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Do Terpenes Survive Your Edibles? · Bite Me The Show About Edibles

• 1:17
  Margaret: Welcome friends to episode 368.
• 1:20
  Margaret: And today we're talking about terpenes and do they actually survive your edibles?
• 1:26
  Margaret: This has been something that's been talked about many times over the years, and I thought it would be great to do a reality check today.
• 1:34
  Margaret: I'm your host, Margaret, a certified Gangier and TCI certified cannabis educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have.
• 1:42
  Margaret: Welcome to Bite Me The Show About Edibles, grab a snack, and let's dive in.
• 1:47
  Margaret: Friends, thank you for being here.
• 1:49
  Margaret: I'm so glad you decided to join me on this episode.
• 1:52
  Margaret: And if this is the first time you've listened in, thank you for being here.
• 1:56
  Margaret: I really do think that this is a topic I'm surprised I haven't covered before.
• 2:00
  Margaret: I mean, we've talked about it probably loosely in many episodes, but I'm doing a full episode on how many terpenes actually survive the whole process of making your edibles, because that's something that comes up all the time when people are talking about edibles.
• 2:14
  Margaret: And we're gonna cover that today.
• 2:15
  Margaret: So if this is your first time, fantastic.
• 2:18
  Margaret: I hope you get something out of it.
• 2:19
  Margaret: If you've been a longtime listener, there may be some things that you'll pull from this as well.
• 2:24
  Margaret: And if you know someone who might enjoy this episode, please share it with them right now.
• 2:30
  Margaret: Pull it your phone, hit share to somebody that you care about that's also making edibles.
• 2:36
  Margaret: Just know that word of mouth is one of the best ways to spread the word about this show.
• 2:41
  Margaret: Today we're gonna start with a confession.
• 2:47
  Margaret: I've probably uttered the words full spectrum on this show.
• 2:51
  Margaret: Well, I don't know if I can actually say more times than I can count, but a number of times over the 300 and odd episodes that I've recorded.
• 3:00
  Margaret: And today I'm putting the claim on trial, my own claim included.
• 3:04
  Margaret: And here's the question I want to sit with for the next 20 minutes or so.
• 3:08
  Margaret: And that's when a lab or a brand, or yes, a podcast host like moi tells you that their product is full spectrum, terping rich, entourage, effect ready, is that true?
• 3:19
  Margaret: Or is it a story we tell ourselves because it sounds better than the alternative?
• 3:22
  Margaret: I read through some of the research, so you don't have to, and some of it's going to sting a little, but stick with me because the point isn't to make you give up on flavor, it's to make you stop chasing a version of preserved that might not exist.
• 3:34
  Margaret: So you can start chasing the version that does.
• 3:37
  Margaret: And if that sounds good to you, then keep on listening.
• 3:41
  Margaret: We're gonna get into it.
• 3:46
  Speaker: So here's a quick refresher for anyone who's joining fresh, or for people who have just put this stuff out of their mind, because we have lots of things to think about in this day and age.
• 3:57
  Speaker: Terpenes are the aromatic compounds that give cannabis its smell and flavor.
• 4:02
  Speaker: Myrcine, lemonine, pinene, lil, linolule, karyophylline, the whole crew.
• 4:10
  Speaker: Well, that's just a handful of the identified compounds that you will find in a cannabis plant.
• 4:16
  Speaker: But they're volatile, meaning heat pushes them out of your material and into the air, which is exactly why your kitchen smells amazing and your final batch tastes like less than you had hoped.
• 4:27
  Speaker: And here's the distinction that actually matters for today's episode because it explains why some of your batches lose more flavor than others, even when you swear you did the same thing twice.
• 4:37
  Speaker: Terpenes come in two sizes.
• 4:39
  Speaker: Monoterpenes are the smaller molecule, things like pinene, myrrsine, and lemonine, and they have a lower boiling point, most of them between 155 and 200 degrees Celsius.
