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Edibles Head Math: How to Read a Cannabis Label Without a Calculator · Bite Me The Show About Edibles

• 1:15
  Margaret: Picture this.
• 1:16
  Margaret: You're at a friend's place and they hand you a little package.
• 1:19
  Margaret: Here, try one of these.
• 1:20
  Margaret: They're great, they say.
• 1:22
  Margaret: You flip it over.
• 1:23
  Margaret: There's a wall of tiny print.
• 1:25
  Margaret: THC, total THC, a percentage over here, milligrams over there, and something about it being equivalent to some number of grams of dried cannabis.
• 1:33
  Margaret: Your phone is at 4%.
• 1:35
  Margaret: So you do what most of us do.
• 1:37
  Margaret: You squint, or you grab for your reading classes like I do.
• 1:41
  Margaret: You guess and you break off a piece that looks about right.
• 1:44
  Margaret: Or maybe you're in your own kitchen with a jar of 18% flour and a brownie recipe, and maybe you just don't know roughly how much bud goes into the pan without opening an app.
• 1:53
  Margaret: Today we're going to fix that.
• 1:55
  Margaret: My friends, no calculator, just a handful of mental math moves you can do standing in the dispensary line or with butter all over your hands.
• 2:04
  Margaret: Welcome, friends, to Bite Me The Show About Edibles.
• 2:06
  Margaret: I'm your host, Margaret, a certified gangier and a TCI certified cannabis educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have.
• 2:16
  Margaret: And this is episode 372, and I think of it as a middle chapter.
• 2:22
  Margaret: A few weeks ago, we talked about how to read a COA, a certificate of analysis, the lab report that sits behind the product.
• 2:29
  Margaret: Back in episode 312, I walked through the full potency formula for homemade edibles step by step.
• 2:35
  Margaret: If you haven't heard either one of those, they're linked in the show notes.
• 2:38
  Margaret: Today sits right between those two.
• 2:40
  Margaret: Not a lab report, not the full formula, the label on the package in your hand, and the math you can do in your head.
• 2:48
  Margaret: And I'll be honest, part of this episode came straight out of the Bite Me Cannabis Club.
• 2:52
  Margaret: Someone asked a question recently that was so good and so relatable that I'm going to work through it out loud later on.
• 2:57
  Margaret: So stick around for that one.
• 3:03
  Speaker: So here's something I noticed working behind the counter at the dispensary.
• 3:07
  Speaker: I worked at the dispensary at the beginning of the pandemic for a couple of years, the first legal dispensary in my town, and it was a really eye-opening experience.
• 3:15
  Speaker: Almost nobody asked to see a COA, but everybody read the label, or at least they tried to.
• 3:21
  Speaker: They would ask a lot of questions.
• 3:23
  Speaker: In the two years that I worked there, I never had a single person asked to see the COA.
• 3:28
  Speaker: The label is a thing that you actually hold.
• 3:30
  Speaker: It's what's on the gummies your friends hands you, the flour you bring home to infuse and the tincture bottle in your cupboard.
• 3:36
  Speaker: And labels are written for regulators first and for people second.
• 3:40
  Speaker: They're accurate mostly.
• 3:42
  Speaker: They're just not written for us home cooks or cannabis consumers.
• 3:45
  Speaker: Now you might be thinking, but Margaret, you literally have a dosage calculator on your website.
• 3:49
  Speaker: Why do I need to do this in my head?
• 3:51
  Speaker: And that's a fair question.
• 3:53
  Speaker: And I love the bite me dosage calculator.
• 3:55
  Speaker: When I'm planning a batch at home, I use it.
• 3:57
  Speaker: It handles decarbon extraction as separate steps.
• 4:00
  Speaker: It works backwards from a target dose, and it does the fiddly decimals for me.
• 4:06
  Speaker: Sometimes I like to compare the results from that to the results from my tea check after I've infused something.
• 4:12
  Speaker: But a calculator only gives you what you put in.
• 4:15
  Speaker: Put in the wrong number from the label, and it will very confidently hand you the wrong answer.
• 4:20
  Speaker: That's what mental math is for.
• 4:22
  Speaker: It's your smell test.
• 4:23
  Speaker: You don't need a kitchen scale to know that a cup of salt in the cookie dough is incorrect.
