Making tincture is an expensive project, and candy, though simple, is a little more dangerous to work with because of the high temperature involved. Still interested? Keep reading.
You will need some special equipment, a significant quantity of high quality cannabis, and a certain fearlessness of disfiguringly hot liquid candy to complete these recipes. When you're done, you'll have a supply of tincture that will last for months if stored properly, and some lovely candy that is discreet, and easy to carry and take whenever smoking or vaping is inconvenient.
Because we already make a lot of candy here at the holidays, I had some needed supplies on hand, like a candy thermometer, candy molds, colors and flavors, and cellophane wrappers. If you're making tincture, you'll need a glass jar, preferably of a dark color, with a tight fitting lid, and a tincture press.
I already own a small selection of candy molds. My favorite for hard candies, hands down, are a pair of silicone mini cube trays, each with 81 half-inch cubes. I use them both and get something over 110 pieces per recipe. There are many attractive silicone candy molds on the market. You'll need enough silicone candy molds to hold about 161 ml of liquid candy. Yield will vary depending on the volume and type of tincture and additional flavorings you add.
I had 5" x 5" cellophane wrappers on hand that, cut into quarters, were just the right size to wrap my half-inch candy cubes. Hard candies are sticky, so they must be wrapped individually for storage or you'll have one giant candy.
If you're making your own tincture, you will want a tincture press. To make strong candies, you need a very strong tincture. Any tincture you can't get out of the mash is lost to the compost. You can't make tincture without losing some product in the straining, but you can minimize loss with efficient mechanical pressing.
Before you begin, decide what candy mold you want to use, and how strong you want a single piece of candy to be. I recommend something between 2-10 mg of THC for a small piece of hard candy.
Ten milligrams is what Colorado has standardized upon as a single dose in an edible. If you're not an experienced cannabis user, or if you're not experienced with edibles, 10 mg could pack a lot of punch. Individual experiences can vary a lot. Be cautious in dosing until you are familiar with your own candy's strength. Remember that edibles take longer to come on than smoking or vaping, which are nearly instantaneous. It could take from ten minutes to two hours to experience the effects of edibles.
Determine the volume of a single piece of candy in your mold by pouring water into it, then measuring the water it takes to fill.
Divide the total yield of about 161 ml by the volume of a single piece of candy to find out how many pieces you'll get from a recipe. Multiply the anticipated number of pieces of candy by the amount of THC you want in each: that is how much THC must be in the tincture you add to the recipe.
When making the tincture, make it strong enough so 1/8 cup or less is sufficient to infuse a whole recipe of candy.
Added flavor and color are both optional. A very strong tincture has an herbal flavor that pairs well with many spices and fruits. A 2 mg hard candy will taste principally of the added flavoring, while a 10 mg candy will taste mainly of tincture. I recommend using LorAnn Hard Candy Flavoring Oils or a high quality alcohol based extract.
The candies pictured were made with 1/4 cup of glycerin tincture each, but of different strengths of tincture, so the top two candies are much stronger than the next three. Using a quarter cup of tincture made them difficult to work with, and some of them did not solidify well, which is why I recommend you make your tincture strong enough to use half as much. Your hot liquid candy solution will be easier to blend, and the finished candies will be less sticky. Also, alcohol will mix in more smoothly than glycerin. Tincture is added at the end of candy making, when the mixture has cooled enough that it doesn't degrade the active ingredients.
The top pictured candy is a 10 mg strength piece flavored with raspberry, and colored with three drops of royal blue coloring. The second piece is pear flavored, of the same strength as the raspberry, but has no added color. The next three pieces are of 2 mg strength. The middle candy is flavored with 2 tsp of Key lime extract, and colored with a drop each of yellow and green. The very gooey looking yellow one is not solid because in addition to the quarter cup of tincture, I used a quarter cup of ginger syrup to flavor them. There's no added color in these, either: the hue is a combination of tincture and ginger syrup. They taste great, and I'd try making them again, adding the syrup with the sugar before cooking, instead of at the end with the tincture and color. The bottom candy pictured is cherry flavored. I probably colored these with two drops of red color, but didn't make a note of it.
Cannabis tincture
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| Strong glycerin tincture |
There are two tincture solvents you can use that are both good for hard candy: glycerin and alcohol. Glycerin has a sweet taste and is a good choice if you want to be able to ingest the tincture directly. It's tasty by itself, or with a flavor added. A 1:1 blend of glycerin tincture with ginger syrup is very nice tasting. Whether you take the tincture directly or in a hard candy, you can absorb some of the active ingredients sublingually by holding the tincture or candy in your mouth for a few seconds, instead of swallowing it right away. The THC absorbed this way takes effect much more rapidly, and the effect is several times stronger than it would be if you swallowed it quickly.