• 4:53
  Speaker: They're the bright top notes, the citrus, the pine, the stuff that hits the second you open the jar.
• 4:59
  Speaker: Sescaterpenes are bigger molecules.
• 5:02
  Speaker: Caryophyllene and humolene are the big ones here, with boiling points running from the low 260s up to 314 degrees Celsius.
• 5:13
  Speaker: They're the deeper, earthier, more resinous notes underneath.
• 5:17
  Speaker: And why does size matter?
• 5:20
  Speaker: Well, in this case, because it decides who survives your kitchen and who doesn't.
• 5:24
  Speaker: Monoterpenes start volatilizing at shockingly low temperatures, some of them as low as room temperature.
• 5:32
  Speaker: So they're already evaporating before you even before your oven even reaches your decarb range.
• 5:38
  Speaker: And this is further evidenced by the fact that many growers, especially on the commercial side who are growing outside, and I've known many a home grower to do the same, will often harvest their cannabis plants in the wee hours of the morning before the sun comes up, so they don't lose any of those terpenes from the sun hitting the plant and evaporating some of those terpenes, which is pretty wild.
• 6:02
  Speaker: Now, seskaterpenes hang on longer simply because they need more heat to boil off.
• 6:07
  Speaker: So when your edible tastes muted instead of gone entirely, that's not usually all the terpenes disappeared.
• 6:13
  Speaker: It's the bright top notes disappeared and the heavier base notes stuck around.
• 6:17
  Speaker: And that's actually useful information because it tells you exactly which part of the flavor profile your process is failing.
• 6:24
  Speaker: Now let's talk numbers because the numbers are worse and more specific than you lose some terpenes when you decarb.
• 6:30
  Speaker: Marcus Rogan, a cannabis chemist who publishes in Cannabis Science and Technology, puts terpene loss at up to 30% during the drying and decarboxylation stage of commercial processing alone.
• 6:44
  Speaker: That's the baseline.
• 6:46
  Speaker: That's before your oven, before your infusion, before anything you personally did wrong.
• 6:52
  Speaker: It gets more specific depending on method.
• 6:54
  Speaker: Researchers at the University of Turin in Italy ran cannabis through a microwave-assisted decarp process, gentle by industrial standards, and still only recovered about 58% of the starting terpene content after the decarp step.
• 7:08
  Speaker: And that 58% skewed heavily toward the seskaterpenes for exactly the reason I just gave you.
• 7:14
  Speaker: The lighter monoterpenes took the worst of the hit.
• 7:18
  Speaker: Now, here's the number that made me put my coffee down.
• 7:21
  Speaker: A 2022 study out of Israel published in the journal Molecules compared raw cannabis flour directly to commercially decarboxylated extracts and found something close to a 90% loss of monoterpenes specifically.
• 7:36
  Speaker: 90% cannabinoid content held up fine in that same comparison.
• 7:41
  Speaker: Terpenes did not.
• 7:43
  Speaker: And it was overwhelmingly the bright top note monoterpenes that vanished.
• 7:48
  Speaker: Just sit with that for a second because it matters for what's coming next.
• 7:53
  Speaker: And I need to correct something I've probably let slide on the show before because it's the kind of thing that actually matters if we're being honest with each other.
• 8:01
  Speaker: Full spectrum doesn't mean every terpene at full strength.
• 8:05
  Speaker: It means the product still contains the range of compound classes the plant naturally produces.
• 8:10
  Speaker: Your cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, together instead of being stripped down to a single isolated compound like THC or CBD isolate.
• 8:19
  Speaker: That's a category, not a percentage.
• 8:22
  Speaker: So a full spectrum oil that loses most of its monoterpenes and decarb is still technically a full spectrum oil.
• 8:28
  Speaker: It just isn't the same full spectrum profile the raw flower had.
• 8:32
  Speaker: This distinction matters because it's exactly where the marketing gets slippery.