• 4:28
  Speaker: You just know.
• 4:30
  Speaker: I want you to have that same, I want you to have that same instinct with milligrams.
• 4:36
  Speaker: So when a number is off by a factor of 10, something in your gut goes, wait, wait, wait a minute.
• 4:41
  Speaker: The calculator gives you precision.
• 4:43
  Speaker: Mental math gives you a sense of scale.
• 4:46
  Speaker: You want both.
• 4:48
  Speaker: So before anything else, a big caveat.
• 4:51
  Speaker: Labels are not the same everywhere.
• 4:54
  Speaker: Canada has one national set of rules.
• 4:56
  Speaker: In the US, every state writes it writes its own rules.
• 5:00
  Speaker: And outside North America, that's a whole other story.
• 5:03
  Speaker: So I'm going to walk through the Canadian labels first, because that's where I live and shop, and then talk about what tends to show up on U.S.
• 5:09
  Speaker: labels.
• 5:10
  Speaker: If you're somewhere else, the concepts will carry over.
• 5:12
  Speaker: The layout might not.
• 5:14
  Speaker: Check your own local rules.
• 5:16
  Speaker: And of course, this is exactly what your bed tender is for to help you interpret some of these things if you're unsure.
• 5:22
  Speaker: Pick up a jar of flour in Canada.
• 5:28
  Speaker: You often see two numbers.
• 5:30
  Speaker: One says THC and it's tiny, often under 1%.
• 5:33
  Speaker: And the other says total THC, something like 22%.
• 5:36
  Speaker: That tiny number is the THC that's already active in the bud.
• 5:40
  Speaker: The big number is what you get after heat does its thing.
• 5:44
  Speaker: And here's why.
• 5:45
  Speaker: Raw cannabis is mostly THCA, the acid form.
• 5:49
  Speaker: When you decarb, heat knocks a little piece off the molecule and it floats away as carbon dioxide.
• 5:56
  Speaker: What's left is THC, and it's a bit lighter than what you started with, about 12% lighter, in fact.
• 6:02
  Speaker: So total THC is the lab doing the conversion for you.
• 6:05
  Speaker: Plus THC, it's THC plus THCA times 0.877.
• 6:12
  Speaker: You don't need to remember that formula.
• 6:14
  Speaker: What you need to remember is this for edibles, total THC is the number that you want.
• 6:19
  Speaker: Now I am looking at a jar of cannabis.
• 6:22
  Speaker: There is no THC on it.
• 6:24
  Speaker: It only lists the total THC on this particular label.
• 6:28
  Speaker: Wonder if they've changed that.
• 6:30
  Speaker: I don't buy cannabis too often in the stores, but I do like to pick some up every now and then when I hear about something good.
• 6:35
  Speaker: Total THC is the number that you want.
• 6:37
  Speaker: And the jar that I'm holding right now says 29.46.
• 6:41
  Speaker: Holy shit.
• 6:42
  Speaker: It does get me pretty high.
• 6:43
  Speaker: In the US, it depends on the state and the brand.
• 6:46
  Speaker: Some labels show total THC, some put a big THCA percentage right on the front because the bigger number sells.
• 6:52
  Speaker: If THCA is the only number you see, take off about an eighth.
• 6:56
  Speaker: So 24% THCA is really about 21% once it's decurbed.
• 7:01
  Speaker: We'll practice that in a minute.
• 7:02
  Speaker: And if you're in the US and buying hemp derived THC flour, that's a whole regulatory saga on its own and it's changing fast.
• 7:10
  Speaker: That's not for today's episode, but the hemp versus cannabis episode is in the show notes that can get into a little bit of that.
• 7:18
  Speaker: Now, there's also the per piece or per package uh label that you have to think about as well.
• 7:24
  Speaker: And this is the classic mix-up.
• 7:26
  Speaker: In Canada, a package of edibles can hold no more than 10 milligrams of THC.
• 7:31
  Speaker: Now, they have loosened this a little bit with certain types of edibles I have seen in the stores, but generally speaking, the 10 milligrams per package still applies mostly across the board.
• 7:43
  Speaker: So if you buy a pack of two gummies and it says 10 milligrams, that's 5 milligrams each, not 10 milligrams each.
