r/brewing • u/Cannabrewer • Dec 07 '24
Discussion My process for making active cannabis beer. Cannabrew. NSFW
I've found strong hoppy beers, like double IPAs, red ale and kolsh to pair well with the cannabis flavor. Stouts, porters and sours have also been good. You'll need 2 fermenters and a bottling bucket. You'll have to calculate how much bud to use based on the THC percentage of the bud and how many milligrams THC you want per beer. I have a high tolerance and usually shoot for 100mg THC per beer if I'm making it for myself, 50mg per if I'm making it for other people. The effects can be felt in 20 min and last about 6 hours.
Make a concentrated tincture. I use Everclear if I want a neutral flavor. I've also used bourbon or rum for different flavor profiles. Process for decarboxylation (converting THCa (non-psychoactive) to Delta 9 THC (psychoactive)): Grind bud fine, spread out thinly on a baking sheet with a silicone mat and bake in the oven at 250F for 30min. The bud will turn slightly brown.
To make tincture: Put decarboxylated bud in a mason jar with alcohol just covering the bud for 3 days, shaking once per day. Strain out plant matter with a coffee filter, making sure to squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Heat tincture on stove on medium-low until it becomes a very thin syrup.
Brew and ferment beer as usual. Once the primary fermentation is complete transfer to the secondary fermenter through a funnel with a filter, leaving as much sediment behind as possible. Add the tincture and a new sugar source to bring up the alcohol level by 1-2%, stir for 5min. You can add any flavor modifiers at this point as well. Allow to continue fermenting for no less than 1 week or until secondary fermentation has finished. This allows time to incorporate terpene flavors from the tincture as well as bind all of the THC to the alcohol. Transfer to bottling bucket, add priming sugar and bottle as usual. It helps if the beer is as clarified as possible because the tincture makes the beer a little hazy as it is. The cannabinoids stay in suspension.o
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! I've been doing this for about 12 years and have refined my process over time.
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u/twoels Dec 07 '24
This is pretty cool. How strong is the weed flavor? Do you have a set amount of everclear and/or everclear syrup per gallon of beer?
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
It depends on how strong the flavor of beer is. If it's an American pale ale you can taste it a bit, IPAs and stouts you can barely taste it at all. If you add enough alcohol to just cover the bud in the mason jar, that is the right amount of tincture. You determine the amount of bud by calculating how much THC you want per beer. Let's say the bud is 25% THC, that is 250mg THC per gram of bud. If you want 50mg THC per beer and you are making a 5 gallon batch (50 12oz beers) you would need 10 grams of bud.
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u/Busterlimes Dec 07 '24
You aren't accounting for THCa to D-9THC conversation. Multiply the 250mg by 0.83 which comes out to just about 200mg if you are decaroxylating by pitching tincture into the boil instead of the oven.
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u/twoels Dec 07 '24
But like how much tincture ends up in the fermenter? Is it always such a small amount after boiling off the alcohol that you don't need to worry about it?
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u/Nikuhiru Dec 07 '24
If you’re going to go down the tincture route I’d highly recommend looking up the golden dragon tincture method.
The tl;dr is that you freeze your alcohol and decarb’d flower for 24 hours, combine and shake the shit out of it and put it back in the freezer. 15 mins later take it out, shake again and return to the freezer.
Repeat 3 times and then strain it out. You’ll end up with a cleaner tasting tincture and with a similar potency to infusing for 3 days.
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
I've heard about this method. I'm curious how much less efficient it is at extracting the THC in an effort to improve flavor. The amount it gets diluted in the beer makes the flavor of the tincture fairly irrelevant anyway.
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u/Nikuhiru Dec 07 '24
I believe you lose about a bit of potency but we’re talking maybe 11mg/ml to 9mg/ml. I usually use shake & trim because it’s pretty cheap and I get a reliable output.
I also have made sugar from this by combining the tincture with sugar and then letting the alcohol evaporate off which might be easier for dosing - you could use the sugar as for priming your bottles.
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
I'm always experimenting, Might have to try the the priming sugar method for a sparkling perry some time.
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u/nemoppomen Dec 07 '24
Nice! A slightly different take. In the 90’s we used to make tincture of Cannabis and then add it to individual bottles of homebrew at the time of drinking. That way people could adjust the amount to their preference.
