don't flail with the spoon or spatula.
- Turn heat as low as it will go, cover but leave a small air vent, and give it another 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes. (After that, you're just vaporizing molecules.)
- Cool, strain, and put your now-beige herbal matter into the trash or on the compost.
Blending
This is fun.Proportions are not listed, because it depends on what you have, what your body needs, and what you can afford to get.
Ingredients & tools
- oils from all three processes
- clove essential oil
- rosemary essential oil
- lemon balm extract
- optional: St. John's wort herb or oil (if you have a good source). It can overstimulate the nerves in some.
- optional: beeswax, for a stiffer salve and a protective layer on skin. For this, warm up the hot-process oil and melt the beeswax in that. Cool the oil, and proceed from Step 1 below.
- candy thermometer
- final filter: muslin or paint strainer (or L'Eggs Sheer Energy socks: tight weave, very sturdy)
- clean hermetically sealed jars or bottles for longer-term product storage
- Warm up the warm-process and hot-process oils so the coconut oil is melted but still almost cool enough to touch comfortably (~120F). Take it off the heat.
- Stir in the lemon balm extract. The alcohol should gently vaporize at this temperature over a couple of minutes. Lemon balm soothes inflamed nerves and helps cut flares back.
- Blend the cold-process oil into the pot, once the warm oil is cool enough to touch comfortably but still fully liquid (90-100F). Use a spatula to scrape all the cold-process oil out -- you'd be amazed how much can hide.
- Stir in the rosemary oil and clove oil. To those of you who have unpleasant associations with skunks, this will come as a great relief, because it really cuts that smell. Also, clove oil cuts nerve pain without affecting blood vessels or exciting the nerves. That's why it's used in dental care. I use a lot of it because it's so helpful. The rosemary oil preserves the final product.
- Pack into clean, hermetically sealed jars, such as canning jars or flip-bail jars.
Using it
I use a small easy-open container to carry it around in. I keep all backstock in the fridge, and only open one at a time. It is perishable, so keep it cold (but not frozen!) until it's within a few days of being used. In the back of my fridge, it lasts several months.
Be sure to wash your carry-container with hot water and plenty of soap in between refills.
I use it in pea-sized blobs, 1-3 blobs at a time for 1-2 body parts. When things are bad, I just slather it on and give up on braining for the day, because after 4 or 5 pea-sized blobs, it does start to retune my brain to Radio Gaga, and I'm pretty high by 8-10. Note that I am a lightweight. YMMV.
Posts
Shared this with a friend who wants me to ask you if you've considered adding DMSO to this. Or would that put it a little too directly into the system?
ReplyDeleteWhether DMSO would carry the molecules further would depend on the shape and electric characteristics of the molecules, which I certainly don't know enough about.
ReplyDeleteDMSO is intriguing but the legal/medical environment around it is unsettled. It got a hideously bad rap a few decades ago, and as an un-patent-able molecule, it faces an uphill battle to be properly studied. However, its strong antioxidant properties and its penetrative properties make it extremely interesting in a disease like CRPS, where oxidation in the tissues is such a big and stubborn problem.
I'd love to get my hands on some to try out, but you didn't hear me say that.
I don't know anything about the history of use or the controversy, but one of my docs in California once sent me to a compounding pharmacy to get some topical cream for my wrist that had that in it, to help absorption of some painkiller or other, as I recall. Not hard to get it and not expensive (I just did a quick google search), but in your case I would be cautious if it has any potential toxicity, obviously.
ReplyDelete