Weed Honey: How to Make This Immune-Boosting Edible and What to Avoid

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 and its health benefits

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:

• Contains many antioxidants (organic acids and polyphenols)
• Has antibacterial properties (high sugar content and the presence of inhibin are great bacteria killers)
• Relieves sore throat
• Boosts the immune system
• Good for skin and hair 
• Lowers cholesterol and triglycerides 
• Heals burns, wounds and inflammations
• Acts as a healthy alternative to processed sugar

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.

How NOT to make canna-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.

Why this is not a good idea

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:

Issue no. 1: Heating can destroy all the health benefits of honey

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.

Issue No 2: Heating honey destroys its flavor

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. 

Issue No 3: It’s a waste of time and electricity

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:

Issue number 4: The THC/CBD potency of this honey is questionable

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:

How to properly make canna-infused honey?

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:

• 15 g (about 0.5 oz) or 1 cup of cannabis
• 300 g (11 oz) or 1 cup of honey
• 200 g (about 7 oz) or 1 cup of coconut oil 
• Cheesecloth
• Canning jar 
• Pot

Instructions:

1. Like with any canna-edible, first you need to decarboxylate cannabis to activate THC/CBD. Bake your grounded cannabis flowers for 25-30 minutes at 250°F (115°Celsius).
2. Heat the coconut oil until it dissolves, and add decarboxylated cannabis. 
3. Cook on low for about 3 hours. 
4. Strain out the cannabis from oil with cheesecloth. Squeeze really hard so you get all the THC/CBD from the plant material into the coconut oil. 
5. Mix cannabis-infused coconut oil with honey and wait until it cools off. 

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:

• 7 g (about 0.25 oz) of cannabis or ½ cup of cannabis
• 300 g (11 oz) or 1 cup of honey
• 2 tbsp of coconut oil 
• ½  tbsp of lecithin (we recommend egg or sunflower based lecithin because soy-based lecithin contains a high amount of estrogen). 

Instructions:

1. Decarb cannabis and grind it to a fine powder.
2. Mix cannabis powder with coconut oil and lecithin and stir the mixture until there are no lumps.
3. Add honey to the mixture and continue stirring until this fusion is smooth and completely blended.
4. Store the honey in a jar and wait until it cools off. 

Tips on using canna-honey

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:

• Warm lemon water with a tablespoon of honey and ginger powder is an excellent remedy for a sore throat.
• Walnuts dipped in honey are too yummy to be true, and have been used as a natural aphrodisiac since ancient times.
• Honey-mustard dressing (with apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and lemon) is a simple and delicious salad-dressing which can also be used as a dipping sauce for fresh vegetables.

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.