Cannabis Extraction

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Cannabis has over 100 cannabinoids and over 150 terpenes (volatiles). It’s packed with lots of medicinal properties. You can do a regular cold extraction, which is my personal preference, to gain the benefits of these constituents. But if you want your extraction to have THC, which is the primary psychoactive constituent, then the process is a bit more complicated.

To get THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), it needs to be converted from its original acidic form THCA (Tetrahydrocannabinolic Acid) via heat. This process is called decarboxylation. (By the way, same goes for some of the other cannabinoids including CBD). You can either use heated alcohol or you can bake the plant material before adding to alcohol for extraction. It’s a double edge sword though because by heating it, you greatly degrade those highly medicinal terpenes or lose them altogether to evaporation.

Using a Soxhlet Extractor for cannabis tincture can help strike a balance. It allows for the preservation of those volatile compounds (terpenes), as the closed system of the soxhlet ensures they condense and return to the mixture rather than escaping through evaporation. The downside though is that with this method there’s only a partial decarboxylation of the THCA because the heat of the condensed alcohol isn’t hot enough to fully decarboxylate the THCA into THC. So it’s one of those “can’t have it all” situations in herbal extractions.

In a Soxhlet Extractor, the alcohol is heated up through the system, then reaches the cooling water which condenses it back down the system though the plant material, eventually making its way back to the bottom (right). Then the process repeats itself over and over, yielding a very strong final concentration.

 

Terpenes are antiviral, anticancer, antimicrobial, antidepressant, and analgesic. The terpenes are definitely worth trying to retain when doing a Cannabis extraction. And the acidic forms of the cannabinoids are loaded with medicinal value too (anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, and non-psychoactive). If you’re like me and you’re just going for the non-psychoactive medicinal properties, then just make a tincture like you would any other herb and get the benefits of these plant properties.

Cannabis use goes far beyond its psychoactive influence. It’s a highly valuable plant for many medicinal uses, both internally and topically. Thankfully, aside from those who were irreparably persuaded for life by Reefer Madness propaganda, the stigma around Cannabis use has just about come to a close among the majority of the population.