Lessons learned in making cannabis oil - steps in making it

A little over a year ago we moved to the Cape in order to live a simpler life and assist my in laws who were struggling with serious health issues and finances.

Part of that help was to grow and supply cannabis oil to them. One had a possible tumor in the head and other health issues coming from his quadruple bypass, and the other had a series of cancer issues. Breast cancer had been with her for some time, and now she also had lung cancer from a careless doctor cutting into a "Fat cell" that in this case was cancerous, and the blood went into her lungs.

Scary.

So we spent a lot of time researching options for them, and regularly the option of CBD oils and Cannabis being a viable option for them to use.
This not only seemed to be a genuine option for them, but also financially viable, available and with little to no side affects at all.

We decided to go for it.

Before we have a world of angry people 'beating down our door', I just need to elaborate that the continued with their traditional treatments, improved greatly on their lifestyle by a simple and active farm life and also added the OILS to their diets.

Moving on

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Learn from our mistakes

We decided to make it with a solvent, Ethanol. We used the 96% Ethanol, which is 96% alcohol and 4% water.

Things you must know if you are to make it yourself are as follows:

1. Get a distiller. The Solvent is quite expensive if you get the right stuff, and the distiller allows you to capture most of it after using it as solvent. The Distiller is quite expensive however
2. Don't skimp on the solvent. You don't want to have a great medical benefit in the CBD oil and then put some unwanted car fuel in your system instead!
3. Get a coffee machine. It will help with the final straining and cleaning up of the greens from the solvent and is easily obtained, and relatively cheap. Of course you then need coffee filters with it
4. Nice big glass bowls (2 of them at least), a smaller glass bowl and a large strainer for your initial straining of material
5. A nice area that is not inside your main living area if possible. So don't try do it in your kitchen if you can. There are lots of gasses and smells that come from the process. the area needs to be ventilated too.
6. Get some good coconut and olive oil to use as the raw CBD oil is very thick and difficult to work with. It also stains everything if it is raw and not mixed with an other oil like them.

When I tried to do this the first time, I was nervous and worried I would mess it up. I did!!
I had to learn how the distiller would work, and after allowing it to switch off automatically the first time I opened the lid and the whole house was filled with a heavy cannabis smoke that stunk up the whole house.....and of course I was taken over by my first ever week smoke cloud!!

Baptism of smoke!!

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And here is the process for you(the way we make it - I know there are other successful methods):

• Take the cannabis plant when ready and cut it up into small manageable pieces. I let them then dry a day or 2 which makes it easier to work with
• Once ready, place a large portion of the cut weed into one of the glass bowls. Cover the weed with the Ethanol, and work the weed with your hands. I make sure that all the heads are crushed and leaves, stems everything is sufficiently worked through my hands to get all the oils from the plant into the ethanol
• Strain the mixture into the 2nd bowl, make sure to get as much of the solvent out the plant...this is where the oils now reside
• Get rid of the old plant material (I put in garden as fertilizer)
• Take the strained solvent and put in the coffee filter to get rid of the small plant material still in the solvent. I sometimes use more coffee filters than just the one in order to speed the straining, since the plant material can clog the filter and slow the process
• See how much Liquid you have, then add your olive/coconut oil to the mix. You need to know how much you add (I usually do around 15 to 20ml) so you know exactly how much actual CBD oil you produced. Without this you have no clue how much actual CBD OIL you produced!
• Add the liquid to the distiller and allow it to cook off all the alcohol, capturing it in a bowl or flask that comes with the distiller. You can put this ethanol back into the containers they came in and use again later
• AS SOON AS THE ETHANOL slows down in the distilling process, turn off the distiller!! This means the ethanol is almost fully extracted and any further distilling may burn the remaining liquids causing the above smoke room affect that burns the OILS.
• Allow the liquids to cool down sufficiently, and then pour it into the small bowl. I often use a little more ethanol to clean the oils from the distiller completely, swishing it around so to get all the CBD oils. That ethanol will be lost but it is just a little bit and worth it
• Place the small bowl on the warmer part of the coffee machine in order to let it stay warm and burn off the remaining ethanol form the mix. I test it by putting a pin or needle into the mix and lighting it with a lighter to see if it sparkles. If it does, then you know there is still ethanol in the mix and needs to stand longer.

And there you have it, good clean CBD oil that you can use for you pains, sickness and sleep. And don't anyone try to tell me it is not affective, as we have seen it first hand in the family.
Helping with pains (arthritis, joint and general - our old dog is WAY better on it), sleeping assist (much better than sleeping tablets and their chemicals), cancerous growths and even cancer itself (mom and dad are both clean).

I know this is not a fix all to all things, but it worked for us.

We take it by putting a buying the clear gelatin capsules from the pharmacy, and placing the drops of oil in those. That way you don't taste it at all and it is easily taken.
With the above strength, 1 drop is more than enough to use for most of the issues, except cancer fighting. That needs a large amount of oil over quite a short period of time.
The suggestion is 60ml over 90 days!

We battled to get dosages right in the beginning and it put all on a trip (I can't understand why people chase that - it is horrible) until we got it right.
1 drop was more than enough, and this can be taken as needed or once every few days for something like arthritis pain.

I hope this helps anyone interested in making the oil for themselves. This is also not pro drugs at all, but pro safe medicines and care!
we live in a home where nobody drinks or smokes at all...so this is not for recreation, but medicinal use.

In fact my wife laughs at me because the one time I was in the hospital, the pre-meds completely knocked me out....I am a total lightweight for a 100kg man!

Good luck everyone!

[Image credit unsplash.com, floydsofleadville.com, prima-coffee.com, talksport.com, pinterest]