Infusion
POT by NOIDS is amazing when it comes to making your own herb infused oil, but what are the benefits of making your own infused herb oil? This blog explains how to infuse properly.
Why make your own oil?
Of course commercially available oil can easily be found in stores nowadays, but it’s quite expensive for how little you get. That’s why a lot of people choose to make it themselves. Other good reasons to make your own infused oil:
- With infused oil you can make your own edibles, which means you have control over picking ingredients that match your dietary needs and preferences.
- Get as much active compounds as possible out of the plant - smoking destroys about 50% of all good stuff, while oil can get 80% +, and you can extract not only from the buds, but also the sugar leaves and trims.
- Personalize to the max. You can choose your preferred strain, oil and way of use.
- Easy to control the dosage. You can make a very good estimate of how many mg you consume every day.
Edibles
If this is your first time using edibles, here’s a few things you should know when it comes to the good stuff:
Because of how your liver processes those compounds when it’s consumed through an edible it will give a much more intense effect than when you would consume it in a different way.
Edibles are great for people who are looking for a long lasting effect through the day (against anxiety for instance) or through the night (against insomnia for instance).
Edibles are not the right choice for people who are looking for an instant effect that only lasts for a few hours
Here's a tip:
Plan your day accordingly when you consume an edible. How long it takes before you can feel the effects depends on your metabolism and what you ate that day. How long the effects will last and how powerful they will be depends on how potent the activated parts in your edible are and on other variables.
We would recommend clearing your schedule for the day if you are trying out an edible of which the level of potency is unknown to you or if it is your first time consuming an edible altogether. Thank us later!
How to use your infused oil
Like we said it’s up to you to pick the oil you want to use to infuse with your herb with, so use infused butter when you want to bake a cake, infused olive oil when you’re making a salad dressing, infused canola oil when you want an oil that doesn’t have an overbearing taste or smell, infused coconut oil for your vegan recipes...The possibilities are endless! Why?
Because you can literally recreate any existing recipe you want by replacing the oil in it with your own infused oil and make it healthier and more potent. Just be sure to pick the same oil they use in the recipe to infuse, to make sure you get the taste you’re going for.
Even though it is possible to bake with infused oil, we don't recommend it AT ALL, because with the temperature over 140º C, a significant amount of good stuff will evaporate. It is impossible to keep the dosage consistent although you might still experience the effect.
Best practice:
- Steam buns instead of baking.
- Apply infused oil after baking as smear, topping or filling
- Make dips with infused oil
- When using the stove, never go above 120º celsius.
How to make infused oil
So what is it you would like to make? It’s probably best to get the oil it says to use in the recipe that you want to try out, but if you are going off-book here are some tips:
- Butter or plant-based butter
- Olive oil for cold savory dishes like salads, baba ghanoush, hummus, pesto, but also for frying foods like scrambled eggs, seitan or tofu - and, of course, olive oil is very good for you
- Coconut oil for vegan recipes
- Organic liquid coconut oil for skincare products
- Canola oil when you don’t want an overbearing oil taste as it is relatively tasteless
- Avocado oil for making a wide variation of dishes - it’s also very healthy
When you’ve decided on an oil, make sure to measure how much of it you are using and weigh out how much herbs you are using in order to make a precise estimate and to make sure you don’t go beyond your preferred level of potency.
Tip: when you are cooking or baking you can always dilute your infused oil with regular oil. For instance, if the recipe calls for the use of one tablespoon olive oil you can use 3/4 tablespoon of olive oil and 1/4 table spoon of your own infused olive oil.
The next step in making your infused oil is to decarboxylate your herbs. Our first blog is actually about decarboxylation - if you haven’t read it yet, just click here and then come back to finish infusing your oil.
Just remember to break your dry buds by hand or with a grinder before you decarboxylate. Using an electric processor will not get you the best results. After decarboxylating your herb, it is time to infuse it into the oil you are using. There are a lot of intricate ways to infuse, but here at NOIDS we can confidently say that ours is the cleanest, easiest and most efficient way.
How to get the preferred level of potency
Try consistently measuring each dose and keeping a log of your experiences, so you can adjust potency in the future.
There are ways of estimating the level of potency of your doses.
figure out the total amount (mg) of good stuff in the total plant material.
divide this amount by the total volume of the end product.
For example, if your plant material contains 1000 mg of good stuff:
- 100 gummies - 10 mg good stuff per gummy
- 200 ml of oil - about 5mg good stuff per ml
We also provide a potency calculator
Tip: If you don’t know the percentage of your herb, you can estimate the percentage at 20%, because strains usually contain between 18% and 22%.
Let us know if this was helpful and if you have any questions, and remember that with infusion we are always talking in estimates, so always be careful and, especially if it is your first time, it’s always better to start low and then experiment.
Send us the recipe of your most original home-made edibles and we’ll post our favorite picks on our site!
