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How Long To Decarb In Dehydrator At 115F


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For THC how long would it take to decarb?  The chart I saw for hi temp decarb didn't draw out the line for decarb at that low a temp.  I was thinking in the line of 10 - 12 hours.  I'll do the testing eventually but wouldn't mind a ballpark estimate to start.

Also, would you be able to properly decarb flowers that were 15%THC and 15%CBD at 115f and have it work since the rapid decarbing temp for CBD on the hi end would vaporize the THC?

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For THC how long would it take to decarb?  The chart I saw for hi temp decarb didn't draw out the line for decarb at that low a temp.  I was thinking in the line of 10 - 12 hours.  I'll do the testing eventually but wouldn't mind a ballpark estimate to start.

Also, would you be able to properly decarb flowers that were 15%THC and 15%CBD at 115f and have it work since the rapid decarbing temp for CBD on the hi end would vaporize the THC?

I have wondered how much THC etc. is lost in a faster decarb. At 115f you are far below the boiling point of THC but THC will still evaporate below it's boiling point, much like a pot of water will evaporate while sitting on the counter at room temperature. I wonder how much THC evaporates during a cold decarb for a long period vs a warm decarb for a shorter period.

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Found a couple things on other forums.  This guy seems to have spent a bit on testing.

 

The difference between 200 f - 400 f is a exponential increase in the speed that degraded byproducts are produced! Achieving an internal temp of 200 rapidly causes decarboxylation, while achieving an internal temperature of 400 f means that THC has already been vaped off, and it's coming very close to vaping off CBD. Keep in mind that, just upon the approach of these temperatures, your most therapeutic and active chemicals degrade by nearly 20% - 30% of their original content, before they even produce vapor.


Close to 400 f and you've already been vaping THC for about the last one-hundred degrees. At 402 f, and you're vaping off CBD. (I think you may have your C and your F mixed around, btw. smile.png )

Once a vapor is produced at such high temps, you have a guaranteed loss over 30% of your THC, and nearly as much CBD, even if heated in a closed environment! Contain that vapor, and keep those temps up for too long and you're left only with byproducts of degraded THC and little, to no CBD at all.
When testing old, degraded cannabis (with samples coming everywhere from ancient tombs, to confiscated product from the 60's), we often find traces of THC and byproducts of its degradation, and little to no CBN, indicating that it likely eliminates/depletes beyond reading first, before THC and its byproducts over time, as well as first with heat.


It's worth noting that decarboxylation, and the additional cannabinoid conversion caused by increased and extended heat exposure, are not one in the same smile.png



If you want the most CBD possible, you need to stop conversion immediately after decarboxylation!


A brief, gentle pre-decarb followed by a lengthy cold oil, glycerin or alcohol extraction is ideal for this. Once you continue heating, you risk degradation, and if your CBN and D8-THC levels begin to rise (byproducts of degraded THC), you've already lost a varying amount of CBD, depending on the conditions which caused the THC conversion and degradation. The higher the temp, the greater the loss of CBD.



I haven't performed any studies myself to determine the precise rate of degradation at different temps, that would cost thousands and thousands of dollars that I don't have (and shouldn't have spent on the testing I did).

I do know from the testing I've had done, that the rate increases exponentially the hotter and higher the temperature rises, and that 400+ f temperatures that exceed more than a minute or so in duration, leave behind comparatively very little non-degraded potency in the remaining material depending on the conditions of the environment (sealed, unsealed), it's mainly in the form of CBN, and D8-THC. I've contributed well over $10-15,000 in lab analysis over the years to find out the precious information I operate by smile.png


The potency analysis labs Halent and Steep Hill both agree that the carboxyl group is eliminated rapidly, once the temperature exceeds 200 F, and that it is eliminated almost instantly once it hits 220 F (not Celsius!)... I do not know where Ed Rosenthal came by his information, but he agrees with the labs: 220 f causes almost immediate decarboxylation.