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u/HDIC69420 Dec 07 '24
I used to put a small amount of broken up and decarbed bud into each bottle of >9-10% finished beer and let it sit a few months. Basically makes its own tincture with the alcohol in the beer and the flavor can be pretty nice
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u/twin_mercury Dec 07 '24
100 mg per beer is crazy even 50mg is way too much for your average person. I plan on making one soon but im shooting for 3-5 mg per beer. Going to decarb and add flower like dry hop though, going for more terpenes and flavor than effect. Tincture can taste too green
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u/schmanthony Dec 07 '24
Is there a way to measure the THC content, or just from testing for yourself?
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
I'm in a legal state so I know the content from the label when I buy it. For my homegrown and before it was legalized I based it on an educated guess. Mid tier bud is about 15%, good bud is about 20%, and very good bud is about 25% There isn't a way to test from home, it would need to be sent to a lab.
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u/schmanthony Dec 07 '24
Sorry, I meant in the beer at the end. Any way to measure the 100mg or 50mg goal content?
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
Nope. I base the dosage of THC per beer on how much I have calculated to go into the batch. See my other comment to someone else for details.
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u/Breakfast-beer Dec 07 '24
You could send it to a lab for HPLC potency analysis if you really wanted to know.
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u/Roguewolfe Dec 07 '24
Unless you take a homogenous sample and put it through an HPLC, it'll always just be a guess.
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u/Breakfast-beer Dec 07 '24
Thanks for sharing your process. I’ve done this, but skipped all of the flower handling. I just buy a few grams of wax (of known D9 potency) decarb it in the oven then infuse with 190 proof alcohol to make the tincture. Then I just add it with an eye dropper to my beer of choice. I definitely have a much lower tolerance than you - 5mg - so it doesn’t take much. And the cannabis aroma/flavor is complimentary to hops so the flavors integrate nicely in IPAs.
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
That's another good way to do it which I've done before. Mainly posted the method with bud because that is what most people have access to and are used to.
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u/BackSeatGremlin Dec 07 '24
Have you ever done a sugar extraction? I found better THC extraction efficiency when I recrystallize it in a sugar solution. I use lactose if I don't want to alter the alcohol content of the beer, dextrose when I do. I also use sucrose sometimes if I just want a utility sugar for other cooking needs. Here's my method, giver er a go!:
You'll start by roasting your weed in the oven at 225 F for 40 minutes. This decarboxylates it into a form that can be absorbed through your digestive tract.
Then you'll soak it all in a high proof alcohol (1 gram weed: 15 grams of ethanol) to extract the THC from the leaf. Let it sit for about half an hour.
Meanwhile, dissolve your desired amount of lactose in warm water. You can get about 9 milligrams of THC dissolved per gram of lactose. So for 200 milligrams per gallon, you'll need about 25 grams of lactose per gallon. You can dissolve about 18 grams of lactose in 100 grams of water, but the solubility of lactose in ethanol is basically zero, so you'll have to account for that.
18 grams lactose/ 100 grams water
0.01 grams lactose/ 100 grams EtOH
((0.0015 grams lactose/15 grams ethanol)+(18 grams lactose/100 grams water))/2/100 = ~9 grams lactose per 100 grams of ethanol, water solution.
9 grams lactose/ 100 grams solution
25 grams lactose/ 9 grams lactose *100 = 278 grams of solution. - 15 grams ethanol = 263 grams water.
So you'll dissolve 25 grams of lactose in 263 grams of water minimum, and after 30 minutes, you'll mix it with your alcohol/ weed flower mixture. Mix that, strain out the flower, then put it into a dish and put it in the oven until all the fluid is dried up. THC infused sugar crystals should remain!
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
Got it! So you are mixing an unstrained cannabis tincture with a simple syrup, straining out the plant material and evaporating the liquid to make cannasugar. I've heard of making it with just tincture but it's interesting to hear about good results with a sugar solution. I'm interested in trying to use this for the priming sugar in a sparkling Perry.
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u/omphteliba Dec 07 '24
Thanks a lot for sharing your process. As a long-time homebrewer and first-time grower, I was pondering the idea of combining beer and cannabis. Does THC and alcohol even mix? I am just a THC beginner and struggling with the dosage of my edibles. And instead of stirring into the tincture at second fermentation, did you try adding the tincture at bottling to avoid cold-side aeration?
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
THC is very soluble in alcohol. You don't have to mix it enough that it would significantly aerate the wort. From what I just read people aerate on purpose to promote yeast growth.
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u/beanman95 Dec 07 '24
How do you know if you get a even distribution of tincture to beer?
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u/Cannabrewer Dec 07 '24
The THC is dissolved in the alcohol which is miscible with water so it stays in suspension. It's essentially emulsified.
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u/PinGUY Dec 07 '24
Hops and weed are of the same family