• 8:36
  Speaker: That 2022 study I just told you about, the one from Israel, didn't argue that decarboxylated extract stopped being full spectrum.
• 8:44
  Speaker: What the researchers actually said is that terms like whole plant and full spectrum create a misleading impression about what's in the jar because most people hear those words and assume they're getting something close to the plant's original aromatic and pharmacological profile.
• 9:00
  Speaker: And they're just not.
• 9:01
  Speaker: The category survives.
• 9:03
  Speaker: The content inside that category has usually been gutted of its lighter terpenes before you ever see the label.
• 9:10
  Speaker: And I want to be honest with you about why that lands hard in this community specifically.
• 9:14
  Speaker: A lot of us, myself included, have built part of our identity around the entourage effect, the idea that cannabinoids and terpenes work better together than cannabinoids alone.
• 9:24
  Speaker: I've said that on this show before, I'll keep saying it, that the entourage is a promising hypothesis, not settled in clinical fact.
• 9:31
  Speaker: This research is a good example of why that caution matters.
• 9:34
  Speaker: Even if a product is honestly labeled full spectrum, that label alone doesn't tell you whether there's enough of the original terpene contents left for an entourage effect to have anything to work with.
• 9:46
  Speaker: That's also going to be why when you go to places like a legal dispensary and you see things like the vape pens, you will notice a lot of terpenes in them.
• 9:56
  Speaker: Some of those might be botanical terpenes that have been added in afterwards.
• 10:01
  Speaker: But here is the part that actually reframes this for me instead of just deflating it.
• 10:06
  Speaker: If commercial labs with lab-grade equipment, controlled temperatures, and instruments can measure parts per million, are still losing a majority of their monoterpenes, then the home cook standing over a mason jar in an oven is never going to hit some mythical perfect preservation number either.
• 10:23
  Speaker: And you're not failing at something achievable.
• 10:26
  Speaker: You are working with the same physics everyone else is fighting, just without the vacuum chamber.
• 10:32
  Speaker: Now that's not permission to stop caring about your process.
• 10:35
  Speaker: It's permission to stop measuring yourself against a standard that nobody's actually going to meet, and to stop assuming a full spectrum label is a promise about how much flavor made it into the jar.
• 10:45
  Speaker: So here's something I think that gets lost every time we talk about terpenes and decarb, and it's worth pulling apart on its own because I've actually seen people fix one problem and never notice that they've still got another one.
• 11:00
  Speaker: Decarbing your flour and baking your final edible are two completely different heat events, and terpenes get hit in both of them.
• 11:07
  Speaker: Decarb is step one, usually flour alone in an oven, somewhere in the 240 to 245 degree Fahrenheit range, converting THCA and T into THC.
• 11:17
  Speaker: That's where most of the numbers I gave you in segment one come from.
• 11:20
  Speaker: But then you infuse that decarb flour into a fat, and that's a second heat exposure.
• 11:26
  Speaker: And if your recipe is something like a cookie or a brownie, then you bake that infused fat into a final product at 325 or 350, and that's a third heat exposure.
• 11:36
  Speaker: Three separate chances to lose terpenes, and most of us only ever think about the first one.
• 11:41
  Speaker: Three separate chances to lose terpenes, and most of us only ever think about the first one.
• 11:46
  Speaker: You can nail a slow, careful, foil-covered decarb, feel truly proud of yourself, and then bake your cookie at 350 degrees for 18 minutes and undo the chunk of what you just protected.
• 11:58
  Speaker: The oven doesn't even know or care that you already did the careful part.
• 12:01
  Speaker: It's just heat, hitting volatile compounds for the third time.
• 12:04
  Speaker: And this is why a gummy or no-bake treat using infused fat you made carefully will almost always taste a little closer to the plant than when you baked a cookie made with the exact same fat.