They also agree that primary cannabinoids surpass decarboxylation, and continue to noticeably degrade just after spending an afternoon in a moderately hot car. eek.gif


Those are temps well under 200f. This helps explain what I said earlier; the lower the temps, the more easily you can pinpoint the exact outcome you're looking for, and the lower the temperature the longer you can safely process and the more total active chemicals you can produce, and preserve, because intense heat increases the rate of degradation exponentially more, than extended time during exposure to lower temps.


The higher the temps, the more rapidly activation AND degradation will occur. It doesn't just stop after it's activated, and that's true even if activation is performed at lower temps. smile.png But the hotter it is, the more rapidly you surpass activation, and fly into degradation. That's ok if you don't mind somewhat varying results, depending on whether or not you manage to cool it down five seconds too soon, or too late, or worse, if you leave it on the stove or in the oven for even just a half minute or so too long.

If you perform the entire conversion too hot, while dry, it also doesn't leave you much room to promote bioavailability in heated oil, without encouraging further degradation.


The best approach, and the approach that both preserves the most potency while causing the most activation, is slow, and low. A home food dehydrator for 45 minutes to an hour, can produce more THC and preserve more psychoactive potency and even CBD, than using the oven at 220 f for a half an hour.

*** I've said it before, and I'll say it again tongue.png : I have always felt that my oven decarbing recommendations are already overkill!



Once the carboxyl group is removed, degradation begins to happen much more rapidly. This is why smoking pre-decarbed herb tends to produce weaker results; the secondary exposure to heat after the carboxyl group has been removed, is much more damaging than exposure to that heat alone.
When comparing fully dried herb, and decarbed herb, the exposure to flame and heat occurs in the same amount of time as it would have occured, had the carboxyl group been intact, that secondary heat exposure is the same, and where decarboxylation has already happened and a step that takes only an instant to occur, has already occurred, that only-instant, additional exposure to heat, doesn't leave it with anywhere else to go, but down.


There is decarboxylation, and then there is the following cannabinoid conversion that is hastened even more with heat, and they are two very different things.


The first, decarboxylation or what we consider 'activation', removes the carboxyl group eliminating the acid component. But conversion alters the chemical and psychoactive properties structurally at a much more integral level, and their rate of destruction, already hastened, can be hastened at an increasingly more rapid pace the higher the temp goes... meaning you're left with a higher maximum of active chemicals, and fewer degraded chemicals, if you take a low-temp approach. When you create a large amount of over-converted (degraded) THC, in the form of CBN and D8THC, you're also losing varying amount of your CBD content.

Once it's decarbed, you have your CBD. With additional heat, you're eliminating it bit, by bit. smile.png


The below image and excerpt should help explain how high temps can cause almost instant degradation... I can't recall if it came from Halent, or Steep, or perhaps even another lab. They all tend to come to a similar consensus, and most if not all of the samples I've had tested over the years produced similar results. smile.png

Liquid Chromotography is performed at much lower temperatures, and doesn't cause much, if any decarboxylation OR conversion. I found Gas not only to cause too much degradation, but to be much too variable myself, as well, and most of my funding was put towards analysis using liquid. Even trained technicians, would take the same samples, and produce oddly-varying results with GC(gas), versus LC. Now imagine a stoner or well-medicated patient, working in his or her kitchen! High temps, increase your liklihood to produce wildly varying results.

A split second at 230 c, and you've skipped right through decarboxylation, and you've lost at least 30% of your THC and a fairly large portion of your CBD. Processing for five or so minutes at 200 c, degrades about as much... and then you need to worry about additional heat-processing in oil to promote absorption!

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So, does this mean that cannabutter should be cooked at temps lower than 175 - 200 degrees?

The thing about cannabutter is you have water in it. You bring it up to a simmer and hold it there. That would be about 212 F. Then you use it to cook with which usually is even higher than that. And it does work great like that. The best canna cooky I ever ate was cooked at 250F. That's anecdotal evidence that temps can be higher than 200 and not ruin the cannabinoids. So the cannabutter was at 212 for 4 hours. Then the cooky was cooked at 250 for around a half an hour.

