Anyone ever tried putting pot into homebrew?

[Brad Meanie]

Alright...technically not legal, but I heard about this years ago. has anyone tried it, and how did it go, or is this an urban myth type thing.

[Dogger Dan]

I haven't as I have no interest in it, my own guess would be to add it to the boil and get the THC out. Will in all likelyhood lead to crappy fermentations as it is an oil. Additionally I am not sure how good the yeast will work, remember, yeast is a living organism and it will be afected by the stuff to (the other crap associated with it)

It may taste like crap to (my guess only)

How much would you have to add to get something from it and is ingesting it any good to you? I mean if you eat a cigarette you will puke it back up right so what about eating a pound of dope?

My own feel is to leave beer as it is but thats just me if you got to do it, Drive On, and don't get caught. I figure you will need traficking quantities of dope to make it work and I don't think the police will buy into the story that you need that much so you can blend it in your homebrew

Dogger

[the Baron]

G'day Mr. Meanie, haven't heard of people putting it into beer but I have heard of blokes dropping buds into spirits for a few months and having desired results, don't know what quantitiy, but they said only needed a few shots and they were steaming.

[db]

thought about this one myself.. & seeing how hops & bud seem to be very similar (i once heard they were closely related & could be grafted together quite easily - but i havent confirmed if this is true) i dont see why it wouldnt work.. i'd be inclined to boil them out for a few hours (like you would to make cookies) to get all the oils out.. you could try it with leaf, but i think it'd probly just put you to sleep..
in a 23l batch i'd be thinking of using about 3-7g boiled for a few hours..

[wombat]

Dogger Dan is right, you'd need traficking quantities of it to get high off of it. Cannabis is related to Hops (humulus lupulus). I saw hemp beer for sale once but I didn't stop to buy any and figured that it was probably just normal beer brewed and flowers of the cannabis plant used as an aromatic.
That would probably be your best bet. If you were going to do it, possibly it would turn out alright if you just used the cannabis as an aroma additive. Otherwise, it would be a damn expensive beer....
-wombat

[db]

wombat - if you can make cookies out of it you sure as hell can make beer.. easily from less than "trafficking quantities"

http://www.onr.com/user/liberty/Marijua ... MBeer.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 0?v=glance

http://www.budlife420.com/pg3/v2e11index.html

[wombat]

thanks for that information, db - it was pretty interesting stuff.
-wombat

[thehipone]

Are you sure the THC would be stable if you just chucked it into the boil?

The chemical engineer in me says no, but I'm not certain. The alpha acids in hops undergo an isomerization reaction during the boil to give them the characteristic bitterness. Merely the presence of an acidic environment would make me worry that the THC would get converted to some other "less-than-effective" organic molecule. It would be kinda pointless to dump your whole stash into the brewpot only to eliminate the chemical you want to extract in the first place.

Again, I'm no expert in the chemistry of THC (damn, a few potheads have a leg up on me), I would suggest you double check before you try this idea of yours.

[db]

yeah thats something i too find interesting thehipone.. i can from experience say that not all thc will be lost (in my younger years a friend & i boiled up 2oz - together with a stick of butter - for over 6hrs, put the whole pot in the fridge & scrapped the solidified butter from the top). i wouldn't be surprised if a small to moderate percentage does boil off - but how much i dont know.

[Brad Meanie]

Once I have enough batches of Pale to keep me going over christmas, I'm going to try this.

Thanks for the help guys.

[Guest]

i'd be keen to hear how it turns out

[Evo]

Yeah, I too have heard about using pot as hops. I was under the impression though that you'd just dry hop your brew with it and the THC would be soluble in the alcohol. Does this sound right TheHipOne ?

Being that I used to have a big interest in the other method of THC delivery, I'd be real interested to find out how it goes. If you got the mix just right and got slowly piped and slowly drunk at the same time, well that'd be great (if you were into that sort of thing).

As for the hemp beer, I had the pleasure of a bottle of this. The difference is hemp has minimal THC, so is only added for flavour/aroma. I can't for the life of me remember whether or not I liked, so maybe it did have some THC in it

[db]

i thought that hemp beer was filtered with hemp (the kind that has no thc) & didnt actually contain any hemp nor thc? - i could be wrong

[thehipone]

Yeah, I would guess "dry hopping" would be the way to go. CO2 scrubbing can take lots of stuff with it out the airlock, again, I'm not sure if the THC is one of these compounds, but why chance it. Just let it sit for a while to make sure eveything is dissolved.