One of the aspects of cannabis medicine that
we all appreciate is that it can be
so easily individualized
for each person. It is far more adaptable
than a one size fits all pharmaceutical approach.
Also, cannabis preparations are so easy to make.
They are open to everyone.
We have definitely seen how hard it is
to obtain medical cannabis products in the legal
markets, both in terms of availability
and price per unit.
This is just one of the reasons why
ShapingFire has always stood for cannabis patient self
sufficiency
for the last ten years.
Everyone should be able to grow and process
their own medicine.
And making proper medicine demands access to analytical
labs because medicine is about repeatable results, not
guesswork.
Luckily, labs are available to patients in most
states.
Thanks to everyone who participated
on the rambunctious
thread on the ShapingFire Instagram page about analytical
testing in your state. Looks like most states
have testing for patients, but with everyone universally
complaining about testing in Ohio, Michigan, and Florida.
I don't think the fight for medical cannabis
is gonna stop anytime soon.
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month. You are listening to Shaping Fire, and
I am your host, Shangelos.
Welcome to episode 124.
My guest today is doctor Amber Wise. Amber
Wise, PhD, grew up in the woods of
Northern Wisconsin and earned a degree in chemistry
from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and
a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley.
Her extensive post grad work in science policy,
toxicology, and risk assessment
include the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington
DC and UC San Francisco.
She has taught in Bangladesh at the Asian
University for Women, San Francisco State University and
the UC Berkeley Extension, and Chicago State University.
She then pivoted to a multistate cannabis operator
to refine and optimize their c o two
extraction and develop their strain specific low temperature
terpene isolation.
Amber Wise has been managing
Medicine Creek Analytics in Fife, Washington since 2018,
providing third party testing for the licensed cannabis
market.
She has published two peer reviewed scientific papers
measuring heavy metals in the aerosols of cannabis
vape cartridges
and has donated a great deal of time
to help Washington state cannabis policy.
Amber has over a 150 houseplants and one
aquarium.
Today's episode is for cannabis patients and home
growers who want to interact with cannabis labs.
During the first set, we break down the
best ways to reach out to labs to
get the answers you want in ways that
keep you in the lab safe,
attributes to look for in a lab, preparing
samples and how to get them to the
lab without tainting them. In the second set,
we discuss the varieties of tests you may
want, what they mean and what they can
really tell you. We discuss common fallacies people
believe about testing results, heavy metals and why
all these flour THC potency tests above 30%
are so unreasonable.
And we wrap up in the third set
with best practices for making tinctures and full
extract cannabis oil.
Amber and her team don't teach extraction, but
they sure have some best practices to learn
from what they've seen in the testing lab.
All these topics and more today on shaping
fire one twenty four.
Welcome to shaping fire, Amber.
Thanks for having me. It's an honor to
be invited. I've wanted to have you on,
the show for a long time and was
just looking for the right thing and, I
think we finally found the right thing. So
thank you so much for being here.
So, you know, let's get right into it.
What are the things that patients and home
growers should be looking for in a lab?
And I can almost hear the joke already
They should be looking one for one that
will even take their samples. Right? And and
I get that. But but let's assume for
a moment that a patient can be a
little choosy. What what are the attributes that
we're looking for in a good lab for
a patient versus a good lab for a
commercial company?
Yeah. I think,
if you have options, right, just give them
a call. There's gonna be a phone number
on their website and ask if they accept
samples from medical patients or personal use
folks. And if they do,
you know, what sort of accreditations do they
have?
Are they certified with the state or are
they ISO accredited?
There's a there's a testing lab standard called
ISO 17,025
that is not cannabis specific, but,
analytical lab
labs in general,
will get this certification. And it's
a sign that they have good paper records
and documentation
and processes.
But that's not necessarily a sign of a
great lab either.
Like you said,
if they will work with you at all,
you know, lots of rules in different states
vary and some states very specifically say you
must have a license to transfer things to
a testing lab or testing labs are only
allowed to accept samples from a licensed
producer processor,
but some states,
are different. And, you know, I, I manage
a testing lab here in Washington state and
we are able to take individual samples. And
I think it's really important for medical patients
and people that are making their own medicine
to have access to testing.
So, call around and ask if they accept
samples, and then then you can ask other
follow-up questions about what sort of documentation they
might need or or how to submit samples
because that will vary.
Right on. Well, I wanna give you a
nod, and and appreciate that your lab takes,
patient samples. There are not,
very many.
And it's nice to know that some folks
are interested, e even though working with patients
is is mostly just noise on on your
balance sheet,
compared to the to the commercial labs, it's
it's important work. And so thank you for
for all the patients everywhere for for for
raising that that medical flag still.
Yeah. It's really important, and,
I I don't want so so so many
patients have been forgotten in the rush to
legalization, and I wanna make sure that we're
respecting the people that allow legalization to happen
and the the people that really need cannabis
for medicine
to improve their lives. Hear
hear. So,
so because the whole background of cannabis has
been so taboo and a lot of the
patients are still very much in the taboo
mindset because,
you know, not really being included in the
normalization
process as much as as we'd like.
Some people might have a hesitancy
to call the lab because, a, they they
might get the wrong person on the phone
or the person on the phone might not
want to say, yes. We take care of
patients.
Or, you know, patients very often just don't
wanna be on the phone. Either they're stoned
or neurodivergent
or whatever.
And and they and they don't want to
be on the phone and so they will
email. And and I've heard everything from patients
who I've talked to about they're they're concerned
about emailing because
they don't want you to have to reply
on the record that you take patient,
samples. Or other people, they don't wanna call
because they don't wanna get an incorrect answer
from an admin assistant, which is different than
the one that the director of the lab
would get. And, you know, I've been I've
been dealing with labs for, like, ten years
now, and I kind of developed the opinion
for myself that,
labs are are have got to be up
and up in a way that it doesn't
really matter who you talk to. You're really
gonna get the same answer from everybody in
the lab because everybody knows the policy, and
it doesn't really bend much. But I'm very
willing to be wrong. So will you kinda
address this idea of interacting with the lab
and and trying to figure out whether or
not there's a better way to do it?
Yeah. That's interesting.
I was basically gonna say the same thing
that your opinion is is that, you know,
if a lab is doing the right thing
and
they're not doing a lot of shady things,
you're gonna get the same answer from everybody.
I treat, you know, individual patient samples exactly
the same way as I treat
regular licensed samples.
We use our same software, you know, I'm,
I'm happy to communicate with patients or clients
via email. I have nothing to hide really.
I do have
some small amounts of protection because of the
way the rules are written in Washington state
and the fact that we're owned by a
tribal entity.
But at the end of the day, I
think that's you know, your first question was,
like, how do you know you're dealing with
a reputable lab? I think if, you know,
you're getting different answers from different people, that's
a sign they might not be that reputable.
That's a very good point, Amber. That's a
good point.
And I get people's hesitation,
but
most labs, you know, they're they're either gonna
say, yes. We can help you or no.
We can't. Right? There's not gonna be a
lot of, oh, call this secret number or
meet me on the corner. Right.
And, you know, I get that people are
sometimes nervous to call or be on record,
but
at, you know, at this day and age
in the, in The US, at least even
if you're in a state that doesn't have
a legal
adult rec program and you have maybe a
hemp testing lab,
you know, the the taboos are are not
so much that you can't call a business
that actually handles cannabis or hemp and ask
them a question about their business.
It's so it's so hard though at the
patient level to know,
like, where the selective enforcement is. Right? Like,
those of us who are in the industry,
you know, I I've I've gotten so
comfortable with with traveling and flying with, like,
you know, things that I need for events
and such that I forget that normal people
are still, you know, you know, can I
can I can I roll can I fly
with my pre roll? Right? And I'm like,
dude, I brought 30 for an event. You
know?
Yeah. I mean, certainly no one's tracking your
phone number and following up with the cops
after that phone call to the lab. Right?
Totally. That you know, we're not at that
level of, taboo or, you know, illegalness. So
I I all I also wanna give a
shout out to all everybody in the industry
who rolled their eyes when I said brought
30 pre rolls because I know you folks
bring a whole lot more.
Okay. So then let's focus on what the
most common tests are that you actually,
offer to patients because, of course, you know,
labs offer a whole slew of of different
types of tests but a lot of those
are really
designed for the licensed industry and for scalable
product and all of that and it's not
really for like, the individual patient who's trying
to create their own medicine and stay well.
So would you kind of slow walk us
through the menu of of tests that that
labs offer that that patients might wanna consider?
Yeah.
So the most common one is what most
people call potency,
but I try not to use that term
as a scientist because that has pharmacological
implications and it's not really what we're measuring
in that test. What we're measuring is cannabinoid
concentration,
cannabinoid panel.
