A life of leisure is surprisingly boring, so I’ve been passing the time with science.

Making tinctures is great fun and I love sharing the fruits of my labour, but the anxious weasel in my head had a lot of angst over math and philosophy (my calculations of potency were derived using some reeeeally sketchy math, the kind after school PSAs warned us about). To give the anxious weasel a rest, I splurged and spent my stock payout (lol) on a tCheck, a small device that connects to your phone via Bluetooth, runs some tests on the sample you provide, and spits out the potency. It is super neat.

Armed with science, I started two more batches of tincture. ANA-001 is 250ml of Everclear infused with 14g of Ancient Freezer Weed, provided by the divine MizAnna. She wasn’t sure if the weed was any good, so I didn’t really know what (if anything) to expect – and while I stripped out all the literal sticks, there were a lot of leaves and stems and it looked far different than the stuff I usually worked with.

The final yield of the plant matter was around 45g. I only used 250ml of Everclear in this batch, so after weighing out 14g, I soaked it all in the dark. I tested every two days to see how the longer soak time affected the potency.

Verdict: Most of the action happens within the first day of infusing, but a longer soak does increase the potency (albeit by very small amounts).

The very first test I did was after two days of undisturbed soaking. It tested at a girthy 10.7mg/ml right out of the gate, meaning I should have started testing a LOT earlier. Still, not bad.

Here, have some data:

• 48 hours: 10.7mg/ml
• 72h: 10.9mg/ml
• 96h: 10.9
• 120: 11.3
• 144h (harvest): 11.9mg/ml

The final yield after straining the tincture twice through a coffee filter was 170ml of ANA-001, which is 11.9mg/ml. It’s a dark, evil green and it is entirely awesome. I think. I haven’t actually tried it yet – I don’t really consume my science, the fun is in the testing. If I ever get a job, I’m thinking about saving up for an entire Science Laboratory so I can make potions of an exact nature all day long. I’ll need a lab coat.

The second experiment was far more humbling, and I did an additional learn. Batch SCP-001 started out as 17.44g of Cherry Pie, a hybrid I bought on sale. Then I got lazy: I find hand-grinding the flower to take a really long time and it makes me uncomfortably sticky, so I found a small coffee grinder to try and speed the process up. This may have been my undoing, because the coffee grinder is insanely powerful and it essentially turned the dried flower into dust. I think this destroyed most of the trichomes, because 12g of weed dust has been soaking in 500ml of Everclear for 4 days now, and it’s clocking in at 3.9mg/ml – and that’s only after I gave up on the original method (Ikea teapot), dumped it all into a mason jar, and added the remaining 5.44g of pulverized Cherry Pie.

Lesson learned. I’ll let this batch soak for another day, and then strain out the mulch. I didn’t bother reducing the alcohol content of ANA-001 because there was so little of it to begin with, but I’ll strain and reduce SPC-001 before I report a final potency. I’m not expecting any miracles, so I’ll reserve this batch for anyone who wants to dip their toes ^{(not literally please)} into THC tinctures – it’ll be super mild and mostly guaranteed ^{(not a legal statement)} not to destroy your weekend.

Beyond the science: I’m still unemployed, I officially turned down a position with a company based out of Texas for at least 3 reasons, and I’m 5 interviews deep with another company that I’m really hopeful about. I still miss my former team terribly, and I’m glad-but-sad that I finally got to meet them – the Vancouver work trip we had been planning when we got laid off actually happened, and I had dinner with the crew. So many faces were missing, but I hugged the hell out of the faces I got to meet and then sniffled all the way home.

On the whole, things are good. I’m trying to be calm and patient and understanding, but I usually end up on anxious and pacing and kinda lost. I also miss working, and not only because Everclear is really expensive but a) I need to be occupied at all times or I get into trouble doing SCIENCE and b) all this sitting around being useless is starting to affect my mental state.

.. okay bye.