• 7:50
  Speaker: In a lot of US adult use states, the common rule is 10 milligrams per serving and up to 100 milligrams per package.
• 7:58
  Speaker: So that chocolate bar that says 100 milligrams on the front, that's for the whole bar.
• 8:03
  Speaker: If it's scored into 10 squares, each square is about 10 milligrams.
• 8:06
  Speaker: I heard some version of this story more than once at the dispensary, especially with legacy market edibles that you could buy and you can still buy, which is why being able to read the labels is really important.
• 8:18
  Speaker: Somebody eats the whole bar because they thought it was 10 milligrams for the entire thing instead of 100 milligrams.
• 8:28
  Speaker: Don't be that person.
• 8:29
  Speaker: Always find a line that says per unit or per serving.
• 8:33
  Speaker: Now, what about liquids?
• 8:35
  Speaker: I find these can get probably a little bit more confusing than any other format.
• 8:40
  Speaker: Tinctures and oils trip people up because there are two ways to say the same thing.
• 8:44
  Speaker: A 30 milliliter bottle might say 300 milligrams total, or it might say 10 milligrams per milliliter.
• 8:52
  Speaker: Those are the same bottle.
• 8:54
  Speaker: The total divided by the milliliters gives you the per milliliter number.
• 8:57
  Speaker: And here's the sneaky part.
• 8:59
  Speaker: One squeeze of a dropper is often not a full milliliter.
• 9:02
  Speaker: Grab a little oral syringe from the pharmacy.
• 9:04
  Speaker: They're cheap and they may take the guesswork out.
• 9:07
  Speaker: Next we have concentrates, and they're labeled in percent, just as flour is, just a lot higher.
• 9:14
  Speaker: And since a gram is a thousand milligrams, a percentage converts right over.
• 9:19
  Speaker: 80% distillate is about 800 milligrams of THC per gram.
• 9:24
  Speaker: One catch.
• 9:25
  Speaker: Distillate is usually already decarbed.
• 9:28
  Speaker: Rosin and hash usually aren't.
• 9:30
  Speaker: So they're still mostly THCA.
• 9:32
  Speaker: Same rule for flour.
• 9:34
  Speaker: Take off about an eighth, and you're looking at a THCA number.
• 9:37
  Speaker: One more Canadian quirk.
• 9:39
  Speaker: A lot of products carry a statement that says something to the equivalent like equivalent to 3.5 grams of dried cannabis.
• 9:47
  Speaker: That number is about possession limits, how much you can legally carry.
• 9:50
  Speaker: It tells you nothing about how strong the product is.
• 9:52
  Speaker: Skip right past it when you're dosing.
• 9:54
  Speaker: How much should you trust the label?
• 9:56
  Speaker: Mostly, but not blindly.
• 9:58
  Speaker: Labs allow variants, and sometimes a producer can shop around for a lab that gives them the highest number, unfortunately, because high THC is still a benchmark.
• 10:08
  Speaker: Even though we all know, because we're an educated bunch on this, listening to this show, that high THC does not equate quality by any means.
• 10:19
  Speaker: If a flower label looks suspiciously high, it might be.
• 10:23
  Speaker: Treat every label as a starting point, not a promise.
• 10:26
  Speaker: That's true whether you're doing the math in your head or in a calculator.
• 10:29
  Speaker: Okay.
• 10:34
  Speaker: Six moves.
• 10:36
  Speaker: None of them need anything harder than a doubling a number and knocking off a zero, I promise.
• 10:40
  Speaker: Move number one, percent times ten.
• 10:43
  Speaker: The percentage tells you how many milligrams of THC are in one gram.
• 10:49
  Speaker: That's it.
• 10:50
  Speaker: 20% flour has about 200 milligrams in a gram.
• 10:54
  Speaker: 18% has about 180 milligrams.
• 10:59
  Speaker: 80% distillate, about 800.
• 11:02
  Speaker: This works because a gram is a thousand milligrams.
• 11:05
  Speaker: So every percentage point is 10 milligrams.
• 11:08
  Speaker: Half a gram, cut it in half.
• 11:11
  Speaker: Move number two, percent times eight.
• 11:15
  Speaker: Not all of that THC makes it into your butter or oil.