I think your listeners are savvy enough to
know,
that it's, you know, the weight percent of
cannabinoids in that product.
So most commercial labs have about eight
to 12 cannabinoids on their standard panel.
Some labs in in some states might only
have a THCA, THC, CBDA, CBD combo.
But there's generally like some additional ones as
well, CBGA, which is the precursor molecule. So
you'll often see a small amount of that
in flower or extracts because there's some leftover
in the plant.
And so so that's pretty standard. And that's
obviously what people are interested in in terms
of dosing,
and understanding, you know, how many cannabinoids do
you have present?
Additional tests,
for regulatory purposes are often focused on public
health and safety.
So things like pesticide screens,
heavy metal screens,
microbial panels, like salmonella, e coli that can
make you sick.
And so I generally recommend if people are
interested
in screening for safety
as someone who's doing a home grow or
making their own medicine,
I often recommend heavy metals before I recommend
pesticides.
Because even if you grew it yourself in
your own yard or, you know, the soil
that you bought that, you know, was promised
to be clean,
a lot of
properties can be unknowingly contaminated.
Gardens,
in urban areas, even in rural
areas. I don't want to scare people, but
it's not a bad idea to get your
soil tested if you plan to grow outdoors.
It's generally pretty inexpensive
to get a soil test done locally. It's
a different lab than what would be running
your cannabis test. And where I live in
King County, you can actually get soil tests
done for free to a certain extent, in
your property.
So,
so, and, and cannabis plants are also known
to uptake
metals from soil. So if it's there, it
might it might end up in your in
your product.
So that's one that I sometimes recommend if
you're interested in something additional. So Amber, before
we move on to heavy metals, I would
like to comment on this. And what's also
funny, I forgot that we live so close
because I am also in King County. And
I'm like, wait a minute. I have actually
had that test done.
Where I live here on Vashon Island,
I am, slightly downwind from the old,
Asarco
building in Tacoma,
and we used to get all the fumes
of arsenic.
And so the very southern tip of the
island,
has had arsenic on it for decades, and
they've replaced lots of that soil. And it's
just been a big old mess. And people
are very concerned with their food gardens. Right?
And so,
anywhere on the island that I have, cultivated
food or
flowers,
I have always
been
in containers.
Well, I really wanted to do a really
big food garden this year for just general
food security. Seems like it's a pretty good
idea right now. Yep. And so,
I I I wanted to build out the
this the this large,
like, you know, 80 by 40 garden on
my property, but I live within the plume.
So I did reach out to King County,
and they did send people out, and they
did test my soil.
And and what a sigh of relief I
had to find out that the amount of
arsenic in my soil is actually lower than
the natural
background
arsenic
that there is in our area.
And so,
for years, no one's been growing food on
this property just assuming that there was arsenic.
But but I was able to test it
and find out it was not only not
the case, my soil was actually better than
most of the rest of the soil on
the island.
And so, and that that that was free.
And so
that's just a good example of of if
you've got these services from your your county
or your local extension office or something, go
ahead and use them because they can they
can buy you a lot of peace of
mind. And also, if we're talking about specifically
for flour, you do not wanna be smoking
that even in trace amounts.
Right. Yeah. Exactly. And even if you have
to pay, they're usually 25 or $50,
and
it's not, you know, it's totally legal to
send metal, you know, soil over state lines
or whatever and find a lab.
It's it's not anything as complicated as cannabis.
Yeah. That's true.
So, yeah, moving on to other tests. Thank
you.
Pesticides,
are a test that most labs will run
for regulatory purposes, but every state has a
different list of pesticides that they look for.
And commonly used garden pesticides
like Roundup, which is glyphosate
or, you know, some of these other things
that are often in groundwater, like atrazine,
aren't actually on our list of pesticides that
we look for.
And there's complicated reasons for that, but generally
testing labs stick to the regulatory list of
pesticides, which aren't always necessarily all the pesticides
in commercial use.
So that's something that, you know, I'm happy
to run for folks, but it's a little
bit more pricey and it's not necessarily
a guarantee that your crop is
free.
And then there's, things like microbial panels. And
if you're making edibles or tinctures, it's not
a bad idea to run a salmonella or
E coli screen just to make sure that,
you know, you're not going to get sick
from it, but they're pretty rare assuming that
you're, you know, using just general clean kitchen
practices.
But you know, it's something that people might
be very sensitive to and interested in screening.
And those usually aren't all that expensive.
Obviously, if you're growing your own, you're doing
a close visible inspection for mold or bud
rot or something.
You don't need a lab for that kind
of
detection.
But even if you do get some mold
or bud rot, there can potentially be ways
to salvage that slightly moldy material
using like ethanol extractions and oral,
mixtures and stuff. So I don't wanna like
say that it's safe to use moldy material,
but there are ways of extracting it that
can salvage the cannabinoids that are there.
So, so yeah. And then you'd obviously wanna
like probably screen that extract for any microbial
growth or mycotoxins,
once it was made and for peace of
mind.
But those are the main ones that I
recommend for folks. And then there's also one
called residual solvents
that's related to concentrates when you do an
extract. And a lot of people commonly use
ethanol at home to make extracts and tinctures.
And if you run a residual solvent test
on a tincture or an, on an extract
or like an RSO or something
that used ethanol, you're probably gonna get a
very high number
in parts per million for ethanol. And that
doesn't necessarily mean it's unsafe. It might even
be, something that would be over a regulatory
limit for a fail.
But depending upon how you're ingesting that,
it might not be an unsafe amount.
So,
you know, there are regulatory requirements for safety
reasons and, and certainly there are legal requirements
to label things that have ethanol in it.
And,
you know, liquor laws vary in different places,
but,
that can be something that might be able
to give you an idea of how much
is left over. It's very
all the ethanol at home from from a
an RSO or something like that.
You know, that really is startling the first
time that somebody sees
a residual ethanol in their RSO,
and the number is so much strikingly higher
than the state legal minimum for licensees.
But then and so then you find out
you know, this is varies from state to
state. But in in some states, it's a
health reason. But in some states, it's just
that the cannabis stores aren't allowed to sell
alcohol. And if and if there's more than
a breath of it in there, suddenly now
they're calling it alcohol.
And so when I'm working with patients, I'm
constantly trying to explain to them that, yes,
your number looks really scary compared to the
state
maximum,
but you need to know why that state
maximum is set where it is. Your your
residual ethanol is
actually incredibly
good. And if you do the math, it
would take
fourteen million doses of that to equal one
shot of alcohol. Right? So you're you're actually
safe, but the numbers are so many zeros.
Right. And that's what I was gonna say
about, like, people being scared about math is,
like, the units we use to measure that
are often PPM, and 5,000 PPM is the
action limit in Washington state for ethanol. That's
a big number, but in 5,000 PPM is
only half a percent.
Mhmm. And if if that's a it's a
tincture that you're only taking, like, a few
drops of,
you know, you're it's a level amount. You
know, there's more in kombucha.
The other thing that was pointed out, in
a group I was in the other day
was somebody was really concerned about how much
ethanol was in their RSO to take. And
then somebody else in the group pointed out,
you take alcohol tinctures. What are you even
complaining about? Yeah. And everybody laughed because it
really just depends on what venue, you know,
what part of the puzzle you're looking at.
Mhmm.
I want to hit on, pesticides before before
we move forward. Yeah. Just because I I
have this little piece of, I don't know,
I guess we'll call this negativity or or
darkness that I always
I always think about when we talk about
pesticide testing. And since we're here, I guess
we might as well tease it out. We
could do a whole show on pesticide testing,
of course. I used to work in the
area of of pesticide exposure too separate from
cannabis, so I could talk all day about
it. Right on. So I just wanted I
just wanna hit this one part, which is,
you know, some people say, oh, our state
has pesticide testing, and, oh, our our state
doesn't or ours isn't enforced or not. And
and, honestly, I'm of the opinion that it
doesn't really matter if you have state level
pesticide testing or not. It's really about knowing
your grower and knowing what their intention is
because
even
the the tests that we're getting on, for
pesticides on our cannabis, these these these pesticides
have generally never been tested for inhalation full
pure full stop. They have only been
tested for eating these pesticides. So
just because a state has pesticide testing and
it has passed it really doesn't say anything
about your actual health. All it talks about
is the health of if you were to
eat your cannabis.
And so it really, really is to about
knowing your cultivator and knowing that you share
values with them on using pesticides.
Yeah. And the other thing I try to
put in perspective for folks, and this is
again, scare people about the food that you
eat,
but, you know, when, if and when there
are pesticides detected in cannabis, it's often at
super tiny amounts. There are trace levels that
are in the environment and for whatever reason
are coming through in the test.
