In the glorious canna-universe, one segment has been set to rise faster than all the others combined. The cannabis edibles market in the US and Canada is expected to grow from an astonishing $1B to $4B by 2022.
Producers are constantly coming up with more and more food products infused with weed. Brownies, chocolate, gummy bears, lollipops, butter, candies, drinks, smoothies, snacks – it will make your head spin just thinking about all the cannabis edible products that are available on the market. (For a full spinning effect, you should try some.)
Different tastes aside, there is one product that stands as a holy grail of all canna-edibles: cannabis-infused honey.
Weed honey tastes good, it’s jam-packed with nutrients and antioxidants, and is probably one of the healthiest edibles out there. Cannabis and honey each have great health properties, so when combined together they end up creating one great superfood.
Honey is a sweet, viscous liquid prepared by bees from the nectar of flowering plants (or honeydew). It is the only food produced by insects that humans can eat.
Basically, it is highly concentrated water made up of two sugars: dextrose and levulose. And besides its tasty compound, it has a lot of beneficial properties that have been known to humans for thousands of years.
Here’s a few of them:
When it comes to cannabis, it is already established in medicine in treating a number of health problems. So, depending on your medical condition and personal preferences, you can choose whether or not to infuse your honey with THC or CBD.
If you want to get high, you’ll want to use the good old THC. But if you only want to relax, relieve pain, nausea, stress, anxiety or just get a good night’s sleep, all without experiencing any psychoactive effects, you should use CBD-infused honey.
This recipe has been circulating around the Internet as the simplest way to make canna-infused honey because it requires only two ingredients (and you probably guessed which two): cannabis and honey.
Basically, all you need to do is wrap decarbed weed in cheesecloth, add it to your honey, and then cook this mixture for 5-6 hours on low heat (around 200°F or 93°C). Then you remove the cannabis bundle from the honey and squeeze as much tincture as you can from the bundle into the honey. When it cools off, the product is ready to be consumed.
Although this recipe may seem pretty easy and straightforward, there are a few issues we want to address here so you can get a proper understanding of the delicate process of preparing cannabis-infused honey, or any edible in general.
Although there are tons of recipes out there, if you want to prepare a fully potent, palatable and healthy weed-edible, you need to investigate all the chemical aspects of the substances you want to mix.
So, in this case, when you want to mix weed and honey, you should pay attention to these particulars:
Honey is a heat-sensitive substance and when exposed to high and long heat processing, it can deteriorate or even completely destroy all of its enzymes, minerals and antibacterial properties. Although heating at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit will not completely damage the health-value of honey, research shows that it will definitely decrease the level of inhibin, a protein complex directly responsible for honey’s antibacterial property.
When exposed to high temperatures, honey becomes less sweet, and even bitter if you cook it for too long.
On the bright side, heat won’t make honey toxic or produce delirious effects on humans, as many rumors suggest.
Although exposing honey to unnecessary heat while there are much better alternatives for preparing canna-honey, seems like a total waste.Â
It takes a lot of time and electricity (read: money) to prepare this recipe, which suggests five, six or, in some cases, even eight hours of cooking. During that time you need to be at home in order to monitor the cooking process, stir the mixture from time to time, check if it’s boiling, etc. Basically, it’s a daunting task that hardly anyone wants to be bothered with.
And most importantly:
What’s the point of making cannabis-induced honey if there are not enough cannabinoids in it, either THC or CBD? Since cannabinoids are fat-soluble and not sugar-soluble, they cannot properly dissolve in honey.
When you decarb cannabis buds in the oven, they will release cannabinoids, but because they don’t really mix with honey, you will have to put another emulsifier to help them dissolve.
Which brings us to the main question:
Recipe no. 1 – Preparation time: 3 hours
The first step in this recipe is to make cannabis-infused coconut oil and then add it to the honey.
I use coconut oil because it has a very high concentration of fatty acids (around 90%), which makes it one of the strongest binding agents for cannabinoids. Also, coconut oil is a “go-to” ingredient in almost any canna-edible, because it tends to disguise the smell and taste of weed.
This recipe is awesome because it preserves all the natural ingredients of the honey while achieving the full potential of marijuana. It is also really easy to make, just follow these simple instructions.
What you need:
Instructions:
Recipe No. 2 – Preparation time: 30 minutes
https://stonerscookbook.ca/cannahoney-recipe/
The difference between this recipe and the previous is in one simple ingredient: lecithin. Lecithin is a phospholipid, which is commonly used as an emulsifying agent in the food industry. In this case, half a tablespoon of lecithin is enough to successfully bond the cannabis and honey.
Lecithin also increases the absorption of THC and other cannabinoids in your body, so it will probably increase the potency of this edible.
Last, but not least, using this simple ingredient makes cooking unnecessary, so the whole preparation time will take no more than 30 minutes.
What you need:
Instructions:
You can use weed honey the same way you use regular honey. The possibilities are endless when it comes to this natural sweetener, but here I will mention my favorite ones:
You’ll notice that I love to use my pot-infused honey raw, and I would suggest the same for you. This way you’re 100% sure that all the health benefits of cannabis and honey are preserved, and that you’re using a true immunity-boosting powerhouse food.