Maximizing Flavour with Ganjier Alex

Speaker 0 (00:00:00) - Hey, have you heard the worldwide streaming premiere of the acclaimed documentary film by Jake Remington? Frenchie Dreams of Hashish is April 29th, 2023. Frenchie Dreams of Hashish Showcases, master Hashish and Frenchie Cannolis, lifelong pursuit of perfect hash and highlights the ethos of sustainable sun-grown cannabis. And if you're in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, you can join me for a live screening of the film, along with other cannabis enthusiasts, not in Peterborough, no problem. You can find screenings all over the world, or you can buy the film on Vimeo on the 29th. But of course, movies and cannabis are always better with friends. Find details in the show notes at the bottom of your podcast player, and I hope to see you there. In this episode, I speak with fellow certified goe and culinary cannabis expert, Alex of what the Damn Health. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified Goe, Marge, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, and thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 0 (00:01:24) - This was a fascinating conversation that pulled from Alex's extensive experience in plant-based cooking, which lends itself well to the exciting world of culinary cannabis. You'll hear his unique approach to healthful eating. You'll learn some new techniques for decarboning as well as ways to dab that, highlight the terpenes versus the potency, plus a whole lot more. Please enjoy this conversation with Alex. All right, everyone, I am very pleased to be joined today by Alex. And I think we first had our introduction through Lucas, who's also been a recent podcast guest and fellow goji. And I'm just gonna start out this episode by asking you that, that very big question that people always get asked at the be beginning of episodes like this, which is who is Alex? Tell us a little bit about yourself, ,

Speaker 2 (00:02:13) - Uh, oh gosh. Well, um, avoiding the existential parts of that question, right. . Um, the, the, the parts that have brought me, uh, to here are, um, I, uh, I went through the GGI program, uh, about a year ago, the first kind of summer of its conception, um, and then took my test in the fall. I've been working with plants, um, including cannabis for pretty much my entire adult life, and processing them into, um, different forms that increase their flavor and bioavailability has kind of been what I've been focusing on just in my home kitchen, um, and in my life, uh, that was sort of spurred on by my family having a lot of health issues early on in my life. And so the ability to kind of take control of that, understand what things are doing in my body, what they're, how they're interacting with other things, um, and how to kind of create, uh, synergy through your consumption in your life to create more or less, less a healthy balance. Um, it's, it's something that we do regularly every day as eat, if you're me or a lot of us, something you do every day as well is consume cannabis. Um, and the two, whether I like it or not, end up taking up a lot of my time because if you, if you want to do things with intention, and there are some things that you do already kinda have to dig in, um, a fair amount. Right.

Speaker 0 (00:03:37) - Uh, let's, oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (00:03:39) - Oh, no, please.

Speaker 0 (00:03:40) - Well, I was just, I was just struck by that in a way because I'm reading a book right now that's just come out and they're talking a lot about current medicine and how they treat disease once you already have the disease, but there's very little done really right now to prevent some of these major diseases or health complications. And so if you're somebody that's been working with plant medicines for a long time, do you have like a a an approach that you take for, for what you're describing?

Speaker 2 (00:04:05) - Yeah, and I think it's changed over time. Um, I started out with an interest in chemistry, and so the approach was largely chemical. How do you balance these nutrients, both for, um, my relationship to cannabis and my relationship to food. Um, and I, I had an understanding from a young age, um, because of some of my experiences and getting to live abroad in countries where, um, like the organic movement was going strong already, um, that even within a chemical approach, you, you get a much higher quality product out of an organic, um, whatever you might consider that to be. Um, the limitations to this is it doesn't, um, it doesn't account for biology. So you can be doing all of the numbers correct. And the interactions aren't right. Um, once at this point, um, the approach is a relationship between the biology of the world around me and the biology that I'm putting into me.

Speaker 2 (00:05:05) - So how do I treat my gut and my body like the aquarium tank? It is, uh, I'm feeding the life that feeds me, um, because that's what's actually craving the food. That's what's breaking down particular things. And I can, even though I, it's difficult to control that in a moment. You can control it in an arc over the course of time by making slow adjustments. Uh, you know, the, uh, the reality to health is you have to do what you can do in that moment. So if you're on a cross country road trip, you're gonna make a much different choice about your consumption than if you're in your home and you're able to garden all year or whatever your situation may be. Um, and so understanding that balance at this point has become the focus, um, the focus in my life and, and kind of how to share it.

Speaker 0 (00:05:51) - Right. And that makes a lot of sense too. When you mentioned biology, just, I mean, as someone who's doing a podcast on edibles and how varied someone's response to edibles can be, like, I might be a, you know, 20 milligram kind of person and the person next to me might be a hundred or five. You just don't know totally that biology really does affect things. So when you are sort of using cannabis or other, other foods nutrition, is it just sort of things that you've learned over time, you tweak that sort of what you're eating to based on your reaction to it?

Speaker 2 (00:06:23) - Um, yeah, so I, um, for a long time I kind of, uh, treated myself a bit like an experiment, um, to kind of see how things made me feel, what things made me feel, um, as, as much as anything, it's a relationship to yourself when it really comes to health. I think it's why a lot of these fad diets and a lot of these things that are one size fits all don't really work for people as well as cannabinoid profiles are not a one size fits all approach. Um, I also think to say one thing is gonna work for me every single day of my life, um, if your life is hyper consistent, that may very well be true. If you're a person that does the same every thing every day, that may very well be true. Um, I'm not a person that does that.

Speaker 2 (00:07:09) - Um, so diversity is key to health for me personally and being able to tune in with myself, have a relationship to where I'm at in that moment, what I'm feeling, what feels good, and then also that meta understanding of what is good. Um, if you feed yourself, um, a lot of sugar, you're gonna be craving sugar and that's what's gonna immediately make you feel good because the biology in your gut is craving that sugar and you're literally, something is dying when you don't feed it that sugar and it's sending signals to your brain that your meta understanding of the fact that sugar is an inflammatory food allows you to kind of like alter that choice. So tomorrow you're craving something a little bit different.