• 11:18
  Speaker: Back in episode 312, we used 80% as the average for home extraction.
• 11:24
  Speaker: So instead of 10 times 10, go times eight.
• 11:28
  Speaker: That's roughly what you'll actually keep in the kitchen.
• 11:30
  Speaker: If eight feels awkward, here's the trick double it three times for 18% flour, 18, 36, 72, 144.
• 11:40
  Speaker: So a gram of 18% flour gives you about 144 milligrams in your infusion.
• 11:47
  Speaker: And if you only remember one number from this episode, make it this one.
• 11:51
  Speaker: A gram of 20% flour is about 160 milligrams in your infusion.
• 11:57
  Speaker: That's about 16, 10 milligram doses from one single gram.
• 12:02
  Speaker: Let that sink in for a second because this really surprises people sometimes.
• 12:08
  Speaker: 16 doses from one gram.
• 12:11
  Speaker: Your weed goes a lot farther than you think when you're infusing.
• 12:15
  Speaker: Move number three, total divided by pieces.
• 12:19
  Speaker: Once you have your total milligrams, divide by how many pieces you cut.
• 12:24
  Speaker: Round of friendly numbers.
• 12:26
  Speaker: 144 is close enough to 150 for a gut check.
• 12:29
  Speaker: Let's check this against the brownie example from episode 312.
• 12:34
  Speaker: Seven grams of 18% flour.
• 12:37
  Speaker: Seven times 144 is around a thousand milligrams.
• 12:42
  Speaker: Cut that brownie into 24 pieces.
• 12:44
  Speaker: That's a little over 40 milligrams each.
• 12:46
  Speaker: The exact answer in the episode was 42.
• 12:49
  Speaker: Our head math landed right beside it.
• 12:52
  Speaker: And who doesn't love head math?
• 12:54
  Speaker: There's move number four.
• 12:55
  Speaker: Work backwards.
• 12:56
  Speaker: This is the one that I use the most.
• 12:58
  Speaker: You know the dose you want, so multiply your target dose by the number of pieces.
• 13:03
  Speaker: That's the total that you need.
• 13:05
  Speaker: Then divide your percent times eight.
• 13:08
  Speaker: 12 cookies at 10 milligrams each is 120 milligrams.
• 13:13
  Speaker: With 18% flour, each gram gives you about 144.
• 13:18
  Speaker: So you need a bit less than one gram for your whole batch.
• 13:21
  Speaker: Episode 312 got 0.83 grams.
• 13:24
  Speaker: Again, it's all right there.
• 13:26
  Speaker: Move number five, take off an eighth.
• 13:28
  Speaker: If you're looking at a THC number and not total THC, knock off about an eighth before you do anything else.
• 13:36
  Speaker: 24% becomes about 21%, 16% becomes 14.
• 13:41
  Speaker: It's close enough for the kitchen and it keeps you from overestimating your badge.
• 13:46
  Speaker: Here's move six, cut it down.
• 13:48
  Speaker: If your math says a piece is stronger than you want, you don't have to remake anything.
• 13:53
  Speaker: Cut it.
• 13:54
  Speaker: A 40 milligram brownie cut in quarters is for 10 milligram bites.
• 13:59
  Speaker: Having and quartering is the easiest dosing tool you already own.
• 14:03
  Speaker: It's called a knife.
• 14:04
  Speaker: And we've all got one.
• 14:06
  Speaker: Or two or three or four.
• 14:08
  Speaker: One rule for rounding: when you round for yourself, round however you like.
• 14:13
  Speaker: When you're telling someone else how strong something is, give them the higher end of your estimate.
• 14:19
  Speaker: Nobody's night was ruined because inedible was a little weaker than they were told.
• 14:24
  Speaker: And if you're listening to this and you're nodding along, that's probably because you've been in that exact situation before.
• 14:32
  Speaker: Now for that question from the Bike Me Cannabis Club.
• 14:38
  Speaker: Here's what our member wrote.
• 14:40
  Speaker: They said, I remember someone talking about making brownies with just ground decarb.
• 14:45
  Speaker: I'm making brownies for a friend's birthday party at his request and wanted to make both kinds.
• 14:52
  Speaker: My question is, how much ground bud do I use to make a batch of 16 brownies at 15 to 20 milligrams each?