And you don't ingest very much cannabis,
you know, on a on a mass scale.
Right? Grams, maybe at most
a day.
And we don't test and and cannabis is
generally tested every lot. Every harvest is tested,
unlike your food. Right? We're not testing every
lot of kale or lettuce or green beans
that come out of every field.
And there are there are standards
for pesticide residues, and they are screened at
random
across the country. And you can look up
average values for The United States, and they
are not small.
And so, you know, obviously eating organic will
reduce that to some extent. But at the
end of the day, the the the exposure
you might have to pesticides from your cannabis
use is going to be very small compared
to your everyday exposure to chemicals in the
environment.
For sure. Alright. So let's talk about these
samples.
You know, it it was years ago now
that I was sitting down at lunch with,
one of my most respected,
herbalist, doctor Michelle Sexton from down in San
Diego. Yeah. And she worked on the, herbal
pharmacopoeia
for cannabis
along with other folks. And she was explaining
to me the section of how,
they recommend
you take samples of of commercial lots. And
it's, you know, it's very involved. You know,
you start out with this this big matrix
and you take half of this and half
of that and then half of this and
half of that again, and then you mix
them up and throw salt over your shoulder
and then take half again and boom. Now
you have your flower. Right? And and the
idea is to kind of, like, work in
a little bit of randomization,
I think, to so that you get an,
a random sample. But, also,
the goal is is to to to stop
people from doing the, okay. I took my
ColaBud. I rolled it in Keith, and now
I'm sending it to the lab, right, where
people try to game their numbers. But but
in the case that we're talking about, patients
are are rarely trying to game their numbers.
They actually wanna know the actuality of what
they're experiencing because they're creating their own medicine,
and they need to make the RSO at
the potency that that they're looking for. And
so I'm there's, like, a gray area, right,
where where the
how do you choose a sample when you
work at a licensed company and you really
do need to use science, you know, scientific
method, if you will, to to get the
right one versus
when, you know, when I'm over at a
patient's house and they're showing me their jar
jar of RSO and they're like, what part
of this do I send to the lab,
Shango?
And and and mostly, I, you know, I
I have them put in a,
you know, a a long pipette of some
sort and kinda move it around the jar
while sucking it up so you get little
bits all over the place. And I'm like,
boom. There you go. And and and,
you know, I'll be really embarrassed if you
tell me that that's, like, total
heresy, but but that's kind of why we're
here, right, is to to ask you, what's
how should we be doing this, Amber, if
we, you know, if we if we don't
have these huge lots and if and if
the patient I'm talking with only has, like,
a few cups of this,
how how do I try to, help them
get the best sample other than don't take
it off the top, don't take it off
the bottom?
Yeah. I think you're exactly thinking about it
right. You wanna make sure it's well mixed.
So we'll talk about flour, and then we'll
talk about, like, RSO or concentrates Please. Separate.
So I'll start with the concentrates part.
We're talking about RSO or some sort of,
you know,
coconut oil extract or something. Just make sure
it's really well mixed.
And the best kind of container to send
it into a lab when it's a weird
goopy,
maybe kind of liquid, maybe pasty thing,
is a syringe,
a medical syringe with a cap on the
end. And then also put that syringe in
another baggie.
Sometimes they leak a little bit.
Otherwise, like a glass liquid tight container, like
a tincture dropper jar. I mean, I know
that individual folks, these kind of add up
in cost. So just making sure that it's
liquid tight,
is, is important if it's a tincture,
and RSO works really well in a small
syringe with a cap,
and then in a baggie
to send that to the lab or a
very small jar,
for fly.
I think your listeners are probably
educated enough to know that not every bud
on a plant is gonna have the exact
same amount of cannabinoids in it. It will
vary depending upon the top of the plant,
the bottom of the plant. Was it more
internal near the stem? Was it more external
in getting more light?
So there's gonna be a range of values.
So
if you have something that you grew your
own and you have, you know, a couple
of jars say,
or maybe a bucket of dried flower,
you want to the lab usually needs very,
very small amount.
So like one gram of RSO, like one
small syringe would be plenty.
And generally, you know, you, you should ask
if you're sending in a sample, how much
they need, but two grams of flour is
plenty.
The lab will probably use
one, one to one hundredth of that amount
to take the sample. So if you have
a number of buds and you really want
an average amount, I would take a very
small amount off of multiple buds
and grind it together
before you send it into the lab.
And that way you'll be getting a nice
average number versus
any one bud could be particularly high or
low. Do I really wanna grind it at
at home, though, if I know that you're
gonna grind it there when you take your
sample? Because I'm thinking that if I grind
it at home, I'm I'm,
I'm
volatilizing
terpenoids and cannabinoids.
Yeah. That's true. If you are screening for
terpenoids, and we didn't really talk about that,
and we can get to that maybe later.
If you are wanting to test for the
terpene molecules,
you probably don't wanna grind before you send
it to the lab. But grinding is not
going to affect the cannabinoid profile if that's
all you're looking for. Mhmm. Yeah. Alright.
So,
while we're talking about, putting the,
the RSO in,
syringes and putting it in its own ziplock,
we should probably take a minute and and
and for the for the good of all
the labs everywhere
and and say really avoid using,
bubble envelopes whenever you can. Like like, realistically,
using the smallest size box that you can
find, even the USPS
priority size boxes
to put your stuff in there. It's just
going to get it to the lab more
safely.
I have certainly mailed things to labs,
you know, soil labs too all over the
place where where you just take the sample
whatever it is and then you put cardboard
on either side
of it, and then you put it into
a bubble envelope and off it goes. But
but, you know, just think about how much
money you're paying for this test, that you
really don't want this particular test to to
fall open in the mail, and you don't
want it to arrive at the lab,
you know, messy in any way. You want
your full sample to be there. So so,
you know, yes, it'll cost you a couple
extra bucks probably to send the box versus
the bubble envelope.
But and you might get away with the
bubble envelope, but there's no question that sending
it in a bubble
envelope,
is going to increase your risks across the
board.
Yeah. Absolutely. We've definitely gotten leaky containers in
the past. We don't get most of our
samples don't come in the mail, but we
do,
have hemp and CBD companies that are able
to mail us samples, and we've definitely gotten
leaky
CBD
extracts that smell very much like weed because
they are.
So so is there anything special that we
should do to store those samples,
before shipping? Let's say that we're gonna take
our samples today, but we're not gonna ship
them tomorrow.
I just tell people just toss them in
the fridge, and and that's good enough.
Yeah. That's fine. I mean, the cannabinoids aren't
gonna degrade until it's very, very hot. Right?
More hotter than it's gonna get in a
in a hot mail truck in Arizona even.
Mhmm.
So, you know, there there's a small amount
of degradation that might go on, but the
variability in testing is gonna be larger than
any of that sort of, like, room temperature
degradation. Alright. So before we go to our
first break, when we come back from our
break, we're gonna be talking about, cannabinoid testing
and and and terpene testing and get a
little more into the tests themselves.
But, I wanna, just kinda throw this this
general question to you. Is there anything about
interacting with the lab that I haven't covered
yet that you as a lab director goes,
oh, here's a great thing I wish all
of my patients knew, badang.
I guess I would say, like, it's it's
it's okay to call the lab once you
get results and
if you don't really understand,
but they're not going to be able to
give you any medical related advice on optimizing
your preparation or grow your grow practices, or,
you know, getting a higher number next time
in your formulation. Like that's not their job.
Their job is to give you the number
that is in the product that you sent
in. And once they do that, if they're
answering questions about the format of their results,
that's about as much as you can expect
from them.
I think that is that that is a
very worthwhile piece of advice. And and while
I'll throw that in there, be nice to
the lab folk,
you know, because I I know that very
often patients are a little on the edge
because we're we can be a little nervous,
like, calling these people. And and some people
are are uncomfortable with with, like, asking questions
about the test because they look pretty foreign
your first few times. But Yeah. Just remember
that but in most cases,
these are these are just other, like, really
nice people who are just at work and
trying to help you. And and and you
might get frustrated,
but but be don't take it out on
the lab techs. They're just trying to do
their best.
Yeah. They're just chemists, that are there to
do a specific job. And,
you know, they can't they don't know what
you're doing or how you're making it or
how you're growing it. And that's not their
job. I think sometimes people and the other
thing that I think is really miss common
misconception about testing labs is everybody's seen CSI
where they think we just throw the butt
into the machine and we get a nice
print out the other side. And that is
not the case at all. There's a lot
of chemistry that goes into it. There's a
lot of extractions that happen.
