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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are probably quite familiar with the many potential health benefits of cannabis. Whether you prefer to harness the benefits of the THC in weed or the CBD, it’s important that you understand the basic science behind preparing cannabis for human consumption.
There are many methods of processing pot to make it usable for humans. From curing the buds to extracting the essential oils of the plant, there are plenty of things you can do to your harvested plants.
One of these things is decarboxylation. If you are curious about what the decarboxylation weed process is – or want to know how to decarb weed for yourself at home – look no further than our helpful guide.
What is “Decarbing”?
Decarbing, or decarboxylation, is a chemical reaction that is used to make cannabis edibles more potent. It essentially turns THCA, a chemical that is not psychoactive, into THC – the chemical that we all know and love for its myriad mental benefits.
Cannabis contains THCA instead of THC before the heating or smoking process, so if you plan on eating cannabis in an edible of some sort, you need to decarboxylate it first. Although it sounds complicated and highly scientific, don’t worry -it’s actually quite easy to do and simply involves subjecting your pot to super-high temperatures of around 250 degrees.
There are several ways you can decarboxylate weed. Here are some of your options.
How to Decarb Weed
In a moment, we will walk you through all the steps involved in decarbing weed. Before you get started, however, make sure you have broken your weed down into smaller pieces. You have a couple of options here. You can either break them up by hand, using your fingers to gently break buds into small pieces.
An alternative to using your fingers to break up the weed is to grind them with a food processor or a commercial weed grinder. This will allow the buds to be broken down into a finer consistency – which is often desired if you are using weed for edibles.
Ready to get started? Here are several options for how to decarb your own weed at home.
The Best Way to Decarb Weed: The Baking Sheet Method
Using a baking sheet to decarb weed is the most commonly used method of decarbing weed snce it is both quick and efficient.
However, it’s a rather smelly way to decarboxylate weed. To do this, you will need to preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Line your baking tray with parchment paper and then place your ground weed on the sheet. Bake it for half an hour or until it has turned to a brown color. That’s all there is to it!
How to Decarboxylate Weed the Natural Way
If you don’t want to get super technical or invest a lot of time in decarbing your weed, you do have one simple alternative – you can decarboxylate your weed the natural way.
If you let weed sit around long enough, it will eventually start to decarb on its own – you just have to wait a very long time.
This method isn’t used very often because it takes so long, but if you are interested in experimenting and don’t have to to lose, you might as well give it a try! All you need to do is stash some jars of the clouds in your cupboard and wait for it to decarboxylate on its own.
How to Decarb Cannabis Using Oven Bags
If you have some extra oven bags lying around after Thanksgiving, you might want to give this method a go. It works just like the baking sheet method of decarboxylating weed, but requires less work. You don’t need to buy a baking sheet either.
To do this, simply preheat your oven to about 250 degrees. Put your weed in the bag and tie the top of the bag (this will keep the smell more contained than if you had the buds spread out on a baking sheet).
Place your bag on a baking sheet and then bake for thirty minutes. As with the baking sheet method, you will find that your weed changes to a brownish shade.
How to Decarb Weed With Mason Jars
Mason jars can be used for so many things, from canning jelly to DIY-ing candles. And they can even be used for decarbing weed! This is the best decarboxylation method if you already have a ton of these jars lying around the house.
All you need to do is preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Place your cannabis in a mason jar and fasten the lid tightly to prevent smells from escaping. Gently slide the mason jar onto a rack in the oven – just make sure you are using an oven-safe mason jar and the jar is not touching any heating elements in your oven.
Bake the jars for half an hour. Again, your cannabis will be brown when it is done.
Using a Machine for Decarboxylation of Weed
There are even machines out there that you can use to slowly and effectively decarb your weed. These machines are relatively expensive and take some time to work – up to two hours – but the beauty of them is that you can put the buds in and just walk away. Plus, there is no smell – meaning it allows for more discreet decarbing in your home. In addition, it’s an easy way to decarb weed without oven facilities or other equipment handy.
Why Do We Need to Know How to Decarb Weed?
In short, knowing how to decarb cannabis will open your products up to a whole new market of people. Decarbing is what makes edibles work, and without it, you can’t sell any kind of edible.
It might seem counterintuitive to cook your pot – after all, many people (erroneously) believe that this makes the buds less potent. However, that’s far from the case.
If you don’t decarb your buds before eating them, you aren’t going to achieve any kind of psychoactive effect. You might as well just eat the bag that you stored them in!
Luckily, decarbing weed is easy to do – as long as you follow one of the simple methods we’ve outlined above.