Glycerin tinctures do not denature the active ingredients in cannabis like alcohol does, which some argue makes for a better quality of effect. However, there are advantages to using alcohol to make a tincture. It can hold a higher quantity of THC than glycerin can: up to a 1:1 ratio of pure THC to alcohol, compared with 1:3 THC to glycerin. A typical ratio found in commercial tinctures is 60% THC. Another advantage to using an alcohol tincture for candy making is that most of the alcohol evaporates immediately when added to the hot candy, making it easier to incorporate without affecting the texture.
It's up to you how much tincture to make at a time. Make it as strong as you need.
For either glycerin or alcohol based tincture, begin by decarboxylating the cannabis. (Or follow this procedure for a one-pot decarb/steep.) Grind it, spread it out on a baking sheet, and bake it at 200 degrees for 20 minutes. (Some sources say that decarb'ing is not necessary with alcohol, but the same sources demonstrate decarboxylating before making an alcohol based tincture. The flavor is better if you decarb.)
If you're using glycerin, mix the glycerin and decarboxylated bud into a crock pot, set it to Warm, and let it gently cook for as many hours as you like. I haven't found any evidence in favor of very long steep sessions, but many sources will advise you to steep a heated solution for up to twelve or even twenty hours, and a cold solution for as long as a year! Five hours works perfectly well for making a glycerin tincture. If you're making an alcohol tincture, mix the alcohol and decarboxylated cannabis, and steep at room temperature for three hours. According to one source, longer than three hours draws out the chlorophyll. But if you decarboxylate, the chlorophyll is destroyed, so that's not a concern. Chlorophyll is not psychoactive and its flavor and color can be unpleasantly assertive. Another option with alcohol is to steep it in the freezer.
If you're using glycerin, mix the glycerin and decarboxylated bud into a crock pot, set it to Warm, and let it gently cook for as many hours as you like. I haven't found any evidence in favor of very long steep sessions, but many sources will advise you to steep a heated solution for up to twelve or even twenty hours, and a cold solution for as long as a year! Five hours works perfectly well for making a glycerin tincture. If you're making an alcohol tincture, mix the alcohol and decarboxylated cannabis, and steep at room temperature for three hours. According to one source, longer than three hours draws out the chlorophyll. But if you decarboxylate, the chlorophyll is destroyed, so that's not a concern. Chlorophyll is not psychoactive and its flavor and color can be unpleasantly assertive. Another option with alcohol is to steep it in the freezer.
When you're done brewing your tincture, strain it with whatever means you have. You will have to work at it to get much more than 75% recovery of your original solvent volume. If you plan to make tincture even once, a press is a good investment.
Store tincture in a dark colored, non-reactive container, out of the sun. (Sunlight destroys THC.) It will keep for months.
Dosage notes
I have been calculating the strength of tinctures based on what I put into them. If you don't know what strain of cannabis you're working with, 10% THC is a reasonable estimate for high quality bud. If you do know the strain, you can look up its average and highest test values on Wikileaf, and use one of those figures. A gram equals 1000 milligrams, so a gram of a typical sativa has about 10 mg of THC.
My methods will yield a very rough estimate of dosage. There are testing companies and devices that can get you a more accurate result.
Take notes on your work: how much cannabis you used and what kind, which solvent you used, how long you steeped it, and then when you make candy, how much tincture you used in the recipe and how many pieces of candy you got out of the recipe. When you eat the candy or take the tincture directly (I don't recommend you take the alcohol tincture directly, because pure grain alcohol burns) also note when you ingested it, what else you've eaten before and afterward, and when you begin to feel the effects, when they peak, and when you no longer feel them. Eventually, you will develop a rule of thumb for how much you want to ingest to get a desired effect.
Cannabis infused hard candy
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| Blue raspberry candy |
Equipment
candy thermometer
saucepan
silicone candy molds (at least 220 ml capacity)
silicone spatula
parchment paper (optional)
individual candy wrappers
Ingredients
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup water
up to 1/8 cup cannabis tincture
1 dram candy flavoring or 1-2 tsp extract (optional but recommended)
1-3 drops candy color (optional)
Method
Put sugar, corn syrup, and water in a saucepan and heat on stovetop. When it is warm enough, stir it to completely dissolve the sugar. Cook to 315 degrees.
Take sugar off heat and stir gently. The temperature may continue to rise. Stir until the temperature has dropped to 250 degrees.
Add tincture, flavoring, and color, and stir until completely incorporated.
Pour candy into molds. Smooth tops with a spatula.
Let cool completely before removing candy from molds. It should be stiff, not bendable. Candy will still be a little sticky but should keep its shape while you're handling it.
Wrap candies individually. Store in an airtight container in a dark, dry, cool place.
Enjoy responsibly. Keep your cannabis candy locked up away from children and pets.