• 12:16
  Speaker: It's not that your infusion process failed, it's that you just added a third heat event after the infusion was already done, and nobody warned you that step three counts too.
• 12:26
  Speaker: And if flavor matters to you, that's worth factoring into the kind of edible you even choose to make with your good batch of infused fat in the first place.
• 12:34
  Speaker: And I would actually say in this case, you can make that decision.
• 12:37
  Speaker: Sometimes I know these terpenes aren't being preserved by the time I'm eating the infused brownie.
• 12:44
  Speaker: But in this particular instance, I don't care.
• 12:47
  Speaker: I want the infused brownie.
• 12:48
  Speaker: I want something that tastes good.
• 12:49
  Speaker: I want something that's going to get me high.
• 12:51
  Speaker: And these are the trade-offs I make when I infuse and I make an edible versus smoking or vaping.
• 12:57
  Speaker: So if perfect preservation is off the table across all three of these heat events, what's on the table?
• 13:03
  Speaker: Let's talk about what the data actually supports and where I want you to be skeptical of claims, including mine.
• 13:09
  Speaker: Method matters more than any single trick.
• 13:16
  Speaker: That University of Turin study that I mentioned wasn't just gentler, it also captured escaping terpene vapor and oil rather than letting it vent into the air.
• 13:26
  Speaker: And that trapping step is a big part of why more terpene content survived.
• 13:31
  Speaker: That's not a home kitchen setup.
• 13:33
  Speaker: But the underlying principle translates an enclosed vessel that keeps vapor in contact with your material instead of an open pan venting straight into your exhaust fan is going to outperform an open bake every single time at any of the three heat events I just described.
• 13:49
  Speaker: This is chemistry, not vibes.
• 13:52
  Speaker: And if you think way back, if you were listening to the show at the time, I'm going to mention the episode I did with Vanessa Laverado.
• 13:59
  Speaker: She talked about infusion times where you could extract the majority of the cannabinoids in a 30-minute infusion versus a two-hour infusion.
• 14:07
  Speaker: And she did back this up with a lot of research.
• 14:09
  Speaker: I tried it out myself.
• 14:10
  Speaker: She was correct with my own home experiments, but she also decarbs in a closed environment.
• 14:18
  Speaker: So she puts it into a pouch, into a parchment paper pouch.
• 14:22
  Speaker: You can use a glass jar.
• 14:23
  Speaker: There's a number number of different ways you can do it.
• 14:25
  Speaker: This is also honestly why a controlled decarb device like the Arden FX exists in the first place.
• 14:31
  Speaker: It's built around the two things this data actually supports: low steady heat and a sealed environment instead of an open pan.
• 14:39
  Speaker: That's a real mechanical advantage over an oven with hot spots and a door you keep opening to check things.
• 14:44
  Speaker: I'll say the honest part too, because I'd be a hypocrite not to after everything I just told you.
• 14:49
  Speaker: I haven't seen independent lab testing on the Ardent's actual terpene retention numbers, only Ardent's own claims.
• 14:57
  Speaker: So take it as built on the right principles, not verified to solve the problem.
• 15:03
  Speaker: If you've used an Ardent FX and tracked your own results, I would love to see that data because right now I don't think anybody outside the company has that data.
• 15:12
  Speaker: And it would be really interesting to try and experiment.
• 15:15
  Speaker: And this is something, if any of you want to try this along with me, let me know how you find it, because I think I'm going to do this.
• 15:21
  Speaker: I'm going to try three different decarb methods.
• 15:24
  Speaker: The open pan method that I've done a million times, decarbing in an Art NFX or another controlled decarb device, and a decarbing in a pouch of some kind.
• 15:36
  Speaker: And then I'm going to take those three decarb items, infuse them into different oils, and see which one has the highest potency when I check it with my tea check.
• 15:46
  Speaker: Because I think that would be really interesting to see.
• 15:49
  Speaker: I will also note that an Arden FX or a dedicated decarb device is a nice to have.
