Heythats-- You're exactly right; I did just that, and got good results
Treefa-- It's more reliable to dose than most edibles, I find at least. It still takes about 2 hours to come up, but you can properly titrate your dose a lot more easily. Anything less than 90% ethanol will take a LOT longer to extract; you can speed it up by gently heating in a warm water bath, but most people who use lower alcohol content solvents get good results when they let it sit at room temp for a few weeks.
Vader directed me here, since I misposted in the extractions megathread (sorry about that), so I thought that I'd share my thoughts.
I've had about an eighth or so of decent herb sitting in my freezer for the last few months. My lungs have gotten quite touchy lately so I haven't been able to smoke, and I find that the anxiety has made it a lot less fun. Recently though, I've thought of trying a tincture, and lo and behold there were published methods online just waiting! So this was a trial run, and if it were to have worked I would consider making a larger batch.
The method I used was pretty well the same as the published one:
- Break up the plant matter as small as possible and heat at 310F for about 10 minutes to decarboxylate
- Transfer to a glass container (I used a 100 mL mini mason jar) containing around 75 mL 95% ethanol (i.e. everclear)
- Seal and let sit for a couple of hours
- Filter and enjoy!
I opted to do an extended extraction over about 3.5 hours rather than heating in a water bath more out of laziness than anything else, and I had the time any way. Also, I wasn't super concerned about getting every last drop of actives out of the plant, as this was just a trial run.
One thing that I did do a bit differently was that I filtered under pressure since I happened to have an aeropress handy. The benefit of this is that I was able to easily and quickly push the vast majority of the solvent through the filter, thus losing as little as possible to evaporation and paper wetting. This time around I just did a triple layer of coffee filters, but I think that I'll get proper analytical papers if/when I do a larger batch. The aeropress also made it very easy to do a quick rinse of the plants, to get any residual extract off the surface. I'd really recommend checking out aeropress if one plans on doing this sort of thing a few times; plus it does make a killer cup of joe!
So, my final volume worked out to around 80 mL of dark green, crystal clear liquid from about 3.5 g of plant matter. I tried 1 mL last night, and got a mild but pleasant buzz with no real anxiety. Will try 2 mL next weekend and see how it goes, but I think that this will be an excellent way to consume this lovely substance without hurting my lungs. Plus, I'm thinking that I might try my hand at making homemade breath strips (or at least some hard candies) to help facilitate sublingual dosing.
As a final word: don't try sublingual dosing with the straight tincture. The tissue under the tongue is very delicate, and the straight ethanol burns quite a bit.