There's a lot of nuances to interpreting the
results. There's a lot of retesting that goes
on behind the scenes that people don't realize.
And,
it's not as easy as it looks. And
so, you know, even if your one injection
might only take fundamentally eight minutes,
we have other clients, other injections,
quality control injections that need to be included
with every batch
that it takes a little bit of time,
to make sure that your one injection is
is good.
So it's not, I think sometimes people think
we just sort of sit around and wait
for the machines to do the work, and
it's a lot more hands on than that.
Everybody's just sitting around reading sci fi. You
know? Yeah. Absolutely. I wish that was my
job.
Alright. So we're gonna take a short break
and be right back. You are listening to
Shaping Fire, and my guest today is chemist
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Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire.
I am your host, Shango Los. And my
guest today is chemist, Amber Wise.
So before the break, during the first set,
we talked a lot about getting to know
your lab and how to interact with the
lab to get the results that you want.
In this set, we're gonna talk a little
more about the specific testing, how to think
about it,
and and and what best to do with
it. So Amber, let's start with the gorilla
in the room, 30%
THC
testing.
You know, I am opinionated, but I'm willing
to be wrong.
I'm of the opinion that anything over 30%,
is artificially
inflated either by having too low of moisture
or treating the flower in advance
or or or probably other things that you
have seen.
And and I'm even suspicious of things at
30%. Like anything over 28, I'm starting to
get like, oh, man. I don't know.
Because because everything over 28, there's this huge
pressure for high percentages
because they do better at retail. Right? So
there's this there's this huge industry pressure
for having these these unrealistic numbers. And, also,
it's interesting how, you know, things went from
being consistently
18 to 24%
during medical, and then suddenly the license market
comes in, and these same flowers grown worse
in commodity
settings are suddenly testing higher. I am filled
with the skepticism.
But you're on the front line, so break
it down for us.
Yeah.
Well, it also depends a little bit obviously
on what how the sample is,
submitted to the lab.
But, yeah, there's definitely inflation. I mean, I
was in some stores in California where they
had 45% flower. Oh, come on. Here's where
here's I just wanna break it down for
people just on a biological
level. We're talking about weight percent
of a molecule of a couple individual molecules.
And when you think about where that molecule
is made in the flower, it's made inside
those trichomes.
Those are, you know, there can be a
lot of trichomes on a cannabis flower. We've
all seen very sparkly trichome
heavy buds, and that's great.
That's where the cannabinoids and terpenes are synthesized.
But there's also stem. There's also plant leaf
structure. There's a ton of cellulose that, I
mean, cellulose is the structure of the plant.
And so when we're talking about 30%
of a molecule,
you still have to have a lot of
percentage left over for just plant material.
These molecules are secondary metabolites,
THCA,
CBGA,
terpenoids. Those are secondary metabolites that are not
necessary
for plants to survive.
So we're not gonna be seeing things that
are above 30%
of an oily structure or the plant would
just not be able to support itself fundamentally.
You you can tell just by touching it,
by looking it, by holding it up. You're
like, is this is this flower that I'm
holding in front of me, 30 to 45%
of its weight is in THC?
That's it's it's absurd when positive that way.
So so generally,
flower that's grown naturally is somewhere between 1020%
THCA.
It can be higher, and I've absolutely seen
it higher,
in the lab. And we we don't do
any sort of THC, a cannabinoid inflation here
at our lab. We were kind of known
for that.
And in cases where we have seen really
high percentages of like total cannabinoids being over
30%, I've seen it. I've asked the lab
staff to retest it. In those cases,
that flower does not smell interesting.
It is bred for just straight THC
expression.
There's very few terpenoids.
It's I've used that flower and it's not
an interesting high at all to me.
And so just because, and, you know, you've,
you've covered this on your show in the
past, high percentage of THC or THC a
is not necessarily the only signal of a
quality flower. The other anecdote I will give
is I used to work
at a company that had a grow facility,
and they're, you know, they're always kinda playing
around with different strains and genetics. And there
was one plant that we could never get
to test above 12 or 13%
THC.
And know the stores wouldn't buy it if
it was, you know, that number.
And every time we would harvest from that
one or two plants, and we'd have a
few for the staff, the staff would like
fight over this strain because it was the
best everybody's favorite. It tasted great. The high
was amazing.
So, you know, I just want people to
be realistic that higher numbers in flower is
absolutely not a better marker of quality
or the effects that you're going to achieve
from it. Well said,
Bravo.
So I could, I could talk a lot
more about that, but I'll, I'll leave that
there.
So for your,
you know, home grower in your garden, you're
probably not, you know, fully optimizing every aspect
of it and that's
okay.
So getting, that's why taking small bits off
of a number of different buds will help
get you that average value
for any individual
part of the plant or, or an average
value for, you know, overall, if you're going
to extract those, but those flower buds.
And yeah, just most you're, you're probably not
going to get the numbers that you see
at a retail store. It's, it's kind of
like the difference between growing your own vegetables
and buying vegetables in a store. Right. You
can grow more interesting things, but you know,
your tomatoes aren't always bigger or, you know,
your celery is always something I think about.
Like I've grown celery a few times and
it's always like small and kind of stringy,
but the flavor's really good. And it's, it
doesn't look anything like the celery at the
store, which is bred for
shipping and, you know, shelf storage and, and
all of that. And that's a lot of
what, what flour has grown for retail purposes
is bread for what we call bag appeals.
So it looks good and sparkly.
And it has, like, large bud structure. But
that doesn't necessarily mean that it has interesting
molecular profiles.
I I I see the off ramp to
the indoor versus outdoor debate right here, which
we're we're gonna drive right past.
But but, you know, there this is a
really good point that that all of these
different preferences,
a patient might have versus, like, you know,
doing a little tent in their house or
doing something little out in their yard or
doing something big in their yard
or, you know, if if they wanna grow
in containers or they're gonna grow in the
ground or they're gonna use artificial lights or
they're gonna use artificial ferts and, you know,
grow with salt or they're gonna do living
soil.
All of these different types of,
growing
will all result in a different plant that
all shows up on your bench.
And and then and then you get to
see where where, you know, the proof that's
in the pudding.
Right.
Yeah. And I will say I mean, I
think you've covered this in the past, but
just really briefly, indoor versus outdoor. There are
more molecules
present in outdoor growth even if it's not
more THCA.
There are more terpene profiles. There are more
minor cannabinoids.
There are just more molecules in general. And
if that's your thing, great.
But indoor is more consistent and easier to
kind of reproduce things over and over. So
there's pros and cons to both. And you
were talking about bag appeal. Like, you know,
unless people are trained
to identify outdoor,
most people look at the indoor and go,
wow. Because
they have been grown in a, you know,
a very controlled environment.
Outdoor often often looks less sexy
to, you know, the kind of center centerfold
high times kind of mentality.
But those who know outdoor
can see it and go, oh my gosh.
There's something special there. And then you realize
that, you know, outdoor has got wider terpene
profiles
and has got wider cannabinoid
profiles. And but also, you know,
we're not trying to shame anybody who's doing
it indoors because,
we're all patients just trying to grow our
medicine. Right? And I know where I live,
in the Pacific Northwest,
it's very challenging to finish any genetics that
I want to here. And so I I
have to do outdoor,
to make lots of medicine, and then I
have to do a little indoor tent so
I have something really cool to smoke.
Yeah. And not everybody has an outdoor space
either. So Yeah. Totally.
So okay. So so now that we've hit
on the 30 testing, let's talk about, another,
common,
unrealistic
expectation. It's usually just because patients haven't thought
about it.
Patients will test their raw flower
expecting that medicine they see in the test
to then enter their body
when they use it either in an edible
or,
or when they smoke it. And and and
most people don't understand
how much
of the,
aroma
is volatilized
off and doesn't even get into your body
and how
common it is for cannabinoids
to change
their chemical
makeup when they when when when you add
heat. Now now, of course, we know that
THCA becomes THC, which is the
decarboxylation
process
that we have to do with with edibles.
Right? But but this change from an acid
form to a non acid form, it actually
impacts lots of different cannabinoids.
And so we can't assume that what we
are smoking is the same thing as in
the raw flower test. Right?
Oh, absolutely.
And that's one of
the scientific
areas that is very underexplored
is, like, what are we actually inhaling? We
are obviously inhaling THC and CBD
and some terpenoid compounds, but we're also inhaling
all kinds of other molecules that have
converted from these ones that we know about
have been
created in that aerosol. I mean, aerosol chemistry
is very complicated.
When you add heat to aerosol chemistry, there's
oxygen.
Anytime there's a heat and oxygen, all kinds
of crazy chemistry happens.
