MVP’s Killer Cannabutter Pictorial / Tutorial - Cannabis.com Forums Message Boards - Medical Marijuana, Cannabis Club, Dispensary, News

MVP · #1 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 16:52

Here is a nice, straight forward tutorial for making Cannabutter. In this thread you will learn how you can turn 1 oz of buds, 1 lb of butter and 3-4 hours of your time into a 3/4 lb of killer Cannabutter.

I’m gonna make this pretty heavy on photos and somewhat light on content so that all of the visually-oriented people out there that want to make Cannabutter can have some reference material. It is not difficult as I did this on the first try, and I am a guy that doesn’t spend a whole lot of time cooking, baking, etc.

First you need the right tools and ingredients
1 lb. of unsalted butter
1 oz. of good herb
1 medium sauce pan
1 crock pot
1 cannabis grinder (aka coffee grinder)
1 fine strainer (or cheesecloth)
1 Pyrex 32 oz. measuring cup
1 Oven thermometer
A couple of mixing bowls to hold the ground herb

And we are off to a make some Cannabutter.... but before we get going I want everyone to know that I read a ton of different recipes and the method outlined in this thread is a compilation. When stuck I found myself referring to Flameon's cooking posts to decide on which way to proceed when I had conflicting information.

OK, back on track, here we go..... As PROMISED, many pictures:

MVP · #2 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 16:58

To clarify butter you basically melt the butter in the saucepan, making sure the butter does not burn. What you are trying to do is heat the butter and then skim off the water, cream, and other stuff off of the top.

MVP · #3 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 17:05

We are continuing to make the clarified butter. Use a spoon to skim the frothy stuff off the top and set it aside. In the pics below you see that I got approx 3 oz of cream/water/stuff out of 16 oz of butter.

Once you have skimmed as much off as possible, pour the butter thru the strainer and into the Pyrex measuring cup.

UH, CORRCTION to post #1... It is a 16oz Pyrex measuring cup, not a 32 oz measuring cup. Doh!

MVP · #4 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 17:14

This step is pretty self explanatory: clean the herb really, really well and then grind it up in the cannabis grinder. I use 2 bowls when doing this - one for stems and leaves, the other for the finished/ground herb powder.

My advice is to grind up the herb in small batches and then combine it into the mixing bowl as you go along. I use wooden toothpicks to clean the grinder, scooping the sticky trichomes into the bowl. If you don't clean it every 2-3 runs you will encounter problems.

MVP · #5 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 17:21

As you are cleaning and grinding up your herb, you should have your crock pot warming up, and set the Pyrex cup full of butter in it while it comes up to temperature. I STRONGLY recommend the use of an oven thermometer so you can monitor the temps when it is cooking.

Once the herb is ground up, add it to the butter in the Pyrex that is sitting inside the crock pot. Stir in the herb as you add it to get a consistent mixture. In other words, do not dump it all in at once then stir... do it gradually.

MVP · #6 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 17:39

So now we are cooking! Literally.... well almost. Before you start the cooking process you want to make sure that you place your oven thermometer in the bottom of the crock pot. See it there in the picture? It is vital to monitor temperature so you do not burn or overcook the butter and THC.

SIDE NOTE: When cooking with Cannabis, I always heat my crock pot on High for 30-40 minutes, then back it down to Low and finish cooking it there. With my particular crock pot it heats up to almost 250 F (a bit too hot) on High, so I let it get there, then take the lid off for 30 seconds or so, stir the butter, and set it on Low, where it maintains a temp of approx 225F +/-.

Put the lid on the crock pot, set the timer for 30 minutes, and make sure you don't wander too far and forget about the butter. Return to check the temperature and stir your butter within the 30-45 minute time frame.

In my pics you can see that the temps got close to 250 F, then dropped to 225 F when I returned and set it on Low.

From this point forward I check the temps every 30-45 minutes (with lid on, or heat escapes and cooking takes longer) to keep a consistent 200 F - 225 F range for the remaining 2-1/2 hours. If it is too hot, remove the lid and blow a breath or two of air into it, then replace the lid. Personally, any time I take the lid off I stir it just for good measure. If too cool (less than 200 F), set on High and monitor closely every 20-30 minutes.

In this recipe I cook the butter in the crock pot for a total of 3 hours......

MVP · #7 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 17:56

This is the part where it gets a little tricky. I always cook late at night to avoid suprises - people stopping over, phone calls, etc - so I did not have someone to take pictures of the straining process. Pretty much once the Cannabutter has cooked for 3 hours, I pour the entire mixture thru the fine wire strainer and into a bowl or jar.