Speaker 0 (00:07:51) - Right. Okay. That makes, that does make a lot of sense. And it also, I mean, for people listening, I think taking notes and keeping some kind of journal, I'm always a big fan of taking notes cuz you figure you're gonna remember something and then you just don't. So, you know, being able to sort of track that kind of thing to get the outcome that you're looking for cause Yeah. Yeah. We are all different.

Speaker 2 (00:08:14) - Absolutely. Um, yeah, I, I'm a weirdo and things seem to just stick in my brain. Um, when I've helped other people kind of adapt this, the thing I say to them is, you have to write down everything you eat right? Because I can't memorize everything you eat. I can, I can look at it and say, Hey, this is how I understand this and this is maybe where you are running into these particular issues, but I, if I don't know that it's there, I don't know how to say that.

Speaker 0 (00:08:42) - Right. And sometimes too, if you don't write down everything, cuz I've, I've followed other nutrition protocols where they suggest you write down everything you eat for the first few days at the very least. And if you don't, then suddenly you're like, oh, you, you just don't remember that you had that stickers bar. Right. Three o'clock on a Monday or something like

Speaker 2 (00:08:58) - That. Totally. Yeah,

Speaker 0 (00:08:59) - Yeah, yeah. Even though that might be causing you some issues. So , right? . Yeah. Now, uh, as I understand, I think you were telling me before the show when we were first talking that you are a home cook and, but you were also hosting cannabis dinners. And I'm just curious to how you went from passionate home Cook to somebody who's hosting people for, for meals.

Speaker 2 (00:09:24) - Um, so I, I started, um, I mean I started cooking at a young age. Um, but the deep dive into it really came from the, the diet I was on and the diet my partner was on. So we were vegan and gluten free for a long time, and a v uh, within a couple years had to make a switch to a very specific anti-inflammatory diet because when you, you do a, when you reduce the nutrients that you're getting and then don't eat healthy on top of that, you run into like health complications very, very quickly. Um, right. So we, we decided to keep that ethos for a long time, but kind of try to figure out how to perfect it and how to do it properly. And at the time there wasn't, like, there wasn't great information on it. Like it was not, um, it was not a time when there were even like beyond burgers on the shelf or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (00:10:21) - So it wasn't a shift that f it felt like something we had to figure out how to do. Um, and I, uh, in general, once something gets commoditized and gets too into the jaws of capitalism, it tends to become a little bastardized in terms of the health benefits. So a lot of the fake meat and like the things that started coming out, it was really clear that those were not healthy things. They were products of large scale, conventional farming. They had relatively insignificant nutrient profiles and most of the nutrients were added in through some sort of chemical process. Um, and by that time we, I sort of had an understanding that those things were not good, um, and not, not the best way to achieve health, I guess I would say. Um, the, they, they have their benefit for feeding people in general, um, that had this, uh, kind of juxtaposing side to it where like, I grew up not really liking eating vegetables.

Speaker 2 (00:11:18) - Like I was sort of a picky eater and I wanted to eat junk food and like a standard American diet. Um, at the same time, I, I got a lot of international experiences and so like my, um, my palate was relatively large for my age. Um, and so I kind of just started diving into how to create the flavors. So I didn't really look at any one thing. I just started looking at what makes flavor, how do you balance flavor, um, and then, uh, processing cannabis, um, particularly hydrocarbon extracted shin started to teach me that different plants wind up with different amounts of their secondary metabolites based on their cultivation practice and based on the care and after processing. So, and that's true for everything. Whether you're extracting cannabis or you're extracting a carrot, there's gonna be a different amount of sugar in it. There's gonna be a different amount of the medicinal properties in it, there's gonna be a different level of antioxidants in it.

Speaker 2 (00:12:20) - Um, there's gonna be a different kind of flavor in it. Um, and a carrot is not, a carrot is not a carrot, a tomato is not a tomato is not a tomato and weed is not weed is not weed. They are uniquely different things based on everything from the terroir to the, the profile. And so it became sort of an extraction, tech-based methodology that sort of mirrored the way that I was processing cannabis, um, and looked at that, how do you get the maximum flavor and potency, if you will, in this case of whatever nutrient profile that is. Um, and I do, I like to look at cannabinoids as a nutrient. It's a little, uh, not, not entirely scientific, but it, they are something that is nourishing to the body, um, help regulate homeostasis. And for a long time were in most of our food products in a lot of ways.

Speaker 0 (00:13:12) - Okay. So, so you tackled like cooking from the perspective of increasing flavor profiles or nutrient profiles or cannabinoid profiles depending on what you're working with?

Speaker 2 (00:13:22) - Yeah, totally. Um, and that was largely with plants. Um, and so we, I started being able to kind of create these things that were vegan and gluten-free and anti-inflammatory, um, and largely grain-free, um, that people couldn't really tell or weren't missing anything from them in terms of food. Um, and that just started to lead to things like, will you do this or will you do this on a large scale? So back in North Carolina we did some catering, um, and some different pairing events, and I worked with hemp companies and that kind of thing on, um, getting specific TURP profiles on the market and, um, sort of had the world's unmarried separately rotating, um, and working together. Uh, so I had a, a little bit of experience putting on like small events and that kind of thing and, and a fair amount of experience with cannabis.

Speaker 2 (00:14:14) - Um, and I just kind of came out here one week for a K and F class out to California and after that class, uh, met with de Derek and offered to cook for the Gga program. And from there it was sort of just a snowball effect. I think it was, I literally just shut my mouth and cooked and, um, it seemed to be well received and that, that turned into, um, ideas about how to get events going and how to start really marrying these worlds in a way that show off. Um, I kind of fell in love with the terroir out here and the way that the different profiles express, um, in both vegetables and in cannabis and the ability to like kind of compare these micro climates in an experiential way was just a really unique opportunity. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 0 (00:15:12) - , um, undoubtedly. Now I'm curious about something you mentioned, because you said as you were, you know, the doing the process of this, are you still vegan and gluten free?

Speaker 2 (00:15:21) - I am not actually. Okay. Um,

Speaker 0 (00:15:23) - Okay. You kind of mentioned, alluded that to earlier, I wasn't sure if you still were, but you do ma mainly plant-based cooking. Correct.

