Brewing with cannabis? Liquid additives? Soda?

Just a quick Q without discussing actual brewing recipes and technique too much.

Would it be best if I wanted to make a cannabis wine/beer to make an ethanol tincture and spike my final beverage, or to dry hop (throw nugs on top while it ferments), or make a citric acid hash, or what? Maybe even a glycerin tincture? I really want to maintain the taste of the cannabis strain without stripping any chlorophyll, enough to make it one of the larger flavors in the final beverage.

Add a tincture during your final hop boil for the kick, then dry hop your secondary with some sanitized nugs. You don't want to dry hop the primary and have it ferment. Be sure to sanitize the nugs in an iodophor solution just as you would whole leaf hops. Adding an infection will certainly ruin your brew.

I've tried dry hopping with weed before and it tasted like complete ass, and didn't have any of the weed buzz in it. Likely because the alcohol content is too low to pull the THC into solution in the 14 day secondary, along with the amount needed to end up being a proper dose per beer. Keep in mind, a 5 gallon batch makes about 50-52 12oz beers. A lager would give it enough time, but.. I think it needs heated to be activated, right?

I will note however that the weed I used was not grade A, so that also had a large effect on its assiness I'm sure. =)

Let me know how it turns out if you do.

Best way would be......after filtering the precipitate during winterization, simply bring to room temp and drink..I don't think fermenting bud would give you the effect you want, etoh and glycerine soak will pull a lot of nasties..best to start off with bho or similar then dissolve in etoh(might as well winterize) glycerine only holds bout 30% of its volume in cannabinoids

Awesome timely responses buds! I agree with most everything stated above, but Qwizo king, would there be a decarb step in your process?

And boss hog, I have dry hopped cannabis on top of a mead before, and it pulled the taste and some effect while making it only slightly darker. Just not the results I quite want. It may be best to sacrifice some cannabinoids and just dry-hop for flavor in addition to some etoh tincture?

Also, I have made a limoncello, an italian lemon liquer, with some long cured Acapulco Gold that packed a kick in the teeth with some serious awesome taste. I just threw whole nugs in my etoh soak of lemon zest then let rest for 40 days.

Y'all are beyond me with the alcohol talk lol.....but best way to decarb is double boil and watching co2 bubbles.. its impossible to tell if its not done or if you went too far any other way....distilling also counts as a decarb

like distilling essential oils? or the bho process (still a distillate lol)? You mentioned once you let your product sit on a dark shelf for a month or four to decarb, what about that for this process?

so the CO2 bubbles coming off is the carboxyl group breaking? makes a bunch of sense. I wonder if yeast might attack that bond like they do other sugar-esque compounds.

Lysemith said:

Awesome timely responses buds! I agree with most everything stated above, but Qwizo king, would there be a decarb step in your process?

And boss hog, I have dry hopped cannabis on top of a mead before, and it pulled the taste and some effect while making it only slightly darker. Just not the results I quite want. It may be best to sacrifice some cannabinoids and just dry-hop for flavor in addition to some etoh tincture?

Click to expand...

I think an extract (no idea which would be best - I don't really know much about them like the cookers here I'm sure do) for kick and dry hop some nugs for flavor is the way to go if you want the complete package in a beer. Hmmmn. You want the buds to be a dominant flavor.. Hops and cannabis are botanical cousins if I remember, so.. what if you maybe put some nugs into your bittering hop boil to pull out some 'essential oils' and whatnot for the flavor instead of dry hopping? Perhaps that's all you'd need to pull out some of the flavor. The more I think about it, the more ideas I get. haha.

Your title mentioned soda, as well. When I worked at a brew store in my younger days, I had a guy hand me a bottle of weed soda he made. It was a lemon-lime soda and I couldn't taste anything off at all. He wouldn't tell me how he made it, but I would hazard a guess that he gently melted some BHO into the solution before cooling/bottling. It was fantastic!

I really like the idea of a bittering boil with the cannabis as well, my only problem is I forsee losing some of those delicate and wanted tastes it could also act as a decarb process.

Theoretically if you strained your bittering boil cannabis, you could go on to pull the cannabinoids afterward with everclear, and still put them in your final beer, but this seems like a lot of work.

Keep the ideas flowing! someone is bound to know how to do this the right way!

120 days In a sealed container away from light at room temp (25c or so) is sufficient time for ALL to be decarbed..keep in mind that as time goes less is converted exponentially based on its half life.....I decarb like that because its converted to thc at a more efficient rate instead of the 70% when decarbing at 210, again that percentage lowers exponentially with heat

Bho itself is not a distillate..I was referring to picking up the heads in your bud through distillation of the fermented mix..
Yea when the carboxyl group breaks (cooh) its removed as co2 and/or h2o depending on method...... I don't think yeast will decarb it, but I'm not sure..I'll check in a minute

would concentrate be the most accurate term then?

Do you mean make moonshine out of my cannabis "beer" and that would carry the terps/cannabinoids with the vapor to be condensed?

again thanks a ton for the natural decarb info, this is what I want to do to make my liquers at the least. can you comment on the taste and potency after your 120 day sit?

In the essential oil business, bho is a concrete and winterized bho is called an absolute
Its is a concentrate or essential oil if produced through solvent extraction, pressing ect..it is called distallate if collected through distillation like moonshine....

