Do you have to decarb before baking?
- Thread starter ayr0n
- Start date
skepler
Well-Known Member
I made some canna butter using stbwolfe's recipe from another posting. However, I decarbed the canna butter. I used the same 4oz that I would have used for flour as I mentioned above. I reclaimed only 3/4 of the butter from the process, and used 1/3 of that, or 1/2 lb of canna butter for brownies. Cut into 90 brownies, each of which is kick-ass strong. Decarbing increased the potency 3-4X. Thank for everyone's tips and postings.
I'm in the process of cooking my cannabutter in the crockpot right now. I did not, however, decarb my weed before. If when I'm finished, I put my butter in some water, and cook it in a glass dish in the oven for 30 mins or so on 250°, will this decarb the THC in my butter, or will it not do anything for it?
BobBitchen
Well-Known Member
Apologies here if I'm misunderstanding, I've gone through this thread. My problem is my butter is already cooking. Trying to find out if I can cook my butter with a little water in the oven when it is done, and successfully decarb that way. Not ideal, but where I'm at.
Thanks! This is what I was looking for.
skepler
Well-Known Member
Was there water left in the dish when you were done after '30 mins or so'? The reason I ask is that would indicate to me the butter never got as hot as 250° or else the water would be long gone. In that case it is still good, and may need more decarbing. It takes a while for things to heat in an oven, and water would be a gas at 212° if you're at sea level, and be totally gone if it got that hot.
skepler
Well-Known Member
To answer the question this post is based on, I baked a batch of brownies with a temperature probe in the batter. The bake cycle was 350° for 25 minutes. By the end of the baking, the probe showed 220°. This was probably a little falsely high as the probe was exposed on the top of the baked brownies. This confirms my suspicions that decarbing does not happen to an effective level through baking.
Just FYI: 28 hours in the crockpot on low with no prior decarb worked just fine for me. The butter turned out strong as hell, and works nicely. A leafly article I found said you can decarb by boiling the plant matter for 1-1/2 hours. Whether that is true or not, it seemed to work with my stuff!
What do you mean? I can't go back and decarb what I already have. You mean make a scaled down version of my big batch of butter, to see if it works differently?
Maybe it's not fully decarbed, maybe it is. The point I'm trying to make is that maybe in a slow cooker, decarboxylation is not as important as we might think. There are plenty of people like me, I'm sure, who start their butter only to realize they did not decarb first. I'm here to say, mine came out fantastic with no initial decarb, and if you cook yours for a long time, it too will probably come out just fine. Make of that what you will, as this is all anecdotal, and there is nothing for me to cite exept mine, and others experiences with my finished product.
skepler
Well-Known Member
I have made butter and decarbed it after making it. I believe it spent 20 hours in the crock pot, and it certainly was not decarbed. Just take a few grams of what you made heat it to 250, and see if it is in fact decarbed. I have been making oils and edibles for 30-40 years, and thought cooking and boiling temperatures would work. I have recently discovered I was wrong, and now get 3-4 times the potency or yield I previously did. I am a retired manufacturing engineer, and want reproducible processes with the biggest bang for the buck.
Ok. how do you tell if the butter is decarbed or not after you heat it? Will there be a visible reaction, or is it more heat it, and then make something with it and see if it feels different?
skepler
Well-Known Member
The decarbing is the out-gassing of CO2. This is very visible, starting at about 220°F, this picture is at 230°:
by 255° it has almost an inch of foam on it:
This was some 3 year old oil from a low temp reflux extraction, 7gms mixed with 7gm lecithin. I cycled it between 245° to 255° for almost 30 minutes before it stopped out-gassing. I stirred it with a toothpick every couple of minutes to free any fresh bubbles.
by 255° it has almost an inch of foam on it:
This was some 3 year old oil from a low temp reflux extraction, 7gms mixed with 7gm lecithin. I cycled it between 245° to 255° for almost 30 minutes before it stopped out-gassing. I stirred it with a toothpick every couple of minutes to free any fresh bubbles.
So, if a small amount bubbles when it's heated, it means it was not fully decarboxylated. Could I then just heat my remaining butter to 250° until it stops bubbling, and decarb that way? Or would that just run the risk of ruining the batch? I still have about 1/3 - 2/5lb of butter left, so I might as well "fix" it if I can. Thanks for the info by the way. Very helpful!
skepler
Well-Known Member
Tha
It is how I have decarbed my canna butter. After making it, heated it to 250° and watched the bubbling for 25 minutes or so. I used the same amount of herb that I used to grind up for flour, ~100gm, in a batch of brownies. But the butter, after decarbing, made 3X the number of brownies, and each was 2-3X as strong as when it was just non-decarbed plant material. After decades of baking the same brownies, the difference is amazing.
I had a dream last night that I heated a little bit of my butter, and it bubbled like crazy. Now I'm stoked, and am probably gonna give this a try this weekend. Sorry for the barrage of questions, just want to make sure I understand this process properly. So I heat the butter to 250° for about 25 minutes or until it stops bubbling, and I'm good to go? Does it matter what I use to heat it in? I did use unsalted butter. Will this affect anything? Thanks again!
skepler
Well-Known Member
Doing it in an oil bath in a small stainless container like in my pics above works well. Gets to temperature really fast, especially if you preheat the oil. Use pliers to remove the container from the oil, it will be hot! The SS container is from City Market, Kroger/King Soopers may carry them too being the same chain. They are in the baking supplies, for condiments and hold 2.5 oz, 4 for under $2. Unsalted butter should be fine.