Speaker 2 (00:15:29) - So that's how I know how to cook, uh, right. And most of the meat that I cook, I take the same tech from when I was, uh, cooking mostly Tempe. So I, I made in my partner, made a lot of Tempe, I cooked with a lot of Tempe for the time we were vegan, gluten free. Legumes in general are not super digestible unless you process them in a really particular way. One of those ways is fermentation, especially soybeans. Were not really consumed by humans until we learned how to ferment them. Um, so creating like an anti-inflammatory protein source on a vegan diet, it takes some amount of fermentation. Uh, I do cook with meat now. We try to source our meat directly from farmers in the area, so mm-hmm. For the white thorn rose dinner, the last event that we did, um, we, I literally went to the lady's farm and picked up the Turkey pet, her little goat, um, . The idea is to get healthful food at this point. That is right. Yeah. That yeah. Lives in some amount of

Speaker 0 (00:16:35) - Curious synergy. I was just, I was just curious about it a little bit from the perspective that you mentioned that it sounded like hardcore carnivores we're enjoying your plant-based meals. Totally. And I feel like that's often a challenge. Um, one of my daughters actually runs a vegan gluten-free restaurant, and there's always this sort of idea for people who are outside of that community that it's gonna be like, you know, bird food or you're picking at seeds or something. And a lot of the menu items are really hardy filling. She cooks a lot with Tempe as well, and I just always find it super interesting to hear from other people who are, you know, plant-based or that was your background, so.

Speaker 2 (00:17:11) - Totally.

Speaker 0 (00:17:12) - Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:17:13) - Yeah. Um, yeah. And still, uh, I eat mostly plant-based. Um, the ideas just to, uh, have balance over the course of my life. Certainly it's something that does take a lot of specificity and, uh, works with particular lifestyles better than it works with others. Uh Right. I've certainly had a better time with it in a more sedentary lifestyle than living up on a mountain. Right.

Speaker 0 (00:17:39) - . Um,

Speaker 2 (00:17:40) - There's,

Speaker 0 (00:17:41) - Yeah. Yeah. Lifestyle does make a big difference. I mean, if you're out there working a job that has you out of the house for 10 hours a day, it can be a lot more difficult sometimes to prepare food or Totally. Or different things like that. But it can all be done if you with a little bit of planning. Absolutely. Now, what I am curious about is if you have a particular way going back to cannabis for a minute, if you have a particular way that you like to infuse when you're working with cannabis as far as culinary cannabis goes.

Speaker 2 (00:18:08) - Yeah, so I've been working with cannabis ly. That was sort of the, the first thing I started doing, uh, like a lot with cannabis other than smoking it and mm-hmm. , um, that kind of thing. Uh, it was sort of the first processing that I learned how to do. I, the reason that's a difficult question for me is because I kind of look at the cannabis that's in front of me and try to figure out what, how it wants to be processed, I guess is the, is the way to put it. Um, though I was trying to avoid saying something that, um, heady ,

Speaker 2 (00:18:53) - Yeah. Uh, different cannabis lends itself to different things, right? Mm-hmm. . So if I'm just doing a potency extract, I'll do a very standard decarboxylation. Um, personally I prefer, uh, terpene retention decarboxylation. So taking the logic of jar tech or jam tech from rosin making and doing the same kind of thing. So in a sealed environment, the terpenes aren't gonna go anywhere. They're gonna rise, fill the space, and then if you cool the temperature, they're gonna crash back down into solution. As long as you don't have a lot of airspace in that container and there's not excess co2, um, you'll be able to find a balance of retaining your terpenes throughout decarboxylation as well as not wind up with too much expansion of whatever container you're working in.

Speaker 0 (00:19:44) - Okay. So just just to back up a little bit, because you're talking about returning retaining terpenes during decarb, and my understanding for the most part is you lose a lot of terpenes when you're doing a traditional decarb in your oven or whatever the case might be. But you're saying there's, you use a technique to retain the terpenes via decarboxylation. Yeah. Can you just sort of go into that a little bit more? Cuz I'm sure if the listeners are like me, they're like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up , because that's pretty interesting . Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:20:13) - Totally. Um, so in a sealed container, there can be no escape. So terpenes are volatile hydrocarbon compounds. They're evaporating at a temperature lower than you are decarboxylated or boiling water at, right? Mm-hmm. . So if you are decarboning in an open space, so you just put some cannabis on a pan, or you put it in an open jar or in a bowl, um, or even a crock pot with like a lid that like doesn't completely seal, you're gonna have some off-gassing of terpenes and most mm-hmm. , most the traditional tech to kind of avoid that is to just do everything in oil. So you're just doing like a slow cook and butter and oil, and then the oil itself will kind of catch and retain some of the terpenes throughout time. Um, you, you wind up with li limited control in that. Um, however, that, that totally works and that's another way that I will infuse and do like phases of decarboxylation where you're adding in cannabis throughout the process to pull out certain constituents. Um, personally I do like blends of cannabinoids, so I want T H C A in there as well as T H c, um, to create a nice balanced effect.

Speaker 2 (00:21:33) - When you have a sealed jar, um, you are looking at, and this, this comes right from the world of rosin where if you've made rosin before and you've made jam or diamonds with rosin, you're basically doing the same thing, um, where you're doing like kind of a partial decarboxylation mm-hmm. to like liquefy some of the constituents in there, but not fully decarboxylate the T H C A A. Um, so it still crystallizes cuz t H C A will crystallize t HC won't. So you're kind of like, you're getting a temperature that reifies and stabilizes the terpenes and waxes and then the t you're giving it, uh, a viscous enough environment for the th h c a to crash out. If you were to do this process and you heated it to get that viscosity and then you cracked the jar, right, then you would lose all that offgassing.