 

I always run my fresh buds for extract through the food dehydrator for about 8 hours before I extract. Gets rid of the water molecules. I have used buds that were dried slowly for extract and I didn't see any difference between that and the quicker dried buds. Heat can be a bad thing but I haven't seen any damage below 250 F. You start getting above 300 and the THC seems to leave and you are left with the rest of it. This has been learned from a lot of anecdotal evidence of decades of trying to cook with cannabis. Trial and error.

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Here's some more anecdotal evidence;

 

I use a volcano vaporizer. I vape at about 375-400 F. I vape a chamber full for about an hour between at least two of us. It's really been used when we are done. I take that used material and make extract out of it. It's a very good extract. I actually prefer it to extract from buds that were sent through the food dehydrator.

Take that info and add in that you can bake a canna cookie at 400 F and ruin it. It looks to me like after we think cannabis was ruined by heat there are still lots of cannabinoids that can be extracted. That's why people have a hard time believing you can get anything good out of the left overs after vaping. Try it you will like it.

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I've been saving my volcano remnants for just that.  Do you make oil from it or do you extract into oil or butter?

 

I just had a couple caps last nite that spent 5 hours in the dehydrator and 10 minutes at 200f after kiefed.  My stove did hit 250f during that time as it's sometimes off by 50f.  The caps seemed a lot more psychadelic than the stuff I was decarbing at 250f(reaching 300 momentarily) for 15 minutes.  I think I may be overdecarbing.  I have some caps that just decarbed for 5 hrs in the dehydrator I'll be trying later tonite.

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I've been saving my volcano remnants for just that.  Do you make oil from it or do you extract into oil or butter?

 

I just had a couple caps last nite that spent 5 hours in the dehydrator and 10 minutes at 200f after kiefed.  My stove did hit 250f during that time as it's sometimes off by 50f.  The caps seemed a lot more psychadelic than the stuff I was decarbing at 250f(reaching 300 momentarily) for 15 minutes.  I think I may be overdecarbing.  I have some caps that just decarbed for 5 hrs in the dehydrator I'll be trying later tonite.

I make an extract from the duff(left over vape material) using my iso machine, using 100% iso alcohol, that has been pre-distilled by the machine. I can make enough oil out of the duff to provide for all my oil needs and then some. It's amazing. I never have to worry about wasting what is left in the duff because I eventually wring every little bit of cannabinoids out it.
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I've been saving my volcano remnants for just that.  Do you make oil from it or do you extract into oil or butter?

 

I just had a couple caps last nite that spent 5 hours in the dehydrator and 10 minutes at 200f after kiefed.  My stove did hit 250f during that time as it's sometimes off by 50f.  The caps seemed a lot more psychadelic than the stuff I was decarbing at 250f(reaching 300 momentarily) for 15 minutes.  I think I may be overdecarbing.  I have some caps that just decarbed for 5 hrs in the dehydrator I'll be trying later tonite.

I bet you get the same results from both types of caps. I don't think you were over-decarbing.
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Sorry, i'm terrible at getting things across in type.  There is actually 3 types of caps described.  Ones that only got the dehydrator, which I'll take tonite, caps that got the dehydrator and 10+ minutes at 200f in the oven and caps that didn't get the dehydrator that were decarbed in the oven at 250(reaching 300f) for 20+ minutes(I said 15 but it was usually 20-30).  Great with math but get confused with remembering stats.

 

So the ones decarbed in the dehydrator and oven at 200f weren't the usual dark brownish kief color they were more tan to white green still.  They definitely didn't get the hi temps they usually get when I just freeze and shake and then decarb in the oven.  And they didn't seem as sedative as the hi temp decarbed ones do.  We'll see how the dehydrator ones turn out. 

