Hi, I'm relatively new to making edibles at home. I quit smoking but I feel nothing quite hits like a joint for me, so I'm looking to preserve as much of whatever is in the bud that you feel when you smoke it.
I've tried a few different extraction methods but this is my current go to. I live with non-users and they claim to feel an unwanted contact high when I decarb in the oven, so I just put a stick of butter in an airtight jar and put it in my slow cooker in a shallow water bath for 3-6 hours on low. I'm a cheapass and I like to try many different strains, so I'll usually buy individual prerolls and use one per stick of butter. After decarbing/infusing in the slow cooker, I leave the lid on and let the butter cool in the fridge. Sometimes I swish the jar, sometimes I shake it vigorously; I'm not sure which method works best or if it's even doing anything. I let it get solid before I open the lid because I'm hypothesizing that it preserves the terps in the butter rather than letting them evaporate. Then I just bake with it as normal.
I understand that terps can affect your experience (whether just because of flavor or the entourage effect) and most if not all of them are lost in the cooking process. I've become a fan of THC seltzers and I notice a lot of them have a really nice flavor similar to that herbal taste I would get when I smoked, but I have no idea what methods they use, or if they're feasible for a home baker.
When I make edibles at home, I get really variable results. Sometimes the cannabutter comes out more or less flavorless, sometimes it has a nice nutty flavor and aroma, and sometimes it has that bitter planty taste. I have no idea what's causing it to be so different every time.
Next time I make edibles, I'm planning to use fractionated coconut oil since it's an MCT oil and I recently learned that helps with potency from this subreddit, but I prefer the flavor of butter and some recipes I use wouldn't work with substitutions. I've seen some people on here swear by using water when making cannabutter, but in my experience it didn't separate well and my recipe was affected by having that extra moisture on the cannabutter, so I've just directly infused it in the butter ever since.
I recently did an experiment where I attempted to make ice bubble hash, with the intention of infusing the hash into the butter. My thinking was it would be a stronger, purer, full-spectrum product but I'm definitely an amateur because I quickly realized trying to make hash out of a preroll-sized amount of weed was a laughably stupid idea. 😅 My old kitchen scale wouldn't even pick it up, so each preroll had to be under a gram and the hash yield must have been microscopic. I ended up just directly tossing the filters into the butter jar and hoped there was something on them that would infuse. But I did notice that the "dirty" ice water looked very purple and I didn't want to just toss it out, so I made cold brew coffee with it and it came out really good. I'm a daily user and I felt like that coffee was normal edible strength, if not stronger than the edibles I made with the results of that experiment (the final edibles had espresso in them too, so I know it wasn't just because of the caffeine), so I thought there has to be something in there that's essential to making really good edibles. I thought that THC needed to be decarbed and wasn't soluble in water, so I have no idea what made it so effective. Is it possible that the terpenes are water-soluble, but they're so volatile they evaporate when you cook them? I heated the leftover cold brew in a teapot and it was still effective, so I don't know if I just lost a lot of THC in the washing process. I have no idea why that water can get me high. That's the full extent of my knowledge of weed and making edibles.
TL;DR There's so many factors that go into making edibles, I'm just looking to optimize the process in the cheapest, easiest, most consistent way possible. Other than a slow cooker and a 90 micron mesh I used to make ice bubble hash, I have no other specialized equipment. I want the flavors and effects to be as close to if I smoked it as possible. I would really appreciate any advice.