Speaker 2 (00:22:33) - Okay. So what you do generally is you, you let it sit at room temperature or in the fridge or in the freezer to crash that back down. Um, and so you're just, it's, it's, it ends up being basic chemistry. So it's the same thing with decarboxylation where that's gonna retain the flavor a little bit better is if you are in a sealed environment. The issue with that is you can also, because of the reduced oxygen environment, you can also not get a full decarboxylation, right? So that's where you just need to get to know your extract a little bit, start to learn what the bubbling actually means, whether or not if the bubbling stops without stirring, you're actually de carbed. There's just a little bit of, um, tech in there that's, that just takes understanding the specific extract that's in front of you, um, and the specific environment that's in front of you. Um,

Speaker 0 (00:23:32) - So basically, would somebody be able to put their cannabis in a jar, seal it up, and then still de carbo in the oven, and then just when they take it out of the oven, let it sit in out until it gets to room temperature. So you don't let those volatile terpenes and off-gassing like escape as soon as you open it, like you said, if you open it too soon. Is that sort of how it, can it be done that way? Like can somebody do it at a home if they wanted to Yes. And help preserve some of those terpenes. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:23:58) - Yeah, totally.

Speaker 0 (00:23:59) - So everything being the same, you're just making sure it's in a sealed jar of some kind, right. Where the, where it can escape. Now, you did mention earlier as well that you may not use this technique if you're wanting the full potency, which you kind of alluded to when you said you're not gonna necessarily, uh, decarb it fully, I guess using this technique. Um,

Speaker 2 (00:24:21) - No, you can, you can use this to get the full potency. Um, you, it just takes, uh, with flour, it's not really a problem. You just need to make sure you're not getting hotspots in your jar, right? Mm-hmm. , so like anything else where like if you just like fill a jar with cannabis and put it in the oven, some of it's gonna be heated at a different rate than other bits of it. So there's just like a relationship to that in the retention of it all. And then with cannabis, you run into a moisture issue in a sealed jar, right? And then with an extract, um, that's where it, it just starts to get a little funny because in an oxygen, like you're releasing something into a space, right? And then that space is sealed, so then where's it gonna go? And then how much CO2 is in that extract and how much residual space did you leave in that jar? Right? And so like anyone can do it, um, and it will work when you get into the fine points of the science about it, there's, there are efficiency differences that you can achieve.

Speaker 0 (00:25:29) - Right. Which kind of makes sense too because an oven itself is not necessarily Yeah, totally. Particularly efficient when it comes to temperature. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:25:37) - And that's true about like any at-home decarboxylation process is you're kinda like throwing, throwing something at a board and you don't know exactly where the points on that board where you get points on that board, but like, you know that you're somewhere in the range of I got some points. Right,

Speaker 0 (00:25:52) - Right. Yeah. So you can use this sealed jar, uh, technique for preserving terpenes with concentrates as well as flour, you're saying?

Speaker 2 (00:26:02) - Uh, yeah. I mean it's, you're just containing the volatiles at a certain point mm-hmm. , so like, and then you're, yeah, you're changing the volatiles at a certain point.

Speaker 0 (00:26:13) - Right. So, okay. And then how would you use that, the flour or the concentrates afterwards, if you've been able to preserve some of these terpenes? How do you, you like to use these afterwards?

Speaker 2 (00:26:25) - So for me personally, I like to flavor balance it with the meal. So the answer for what I would do myself is maybe a little different than, um, what I would do for an event or for a group. Mm-hmm. . So, and it, it depends on the situation. So I'll, I, I will go through basically any infusion, um, that I feel that flower can do. So, uh, for the last event we did, I did everything from flavor extracts to nutrient extracts, to potency extracts, to cannabinoid extracts, terpene extracts, and then recombine with a bunch of different foods, sugars, different things to kinda like show off the flavor. Um, that was because that Cultivar was able to handle that. It was complex enough and interesting enough that going through the many, many phases of it continued to be interesting throughout the experience. It, um, the way that I will choose to infuse for people's individual titration is generally something like a sauce or an additive to the actual thing. Um, I like to have the cannabis flavor be paired on some level with the food. Um, and that's easiest with extracts because it just shows a pure, basically because there isn't chlorophyl present, chlorophyll tastes has a specific taste that people attribute to not a clean food product in the sense of like experiential, uh, uh, satisfaction that, that like green

Speaker 0 (00:28:12) - Well, has that real Yeah, yeah. Has that real green taste, right. That people are pretty familiar with or when they're like, I made weed cookies and they just tasted like weed. Right. Well that's probably a lot of the chlorophyll. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:28:22) - Totally. Yeah. So

Speaker 0 (00:28:23) - How would you, so can you walk us through a little bit, like if you're using, um, some of these extracts, like you were speaking about, like how would you have someone enjoy the extract paired with the food?

Speaker 2 (00:28:37) - Um, so the, the way that we did it last time is we had the food running, um, and then we had a dab bar running the whole time. Um, gotcha. The nice thing about dabs is you can kind of have a mutual exp experience if you want to. So like, you can very easily intake some amount of vapor, and this depends on you, your tolerance and how you're taking the dab. In a perfect world, you can titrate, um, rosin hash much easier than flour and you can have, uh, more mild experience on your lungs and throat. I understand this is not every experience with a dab. There are ways to exemplify the flavor rather than the potency. Um, one of these ways is heating it from cold to hot rather than hot to cold. So that's a l how a lot of electronic devices will heat it. It's also how you can do it with like an email. Um, this allows you to see the many phases of the flavor, um, depending on the type of thing you're eating and what your comfortability is. With a dab you can either intake the dab, exhale and eat, or you can eat while it's in your lungs and kind of create a mutual experience with that. Um,

Speaker 2 (00:29:57) - Uh, yeah. Rosn can also be infused directly into the food in a way that shows off the flavor of it. There are benefits to just having the oil, um, as like a drizzling oil. And that is something that I'll do fairly often is rather than even like put it in a sauce or anything, just have the oil shown off with the flavor of the cannabis really specifically shown so you get the flavor that you would get when you're taking a dab or smoking it. Um, so you're not, you're, you're really getting to see that flavor and then doing it just like a bread bar style, um, with a vinegar that compliments it or something like that. But that there really are some amazing flavors in cannabis. Something I was trying to show with the last dinner, um, which again was, uh, with flower from Huckleberry Hill for the white thorn rose, and we had, um, rosin from Heritage Mendocino that was being launched by a brand in Los Angeles, I Poppy. Uh, and really very quickly I was like, oh, okay, what I need to show is how well this can be used as a flavor extract. So like one of the things in food products that we really don't understand the health effects of are natural flavors. We really don't know what they're doing to our brains. They have some amount of interaction with your neurochemistry and we know that they have some amount of interaction with your, um,

Speaker 3 (00:31:23) - With

Speaker 2 (00:31:25) - Your, um, blood sugar response. They, um, but we don't really have a full understanding of what they do long term in terms of health effects. Um,

Speaker 0 (00:31:36) - And natural extracts too. That's a pretty broad umbrella term to encapsulate like a whole bunch of different ingredients.