I was only saying overdecarbed in the sense that they were more sedative, not in the sense they didn't work or had converted everything to CBN.  Would like to know the start point where THC is highest and there is still a percent of THCA left(point where THC starts converting to CBN faster than THCA is converting to THC) so that the caps have the longest life and you get the most out of the anti inflamatory effect of THCA and CBDA.

 

Don't remember if I asked but: Does THCA convert to THC in the same parameters as CBDA converts to CBD?  I know they vaporize/boil at different temps but does decarb run the same since they all are converting from an acid thru loosing the same molecules or do the bonds differ in that some will loose the carboxyl group easier than others(THCVA, CBGA, etc.)?

Edited by Norby
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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi, new poster here.   I've noticed that this forum has a lot of people discussing decarboxlyation / degradation specifics which is an interest area of mine too.  So thought I'd join.

 

Going back to the original thread discussion, I have always wondered about the link between "dehydration" and decarboxylation.   I question whether there is one - at least from a practical perspective when decarbing your weed.   Decarbing is about losing CO2 that's a chemically-bonded part of the THCA molecule.   Dehydrating is about losing H2O that is incidental moisture in the plant product.  Simply drying out the moisture shouldn't in itself decarboxlyate, especially at low temps.  

 

But a lot of people associate drying and decarb and I wonder why.   I've seen a patent where they talk about a using lower temp drying step for the purpose of getting moisture out for even heat distribution later on in higher-temp decarb.   That makes sense to me.    But my thought is that a dehydrator at 115F in itself won't result in a good decarb.  

 

But I'm open to see what others have learned on this topic.

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But decarbing happens naturally at any temp over time and heat decreases the time.  I've heard sitting in a container in a hot car for the day will do the job.  When I get rich I plan on doing the testing with 10 hours of decarbing with a sample being taken off the dehydrator every hour.

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I totally agree with your comment on doing some testing in real life conditions.  With HPLC pricing coming down, I'm hoping one of the labs will so some practical testing around time / temp for everyday applications like cannabutter. 

 

In the meantime, your other comment motivated me to do some calculations using a paper I read recently on the reaction rate of THC decarboxylation.   The reaction rate follows a first-order rate law, so by plugging in numbers I was able to calculate the reaction rate at a range of temperatures:

psqyYin.png

 

Sorry for the huge table.   Anyway, at different temperatures I calculated the reaction rate (middle column).   In the right column I compared the rates to get a relative sense of how much more time was needed to get the same results as a decarb at 230F.   For example, at 212F it takes 2x longer to convert the same amount of THCA to THC as it does at 230F.  

 

What this suggests is that while, yes, decarbing happens naturally at room temperature the rate is quite slow.  At room temperature of 70F, it takes ~3000x longer to decarb as it does at 230F.  This jibes at a high level with some other research that looked at how quickly the components of hash and hash extract converted/degraded at normal storage temps.

 

At the 115F dehydrator temperature, it takes 207x more time to get the same results as it does at 230F.   Now, if I usually decarb in the 230F oven for 30 minutes, that doesnt mean it should take 207 x 30 minutes at 115F, because a good portion of that original 30 minutes is used to heat the weed to temperature.  But best case it would probably take a few days in the dehydrator to get a decent decarb.  

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Great post!  There is a lot that goes into it.  I like the idea of about 8 - 10hrs at about 160.  It seems easier to achieve that temperature more steadily as that is about max on my dehydrator.  My main problem is that my stove can swing 50+ degrees over the course of 10 minutes, after it's achieved set temps.

I currently decarbed on a coffee cup warmer in a petri dish.  1/2 gram of kief spreads evenly and a temp gun measured sustained temps between 220 and 230f.  Works great for kief but it's nice to dry it thoroughly to kief it as when it's brittle dry it kiefs so much easier. Maybe I'll start my tests at 6 hours at 165 in the dehydrator and go every hour to 12 hours and adjust from there.

 

Oil is so nice as you can just watch for the small bubbles to stop.

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