Really just different terminology someone made up

If you want soda
Roughly 2 tbsp (24 ml or so )of etoh will dissolve 500 mg of thc (that's a lot) you can pretty much add that to any drink and it won't add much alcohol but you get a good amount of thc. You could add etoh, limonene, or glycerine even a combo..limonene is pretty strong and should only be added to citrus drinks.

You could, just an idea..I dont really know much about making beer


Terpenes result from the combination of several isoprene units. Terpenoids can be thought of as modified terpenes, wherein methyl groups have been moved or removed, or oxygen atoms added (oxidized)......basically the cure takes your terpenes and attempts to cyclicize them into the corresponding terpenoid hopefully with a lower ppm sensory threshold (makes it stanky)
After my cure/decarb the bud has a more robust flavor and better crosses the blood brain barrier

ive noticed when you add an etoh tincture to something with lots of sugar in it, the cannabinoids fall out of solution. any ideas to homogenize? and isn't limonene a solvent capable of dissolving cannabinoids?

Sweet! learnin me some scientifuckal stuff!

Lysemith said:

I really like the idea of a bittering boil with the cannabis as well, my only problem is I forsee losing some of those delicate and wanted tastes it could also act as a decarb process.

Theoretically if you strained your bittering boil cannabis, you could go on to pull the cannabinoids afterward with everclear, and still put them in your final beer, but this seems like a lot of work.

Keep the ideas flowing! someone is bound to know how to do this the right way!

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Ok, so.. maybe add them during the aroma hopping for the last 5 minutes and just be sure to cool it quickly? Maybe even some at every 'hop drop'? My beers are quite floral when I cool it down really fast.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17766451/

under anaerobic conditions at pH 2 pyruvic acid is vigorously decarboxylated by intact baker's yeast, but hardly at all at pH 5.5. Furthermore, the decarboxylation occurs more slowly with semiaerobically cultured than with aerobically cultured baker's yeast.

I asked some of my coworkers who all thought the same thing as me....there's really no way to be certain yeast would decarb all or any but it is reasonable to believe, at what rates or even how that would effect oxidation ect of thc , I don't know....... basically interesting but not effective with out more info (that I don't possess)


Yes limonene glycerin and etoh will all hold cannabinoids (ethanol holds most) you could use a combination of the 3 to increase absorption(glycerine) flavor (limonene) and etoh for potency, a combo to reduce amount of alcohol in a drink...if say you didn't want any sort of alcohol buzz.

Liquid lecithin works well..though I've never experienced this falling out.. More reactive materials can displace bonds formed by less reactive ones...
But sugar doesn't really like to dissolve in ethanol

Floral smells are light unsaturated hydrocarbons(most of the time),light alkanes..why some say fresh weed tastes perfumey or even soapy
They are the first to boil

those floral smells are exactly what I want to preserve! when etoh mixes with water the thresholds for solubility drastically alter, I think the sugars start competing to stay in solution with the desirables. Make any sense? or am i slightly wrong like usual lol?

I figured that there would not be much info on yeast with cannabinoids, but I bet some resilient wine yeasts or some turbo yeast would do a helluva lot better than bakers yeast. something to be explored for sure.

Ive started hearing cool things about lecithin, via liposomal encapsulation? but I do not think this would blend well with alcohol, and might fuck with the fermentation process. And I thought the lecithin was a technique for fat extraction.

How would you try and preserve those floral tastes?

Thanks again for this, a very fun conversation.

Lecithin is what's in salad dressing for example to keep it from separating, it should ferment as normal... I've used it many times to aid mixing for chem rxn's in heat sensitive compounds that I couldn't reflux (lsa for example)..it won't stop the yeast from doing its thang.

Well see if you had ethanol saturated with sugar. And added thc the sugar should precipitate..ethanol doesn't like to hold (meant sugar not water) but is quite fond of the cannabinoids..are you certain that's what's falling out? If so..I have no answer for you

To preserve that flavor you wouldn't really want to use cured bud in fact fresh plant matter with those bitter juices will contribute a lot.. Ive never made beer or anything of that nature so this is all theoretical....but it would be best to not ferment with the bud if you want that flavor as in that time frame it may oxidize or otherwise change form or evaporate... .I would suggest preparing a qwet if you had the materials (a still) to extract with the etoh and then evap and keep the evapped etoh for later use..this would be easier than winterizing a butane extract

But adding a good hash product to your finished beer or soda will preserve potency and flavor....if its to be chilled it must be winterized or you may see fats flocculate

That in fact has been my plan for a good long time now, have the pressure cooker, but not the time. I have come to the same conclusion, make liquers with my cannabis and forget the brewing, but its romantic to brew with cannabis, and I think it could make something really awesome. Im learning so much its a nerdgasm, but I need to be a good student and go to class.
I love that word- flocculate.

I have always been fascinated with the notion of using a moonshine still with a "Gin Head" on it, to produce fine cannabis oil, and moonshine, lol.
Modifying a Gin Head slightly to catch any drippings that may drip from the basket where you place the Juniper berries and leaves, sounds easy enough. Gin heads let it drip back into the mash.
Now, instead of running "Gin" flavored with Juniper berries and leaves in a "Gin Head", I thought it would be interesting to run BC Bud in the Gin Head Basket, and collect any oil that would drip out during the distillation process.
I'm not sure if I would like the "Oil" drippings to run into the "Gin" or collect in a separate container, but either way wouldn't be to difficult to build when you make the modified "Gin Head" for your still pot.
Just a Stoned Thought.