Speaker 2 (00:31:43) - A whole bunch of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That can range from like absolute po poison to something super normal. Right. Um, which is difficult. Um, the nice, the cool thing about cannabis is the colier itself can show off so many different profiles depending on the co cultivar you're running. We talk about this a lot in cannabis. This one tastes like blueberry. Mm-hmm. , this one tastes like cherries. This one tastes just like, like Jolly Ranchers or something like that. We've got in profiles that taste so specific to some sort of candy or Esther or something that we know in our world. Um, and in some cases flavors that we've never got into experience and are so unique to the cannabis plan and are delicious and fruity or floral or, um, whatever they might be that we would love to see candy in. Um, and the whitehorn rose was a really good example of something that you could just take the flavor right out of it and put it right into sugar or honey or something sweet and you wind up with a candy that anyone would want to eat.

Speaker 2 (00:32:42) - Mm-hmm. Right? And so as long as you hold it in the form where it's raw and it's not heated, so you don't start getting some of those flavors that come from the heating of cannabinoids and terpenes, um, cuz terpenes, whether you lose them or not, they change. So, and especially when there's interference from other constituents from the plant, they, they will in, they will interact with those constituents and you'll start to create new flavors. So like the heating from the perspective of decarboxylation, which a lot of us get obsessed with when we're trying to make edibles because the important part is that everyone gets high. Um, and a long time ago I realized people get high off edibles, like they will get high off edibles. Like there's no there, there's no shortage of potency in edibles. Most people only need five or 10 milligrams, but you can put so much more of the plant in there without increasing the potency to really show off what that thing is. And I think that's really what is, uh, is being done a little, a little less often.

Speaker 0 (00:33:47) - Okay. So just to recap, cause I feel like you said so many interesting things there. Um, when it, so it comes to like your last event that you did or what you do at dinners is that you have like a dab bar where people can sort of experience the flavor of a canvas with something that they're eating, but to keep people from getting too high. Cuz I'm pretty sure most dabs would knock me off my ass . I wouldn't make it past the first course, but if you heat from cold to hot when heating your dab, then that focuses more primarily on the flavor versus the potency of that dab.

Speaker 2 (00:34:21) - It also slows down the titration. Right? Right. So it's when you take a dab from hot to cold, everything you put on that dabber, depending on the efficiency of that dab is getting vaporized more or less in one or two hits. Right. So it's a very large amount. You're, you are now, um, your fate is in the hands of whoever made that dab and if they don't know how to tie trade it right? Then you might have one experience versus another experience. , when it's heated from cold to hot, slowly your lungs are the boss. So you inhale a little bit, you take as much as you feel comfortable with and then you're able to exhale. You're able to take a beat and then go back to that same bowl and it's just a little bit more like smoking a bowl of cannabis in a traditional sense.

Speaker 2 (00:35:10) - Right. Um, dabs also do vary. Um, and they vary. So like the white thorn rose for example, is, um, it's a pretty divable cultivar. Even people with a relatively low dab tolerance seem to be able to transition into it pretty well cuz it is more on that fruity, uplifting, um, kinda like not knock you on your ass side of things. Um, it is much, it is fairly sociable and it seems to be one that non dabbers have a pretty comfortable time, uh, getting into. So that is part of it. Um, you also, if you're heating from cold to hot rather than hot to cold, there's a relationship between temperature and time. So the first part of that dab is gonna be primarily the terpene expression, and then you're going to start to get deeper into the potency. So if you stick with the first half of that dab, you are not gonna get as high.

Speaker 2 (00:36:04) - Then if you keep forcing that heat through it, as it changes, as it turns into thc, as it turns into cbn. And as it kind of increases in that like downward trajectory of potency, um, not in like upward trajectory in terms of intensity mm-hmm. , but downward in terms of like the effect, the type of effect that you're getting, you'll start to get those, those stonier effects later on in the dab. Mm-hmm. . Um, similar to like, if you're smoking a bowl of hash like four hits in, it's getting much more robust and must much more, uh, much more intense.

Speaker 0 (00:36:38) - Now the other thing that you mentioned as well was having like the drizzling oil and using like ROS and infused drizzling oil mm-hmm. , is that something that's been created more for flavor versus potency in that particular case as well?

Speaker 2 (00:36:50) - Uh, both cases. Right. Um, so, uh, using the last dinner as an example, again, we had a T H C A oil and then we had a, uh, had a decarboxylated T HC oil. Um, and the idea was to show the difference between those things.

Speaker 0 (00:37:04) - Oh, that's very cool. So you had both on ham, same cultivar, just one same cultivar

Speaker 2 (00:37:08) - Car one wasn't. Exactly, yep.

Speaker 0 (00:37:10) - Oh, how interesting. So you're working with, and you just alluded to this a second ago, you're working with raw flour a lot of the time when you're making extracts. Does that sound, is

Speaker 2 (00:37:18) - It from my right for flavor extracts? Yeah. Right. Um, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, a quick breakdown, if I'm doing just a flavor extract, I wanna work with the raw flour. Um, if I am, uh, because I want to be in charge of that extract mm-hmm. from the start, um, if I am going for flavor and potency, I generally want rosin. Um, if I'm going for full medicinal effect, I tend to lean towards ish and if, um, or full flour. And then if I'm just going for, I have weed and I'm trying to make it into an edible, I, you know, do the standard decarboxylation or will do some kind of blend of decarb and not de carbed. Um, I personally really like eating T H C A, um, and I'll, I'll eat it for its new tropic benefits, um, aside from its uh, like right. Intoxicating

Speaker 0 (00:38:14) - Properties. So that would just be, are you using that then just like raw flour in edible then if you're just eating th h c a

Speaker 2 (00:38:22) - When I personally do it, I'll just eat raw hash or raw hash oil. Okay. Straight up. Um, but

Speaker 0 (00:38:27) - Straight up just like take a bite .