Normally you can just strain the butter into a jar or bowl, cover it, and throw it in the fridge to cool for a few hours. That is the easy thing to do.

But I get crazy ideas in my head sometimes, and this was no exception..... Once in the jar I thought of something I saw once on FoodTV, Alton Brown or Emeril or someone... an ice water bath to cool the butter.

In this case I wanted to try to press my Cannabutter into 'sticks' so I went a little bit extravagent.... I made little loaf pans out of some boards from my workshop, lined them with wax parchment paper, and cooled the butter in the water bath until it was the same consistency as cookie dough.

Then I took the spatula and scooped the Cannabutter out of the jar and into the DIY loaf pans, pressing the budder into the molds. I had to hurry at the end as it was setting up pretty fast. The last photo is of the used bud material that I drained off and tossed into the trash.

So that is How MVP Made Killer Cannabutter, and how you can make it too. Gotta love that deep green butter color.... Yum!

8182KSKUSH · #8 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 19:05

Wow!!! That was awesome thank you! That'll be around for a while! I am visual myself, and that made it very clear and easy to understand!
Question.
Can you, or is it advisable to use kief instead of flowers? What kind of ratios would you suspect that would be used? For say a very small amount of kief like a gram or 2 or 3 or 5? Whatever just curious?

Xyz505 · #9 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 19:27

sweet can u show more pictures is this as good hash or wat am kinda new to this cana butter

MVP · #10 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 19:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by 8182KSKUSH

Wow!!! That was awesome thank you! That'll be around for a while! I am visual myself, and that made it very clear and easy to understand!
Question.
Can you, or is it advisable to use kief instead of flowers? What kind of ratios would you suspect that would be used? For say a very small amount of kief like a gram or 2 or 3 or 5? Whatever just curious?

When I cook with Cannabis, I estimate that 1 gram of kief or hash = 1-2 grams of buds. Of course the better the cannabis the better the final product.

The reason I used 1 oz buds (Master Kush to be precise) and 1 pound of butter (which is 4 sticks) was to make it easy to scale the recipe up and down. Also note than I had approx 25% shrinkage in the butter.

An easy starting place for most people would be 1 stick butter : 1/4 oz herb... substitute kief or hash at an average of 1.0 gr = 1.5 gr herb, and you could make approx 6 tablespoons of good quality Cannabutter (after the 25% shrinkage) from approx 4.5 - 5 grams of kief or hash.

My best advice is to start small and experiment a little bit.

I should also note that when I cook I don't always use 100 percent cannabutter in my recipes. Sometimes I use 50/50 cannabutter/regular butter so that the cookies, etc are not too overpowered with the herb taste...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xyz505

sweet can u show more pictures is this as good hash or wat am kinda new to this cana butter

I'll try to get more pics, just tell me what you want to see. As mentioned above you can use hash to make cannabutter. Of course cannabutter is for cooking, not smoking....

keeko · #11 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 20:01

excellent tutorial, the pics helped a lot.

Weedhound · #12 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 20:43

Wonderful!!

A couple of questions. Sorry if you said something already and I missed it.

What's in the bowl in the last pic? Your strained solids? Do you toss that stuff or what do you do with it?

Can I use salted butter? I can't stand the unsalted kind. Will it make a big difference?

I use the metal strainer to grind up my weed instead of a grinder and it ends up in pretty fine powder. Would I be able to use this instead of buds in a grinder?

You are measuring the temp of your crockpot. Do you ever measure the temp of the actual butter with a candy or oil thermometer? Do you know if the temps match.....whether measuring with an oven thermometer is the same as measuring the temp of the butter itself?

Thanks very much MVP. I'll definitely be trying this recipe.

Markass · #13 (**permalink**) Feb-20-2008, 21:21

This should be a sticky for sure. Not a whole lot of people will have an extra ounce of killer laying around unless they're growing, but this is a great walkthrough...cannabutter's simple but a tad tricky...I'm not incredibly comfortable cooking with it though, I'm much better at smoking it

But the narcotic like stone you can get from brownies is much like the intense effect of something such as an oxycontin for me, only I don't throw up and I'm still able to function and think easily..I just don't much feel like doing it if I'm stoned off of space brownies

..which I would much rather feel like not doing something rather than physically and mentally unable to do it...Pot is great!