• 14:58
  Speaker: My basic math says if I use 18% bud, I need 1.8 to 2 grams of bud.
• 15:03
  Speaker: Maybe it's the experienced user in me, but that seems a bit low.
• 15:08
  Speaker: I love this question so much because it really does highlight the fact that it often feels like we need way more cannabis to get the experience that we're looking for when we actually don't.
• 15:20
  Speaker: Now, this might change a little bit if you're using trim versus bud, but it's going to be pretty similar.
• 15:26
  Speaker: And I would love to hear if any of you test it out yourselves.
• 15:29
  Speaker: And do know that you can make edibles with just decarbed ground bud.
• 15:33
  Speaker: I've done episodes on that as well.
• 15:36
  Speaker: And I can link to those in the show notes too.
• 15:38
  Speaker: And especially when you're using the amounts like this, like 1.8 to 2 grams of bud, adding that straight to your brownie mix isn't necessarily going to make that brownie taste weedy.
• 15:49
  Speaker: When you think back to those folks who talked about chucking a whole bunch of ground weed into a brownie mix and then they tasted awful, that's probably because they were using way more cannabis than they actually needed.
• 16:02
  Speaker: Back to the question.
• 16:04
  Speaker: Step one, work backwards.
• 16:06
  Speaker: They want 16 brownies at 15 milligrams.
• 16:09
  Speaker: That's 240 milligrams.
• 16:12
  Speaker: 16 at 20 milligrams is 320.
• 16:16
  Speaker: So the whole pan needs to be somewhere between 240 and 320 milligrams.
• 16:22
  Speaker: Step number two, percent times eight.
• 16:26
  Speaker: 18 doubled three times, 36, 72, 44.
• 16:31
  Speaker: So each gram gives you about 144 milligrams.
• 16:35
  Speaker: Step three, divide.
• 16:37
  Speaker: 240 divided by 144 is a little under 1.7 grams.
• 16:43
  Speaker: 320 divided by 144 is a little over 2.2 grams.
• 16:48
  Speaker: And if we use percent times 10, assuming nothing gets lost at all, the range is about 1.3 to 1.8 grams.
• 16:56
  Speaker: So your answer lands somewhere between 1.3 and 2.2 grams, depending on how much gets lost along the way.
• 17:02
  Speaker: Your 1.8 to 2 grams sits comfortably inside that range.
• 17:07
  Speaker: Your math is correct.
• 17:09
  Speaker: It's your gut that's questioning it.
• 17:11
  Speaker: And I want to talk about why, because I think a lot of experienced folks feel exactly the same way.
• 17:16
  Speaker: If you've been smoking for years and you think about cannabis and grams, a gram is a joint, maybe two.
• 17:21
  Speaker: It's a nice evening.
• 17:22
  Speaker: So two grams for a whole pan of brownies feels like nothing.
• 17:26
  Speaker: But smoking and eating are completely different animals.
• 17:30
  Speaker: When you smoke, a lot of that THC goes up in the air as side streams smoke.
• 17:35
  Speaker: Some of it you breathe back out, and the effect wears off in a couple of hours.
• 17:40
  Speaker: When you eat it, your liver turns THC into a compound called 11 hydroxy THC.
• 17:46
  Speaker: It hits differently, it lasts longer.
• 17:50
  Speaker: And think about this: at 20 milligrams, one of these brownies is twice what's allowed in an entire package of edibles here in Canada.
• 17:57
  Speaker: That's not a weak brownie.
• 17:59
  Speaker: And of course, our tolerances range so widely that 20 milligrams for someone might be a comfortable dose.
• 18:07
  Speaker: For someone else, it's a nightmare.
• 18:08
  Speaker: And for someone else, they're not going to feel it at all.
• 18:11
  Speaker: So two grams using our times eight number, that's about 288 milligrams or right around 18 milligrams per brownie.
• 18:20
  Speaker: That's a lovely target that our friend asked for.
• 18:23
  Speaker: A couple of things are different when ground bud goes right into the brownies instead of into a strained butter first.
• 18:29
  Speaker: First, check which number is on your jar.
• 18:32
  Speaker: If that 18% is THCA, take off an eighth.