Speaker 2 (00:38:29) - Yep. Yeah, totally. Okay. Yeah. Take a little scoop and eat it. Um, if, but yeah. Uh, t H c A oil works just as well, that

Speaker 0 (00:38:36) - Kind of thing. Would you and

Speaker 2 (00:38:37) - How would, that's how you prefer to consume

Speaker 0 (00:38:39) - It, right? Yeah. Well I just find oil is very versatile for one, for a lot of people. A lot of people don't wanna just like bite a piece of hash or whatever, but

Speaker 2 (00:38:46) - Right. I'm not normal in that ,

Speaker 0 (00:38:48) - That's . Right. Well that's, that's what makes us an interesting conversation to learn what other people are doing. But if you're working with like an in a raw flour infusion mm-hmm. , how do you usually, do you just do it the same way you would infuse like an olive oil? You're just not skipping the decarb?

Speaker 2 (00:39:05) - Yeah, yeah. Basically. So you would just infuse it at a lower temperature. Um, again, I would do it in a sealed container mm-hmm. , um, uh, with a sealed container. Again, the things you're gonna have to look at are moisture and CO2 and just, you know, be careful with those things, um, for the thing you're making. Uh, but yeah, that is basically it is, you can just infuse it right in. You're just not worrying about the decarb. It is, it's, you know, it's, if you look up how to make edibles, it's gonna teach you one specific thing, but that is a different question than how, what are all the ways you can use cannabis colon.

Speaker 0 (00:39:44) - Right, right. You know, that's so interesting because I've also done it and I'm, as I'm assuming you can do it this way as well, I've infused, um, olive oils with garden herbs like basil time Yeah. That kind of thing. Totally. With an olive oil that I can use in the wintertime that's been infused with fresh basil. Exactly. Now can you do it the same way? Like, I just usually would put the herbs in the oil and then just let it sit and give it a shake every day for six weeks and then that was it Like, or did you get too much chlorophyl and that kind of thing from doing it with cannabis?

Speaker 2 (00:40:14) - Um, I don't think you're gonna get chlorophyl. Um, the heat allows the T H C A to st sort of start moving towards a viscosity where it'll start like equalizing and combining with the oil. Okay. Um, and so if you're trying to extract the T H C A out, there's just like this really fine line with it where, okay, so the first answer is I don't 100% no. Mm-hmm. , um, you will get some amount of flavor with cannabis. You're working with this like semi-permeable membrane that is the trichome head and then inside the trichome head there are cannabinoids and terpenes and other waxes. And depending on what exact you want suspended in that oil, heat may or may not add efficiency. Right. Is the answer to it. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (00:41:07) - Okay. I should try some experiments so then Yeah, just to see what happens. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:41:12) - Um, and I think that is, there's not a wrong answer to these things. It is like you will get different things out of each technique, right? Mm-hmm. . So depending on exactly what you're trying to achieve, if you're trying to just get like a flavor infused oil, but you're not trying to get the T H C A mm-hmm. , I would say cold, uh, fully cold infusion is probably the way to do that. Um, if you want T H C A and not t de carbed T hc, then you'll probably want it to be a little warm mm-hmm. , it'll allow you to do it in a couple days rather than months, you know? Right. That kind of thing. Um, yeah. And then obviously Decarboning is decarboning. Right.

Speaker 0 (00:41:50) - No, I was just curious about the raw flour cuz it's not really something I've worked with a whole lot myself, but it sounds interesting and I'm assuming even though if you're not necessarily getting the same potency effects that you would if you de carbed that there's still some, you know, medicinal benefits to enjoying cannabis. Yeah. You know, and olive oil that you can sprinkle on your whatever it is that you're reading. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:42:11) - Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, and anything you put cannabis in is a solvent in some form. You're just like a hash making teaches you that really quick. Right. Because water is not the solvent that's being used for the extraction, it's actually being used for a separation because what you're trying to, uh, get off of the flour does not combine into water. Mm-hmm. . However, when you actually look at that water, you are extracting things. You're basically making a cold brew tea and then separating out the sediment. So when you start looking at that process, ly how we look at it for all other foods is that water, we are looking at that water as a solvent. And what you wind up with when you do a wash like that is basically a nutritive tea that's high in antioxidants and high in, um, a lot of the constituents you would pull out of a flower in tea making mm-hmm. . Um, and so people use it to feed back to their plants. Um, I've made teas out of it. I've made like, um, different elixirs and things out of it. Um, as long as you know that that flower is healthy, you've wound up with essentially a cold brew tea at some level. Um, and if you taste that water at different phases throughout the hash making, you can very clearly taste where you start to pull out excess chlorophyll into the water and where you go from like a terpene infused drink to a chlorophyll infused drink.

Speaker 0 (00:43:36) - Right. That's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Science is pretty wild . Yeah. You know, when you're doing some of your, your hosted dinners, do you typically do like the courses themselves are infused? Or do you use a method where you're having like butters and sauces and stuff that people would self-administer? I've kind of been to dinners that do one or the other. So far I've been to too many dinners, but,

Speaker 2 (00:44:00) - Um, I tend to be, uh, fairly modular in the way that I think mm-hmm. . Um, and I prefer partnering with people and kind of trying to see their vision because I, I'm like, well, I can, I can arrange a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and I want it to make sense for the thing. So in this last one, there was not directly infused food. Um, there were, so literally there was just a THC oil was the only like actual cannabis infusion. Um Okay. Or like potency infusion that was Right.

Speaker 0 (00:44:36) - And that would, people would add that onto their own food Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:44:39) - Kind of thing. Um, what was interesting was almost no one did. Oh really? Um, I made 10 to 12 different extracts of cannabis. The one that was made for potency was used the least Hmm. At that dinner. Um, dabs were taken, people enjoyed the consumption in that way, but very few people ate the oil directly. Um, or were looking for that kind of experience. And that largely comes from feedback, um, that was, it was requested to not really have it be infused at that level. Um, we're, you know, we're in a place where unless you're staying here, you might not be comfortable doing that. Um, so it allows people to self titrate in a, in a comfortable way. Um, if that's, if what's requested is for the meal to be infused, that's certainly what I know how to do. And I did that for a long time and really what I learned was people don't need that much, it doesn't make a lot of sense to do it that way for like the majority of people.

