Marijuana butter, also known as “Cannabutter,” is the backbone of many cannabis edible. Once you learn how to make marijuana butter, a whole new part of cannabis culture opens up to you. It should be noted that there are many ways to make marijuana butter, however, this is the marijuana butter recipe that my friends and I have refined over the years, and it’s what we continue to use to this day!
I want to start out by saying I personally do not know how to cook or bake, but our recipe has been praised by many! This is more of a science experiment that we have routinely improved upon, and, if you want to make this recipe better, we have found the more oil you are able to bond to the butter, the stronger the final product will be.
THC Butter Recipe: Making Pot Butter at Home
Here, we make the marijuana butter out of clippings/trim from homegrown harvests. You can use crushed up marijuana nugs or shake, but, for those thrifty chefs out there, we found this marijuana butter recipe to be quite dank. If you’re like me, you’ll see no point in using up all your dank weed flower, that you could have easily puffed merrily, in a pan of brownies. Use the leftover trim and clippings to maximize the true potential of your kush. If you want to use a whole half-ounce of flower on a tray of brownies, absolutely be my guest, but you may just get more baked than you had planned.
I don’t always opt to use the stems of the plant, though they do contain noticeable amounts of THC. If you want to throw in stems when making cannabutter, just make sure none of those prickly suckers end up in the final confection.
How Much Cannabutter Does an Ounce Make?
The standard rule to follow when cooking with cannabis is that, for every ounce of marijuana, 4 sticks of butter will be proficient. So, if you are cooking half an ounce of pot, you should be using 2 sticks of butter! Who knew math could be so practical?
Can I Make Cannabutter with Fresh/Wet Trim?
Start the process by preparing the clippings/trim. Get all the debris and stems out of the mixture so all that is left are the leaves. We have found that running the clip/trim through a food processor is the best way to ‘mulch up’ the clip or trim. This is where the surface area of the bud comes into play.
Consider that, if you boil a full marijuana bud for infusion purposes, the outside of the leaf is being reacted upon. This can be wasteful, as you aren’t getting the entirety of the oil from the product. But, if you turn that same leaf into something as fine as sand, it unlocks more oil that can be found WITHIN the leaf. A food processor allows you to push the leaves through the blade giving you what you want. You can mulch up a huge bag of marijuana trim in no time flat, whether the leaves are dry or fresh.
This THC butter recipe allows you to make marijuana butter out of whatever you can get your hands on. If it’s a small batch of trim, use a small pot. If there’s lots of trim, use multiple pots. Either way, whatever you use, fill it one-third of the way with mulch.
From there add the sticks of butter and water at a 1/4 ratio, meaning for every stick of butter (4 oz) you add in, put in 16 oz of water. Do this until the entire mixture is filling 2/3 of the container. You don’t want to fill it up all the way, as the boiling liquid could spill over when the pot gets hot.
Now that you have a big pot of floating marijuana flakes and sticks of butter, it’s time to crank up the heat. I like to turn the burner up all the way, stirring as needed. This allows the mixture to get as hot as possible, which is one of the things that will get more oil out of your plant!
Some people prefer to use a low boil method, such as in a crockpot, and let it sit for a long while. However, this only creates a protruding smell that will not leave your house for a week, in some cases. That’s not to say our method doesn’t create a delicate aroma, but it at least isn’t going to be simmering in a crockpot for an entire day.
After it comes to a rolling boil, lower the burner down to about 6 or 7/. Then boil it until about half of the water evaporates from the pot (around 1-1.5 hours). Then add water until the water level is back to where it was when you started. Repeat this once or twice (we like to do it two times just to be safe, but once will also suffice).
We will put the quicker method up against the slow boil method any day of the week – time tested, weed enthusiast approved. Whether you are making this butter for recreational or medical purposes, we can only provide you with the best top tier information that will help you out.
Cannabutter Molds
After about three to four hours, there should be a lot of oil floating on top of the mixture. From here, you strain the mixture through a flat strainer that is placed on top of the container that will ultimately go into the fridge. This is what will hold your butter while it is hardening.
After the water has passed through the strainer, there will be a pile of mulch on the strainer. In the past, I would normally press the mulch up against the strainer to get the rest of the liquid out, but we found a better way to get more bang for our buck! Using our hands we would squeeze balls of mulch until they were plum-sized, and this worked perfectly for getting more liquid out of our mixture. So we recommend using those flesh forks to make that juice!
After all the liquid is drained into your container, you will see the oil (the stuff on top) separate from the water (on the bottom). Place the container in the fridge overnight. When you wake up the next morning, the oil will have become a solid chunk of precious marijuana butter. Be careful when taking it out of the container. You don’t want to spill anything as it can stink up a kitchen.
Now you have your brick of marijuana gold, but be sure to monitor it for mold every couple of days. It should last a couple of weeks at least if it’s stored properly (airtight with no moisture). But, if you want to avoid the mold problem altogether, keep the butter in the fridge. It makes it a little harder to bake and cook with because you have to soften it, but it lasts a lot longer.
Additional Readings on Cannabis-Infused Products
The Weed Blog: a place to find reviews of certain top strains of cannabis and online news resources regarding the legalization of marijuana. We are committed to helping you find valuable information about cannabis on our website. With the laws of marijuana activism constantly changing, learn about the latest laws and what you can do to help! Otherwise, consider these other top-tier articles regarding cannabis-infused products:
How To Make Marijuana-Infused Olive Oil