• 15:54
  Speaker: The difference in infusion and the actual retained terpenes isn't necessarily enough to justify the expense.
• 16:01
  Speaker: Just bear that in mind because I wouldn't be surprised if that was actually the case.
• 16:05
  Speaker: Lower and slower still wins every time I've looked at the research.
• 16:12
  Speaker: Terpenes start volatizing at temperatures as low as room temperature for the most delicate ones, and most model terpenes are gone well before you hit standard THC, THCA decarb range.
• 16:23
  Speaker: If your recipe gives you a range, take the longer time at a lower temperature.
• 16:28
  Speaker: You will not get more terpenes by rushing the process.
• 16:31
  Speaker: You'll only get less THC.
• 16:33
  Speaker: And now the one I actually want you to try, and that's the Sedanio method.
• 16:38
  Speaker: This comes from Chef Chris Sedeno, and it flips the usual order of operations entirely.
• 16:45
  Speaker: Instead of decarbing your flour with dry heat first and infusing into a second fat, you build a terpene-friendly base by infusing your fat with aromatics first.
• 16:54
  Speaker: Then you add your raw cannabis directly to that fat rather than exposing it to a separate, harsher heat source on its own.
• 17:00
  Speaker: Decarboxylation still happens.
• 17:03
  Speaker: It just happens slower and less completely, landing somewhere in the 30 to 50% range instead of 80 to 90% you get from a dedicated dry decarb.
• 17:12
  Speaker: Why would you want that?
• 17:14
  Speaker: Because the fat itself is doing double duty as a buffer against the kind of aggressive direct heat that strips out the lighter monoterpenes fastest.
• 17:23
  Speaker: You're trading decarb efficiency for terpene retention on purpose, which is exactly the trade-off this whole episode has been building towards.
• 17:32
  Speaker: The real cost is potency.
• 17:33
  Speaker: You'll typically need close to double the flour to hit the same strength as a conventional D carb would give you.
• 17:40
  Speaker: If you're working with a strain whose terpene profile is the reason you brought it, that trade-off can be worth every extra gram.
• 17:48
  Speaker: And maybe you're not using the extra flour because you're just going to rest with the fact that it's a lower potency.
• 17:54
  Speaker: If you're optimizing for potency per dollar, it isn't the method for you.
• 17:59
  Speaker: And that's fine too.
• 18:01
  Speaker: Know which game you're playing before you choose the method.
• 18:03
  Speaker: And I will say, Chris Chef Sedeño, who I understand has passed away.
• 18:08
  Speaker: Unfortunately, I would have loved to have had him on the show to talk about this technique.
• 18:12
  Speaker: He was a culinary cannabis chef who was using it in building infused meals where there was a lot of terpene and food pairings happening.
• 18:22
  Speaker: So he was really wanting to preserve the flavor of that cannabis with other aromatics and with the other foods and beverages they were probably enjoying.
• 18:30
  Speaker: Now, this isn't to say that you shouldn't try and capture some of those terpenes when you are decarbing, because what if you'd want to take some of that decarbed cannabis and infuse it into an oil that you want to do something with?
• 18:43
  Speaker: Maybe you're not baking it into something, but you're going to use it as a finishing oil, or there's something that you want to do with it where you are going to perhaps notice some of that cannabis taste.
• 18:52
  Speaker: If you are a little more careful at the outset with the decarb, you can do that.
• 18:58
  Speaker: And of course, if it's not something that really matters to you, then just do what you want.
• 19:02
  Speaker: That is the wonderful thing about making your own edibles and taking control of your high life.
• 19:06
  Speaker: It's a do what you want thing.
• 19:07
  Speaker: Now, I am going to mention here as well.
• 19:10
  Speaker: I had Robin Swan on the show a little while ago, and she was a proponent of not decarbing at all because she felt that the decarb process was never talked about in the older texts, ancient texts, if we will, when it came specifically to medical cannabis.