• 18:35
  Speaker: So you're really working with about 16%, which is about 128 milligrams.
• 18:40
  Speaker: Now you need closer to 1.9 to 2.5 grams to get the same result.
• 18:44
  Speaker: Second, there's less research on how efficient this method is compared to a classic version.
• 18:49
  Speaker: Our times eight is a reasonable estimate, but not gospel.
• 18:53
  Speaker: If you're skipping that step because you don't have time for an infusion, let me remind you of the episode that I did with Vanessa Laverado.
• 19:02
  Speaker: I did a follow-up episode after that conversation where she said you can extract the majority of the cannabinoids in 30 minutes, not two hours.
• 19:12
  Speaker: So keep that in mind if timing is an issue.
• 19:15
  Speaker: But one thing that helps is to warm the ground decarbed bud in the melted butter on low heat for a bit before it goes into the batter.
• 19:23
  Speaker: That gives the THC a head start on moving into the fat.
• 19:26
  Speaker: Third, and this is the big one, mix it like you mean it.
• 19:31
  Speaker: Ground bud likes to clump, and clumps make hot spots.
• 19:34
  Speaker: One person gets a little sleepy, brownie, and someone else gets a very memorable night out.
• 19:39
  Speaker: Grind it fine, stir it into the fat thoroughly, spread the batter evenly, and cut precisely.
• 19:47
  Speaker: And I think it's important to mention the grinding here because normally when I'm decarbing, I wouldn't worry about grinding my cannabis beforehand.
• 19:55
  Speaker: But if you are going to be using it this way, going directly into your batter, the finer the better.
• 20:01
  Speaker: So in this club question, the friend asked for 15 to 20 milligrams, and that's their call.
• 20:06
  Speaker: But not everyone at a party has this tolerance.
• 20:09
  Speaker: So cut a few in half and label those as the gentle ones.
• 20:12
  Speaker: Keep the pans clearly marked and away from regular desserts.
• 20:15
  Speaker: And since we're making both kinds, remember that two batches won't match exactly.
• 20:20
  Speaker: The whole Bud Brownies will taste more herbal, and the numbers are a little fuzzier, so label each pan with its own estimates.
• 20:27
  Speaker: That's the kind of guest people invite back.
• 20:30
  Speaker: So here's where I want to leave you as we wrap up today's episode.
• 20:34
  Speaker: The label is the starting point.
• 20:36
  Speaker: Find the right number on it, the total THC, not THCA, and per piece, not per package, then run your moves.
• 20:45
  Speaker: Percent times 10 for what's in the gram, percent times eight for what you'll keep, total divided by the pieces, work backwards when you know your dose.
• 20:56
  Speaker: Take off an eighth for THCA, and when in doubt, grab a knife.
• 21:00
  Speaker: None of this replaces careful math when you're planning a batch.
• 21:03
  Speaker: For that, the bite me dosage calculator is linked in the show notes along with the full formula from episode 312 and the cheat card for Diddy's moves, and write it down.
• 21:13
  Speaker: Every batch, every number, how it felt.
• 21:16
  Speaker: The Bite Me Edibles Dose Diary was made exactly for that.
• 21:20
  Speaker: But the head math is what lets you walk into a party, pick up a mystery package, and know within 10 seconds whether you're looking at a nibble or a whole night.
• 21:28
  Speaker: That's what taking control of your high life looks like, my friends.
• 21:31
  Speaker: Not memorizing formulas, just knowing in your gut what a milligram is or how many milligrams are in a gram of cannabis.
• 21:38
  Speaker: So before I let you go, I have a question for you.
• 21:41
  Speaker: What's the most confusing cannabis label you've ever squinted at?
• 21:44
  Speaker: You snap a photo, post in the Bite Me Cannabis Club, send it by email.
• 21:48
  Speaker: I might break down a few of them in a future episode.
• 21:51
  Speaker: And to our birthday brownie baker, I'd love to hear how the party went.
• 21:55
  Speaker: That's it for this week, my friends.
• 21:57
  Speaker: If you know someone who's ever eaten a whole chocolate bar by accident, please share this one with them.
• 22:03
  Speaker: They'll appreciate it.
• 22:05
  Speaker: I'm your host, Margaret, and until next time, stay curious and stay high.