Getting The Most Out of Your Cannabis
Marijuana is expensive, that’s just a fact. So, it’s important to get the most out of your money especially when it comes to weed. There are a few hacks used to help people get the most out of their marijuana. Using a grinder to grind your cannabis is a great way to maximize your marijuana as kief builds up over time in a grinder which is a delightful treat to sprinkle onto a cannabis bowl. Or a nice surprise when you run out of pot.
Once you have smoked all the buds and you are down to just the stems don’t you ever wonder if there is THC left in the stems? I know I sure have. Technically you can smoke marijuana stems but it really isn’t the best decision as it won’t really make you feel any different or help you get much higher. Furthermore, the taste of smoking stems is not the same as smoking flowers, there is more of a wood chip taste which may result in a headache.
There are however ways to extract the THC from the stems allowing you to maximize the use of your marijuana.
Make THC Tea
The short answer is yes marijuana stems do have THC in them but it is a lot less than your typical cannabis buds. This is why smoking them doesn’t really get you high, but you can make other things with the stems to get the most out of your cannabis. There are many options for extracting THC from marijuana stems and making tea is one of them. Try this simple recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup stems (either ground or broken up, brewer’s choice)
- 3 cups water
- tea bag of choice
- coffee filters
- 2 to 3 teaspoons a favorite alcohol
If you want to stay away from alcohol, try ½ cup of milk (Almond, soy, dairy or coconut) or half teaspoon of butter or coconut oil. Remember that in order to successfully extract the THC it will be important to decarboxylate the cannabis.
First fill a tea kettle with water. Then, add the milk, butter or oil, (if using alcohol, wait until after the water is boiling and off of the burner to incorporate into the water). Add broken down stems to boiling water and stir for ten minutes, infusing the liquid. If using ground stems, consider using a reusable tea bag to make the straining process easier. If not, simply place the coffee filter over the kettle’s spout when pouring.
Once you have mastered this technique you can have some friends over for a cannabis tea party, and show others how to make cannabis tea out of leftover stems.
Infuse Your Alcoholic Beverage
There are several different types of marijuana beers and wines on the market you can try out in the world, but this a project you can do yourself. Another interesting way to use your marijuana stems is to infuse them with alcohol as alcohol helps extract the THC into the liquid.
Alternatively, if you want the cheater’s method and you have the time, take a bottle of strong clear alcohol, such as ever clear or vodka. For every ounce of liquid, grind up 1.5g of stems. Let the bottle sit in a dark room for three weeks, occasionally shaking to stir up the contents. At the end of 3 weeks, you should be ready to drink.
Because of the intense taste, consider taking 1/4 or 1/2 shots of the finished product at a time to see how it will affect you. Also try blending it with your favorite mixer, like bloody mary mix.
Bubble Hash
All stoners wonder at some point if there is THC in marijuana stems and making bubble hash will help answer that question for you, yes there is THC in marijuana stems.
Start by gathering broken down stems or putting them into a blender (amount is to preference, just remember it should be almost double what it would be with just flowers). Put them into a mason jar with 90% isopropyl alcohol. Shake the closed jar for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Strain with a coffee filter into a pyrex glass container, like a brownie or casserole dish. Adjust a fan to blow onto the mixture and wait until all the liquid evaporates. This waiting period could last over 3 hours, but it may be best to wait a full 24 before indulging in the product. Once the waiting process is done, simply scrape and smoke. Now you know how to extract THC from stems to make hash.
Baking Marijuana Stems
Knowing there is THC in marijuana stems gives you a great opportunity to experiment with baking. You can use marijuana stems to make cannabutter or cannaoil. Simply adjust your recipe by increasing the amount of stems instead of the ground marijuana. Obviously when using stems that have less THC than marijuana buds you will have to use more stems to get the same result. Also, the stems will have a more woody taste in comparison to a normal marijuana flower taste.
Get Creative
There are a few other things you can do with leftover marijuana stems other than using them to extract THC. Depending on the size of the stems you can use them as skewers for a cookout or glue them together to make a small basket. The sky’s the limit honestly and with the right creative thinking you could use them for several different things.
Now knowing that marijuana stems do indeed have THC in them it may be hard to use them for something other than getting high but either way you get the most out of your marijuana purchase.