Speaker 2 (00:45:42) - Mm-hmm. . Um, so for folks that are like, I love edibles, let's get into this. Absolutely. Um, and I love really infusing cannabis directly in and making it make sense with the whole thing. Um, it does not seem to be what most people enjoy. It doesn't seem to be the way that most people want to consume past like a couple milligrams at a time. Uh, it is something that I've had to learn cuz I'm a human that will eat 500 milligrams and like go out and hang out with my friends and, and be fine. Um, that's not everyone. And so I, no,

Speaker 0 (00:46:17) - Definitely not . Yeah. .

Speaker 2 (00:46:19) - Yeah. So, so far no, we have not. Um, the last one was a dab bar because it was a rosin company that was launching a rosn skew in LA mm-hmm. , so they wanted to show off the rosin. Um, we also had a couple hash holes, so it was flower infused with Rosin and, uh, huckleberry Hill had some flour as well, but it was really, uh, about the smoking of it, uh, and about showing off the flavor in the different infusions rather than showing off the potency.

Speaker 0 (00:46:48) - Well, I guess when you, when it comes to dinners too, I mean, like I said, I've been to a couple, but depending on the time of day and how far you had to travel to get there, I mean, everybody has to get home and if you're getting blasted on edibles, Totally. It might not be an option unless you have a DV or something. Absolutely. Yeah. And then sometimes I find as well, like the dose that I want when I'm at home, you know, on the couch watching a comedy show is different than the dose that I want when I'm in a social setting. Totally. So there could also be that too, but it's just, it's interesting to hear your, your experience because you have hosted how many dinners at this point or how many meals?

Speaker 2 (00:47:24) - Um, officially in California the answer is, uh, two. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're on our third. Right. Um, since, uh Yeah. Came out here in June or something like that. Right. And it's been a transition. Yeah. Uh, we're, we're doing all the cooking for the GGI program as well mm-hmm. , so in certainly more in terms of not specifically those dinners, uh, but it's, it's been, the first one was a lot to get together. We were, we were really lucky enough to get the brand that was launching to run the dab bar as well as the processor to come and show off some of what they do. We also had the farmer on site, so it really was a, uh, a kind of beautiful marrying of everyone being there. Uh, out of it has spawned a couple of things. The next one will be completely different. Um, it'll be entirely traditional huish and we'll be consuming it more as a group through a hookah. The meal will be more of the tasting bar style, though. There will be five courses each that resemble kind of the five flavors of cannabis. And so we'll go through Fruity Floral Fuel, earth and Sweet. Um, yeah, that's for the Frenchy Dreams of Hashish viewing on April 29th.

Speaker 0 (00:48:46) - Right. And can you talk a bit more about that? I know that the, uh, worldwide streaming premiere for anybody listening is going to be on April 29th.

Speaker 2 (00:48:54) - Uh, yeah. We were, we were, uh, really fortunate that, uh, Lena, one of Frenchie's apprentices as well as Bell, uh, came to the last dinner. So we got to be a bit more acquainted with them and out of it kind of. Um, and we were going to have Kimberly there as well, uh, but she wasn't able to make it out of it kind of, uh, spawned an idea for, uh, Frenchie dreams of ish viewing party. Uh, that was something Kimberly was already doing and hosting, uh, in San Francisco and was having other people do it all around the country and world. So we, um, since Frenchie had such a connection to the GGI ethos and what was happening and, and believed in it, it was something, um, Derek Gilman, who is the property owner here, felt very passionate about. So it was, it was, it was a good thing and we had Lena that wanted to do it as well and I kind of reached out to her with the idea.

Speaker 2 (00:49:58) - Um, and she, she really liked it. Um, and I, it was, it's a way to kind of show off what the Gga program does in a different way cuz we are kind of taking that same same mentality of the systematic assessment pro protocol and applying it to a culinary event. And I kind of just started doing that, um, with it. And it's, it's sort of just been folding out in that direction. So we'll have sort of the appearance section where Lena will be showing off her ha her hash. We'll have, um, a ta uh, uh, aroma comparison through an experiential tea bar that my partner will be running. So each course will also be paired with tea, uh, that's sourced from all over the world. Um, and tea is similar to cannabis and its con in its consumption as the flavor develops, as you apply heat more and more so in successive infusions in the deepening of the experience, you pull out different, uh, flavors.

Speaker 2 (00:51:02) - It's also a wonderful expression of terroir all being the same variety of plant just grown all over the world and processed differently. So much like cannabis. It, it, it's a cool reflection. Um, and it has a, an interesting aroma profile that will allow for that kind of experiential relationship to it. Uh, will be doing two hookahs each with a flavor of hashish for an hour, and that'll be paired with the tasting bar for that hour. So they'll be, they'll rotational move in and out. Um, and we'll be doing, uh, five courses through that as well. Yeah,

Speaker 0 (00:51:39) - That sounds like a really fun event. And I know at the time of this recording, you probably have just under a month to go, so there must be a lot of work going into making sure this, you know, goes off smoothly. But I like the sounds of how you're introducing those, like those dominant, uh, flavor profiles and using that to pair it with the tea and the, the hash I'm guessing and the food.

Speaker 2 (00:52:00) - Yeah. Yeah. It should be, uh, it should be really, really cool. We've been so fort fortunate to get to work with Lena, who is just amazing at what she does and has provided some options of some really unique cool profiles that hopefully, uh, yeah. We, I've gotten the opportunity to r and d them with some groups here as we've had some students up at the GCI campus working and, uh, the feedback has been really awesome and we've gotten to do a couple mock pairings while folks have been here, so. Right. It's, uh, the, the community support has really been, uh, unbelievable and invaluable.