So it's not necessarily bad. It's not necessarily
good.
But it's different than what is reflected
on the report.
The other thing to keep in mind is
we're only reporting out a very small number
of molecules
in that report.
So there's a lot of other molecules present
that aren't listed.
That's easy to forget about because they're not
listed.
So yeah, it's a lot more complicated than
people think it is.
And certainly if there's say 20%
THC a in, in a flower, you're definitely
not inhaling all of those THC molecules. It's
not a 100% conversion to THC.
It's not a 100% inhalation.
So
the math there is not, one to one
by any means.
Totally. And and some of the some of
the novel cannabinoids that we see, like, we
don't even normally hear of. Like like, CBD
can downgrade to CBE
or also WHO three thirty one, like, h
u three thirty one. Like, we don't even
we don't even those these these cannabinoids are
not even in our conversation
right now. And so,
thinking that you're going to smoke your raw
flower and get the same thing, it it
actually involves a whole bunch of additional research
as well.
Yeah. And this is the science behind,
why people why a lot of medical patients
prefer inhalation and smoking to
oral oral medicine. And there are obviously like,
there's tons of people who prefer oral medicine,
and there's reasons for that. And that can
be because the molecules you're taking in orally
work better for your condition. Those are also
different molecules than what you're inhaling.
So, you know, finding the right molecular mixture
is really important if you're looking for a
specific outcome.
And there are a lot of people that
have that, you know, inhale, smoke
for medical reasons, and they try other platforms,
and they don't seem to work for them,
and they go back to inhalation
because of this I'm gonna call it a
magical mix. It's not magic. It's science, but
we don't know all the words and all
the identities of these molecules.
You are so accurate. And what's interesting is,
you know, one of the great things about
cannabis and how we as patients handle it
is we are talking about individualized
medicine. Right? Yes. Where most pharmaceuticals are all
like, okay, we are going to make the
same medicine and then all you different humans
all need to take it the same way.
Cannabis
opens itself up and makes itself available in
all these different ways. And to to provide
the opposite,
idea,
so many patients that I've talked to,
while they might use,
inhaled cannabis for personal enjoyment,
for them to make sure that they hit
accurately their blend of THC,
CBD, and CBG
in their r, you know, that they're gonna
put in their body for pain
to make it through their workday.
They need that stuff to be specific
and a little slower dosed. And so,
smoking, which is has immediate onset,
is not really the right tool for the
job. And so people are making very you
know, they're they're blending their RSO like Vintner's
blend or expensive, you know, table wine. Yeah.
And and so they are making the thing
that works for them,
and then they're taking it in a capsule.
And it's just a beautiful way that whether
or not you're smoking it or or taking
in an edible or a capsule or however
you're using using it,
it's about using the way that it works
for you and be damned the other people's
opinion of what your mode is that is
preferred.
Exactly. I mean, you've had doctor Miyabi Shields
and doctor Riley Kirk on your show, I
think, and talking about the different,
neurotypes of people who use cannabis for different
endocannabinoid
adjustments.
And it is really important to find what
works for you in the right format. And,
you know, it again, cannabis isn't for everybody.
There isn't necessarily, like, the exact right thing
for everybody.
But if what you're trying now isn't working,
you might just wanna try a different format,
and and give that a shot because they're
definitely not all the same even though you
might only see a couple molecules
reflected on a label in the stores.
Indeed. Doctor. Miyabi Shields has been on the
program a few times. And actually,
the most
popular program,
episode that they were on was the one
where they
discussed the,
the the neuro biomechanics
that happen when you take psilocybin,
which is actually one of the most popular
shaping fire episodes that there's been. It's it's
a really it's a really good one. But
they also have been on to talk about
the endocannabinoid
system
and and when,
you know, relatively deep into the smokeability or
not the smokeability, but the,
the the cannabinoids that come through your smoke,
which is which is very interesting. Yeah. Miyabi's
top shelf.
Yeah. They're really great. Super smart.
So so let's talk about,
the testing that we might request in a
different way because, we have talked about the
the what what most people call a potency
testing but we're talking about it more as
in,
cannabinoid concentration,
ways.
But patients often want
more cannabinoids
tested for than the legal
the licensed market
requires. And so you you mentioned in passing
that, you know, patients might want cannabinoids that
aren't listed.
I wanna dig in that a little bit
because, you know I you know I probably
worked with probably six or seven labs now
over the whatever fifteen years ish and,
many of them will only give me options
of CBD, CBG,
THC,
and,
and and their acid forms
whereas others might ask me, oh, just pay
a little bit more and we'll do, like,
a full screen for you. Or,
and
and would you teach us a little bit
about that, a, so we kinda understand it,
but more importantly, so we know how to
ask for it?
Yeah. So the way that testing labs come
up with their results is we have to
buy those specific molecules in very, very pure
forms. So they have to be commercially available
in what we call certified reference material format.
And they're expensive.
And
because they're controlled substances, we can only buy
them in very small amounts.
So
we are only able to the way that
our machines are set up, and this is
the vast majority of testing labs,
you can only get the information out that
you tell the machine to look for. So
that's why we have set lists of molecules
because we buy those specific
cannabinoids and we inject them into the machine
and tell the machine what they look like.
And then we inject the unknown and the
machine compares the two signals and tells us
what it is.
I wish there was a way and and
chemists certainly have ways of identifying what other
molecules are present. Right?
I wish there was a way we could
screen and tell you all the molecules that
are there, but our machines are just not
set up for that.
And if they were set up for that,
it would be prohibitively
expensive for a home grower,
to do that chemistry.
There are labs and my lab is one
of them. We do have an expanded panel
where we have 17 total cannabinoids instead of
the usual 11.
And there's even more than 17 that some
labs might be able to offer. But again,
it's more expensive because it's just more molecules
that I have to buy and tell my
machine what they look like.
And you can't get all the possible, all
the possibilities because
they're not necessarily all commercially available to buy
in pure formats.
They're starting to be more and certainly with
people playing around with cannabinoid conversions and things,
there's there's more,
synthetic cannabinoids available than there were a few
years ago for testing labs.
But,
they're quite expensive.
And just because they're commercially available doesn't necessarily
mean that my test method will be good
for that molecule either.
And so,
you know, I'm trying to think of an
example, like we don't test for HHC, which
is hexa hydrocannabinol
something. It's a synthetic conversion,
but it's getting to be more common in
mostly states that don't have adult rec programs.
So that's a molecule that I can buy
as as a certified reference material,
but I don't know if it's going to
work in the cannabinoid method that I have
on my machine. I would have to do
a lot of behind the scenes science
to make sure that I would be able
to see that. So it's it's not even
just because it's available, I could offer it
to you next week.
It it might not work at all, and
I would have to do more specialized chemistry
to see that molecule depending upon how I'm
running my machines.
That makes sense. And,
while while we're talking about your method, because
hearing you explain the method actually really makes
the the lab make a lot more sense
as oddly obvious as that is.
Would you explain,
I'm gonna ask I'm gonna I'm gonna kinda
butt my way into this bass ackwards, but
would you explain why you can't
tell patients what's in their
RSO? And and what I'm asking is like
the reverse, right? Like like you can test
for things but when people say like like
I don't know what's in my
RSO that's taking up so much space and
repressing all my numbers.
And so patients will request that out of
the lab and the lab's all like, well,
what do you want me to test for?
So it's kind of like a it's kind
of like a, you know, egg and the
chicken or the cart and the horse. Would
you kinda explain that for folks because,
it it was really important when I started
mentoring people in RSO.
Yeah. So obviously, there's lots of molecules in
the plant. And when you're doing something like
an ethanol extraction,
ethanol is a really good solvent for all
kinds of plant molecules. So you're gonna be
pulling out a lot more than just the
cannabinoids.
And so if if your RSO tests at
60% and you wanna know what's
60% THC,
you wanna know what the other 40% is.
I can't tell you that.
As a scientist who understands plants,
I can tell you it's most likely fats
and lipids and some chlorophyll based on the
color. Right. Right. Right.
But I can't, and fats and lipids are
not one molecule. They are classes of molecules
that have many, many different versions. And so,
you know, there are
sometimes there are,
food labs that can test for, like, total
fats or total carbohydrates
in something. But again, you're not gonna get
the molecular identity. You're gonna you're gonna get
a number that's like, oh, this is 35%
lipids.
And lipids are a large group of molecules
that can can have hundreds of of different
versions.
And so,
in a I know this is fantasy, but
in if we were to talk about how
you could figure that out, you would need
a a a reference standard
for everything in the world that could potentially
be in that oil and then run all
of them
through your HPLC
to find out. And then you still actually
wouldn't know if there's nothing else in it.
