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Honey Oil Tincture - Thoughts and Questions

C

Chipp

Greenlighter
Joined
Nov 26, 2009
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19
I figure I'd ask some honey oil-related questions here, since this forum seems really knowledgeable on the chemistry side of things.

I took 1/8th oz of top quality buds and performed a butane extraction on them. I got a good amount of golden oil after the butane evaporated off. I didn't actually weigh the oil, though. Once all the butane was evaporated (warm water bath, 1 hour or a bit longer), I added about 40mL of 76% grain alcohol. The oil dissolved (except for some tiny particles that wouldn't seem to dissolve no matter what, but they were few) into the grain alcohol just fine. I then added a couple drops of peppermint extract (ingredients alcohol, propylene glycol, peppermint extract). I put this tincture-like solution into a small spray bottle, applied about 1mL under my tongue. I got very minimally high, and the spray caused quite an unpleasant burning sensation. I decided to dilute the spray 50/50 by water, thinking that I could just have more sprays, but without all the burn.

Here's where I get confused - I added about 4mL to the 4mL of my prepared tincture solution, and as soon as the water added (cold tap water), the solution when from a pale golden colour to an opaque white colour. This was not air bubbles, as 24 hours later it was still the same colour. A chemical reaction went down, and I have no idea what happened. I just thought that the water would just form a layer in the liquid, require some shaking, and I'd be off to the races. Not so... Something happened here.


So... Does anybody have any idea as to what the white colour was from?

Also, does anybody have any experience with making tinctures, starting from a honey oil, destined for sublingual administration? What sort of techniques for maximum absorption have you found?

I bought some glycerin today, intendening to use some of this to cut the sharp alcohol burn. Anyone use glycerin in these tinctures?


Thanks for reading, and sharing general comments/ etc...
 
I imagine that you didn't get as high as you wanted because THC needs to be heated for decarboxylation to occur. This roughly triples the potency. When you smoke it, obviously there's a lot of heat, but if you want to ingest orally you need to heat it some other way for it to be worthwhile.
As for the white colour, I'm going to hazard a guess that there's something in the peppermint extract that's soluble in alcohol but not water. When you added the water, you lowered the alcohol concentration and caused something to leave the solution (this is what happens when you add water to Pernod or ouzo and they go cloudy). I might be wrong, but this is what initially came to mind.
Welcome to Bluelight by the way!
 
Thanks for the response. Before making the honey oil, I put the cannabis in the oven at ~180-200F for 10 minutes. It may have been on the low side for decarboxylation, but I was afraid of overdoing it.

Also, I ran a little test by putting a bit of 76% ethanol in a shot glass, adding some of the peppermint extract, then adding water, and shaking it around. I didn't get the white colour at all. The presence of the cannabinoid oil must be playing into it somehow (chemically or otherwise)

Thanks again. I'll be making a 50:50 ethanol / glycerin tincture later on, and continuing to tweak recipes and such until I make this work. Ideally, I'd love to have a flavourful tincture that I can spray sublingually to achieve a nice high. I see products like "Pocket Alchemy" on the market, and I'd eventually want to have something very similar.
 
It might be that the cannabinoids themselves are falling out of the solution then, maybe you could do another test without the peppermint extract and see if the same thing happens? I'm just speculating, hopefully someone who knows for sure will chip in. As for the decarboxylation thing, I think it's the temperature rather than the time that's a worry. As long as the temperature isn't high enough to destroy the THC, the length of time doesn't matter-I've got a book here that talks about heating it for an hour to decarboxylate all the THC. I don't think your temperatures were quite high enough though, 106 degrees C (220 degrees F) is what you need(according to Ed Rosenthal).
 
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Thanks for the link. I'll make sure to decarboxylate at 220F for a longer period of time next time.

I've also been doing some reading on beta-cyclodextrin. It seems to be a good host molecule that encapsulates THC (and other cannabinoids I'd assume), increasing the solubility of THC and also its bioavailability. It's also somewhat FDA-approved for human use.

After spending some time seeing how well I can tweak these tinctures with glycerin, ethanol, and cannabinoid oil (the flavouring extracts are just a bonus), I'll probably look more seriously into the beta-cyclodextrin as a means of acheiving a greating bioavailability for an effective sublingual administration.
 
Tap water cannabinoids destroyer?

Hello there..... The same problem happend to me .. Added tap water to an alcohol based tincture and it immediately turned a milky white colour .. I agree with you it must be a chemical reaction maybe the chlorine? Did you use yours or just pitch it out .... I don't want to waste it if it's still good ..... But I guess why they say use distilled water... Oh man ! This sucks!
 
Louching is the technical term for that phenomenon (from absinthe culture) and it's just something that happens when you have an emulsified mixture of ethanol and plant lipids then start adding water. It's perfectly safe to consume. For more details read this.
 
That's awesome thanks for that Info ... I'm glad I didn't get rid of it ! Thanks!
 
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