Speaker 0 (00:52:36) - Right. Well that's, that's pretty amazing. I did actually see a post just today go through my Instagram that, uh, and I'll be sure to, to uh, link your Instagram to the show notes for this episode Please. But it was just showing all of you guys doing this r and d thing. I was like, what a, yeah, that would be amazing. love be so much fun to do. But, um, do you have anything, I mean, obviously this event is just on the horizon. It's gonna be keeping you really busy, but do you have any other goals for the future that you're working towards that you're excited about?

Speaker 2 (00:53:06) - Um, yes, certainly. Um, this, uh, yeah, this event is definitely the, the one that is coming up the soonest. Uh, and just after GGI will be starting up as well, uh, we will be doing events here on the property. Um, the, uh, sort of the concept name is Ho KPOs, H o k E p o S. Um, and so if you go on ho kpos.com, you can kind of see some of what we're doing and, um, some of the other ancillary things that are happening on, on the property. Uh, we, uh, there are a couple other events coming up that are sort of in the process of being conceptualized. Hopefully if this one, uh, when this go one goes well, we will be looking at for June a, uh, orange Turbo event. Um, orange Turbo is an incredibly interesting cultivar that seems to have, uh, uh, interesting range of phenotypical expression, but the one that really seems to perform for Hash that I, um, that, and it was a cultivar that Frenchie really was in love with, um, and really talked highly of. It was the one that was centered around the grow off this year. Uh, and a I think a lot of folks are making hash with it from all over. So if, uh, um, as that moves forward, the goal is to kind of get orange turbo from a couple different terroirs and be able to show it off. It has this really awesome lean, nostalgic, cheesy, fruity, funky kind of, um, richness to it that, uh, that would be be pretty fun to play with.

Speaker 0 (00:54:51) - Right. That sounds pretty awesome. So you're planning a whole event around one cultivar?

Speaker 2 (00:54:56) - Yes. Yeah. Coming

Speaker 0 (00:54:57) - From all over the place?

Speaker 2 (00:54:59) - Uh, yeah, we did it with the white thorn rose and, and hopefully if things keep moving forward, we'll get to do it with the orange turbo. It's really incredible to get to do it with something that has so much of a story. The White Thorn Rose was a cultivar that just has so much, and if, if you're not familiar with Huckleberry Hill Farms, please check them out. They're incredible people. Um, but it has just such a emotional richness behind it. Um, and there's, there's just a lot of love that went into it, and that's certainly the place that I try to cook from and create from. And so when there's that much depth to a thing, there are so many more emotional threads that I can pull to like, do the pairings off of. Um, and like the, with that one, the actual three-course dinner, the pairings were like less flavor based and more like from a particular energy of the cultivar because there was just so much there to get to work with beyond even the profile of it itself.

Speaker 2 (00:56:01) - Hmm. Um, and, and the orange Turbo is, is quite, uh, is the same way certainly and has a, has a lot of history behind it, so, right. Um, if, uh, in, in general here on the property, we're doing curated events, so it's mostly based on who reaches out and who is interested. We, we have one, we'll have one, um, next fall that will be a completely private event, but it will ba basically folks reached out to us and wanted a three day all-inclusive curated event, educational event. Um, so it really is about trying to enrich people for what they need and create a, um, an experiential, um, world around it. Uh, that allows for some amount of it simulation of this information that you can't really put into numbers and you can't really put into a, like a, a very contained package, but we can, we can show it in a contained package and we can allow you to experience it in a contained package. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 0 (00:57:06) - . Well that just goes to show the nuance of the cannabis plant too, right? Totally. Like you said, some things just don't lend itself to the page. You have to, you have to try it out to figure it out, so. Totally. Yeah. Um, I just wanna say thank you for your time today, Alex. This has been really informative and I'm definitely gonna be probably playing around with some of those raw flower infusions myself, my own home kitchen. Very cool. Is there anything else, any, where people can find you or anything you wanna leave for the listeners of Bite Me before we part ways?

Speaker 2 (00:57:34) - Um, yeah, totally. Uh, you can find me. Uh, the easiest way to, to get in touch with me is on Instagram. Uh, it's what Theam Health. W h a t t h e d a m n h e a l t h. Totally

Speaker 0 (00:57:50) - , I think. Totally. I'll, I'll spell it. I'll have it in the show notes, so don't worry.

Speaker 2 (00:57:54) - , that's great. It'll be in the show notes. Yes. Spelled correctly. Properly

Speaker 0 (00:57:59) - , um,

Speaker 2 (00:57:59) - Pro properly and seamlessly, um, , the, uh, um, there's a website linked on there. Uh, if you are looking for the events, um, we have an event Bright Page with, for the Frenchie Dreams of Hashish Dinner. You can, um, you can find a link to it on hokes.com. Uh, other than that, um, no, thank you so much for having me. Uh, it was really great. I, uh, I appreciate your time and,

Speaker 0 (00:58:28) - Uh, yeah, this has been wonderful. I really appreciate it and best of luck for the event coming up and for Yeah, totally the rest of the rest of the year. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:58:35) - Thanks. Hopefully you get to make it down for one, one of these days.

Speaker 0 (00:58:37) - Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. cool. Yeah. If after this conversation you don't wanna start some new kitchen experiments, I don't know what will, I know I'm going to be trying to infuse some of my raw flour in olive oil just to see how that turns out. And I just wanna say thank you to Alex for the inspiration and for his time. Be sure to check out his work online and on the socials all what you'll find in the show notes, and please share this conversation, this episode with someone that you think would enjoy it. And until next week, my friends, stay. Hi, welcome back friends. It is April and time for another Edibles Enthusiasts email newsletter giveaway. Whew, that was a mouthful, but your inbox won't be, I only sent out one, maybe two email newsletters a month, just enough to keep you informed about what's going on with Bite Me, the show about edibles and the wider world of edibles in cannabis.

Speaker 0 (00:59:30) - If you're already subscribed, you're automatically entered to win, and if not, you just have to tap or click the link in the show notes wherever you're listening to this, and you'll be taken to the place where you can enter or head on over to Bite me podcast.com. The winner will be chosen April 30th, 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. But Marge, what will I win? Well, I'm excited to let you know that up for grabs this month is a bite me edibles journal, so you can log your experience with all the wonderful edibles that you are making and buying. Don't delay. Enter now and good luck friends.