You would just know
of the, you know, million standards you ran,
how much of those million things. But there
could be other things in it that you
didn't have a standard for. So it's it's
just an impossibility
to go at it from that direction.
Right. Yeah. And it's it's unfortunate, but it
is like, the labs are set up not
to identify every molecule present. They're set up
to protect public health and safety and give
people an idea of
what their dosing might be. Yeah. And another
unfortunate example of that that the labs are
not Star Trek and are not CSI.
Right. Yeah. I wish.
And there are lots of interesting projects that
I've been presented with that I just don't
have the time or the expertise for, even
if our machine could do it. Sure. Sure.
While while we're talking about,
unscientific
hopes,
I I am sure that you have seen
a whole bunch of unscientific
hopes or expectations
around terpene testing
because people are so interested in it, and
there's so much new research about terpenes and
their medicinal qualities.
But also, terpenes are fleeting. Right? They're
they they are volatileizing
with with warmth and age and exposure to
sunshine
and and, you know, the person's car as
they're driving it to drop off to you
and,
you know, every everything. Right? And so,
let's let's inoculate,
like, some patients to some of this stuff.
What's, what's, an unscientific
hope that folks have about terpenes
that we can we can address in advance?
Well, if you're, you know, heating your flour
to decarboxylate
it before you do the extraction, most of
of your terpenes are gonna be gone just
full stop.
So if you're really interested in preserving
your natural terpene profile in an extract,
you might wanna decarb most of your flour
and leave some of it raw. So you
have those terpenes
like in that extract later.
You're you're also gonna get some THC a
and unconverted THC or CBD a,
but you will get more of those natural
terpenes coming through.
The other thing to keep in mind with
terpene profiling is not that it isn't helpful,
but there's a lot of new research coming
out,
from the folks at Abstract Labs out of
California. And maybe you've had them on your
show. If not, you should get them on.
But they're showing that
even strains that smell very different from one
another, they can have
the same
top 10 terpene profile, almost identical terpene profile
for the top 10 terpenes
in terms of weight percent or parts per
million amounts.
But the difference in aroma and the difference
in physical effects are due to other molecules
that testing labs are not even looking for
and that we have yet to even identify
all of them.
So terpenes are important,
and they do have medicinal applications, but they're
not the be all end all of information
that you can get, unfortunately.
It's interesting how how terpenes we're finding out
are just one of the voices in a
chorus that's made up of of alcohol esters
and and, honestly, a bunch of things that
I don't even know the vocabulary for Yep.
Because abstracts is doing all this original research,
which we're we're all reading and we're all
learning at the same time. It's really fascinating.
And one of the things that's important to
keep in mind that I learned very late
as a chemist, I feel like, is
the way that we perceive smell is not
linear.
So, you know, if you think about, like,
visible visibility and color, like the darker the
color, the more that molecule is there, right?
That is not the same thing with smell.
And so there are certain compounds that, that
like contain sulfur, for instance, like that rotten
egg smell that you only need a very
tiny amount
to perceive at a very
large
smell
amount. I don't know what the right term
is. You'll, you'll feel it really a lot
in your smell receptors, even though it's not
the dominant molecule.
And that's what we're seeing with terpenes is
we can see that,
in a machine, the terpene might be the
dominant
molecule present or in a relatively high amount,
but there's a different smell that's at a
smaller concentration that's affecting our smell
receptors
much more. And so it's not linear in
the same way that the machines are linear.
Right? Our machines will measure things,
in a in a relationship to one another
and give you a math unit out the
other side. But your body is not always
linear in how it perceives or
absorbs these molecules.
That's great. That's that's a good point. Yeah.
So some of the some of the
some of the aromatics,
we will experience at a much more potent
experience level than the math tells us. Yeah.
Yeah. I've always found that experience with terpineoline,
which I think one of the reasons why
I think that people get out so excited
when they come across it,
because it's it's it's tasty and more equatorial
and kinda harder for us to get up
here.
So let's let's do that same thing again
but with instead of with aromatics and terpenes
let's do it with the cannabinoids what what
is a pretty common unscientific
hope that people have about about the cannabinoids
I think to some extent that they can
get really pure
extracts in your kitchen,
and you're just not going to, and and
that's also okay. Mhmm.
You know, sometimes,
obviously making your own medicine is really useful,
particularly if you're trying to grow a specific
strain or have a specific dose profile
or live in an area that doesn't have
access to legal,
products.
But one of the things I tell people
that when they live in a state that
has access to extracts and concentrates is it
can be pretty inexpensive and easy to purchase
rosin or whole plant extracts like RSO
in a medical dosing syringe and then use
that to make your own tincture edibles.
It reduces a huge amount of mess.
They're often the people making it are optimizing,
you know, for more cannabinoid extraction and less
other plant molecule extraction. And they probably know
a little bit better than you what they're
doing.
So so that can be a way to
avoid some of the messy smells and extracts
and questions,
in your own kitchen. But obviously, that's not
available to everybody.
But in terms of, you know, realistic numbers
for making things like RSO,
I would say 60%
is great. And if you get above that,
wow. You're really doing a good job.
And and again, there's a lot of other
molecules that help the entourage effect and assist
the cannabinoids
in doing their job medically
that, you know, you want to be there.
You know, I don't find distillate to be
distillate, you know, that you could buy at
a store that's maybe 90%
pure THC.
I don't think that is very medically,
interesting or,
you know, we, you really need some of
those other molecules present, to aid in
the efficacy.
So, again, that that THC number is not
the be all end all of of high
quality product by any means. Amen. Especially for
medicinal. You know, it's interesting that you would
point out the the distillate.
That is a challenge that I mean, nowadays,
people
who I talk to, they have a better
idea of what whole plant medicine is and
and, you know, even if they can't explain
it, they under can understand what the entourage
effect is.
And,
when people look at whole plant RSO,
or any of the given names it's given,
like full extract cannabis oil,
they're all like, oh, I don't want this.
This is only 60%.
You know. It it it's because they were
built
their experiences with distillate at 90%, which sounds
like you're getting more bang for your bang
for your buck. But but actually, it's a
it's a different it's a whole different kind
of medicine. And it takes a while for
people to realize that, okay, you're giving up
some of your THC,
but, but but the rest of the entourage
that comes along with it, they all work
together in a,
you know, towards a a synchronistic
way.
And, you know, again, it it doesn't make
buying distillate bad, especially if you're on a
ninety day cancer protocol and you're really just
trying to cause apoptosis.
But generally speaking, and I would say even
for the cancer patients, having a whole plant
at 60%,
with all those, you know, juicy other parts
in there is going to be your your
top shelf medicine across the board, especially if
it's grown, outdoor.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Mhmm.
So, alright. So,
let's go ahead and take our, second short
break and we'll be right back.
You are listening to Shaping Fire and my
guest today is chemist Amber Wise.
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Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire.
I am your host, Shango Los. And my
guest today is chemist
Amber Wise.
So Amber, you know, much earlier in the
show, we were very clear that, when interacting
with lab staff, we should a, be very
polite, b, ask for what we want, and
c,
don't ask them to fix our technique
because, it's not your job
And and honestly, in some states, giving advice
on that might actually put them in get
them in trouble. So we wanna be really
respectful of the lab folks and, and not
ask them about how to make our technique
better. But
you are not on the clock right now,
and you are on the front lines of
all of this testing, and you see a
lot of tinctures and a lot of RSO,
the things that patients most often make,
even if they're a precursor for edibles. So
I would like to ask you for a
couple best practices that you've seen from the
bench. So
what are some things that you know about
making tinctures, some best practices
that you wanna raise your hand and make
sure people are considering?
Yeah. I think,
I there's obviously a lot of information online
about how to make extracts at home, and
I don't wanna rehash any of that necessarily.
And but I do also understand that it
can be confusing and overwhelming.
One of the things I always recommend
is, making sure everything is frozen,
and that includes
your bowls, your mixing materials, your jars, like,
whatever you're using for filtration,
soaking, whatever. Put everything in the freezer so
it's all as cold as as possible. That
includes your flour as well,
your ethanol or
extraction,
solvents. Generally, it's ethanol if we're talking about
RSO.
And so just make sure everything's really cold
and the cannabinoids
are still soluble in ethanol. That means you
will extract the cannabinoids,
but the fats and the lipids are much
less soluble in ethanol
at those colder temperatures. So you'll pull out
less of the lipids and somewhat less of
the chlorophyll.
You'll get a slightly greener,
lighter colored solution.
But that doesn't necessarily mean there's less cannabinoids
because the cannabinoids are colorless and also odorless.
So the way it looks and smells does
not indicate how many cannabinoids are present.
