Decarb process?

Hello All,

I was wondering if anyone could refer me to some literature on the decarb process? Or possibly give me some instruction? I am new to extracts and have been making oil with alcohol that has been great in chocolates and candies but apparently have not learned what seems to be a crucial step in the process.

Is it literally just putting the oil in an oven at the right temp?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Awesome thank you! Very helpful

here is a question. If you are cooking the materials (lets say butter in this case), how does that figure into the decarb process? Should you say decarb for a shorter amount of time. What about the time spent in a crockpot when the butter was originally infused the the product?

It is total time at temperature. That is why I watch CO2 bubble production, rather than try to time decarboxylation.

@fadedawg

Could you explain how to watch bubble production?

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@fadedawg

Could you explain your method of decarbing by watching the bubbles?

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The bubbles that Fade is talking about, is basically when you have your concentrate in the oven to decarb it. You will notice that it will bubble (co2 bubbles like FD said) and basically you just wanna keep it in there until the bubbles basically stop.

MWgrower said:

@fadedawg

Could you explain how to watch bubble production?

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Click to expand...

Decarboxylation releases the COOH group as CO2 and water vapor, which produce small relatively uniform fizzy bubbles, that have a different appearance than the larger, more random sized solvent bubbles.

If you watch their production, you can see when their production suddenly drops off, which is when you reach the apex of the THC percent curve at about 70% decarboxylation, and when the cease, you are fully decarboxylated.

Here is a segment on decarbing from an article I just wrote on here about how to make a bottle of green dragon...

This is a highly debated issue when making green dragon, if your weed is VERY well cured, you may be able to get by without doing this step because THCa (non-psychoactive) naturally becomes THC (psychoactive) over time. I do however recommend a decarb process whenever possible. To explain as simply as possible, the decarb process is essentially heating up cannabis for an extended period of time at a temperature far below combustion because the majority of THC in cannabis is kept in the form THCa which has some medical benefits, but does not produce a "high." You want to convert this THCa into THC, this is done naturally during smoking because cannabis is heated up to such high temperatures at combustion, but fails to take place when using alcohol as an extractor. To actually do this decarb, simply put your ground up marijuana on a tin foil covered baking pan, and pop it in the oven at 230 degrees F for 40 minutes. The temperature and time for this decarb process is HIGHLY debated, but I based this temperature and time off a scientific study done by SC labs, and by the fact that β-Caryophyllene which is an essential oil of cannabis is degraded at temperatures above 246.2F. This means that yes, I am going against the famous "325 for 5 minutes" you'll get as a reccomended decarb method from a lot of other people.

The fly in the ointment, is that you can never know the exact state your plant material is in relative decarboxylation, so observation is the only way I've found to accurately gauge it.

Generalizing at a specific temperature for a specific amount of time, just puts you in the ball park.

Once you use heat to fully decarboxylate the oil, you can pretty much kiss the monoterpenes goodbye. The price you pay to get psycho activity at the CB-1 receptors when ingesting orally.

I am going to start tinkering today. I will let everyone know what the results are. I just mixed in a few grams if oil without putting it in the oven and learned my lesson. Just ate three....nothing. What a waste.

I assumed the heat from the crock put would take care of it but I'm at a loss