This week I decided to put the Instant Pot I received for Christmas to the ultimate stoner test: can you use the IP to make cannabutter or cannabis-infused oil?
I stumbled across some tips and a suggested method in a comment on Reddit. I do not remember the link but if you search for it in there, I’m sure you’ll find the same instructions I am about to share below.
Apparently, you can use the IP to not only infuse your fats, but it can also decarb the cannabis too.
I was pretty impressed with the ease of this method. I also felt it didn’t release the scent into my entire house, which was an added bonus. On the downside, I’m not sure the final product resulted in as potent of infusions as I have come to expect with other methods.
For the olive oil, I used 1/8th of cannabis for 1 cup. At maximum infusion, I would have ended up with about 535mg THC. In the butter, I used 1/4th of slightly more concentrated cannabis. At the maximum, this was about 1600mg THC/cup.
Ingredients:
- Cannabis
- Butter or Oil
Tools:
- Clean mason jar and lid
- Instant Pot or pressure cooker
- Mesh strainer
- Cheesecloth
Method:
- Place cannabis in a clean mason jar and place lid on LOOSELY. You want it on so the lid stays on (so give it a turn or two) but you don’t want it sealed.
- With the canning rack inside of your instant pot, place the jar inside. Fill the pot up with water so that it covers the cannabis in the jar, but doesn’t cause the jar to float.
- Place and lock the lid on IP and make sure the vents are sealed. Pressure cook on HIGH for 40 minutes. Natural release or manually open the vent, it’s up to you.
- Carefully remove the jar and open the lid. Use pot holders or other protection as the jar will still be quite warm.
- Melt butter and add to the jar (if using oil, it presumably is room temperature so no need to melt, unless it’s coconut oil). Loosely screw the jar lid back on.
- Place jar back into your Instant Pot, still using the canning rack, and add more water so that it comes up to the level of the butter inside the jar, but do not go past the max fill line. You should be safe to use more water as the weight of the oil or fat will weigh the jar down.
- Replace the lid on the Instant Pot and pressure cook on HIGH for 20 minutes. Natural release. Remove the jar carefully and with protective gear.
- Once the jar is cool enough to handle, remove the lid and strain the butter through cheesecloth and mesh strainer. Store in an airtight jar/container.
4 Responses
How much butter?
Hi Shari! That’s entirely up to you and what you need for your recipe. I think a lot of folks use 3.5-7 grams per 1 stick of butter (or 112g or 4 ounces, depending on how you measure). I hope that helps!
If you use this method with olive oil can you then use the infused oil and repeat the process, presumably making a much stronger oil? How many times do you think that you could repeat the process before the oil was unable to take up anymore cannabanoids?
It’s my understanding that that won’t really work. It has to do with the fat content of the oil, more so than how much cannabis you can add to the oil. For oil, olive oil has a fairly low fat content and especially low on the saturated fat that you’ll find in butter or coconut oil. If you want to really up the potency, try adding distillate or decarboxylated concentrates. Distillate can be warmed up and blended in as is, without decarbing and I think that will yield the best tasting infusion out of all the options and you can do make more potent doses if you need it.