So that's one thing that I recommend for
folks.
Another thing I recommend, I mentioned it earlier,
but if you are in a state where
you can go into a store and purchase
extracts,
that can be a lot easier
to start from.
And there's generally pretty high quality,
either RSO or they call it FICO, full
extract cannabis. What does that stand for? Oil.
You had it. Right? Full extract cannabis oil.
Yep. Yeah. There's a couple different versions of
it that's already been decarbed,
and then they're nicely dosed. They're usually, like,
one gram size or maybe two gram size.
So you kind of already have your dosing
like slightly built in there.
There's already been a test run on it
and there's already a cannabinoid number assigned to
it.
But if you're not in the area that
that that's available to you,
keeping everything really cold is is really important
and not necessarily extracting for way longer.
I think two fast cold extracts
are better than one long room temperature extract.
So that's like one rinse through the flour
and then keep putting everything back in the
freezer and then a second rinse through the
same flour,
is better than,
you know, a longer extract overnight at room
temperature. You're just gonna pull everything out of
the flower in that case. In the in
the old days, there are so many,
early magazine articles that talk about green dragon
and doing it at room temperature and just,
you know, just put it on your shelf
for a, you know, a month or whatever.
Yeah. And and, you know, that does work.
It does work.
You are going to get so much chlorophyll
and so and all the fats in the
world. Yep. And,
you know, many patients are, very reactive to
that much chlorophyll. Mhmm. I'm reactive to that
much
I'm reactive to that much chlorophyll just because
my body doesn't like that much. Like, I
I haven't been able to have a wheatgrass
shot since college because it just turns my
stomach.
And there's there's lots of patients who are
like that. And so
so the old the old Green Dragon stuff,
like, it would work. But there were a
lot of attributes that it would have that
are are not as good.
And they're almost all
solved by following your advice
and
following your advice and and bringing everything to
a freezing temperature. And and for anybody who's
who wants who's raising their hand, yes, we
know ethanol will not freeze at a freezing
temperature. But the point is is we want
everything to be frozen cold
so that those the fats and the chlorophyll
and the other,
what I'll call contaminants,
stay
frozen in situ and we just pull out
the,
the resin that's in the trichomes on the
exterior. So
the rest of the plant material stays
hard and frozen,
but the
ethanol is going to caustically chew through that
waxy trichome really fast just in a couple
minutes and then dump its resin and then
we strain it and off to the races
we go
and
you know you need a big ass freezer
for a little while if you're gonna do
any kind of volume. But, oh my gosh,
it makes this beautiful
amber product
that that is worth all the effort.
Yeah.
It is. And, you know, it feels kinda
more I don't know. I I guess I'm
a chemist. I love to do chemistry, so
it feels more technical sometimes when you're doing
it that way, like, more fun. But maybe
people don't like to play lab like I
did when I was a kid.
Well, if we wanna play lab, we should
mention the the the Queue IT by name
then. Right? Do you wanna tell us a
little bit about it? Because,
when I first learned about it that that
was the easiest way for me to lock
into good technique because when you search it
it it gives
what I don't know what cuet stands for
is that silly the thing excuse me yeah
cuet is
quick wash ethanol tincture.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's basically
what I was describing. Sure. But I only
mentioned it by by by terminology because you
were talking about playing science or, like, like,
playing lab. Right? And and, like, you know,
when I found out what I already did
had a had a name for it that
was lab, I started using that instantly because
I thought I sounded Yeah. Like, smarter. And
that's No. That's great. You did. You sound
very smart because I didn't even know what
you're talking about.
No. Yeah. I, I think,
just, you know, having everything really cold and
then mixing it together and a quick
shake and a filtration
through a coffee filter and having everything be
as cold as possible, including all your glassware,
will help. And you don't really need much
time at all. You did a good job
of explaining that it's gonna break open those
trichomes quickly. And if one way to visualize
like fats and lipids not being soluble at
cold temperatures is like when you put broth
in the fridge, all the
fats, like, solidify and and float up to
the top. Right? And so that's what you're
doing,
with when you're freezing everything is, like, locking
up those fats into a solid form so
they don't dissolve into the ethanol.
Ethanol. Good example.
So so tinctures are, you know, kind of
like the baseline preparation for for most folks
who are starting to wade their way into
it. And,
I like what, Amber pointed out that if
you're if you're trying to determine whether or
not making,
RSO,
or full extract cannabis oil is for you,
maybe go buy some first
make sure that it fits your
your your protocol that you've designed for yourself
before getting, you know, wading into this. However,
I don't know of any state that gives
bulk discounts to patients when buying multiple RSO.
And, you know, if you're a patient that's
going through,
you know, a a a syringe or more
a day or or, you know, there are
pain patients that I know that are going
through, you know,
a a a third of a syringe three
times a day. Right? So a syringe a
day, Like, that becomes very expensive. And that's
at the point that, you know, you need
to have yourself or your friend grow for
you. And and then you need to start
processing your own because
that first, that second, that third,
syringe at the store is all gonna be
full price. But if you make your own,
suddenly you've made,
you know, 70,
syringes out of a a pound of cannabis
and now you're you're set for for quite
a while and you've saved yourself a lot
of money.
So with that said,
tinctures are making the tincture is the first
set to first
the first step
to making the RSO and so using this
QNET method and making everything cold is is
is your first step towards making great RSO
so so
taking this to the the next step, Amber,
do you have,
an additional best practices
for that next step going into the RSO?
Yeah. So I guess,
one of the things is when you filter,
it's often hard to press out all of
the liquid. That's true. So I like to
do at least two
rinses with a very small amount of cold
ethanol to just try to get some of
that extra liquid out that definitely has cannabinoids
in there. I mean, that's what chemists do
when they're rinsing crystals or something
or trying to rinse out all the extract
from a plant material is you wanna do
one or two rinses and reducing the amount
of solvent
that you use as much as possible. That
will reduce the amount of time it takes
to remove all of that later when you're
trying to remove the ethanol later.
So I,
my preferred way is I don't generally decarb
the flour first. I will do a cold
extract and then put everything in a crock
pot
to evaporate off the ethanol. And that
that step at on, like, high on a
crock pot will both drive off the ethanol
and decarb in the in the same step
more or less.
And and so that that can be a
way to kind of reduce the whole having
stuff in the oven. Is it decarbed? Is
it not?
Yeah. I think I wanna throw an alternative
in there as well because that does that
works very effectively.
I,
I moved into mason jars and boiling though
because I smelled all my terpenes in my
house.
And I'm like I'm losing all my terps.
And so what I moved over to was
putting
my plant material into half gallon mason jars
and putting them in a,
a big boiling crock like I do use
to Oh, like a canning bath. Yeah. Like
a canning bath.
And,
THC, you boil for an hour and novel
cannabinoids,
boil for two hours. And I get, you
know, above 95%
decarboxylation,
which is great. But here's the kicker, is
that when all of those terpenes
volatilize,
they're doing it within the closed mason jar.
And then when I put the mason jar
on my counter and it cools down,
those terpenes are stuck against the inside of
the glass.
And so when I add my I will
then eventually freeze that whole thing and then
when I pour my freezing ethanol over the
top of it after it's cooled
in my heart of hearts I believe that
those those terpenes are being pulled off the
glass by the ethanol
and,
remains in my RSO.
So
Makes chemical sense. It makes good. I've never
heard any scientific support on it, but it
it makes sense to me, and my test
results show it. So
Yeah. Yeah. That's actually I've never really thought
about doing it that way, but it makes
sense. I would worry more about, like, exploding
glass jars. But if you're doing it safely
in, like, a canning
situation,
it shouldn't be that dangerous. I have done
I have done that twice, and they were
both with old jars that I bought at
grocery store or,
old jars that I bought at garage sales.
Mhmm. So, you know, you swapping out your
jars occasionally will probably help with that. But,
oh, and there's oh, it makes you cry
when you suddenly see all the water and
and glass in the in with the in
the flower.
It's like drug abuse.
So let's talk about,
the results that we get when we're,
when we're working with RSO.
They,
and actually tinctures too.
Very often the lab results are is in
milligrams
per gram or milligrams
per milliliter.
Mhmm. And
and many people, including me, came to this
art,
believing that a milliliter and a gram were
equal to each other,
which is
kind of mostly true, but not.
And so
just for the sake of being able to
read these test results, would you explain that
for us even though in the long run,
it probably doesn't matter all that much, but
it causes so much consternation.
Yeah. So one milligram does equal,
or sorry, one gram does equal one milliliter.
If we're talking about water
because of the density,
but in cannabis extracts, we don't deal with
water because we know that cannabinoids are not
water soluble. So we're dealing with things like
coconut oil or ethanol
and their density is not one,
one to one, one gram to one milliliter.
