How to Make Glycerine Tincture

Cannabis infused glycerine tincture can be used straight out of the jar and under your tongue, or to sweeten anything that would normally use honey or some other form of liquid sweetness.  Compared to some of my other recipes here, this one is a little more involved.  But, the yield is high: this recipe makes a quart of tincture at a time.  At about two eye droppers for a dose, we are talking about a good supply in one batch.

Here’s What You Need:

• A crock pot
• 2 quart jars with lids – I use canning jars.
• Cannabis – You can use a couple of handfuls of any grade you have available. Leaf  is great for daytime pain relief; bud is better for the high and sleep. I have even heard of people using kief and other concentrates, but this recipe is for weed that looks like weed.
• 1 quart – food grade glycerine – You can Google it to find a distributor near you.  Here’s where I have gotten it in the past.  Their prices have gone up considerably since the last time I bought some, so I might try ebay or Amazon.
• 4 teaspoons – grain alcohol or Everclear. This needs to be food grade, also, which means you get it at the liquor store, NOT the drug store.
• Cheesecloth and twine

After I have activated my cannabis, here’s what I do to improve the flavor of my tincture:

Put cannabis in a bowl and cover with water. Let it sit overnight or for the day. Drain it and squeeze some of the moisture out and cover with fresh water. Temperature is not important. Repeat this process over the next few days until the water you pour out of the bowl after soaking is clear. My friend and fellow cook, Yellowjuana Cake, does it like this.

Squeeze as much water as possible out of the cannabis and transfer it to a square of cheesecloth to tie it into a bundle that will fit in your jar. Put the bundle in the jar in which you will be making your tincture. Be careful about filling the jar with too much cannabis; you want to keep the cheesecloth bundle together when you shove it into the jar so you don’t have to strain weed out of your tincture. I am always tempted to really stuff the jar especially since it is smaller when the water is squeezed out. But, the glycerine needs to be able to move around in the jar a little bit.  You’ll get a feel for how much works with a little practice.

Fill the jar with glycerine, pour slowly and use a bamboo skewer to get the glycerine to circulate through the cannabis. Leave room at the top to add the alcohol. Once you have added the alcohol, put the lid on the jar and shake it to mix the ingredients.

Once the jar is sealed tight, put it into your crock pot. Fill it with hot water and turn it on to the “low” setting. Let it simmer for eight hours.  When you think about it, shake the jar to mix the ingredients and return it to the crock pot. After eight hours, turn it off and let your tincture sit for at least eight hours. Repeat this part of the process so that your tincture gets cooked for three eight-hour shifts. Keep refilling your crock pot with water as needed.

Once the cooking process is complete, your tincture is ready to use. If you want to pour it off right away, remember that it is hot and use proper tools to proceed. I let the tincture cool and set the jar in the sink to remove the cannabis bundle and to fill my dropper bottles.  It’s a messy job, and the tincture is sticky. I squeeze as much tincture as I can out of the bundle to extract as much as possible before the bundle gets thrown away. Tincture can be stored in the refrigerator. Keeping it at room temperature also seems to be fine.

Here are pictures and a slightly different way to make glycerine tincture. The more we learn, the more different ways to consume cannabis.  Thanks to the internet, all you have to do is “Google” it to find many different ways to make cannabis tincture. I like this one because it is straightforward and the tincture is ready in a week.  Try it; you might like it!