How to Make Homemade Edibles with Consistent Doses

As cannabis edibles gain popularity, often for their versatility of recipes and ability to provide consistent doses, more people are learning how to make delicious, infused DIY edible creations at home. 

Homemade edibles allow you to create consistently dosed cannabis products with the ingredients you desire. 

One of the most common questions beginner cannabis chefs have is: how can you ensure your DIY edibles are dosed properly so you aren’t getting too much (or too little) cannabis in each serving?

Step 1: Do the Math

Successful homemade edibles start with selecting the right strain, which will influence your edible's potency and efficacy. After that, the most crucial element of your edibles is doing the dosage math. 

If you're starting with a quarter ounce of cannabis, totaling 7 grams or 7,000mg of dry weight and contains 20% THC. Twenty percent of the dry weight's 7,000mg would total 1400mg of THC (or 200mg of THC per gram of dried flower) in this case.

Let’s say you use one gram of dried flower to create a stick of infused cannabutter. Sticking with the previous example, you would know that your stick of infused butter includes 200mg of THC. Using half of the stick would total 100mg of THC in your dish. If you use one-quarter of the stick of butter, you've got 50 mg of THC, and so on. 

Keep that number in mind when portioning your edibles. If you're making 20 cookies with 100mg of butter, your edibles should end up with 5mg of THC per cookie.

Taking the time to do this math before cooking is vital to knowing how much THC will be present in every serving. 

If you aren't keen on dosing your edibles yourself, you can always purchase a pre-made infused butter or oil from your local dispensary. Or you can use an edible calculator to double-check the numbers. It never hurts to be thorough. 

Step 2: Do the Prep

With the calculations done, it's time to do the food prep. 

Remember that homemade edibles need more setup than most traditional dishes. With DIY edibles, this prep includes decarboxylation or decarbing the weed. This plant-heating process converts the various cannabis compounds into their activated form, notably altering THCA into the intoxicating THC. Without decarbing the cannabis, your edibles won’t have the desired effect. 

You can skip decarbing by buying pre-made cannabutter or cannabis cooking oil at the dispensary. However, if you prefer to make your own infused butter or oil, we recommend making it at least a day before you cook. Making cannabutter can be a bit of a time-consuming (yet rewarding) process, so make sure you have enough time to cook your entire infused recipe.

Some chefs will include extracts, like kief, for added potency. But this can make calculating THC per serving much more difficult. For the best results and most accurate doses, beginner cannabis cooks should stick to dried and cured cannabis flower. 

Once you have your cannabutter or oil, portion out the amount you need for your recipe. Remember to note how strong the portion you're using and the remaining butter or oil is. Label the remaining and store it appropriately, away from any non-infused products. 

Another option to avoid all that prep of decarbing and infusing a butter or oil, consider picking up an oil infuser.

Step 3: Find the Right Recipe

Strain selection isn't the only critical choice you'll be making along the way. It's also your choice of recipe. You can stick with the tried-and-true “pot brownies” or cookies, or pick a savory dish. 

While there are no wrong choices, you may want to look for a favorite recipe that calls for smaller quantities of cannabutter or oil and is easier to infuse. Larger and more complicated recipes can mean the first two steps become more time- and cost-intensive as you use more cannabis.

If your recipe calls for a significant quantity of butter, consider using half-infused cannabutter and half-regular butter, which helps cut down on dosing worries and avoids adding too much THC to your dish. 

The name of the game, especially if this is your first foray into homemade edibles, is to find a recipe that is easy enough to infuse and accurately dose. There are a few ways you can make accurate dosing even easier.

Make Single-serve Meals

The easiest way to dose DIY edibles is the single-serve route. Think of any single-serve meal, from a breakfast burrito to a grilled cheese sandwich to soup. Mix a set amount of THC into your ingredients, and you’ll have taken the guesswork (and math) out of the equation. 

Pre-Portion Your THC Toppers

Pre-portioned butter and oil allow you to infuse select ingredients or parts of a meal in a controlled manner. Pre-portioned infused toppers work great for ingredients you typically use to top a meal, like salad dressings, honey, or butter on toast.

Be Meticulous in Your Food Prep & Mixing

Unevenly mixed meals leave some bites with too much flavor and others with too little. The same uneven distribution happens with infused ingredients. In the latter's case, improper dosing can lead to some portions containing significantly different doses of THC than others. 

Infuser tools and pre-packaged options should reduce this concern. And taking the time to fully mix your ingredients is important to achieve consistent results. Still, with homemade edibles, there is always a risk of uneven dosing. 

Step 4: Enjoy (and Take Your Time)

Even when you know how to make edibles like a pro, small mismeasurements or uneven mixing can result in edibles without the potency needed, or they can spike THC quantities to two or three times more than you expected. 

That’s why, no matter how meticulous you are in your calculations and cooking, we recommend taking your time and giving each dose a full 1-2 hours to take effect before going back for seconds. 

Don't let the risk deter you from DIY edibles. There's nothing like making your own infused creations. Just be prepared to invest the time and care you need along the way to give yourself (and any guests you’re serving) the best possible experience. 

What Can You Do If You're "Too High"?

If you find that your homemade edible was stronger than expected and you feel too high, take comfort in knowing that these adverse effects typically don't last long, and there are steps you can take to sober up from weed if the experience proves too strong. 

If you feel overwhelmed and need support, Fireside Project offers a Psychedelic Peer Support Line to individuals during and after a psychedelic experience. With a highly trained team of compassionate volunteers who listen without judgment, Fireside Project offers the support that many individuals may not have access to at home. Through their Equity Project, callers who are military veterans or who identify as BIPOC or transgender are able to connect with a support line volunteer who shares that aspect of their identity.

The information in this article and any included images or charts are for educational purposes only. This information is neither a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional legal advice or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about laws, regulations, or your health, you should always consult with an attorney, physician or other licensed professional.