• 19:27
  Speaker: Now, I make this face wash that my kids absolutely love.
• 19:31
  Speaker: And sometimes I'm a little slow to making it again when they've run out.
• 19:34
  Speaker: And they'll sometimes text me and be like, Have you made any of it yet?
• 19:38
  Speaker: I haven't washed my face in a week.
• 19:39
  Speaker: There is an oil in this face wash that I make.
• 19:42
  Speaker: Recently, I used some infused oil in it.
• 19:46
  Speaker: And I use infused oils in many of the body care products that I use because I feel like having cannabis on my skin on my face.
• 19:55
  Speaker: I mean, I never have any aches and pains in my face, but I've read that, you know, CBD can take some redness out of your skin or something.
• 20:05
  Speaker: I'm like, yeah, I always have infused oil around, so I include it in a lot of my formulations.
• 20:09
  Speaker: Well, this face wash, I had this oil that contained non-decarbed flour.
• 20:15
  Speaker: And I made it for my daughter, and she let me know that she found something very different about it and it irritated her skin, which I thought was super interesting.
• 20:24
  Speaker: I made her another batch with regular infused oil, and there was no problem at all.
• 20:29
  Speaker: And I had a feeling that it wouldn't be because I've given her other facial oils that have infused cannabis-infused oil in them as well as an ingredient, typically cannabis-infused olive oil, and they never bother her skin.
• 20:40
  Speaker: But it was super interesting that she noticed when the cannabis was not decarbed in that oil, you could smell it more in the formulation.
• 20:49
  Speaker: It irritated her skin.
• 20:51
  Speaker: I just thought that was really interesting because I've been experimenting a little bit with not decarbing.
• 20:55
  Speaker: So I don't want the takeaway to be terpenes are basically gone, so why bother?
• 21:00
  Speaker: That's not what the data says, and it's not what I believe.
• 21:04
  Speaker: What it says is that full spectrum tells you what category your product is in, but not how much flavor survived the trip.
• 21:10
  Speaker: And that the honest goal isn't preservation, it's reduction across every single heat event your flower goes through.
• 21:17
  Speaker: Not just the first one.
• 21:18
  Speaker: You're never gonna keep everything, and that's okay.
• 21:20
  Speaker: You can absolutely keep more than the person who doesn't know any of this.
• 21:24
  Speaker: And that's the exact kind of thing that the Bite Me Dose Diary is built for.
• 21:28
  Speaker: Not to chase a perfect number, but to track your own batches against your own methods over time.
• 21:33
  Speaker: So you can see from your own data whether your different decarb methods make a difference, whether that no-bake treat really does taste different than something that was baked.
• 21:45
  Speaker: And most people never find out because they never wrote it down.
• 21:47
  Speaker: And if you're the kind of person who read this far into a terpene study and thought, I want someone to walk through my actual setup with me instead of trying to reverse engineer three separate research papers at 11 o'clock at night, or you have anything else that you're interested in when it comes to using cannabis effectively in your own life, that's the exact gap that working with me hopes to close.
• 22:08
  Speaker: It's a one-on-one offering where we can work together to reach your goals, whether that's improving your edibles process, using cannabis for specific health outcomes.
• 22:21
  Speaker: If you'd like to learn more, find the link in the show notes and you can book your own free exploratory call.
• 22:27
  Speaker: I would love to work with you.
• 22:28
  Speaker: That's the show for today, my friends.
• 22:30
  Speaker: Your kitchen was never going to outpreserve a lab, but why would you want to?
• 22:34
  Speaker: It doesn't need to.
• 22:36
  Speaker: Make your edibles serve you.
• 22:38
  Speaker: You are in control of the process, and that's what makes them special.
• 22:42
  Speaker: With that, my friends, I am your host, Margaret.
• 22:45
  Speaker: And until next week, stay curious and stay high.