Story by Subcool

Photos by Subcool and MzJill

I’d like to show you how to make this amazing cannabis preparation. It’s a vegetable-glycerin-based tincture that you can make with just a few inexpensive kitchen items. I’m specifying vegetable glycerin so that you don’t confuse it with the product used to make soap, which comes from animal fats and is definitely not the same thing. Vegetable glycerin is used in cough syrups and many other products and is safe for human consumption. However, I do recommend drinking extra water when you’re taking it, as it tends to dehydrate you when taken in larger amounts.

Glycerin – also known as glycerol – is easy to find. The company Now makes a very high-quality version that you should be able to get at your local health-food store. Then you simply soak some high-quality cannabis shake and kif in the glycerin for 60 days.

I like to take the high-quality shake and bud and grind them up well, then place them in a two-quart glass jar. Then I add five to seven grams of kif (i.e., unpressed trichomes) to the jar to increase the medicine’s potency. Remember that this preparation will be ingested, so keep all your tools sterile and use good-tasting shake, not waste leaf.

Once the jar is 90 percent filled with ground weed and kif, slowly add the glycerin until the weed is covered and the jar is full. (Step-by-step photos below) Make sure to rotate the jar for about three to five minutes per day, mixing the contents of jar well. (I like to flip my jar upside-down each day and let the weed float to the top of the glycerin.) After 60 full days, use a 190-micron Bubblebag to strain out the weed. At first I found this part of the process extremely difficult, and I think that using a French press or some type of fine kitchen screen to strain the shake from the tincture would work much better for most people.

Choosing Strains for the “Tinc”

Now here is where some knowledge of individual cannabis strains can be very helpful. For a medication that will provide relief for nausea and stomach pains as well as tremors and shakes, it seems that sativa hybrids work best. These varieties tend to provide a more “up” buzz that’s best for morning and daytime medication. You can even vary the harvest time and use a sativa that’s been harvested early for a tincture that’s even more energizing and upbeat.

Indica strains tend to provide better pain relief and make great medication for nighttime, especially for those folks having trouble sleeping. By making two different kinds of tincture using different types of cannabis harvested to suit the individual’s needs, we can provide effective long-term relief from many ailments both in the daytime and at night. I’m also very happy to use this preparation as ammo when the anti-cannabis people want to bring up the health drawbacks of smoked medicine.

A glycerin tincture is very easy to titrate, and a patient can use a few drops under the tongue to get just the relief needed and no more. Plus the tinc doesn’t seem to get most people super-high or even stoned, and many without serious ailments will not feel its effects unless they take a large amount, like 30 ml. Given the variations in individual metabolism, everyone will be different in this respect.

We’ve also seen incredible results with people using the tinc to treat migraines. When you’re suffering from a serious headache, taking a pill orally is a slow fix. With this preparation, you can brush your teeth vigorously and then apply a few drops into the mouth. The medicine passes across the mucous membrane and seems to have immediate effects.

Tincture Time

The first time I made tincture, I used two ounces of very “up” weed with a high THC and low CBD content. The medicine was incredibly potent, but it actually made you feel “tweaked” and was only good for daytime use. If I used it late at night for pain relief, it actually woke me up and gave me renewed energy.

In order to create a more relaxing and calming tincture, I used the following strains: Jack the Ripper, Space Queen, Purple Urkel and Jack’s Cleaner. All these plants were fully seeded, and the harvest times were past the 70-day mark. This insured that we would have a more sedative form of the medicine. Much of the weed used was either purple- or maroon- colored. I have seen the bubble water turn the color of grape juice when using these purple strains, and I wanted to see if the color and taste came through in the tinc. We also added a large pile of golden kif to the top of the jar before adding the glycerin.

I think it’s very important to fully decarboxylate the THC acids. To do this, we heat an oven to 170ºF (the lowest setting) and let the tincture sit there and warm up for about 45 minutes. At day 50, I also wash the jar well and place it in a bucket of hot water until it all cools down. These two steps ensure that the tincture is activated to its full potential. The plum-colored tinc is really impressive, and as we’d hoped, produced a much more calming effect than the first batch made with early-harvested sativas.

Dosage and Feedback

I take 15 ml of the tinc with unsweetened grape juice – it’s actually quite pleasant. We also gave small dropper bottles to anyone we knew with a medical card, and we’ve had some amazing feedback: