Stem Soda Recipe (THCola)
By McBadAss

Purpose: To produce a refreshing and tasty beverage that will give you a strong relaxing high similar to sharing a joint with one or two of your friends while utilizing those damn leftover stems and seeds that just get thrown away.

Items Needed:
2 short, wide shot glasses
1 tall, skinny shot glass
1 coffee filter
Leftovers (stems and immature green & yellow seeds) from about an ounce of good ganja (1/2 or even less will work for a single drink)
1 razor blade
Soda of your choice (goes best with CocaCola in my opinion)
1 bottle of grain alcohol (Wild Turkey 101, Bacardi 151, or Everclear)
OR laboratory-grade 100% Ethanol (ETOH) because it is a better solvent and extracts more THC (if you have access to it but it's not necessary)
1 bottle of rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) <-------not needed if 100% ETOH is used rather than grain alcohol
1 small cooking pot (plenty large enough for 2 shot glasses to fit in
An electric stove

Preparation:
Place a small cooking pot on an electric stove and fill with 1 - 1.5 inches of water, no more than would come halfway up the shot glass. Turn stove on close to high and bring that water to a boil. Proceed to step 1 while the water heats up. (Note: Distilled water boils a lot faster and cleaner than tap water.)

Step 1.
The first step is to separate your pot from your stems and seeds and put away the sensi. After all, why waste good buds on this venture when you can smoke it? We're only interested in the unsmokable portion that would poke a hole in your papers or get stuck in your pipe otherwise. Once you've pulled out your stems and seeds, it's time to further separate the seeds. For this experiment in ingenuity, we need only the young immature seeds that are light-green to yellow. Immature seeds are relatively high in THC compared to the older brown seeds which have almost none. Place the seeds in a wide-mouth shot glass. Now you must bust out your new VERY SHARP razor blade and proceed to chop up the stems as much as possible. The more surface area there is on a solid in contact with a solute (discussed later), the more of that solid and things trapped in the solid (THC) is dissolved into solution (i.e., more finely chopped = more THC content). If you have a shitload of stems, a coffee grinder could be very useful. Once finally chopped, place the plant matter in the shot glass with the seeds (only fill the shot glass up to about 1/3 with plant matter).

Step 2.
Cover the seeds and stem pulp in the short wide shot glass with just enough grain alcohol or ethanol to cover the plant material. Invert the tall skinny shot glass and place its open end into the open mouth of the short wide shot glass with your alcohol and plant matter in it. Then place it in the by-now boiling water. Make sure the water only comes halfway up the short shot glass on the bottom. Boil for 45 minutes (more water may need to be added to the boiling pot as the water evaporates). What you have done is set up a makeshift reflux apparatus respectable of any organic chemist 'thirsting' for a high.

Step 3.
After 45 minutes, remove from heat and set aside to cool a bit. Once cool enough to handle, place the coffee filter tightly over the top of your bottle of alcohol and place the palm of your hand over that, then invert the bottle a couple of times such that a small portion of the filter becomes soaked (this is known as priming the filter and insures that the vast majority of your product is pushed though the filter when poured. Now place the soaked area of your filter tightly over the top of the wide shot glass with the alcohol and plant mixture in it and pour through the filter into the second short wide shot glass. You should now have one short shot glass with a green-brown cloudy liquid and another with plant matter. Be sure to knock all the plant matter off of the filter and back into the shot glass before proceeding.

**If you are using grain alcohol instead of ETOH, place your shot glass with the liquid back in the boiling water (uncovered) and evaporate as much of the liquid as possible. The funky yellow/brown liquid that remains is the good stuff and should smell alcoholy with a sweet spicey scent. Repeat steps 1 through 3 again and combine the extracted liquids. After you have done this, repeat the same steps again except this time substitute 70% isopropyl alcohol (common rubbing alcohol) for the grain alcohol. When you boil this third extracted filtered liquid, it should be boiled until the volume is greatly reduced, no alcohol smell remains, only a sweet pungent odor and a watery/thick consistency. It is vital that you remove all the isopropyl alcohol; it will make you feel like shit if you drink too much of it. Dissolve this goopy stuff in an equal amount of grain alcohol and combine it with your other extractions. Some water will remain in the sample because 70% rubbing alcohol contains 30% water; this is safe.

**If you are using 100% ethanol, place your shot glass with the liquid back in the boiling water (uncovered) and evaporate as much of the liquid as possible. The funky yellow/brown sludge that remains is the good stuff and should absolutely not smell alcoholy, having a sweet spicey pungent scent. I recommend that you then dissolve this sludge in an equal amount of grain alcohol rather than 100% ethanol for transferring to a drink simply because pure ethanol tastes like liquid shit! Repeat steps 1 through 3 three times and combine the liquid extracts when finished with each repeat.

Step 4
You now have concentrated grain alcohol/THC/trace plant matter. This is the easy part! Pour your combined extracts into a glass of soda, add a few ice cubes and drink up! This will get you suprisingly fucked up for a couple of hours. Soda is very acidic due to the high carbon dioxide concentration. I'm not sure, but a portion of the less active cannabinols and cannabinoids may be converted to the most active form, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, by this highly acidic environment. Whatever the case may be, you've just created a pretty damn good high from something that would have otherwise been thrown away.

The average pothead usually has more than 1/3 of a shot glass's worth of ground stems lying around, as well as a bunch of thirsty friends. This comes together perfectly. Go wide scale! Use a larger cooking pot and run multiple shot glasses at once to create multiple doses! And most of all, have fun. Making the shit is almost as enjoyable as drinking it!

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 6870
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 29, 2001	Views: 32,264
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