Coconut oil density is about point nine two.
So that means it's eight to 10%
less dense
on a volume level. So that means if
you have one milliliter
of coconut oil, it'll only weigh,
point nine two grams. It won't weigh a
full one gram. But point nine two is
pretty close to one depending upon, you know,
how much you care about significant figures and
and dosing exactly right.
So your milligram per gram and milligram
per
mill are often going to be similar, but
not exactly the same if your carrier liquid
is not water.
How does that apply when given the very
Go ahead. Sorry. I just wanted to kind
of, like, say about, like, the variability in
testing and the accuracy of your measuring,
is probably larger than the
and so what is the density of,
cannabis oil? If if we are testing actual
RSO and not,
coconut oil or MCT or something,
how close
is cannabis resin
to water?
I believe well, and and again, this will
depend on how many fats and lipids and
chlorophyll you pulled out, but it's between point
nine three and point nine six. Mhmm. So,
again, we're wildly close where Yeah. It's We're
we're we're within rounding area Exactly. For for
patients.
Right. But then when you think about, like,
a syringe worth of RSO,
right, if we're I'm I'll try to keep
the math, like, pretty simple. But if we
have one milliliter syringe
and it's at 60%,
that's
six hundred milligrams
of THC
in one
milliliter.
So if you are able to squeeze out
exactly
point one milliliter,
that's great. But if you're thinking about, you
know, diluting that whole syringe of RSO
into coconut oil, and now you might have,
a dropper of that coconut oil that also
has RSO diluted in it. If that dropper,
say, is one milliliter
and you dosed it to be ten milligrams
per milliliter,
if you get one or two drops less
or one or two drops more than a
milliliter,
your
dosing is much less
different. Right? The difference there is maybe nine
milligrams or less than half full. Yeah. Yeah.
The difference is less.
And so if you really do need to
dial in your dosing,
you know, having something that's a little bit
more dilute
can help the accuracy.
You know, what you said there is pretty
radical.
This idea that there can be so many
swings
within
the,
within one RSO syringe.
I was always under the impression that those
syringes by the time you've,
you know, gotten to that point is is
pretty homogenized.
And and, you know, most people that I
know who make their own caps will pull
20 out of a syringe, you know, 20
o five caps.
And if I just if I just understood
you correctly, you suggested there could be a
five
milligram to twenty milligram swing
from nonhomogenized
THC cannabinoids
within that syringe. Is that what you said?
Well, I think it's more just how accurate
are you squeezing out that amount. Okay. That
I get. Right on. So if you're shooting
for point o five and you accidentally do
point o nine, well, then, yeah, that's gonna
be a a big difference. I see. But
you're not really speaking to it being not
homogenized.
Right. But I have seen mixtures that people
make at home. If they sit for a
little while, they do separate out.
And so if you're storing it long term
in a syringe,
that might affect
the beginning of the syringe versus the end
of the syringe. Oh, that's interesting.
You know, that that can happen. So, you
know, if you if you are making it
in a syringe, putting it, you know, when
it's fresh and well mixed,
like, putting it into capsules when it's fresh
will help reduce that. Right? And then it's
already well mixed, and it doesn't have a
chance to separate out. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. That
makes that makes sense to me.
So while we're while we're talking about, we
we've been talking almost all about ethanol because,
that's what most people use and that's what
the e was the easiest.
I I want to use this opportunity to
to to tell folks
not that you can't do it safely enough,
and and we all know you're a badass,
but really, really don't do open blasting BHO
if you can avoid it. Because,
for all the advantages that BHO may have
over ethanol, and I know that's debatable,
open blasting
continues to be one of the most dangerous
things
that,
cannabis folks can do,
you know,
other Absolutely. Yeah. I was gonna make a
joke about dabbing with a torch. But but,
honestly, BHO is far
more dangerous than that because Yes. Dabbing will
give you a scar or might lay lay
your mat on fire. But but a BHO
might lay lay your house on fire. So
Yeah. It's an explosion.
Yeah. I mean, I'm a chemist who likes
to do fun chemistry things, and I would
not mess around with that.
There you go. Especially since, you know, I'm
finding that the materials that we make from
from rosin
are just they're it's just such a superior
product now as far as medical efficacy and
use. And and, I mean, creating it is
downright ambient.
It just seems you know, if you're not
gonna go with ethanol,
the the types of edibles that you can
make with rosin are just such high quality
and, honestly, way better than RSO,
edibles as well because they don't they don't
taste like dirt.
Absolutely. Yep.
Yeah. And I think that, you know, there's
a place for
coconut oil extracts
itself.
You know, there's there's a place for
leaving a lot of ethanol in and mixing
it with glycerin potentially rather than evaporating all
the ethanol off. Like, there's some mixtures in
there that can be fine as well and
actually help the solubility,
of some of your molecules. If you don't
want to ingest a ton of coconut oil
or ingest,
you know, a bunch of butter or something,
there's other routes. Right
on. So so let's wrap up with this
question,
kinda hand you the mic here and say,
you know, there there are there are lots
of patients who are listening to you. And
some of them have worked with labs and
some of them haven't,
but everybody is suffering and they are
looking to either increase their quality of the
relationship with their lab or just like get
into making their own medicine.
What words of encouragement
would you offer as a chemist
who cares about
medical cannabis patients
to
encourage them to take control
of of their own self sufficiency
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's
really great about cannabis, I mean, there's obviously
lots,
is that you can't
really mess it up too bad to a
dangerous degree.
Right? You can have too much and have
an anxiety attack and not have a fun
time. But at the end of the day,
it's not generally very dangerous if you're in
a safe place.
So that's one thing is that, you know,
you're not probably gonna make a mixture in
the end that's unsafe,
to to ingest.
And I think the other thing is, like,
don't be afraid of the math. I know
math is intimidating to people and doing dilutions
and mixtures and stuff without a recipe can
be
intimidating. But, you know, you were saying, I'm
not a fan of shaggy p t, but
you were telling me earlier that that's really
been helpful for you to do math. That's
great. If that works for you, great. Mhmm.
You know, there are find a science friend
who's, you know, decent at math. It has
set you up a little Excel spreadsheet,
to plug in your numbers,
and come out with an answer that you
can feel confident about.
And don't be afraid to call the lab
and just clarify the, the units, right? If
you're confused about the results and wanna make
sure you understand the numbers in the units,
that's fine. The lab is happy to explain
the units to you. But they're not gonna
be able to, you know, tell you how
to make a better tincture next time necessarily.
So yeah,
I think that, you know, one of the
reasons I like working in the cannabis science
realm is that there's so many opportunities
for people to innovate and improve and treat
themselves
in safe ways and effective ways
that medicine has has kind of forgotten about
or has specifically excluded
a lot of populations that utilize cannabis successfully,
that, you know, find find your group of
folks either online or in person and and
learn from each other.
Fabulous. That that is great. You know, especially,
you know, medical cannabis communities, you know, patient
outreach groups,
pull together people like we do on Vashon
and and, you know, teach each other. Each
one teach one. Right?
Self sufficiency in cannabis medicine and personalized medicine
is so important.
Thank you for that, Amber. And thank you
for spending your time with us today. You
know, I know that you are taking,
time out of your out of your workday,
and I know that your time is valuable.
And so thank you. And and, honestly, most
of these people who are listening will never
be customers of yours. And so so thank
you. Okay. Thank you. Because I know I
know your heart is in this, and and
that's what I wanna thank you for. So
so thank you for all of your insight
and your time and your passion.
Yeah. Absolutely. I'm happy. I know there's a
lot of information out there, and it's hard
to know what
and I really do try to stick to
the science.
And I like to make sure that people
have all the correct information and not a
bunch of hearsay. Amen. That's the whole reason
shaping fire is here.
So alright. So, in wrapping up, dear listener,
a couple things. Number one,
if you want to get a quick link
to a cuette,
quick wash ethanol tincture,
I will put one on the,
on the, website page at shapingfire.com
for this episode number one twenty four.
Also, if you are interested in reaching out
to,
Amber Wise, PhD, first
of all,
she's super busy. And so
if you do want to reach out, you
can reach out or you can just follow
her if you want to go know what's
going on with her
various research and public talks and stuff, at
her LinkedIn profile.
But but,
don't be looking for Amber to be giving
you,
you know, specific,
feedback on what you're working on. That's that's
not the role that she plays in our
community. So so find somebody else and and
and and and do that there. But, you
know, if you have if you have opportunities
or or just, you know, you wanna send
a a fan letter of thanks or something,
by all means, you can do that at,
Amber Wise, on LinkedIn.
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