# How To Make "Green Dragon" Beverage



## kagecog (Apr 9, 2014)

Hello everyone, in this guide I will be teaching you my own personal method to making a bottle (not tincture) of green dragon. After going through countless bottles of liquor and ounces of dank bud, I think I have finally perfected the process.
Step 1: Choose your alcohol... The top two choices for liquor are Bacardi 151 and Everclear, but anything above 120 proof will suffice. (The higher the alcohol content, the more efficient the THC extraction process will be).

Step 2 (Optional): Water cure your buds! This DRASTICALLY helps the flavor by helping rid the buds of that "green" taste you get from chlorophyll. To water cure, simply soak your buds in water for 7 days, replacing water daily. The end result will be a slightly brown product that still contains all the THC your buds originally had but none of the salts, chlorophyll, or other contaminants.

Step 3: Grind your bud... I find the best bud-alcohol ratio is around 1 gram of mid-high quality bud for every 30ml of alcohol. If you are using stems, trimmings, or shwagg, up the ratio accordingly. Your gonna want to grind your cannabis as fine as possible, although, the average hand operated weed grinder will suffice.

Step 4: Decarb... This is a highly debated issue when making green dragon, if your weed is VERY well cured, you may be able to get by without doing this step because THCa (non-psychoactive) naturally becomes THC (psychoactive) over time. I do however recommend a decarb process whenever possible. To explain as simply as possible, the decarb process is essentially heating up cannabis for a period of time at a temperature far below combustion because the majority of THC in cannabis is kept in the form THCa which has some medical benefits, but does not produce a "high." You want to convert this THCa into THC, this is done naturally during smoking because cannabis is heated up to such high temperatures at combustion, but fails to take place when using alcohol as an extractor. To actually do this decarb, simply put your ground up marijuana on a tin foil covered baking pan, and pop it in the oven at 230 degrees F for 40 minutes. The temperature and time for this decarb process is HIGHLY debated, but I based this temperature and time off a scientific study done by SC labs, and by the fact that betacaryophyllene which is an essential oil of cannabis is degraded at temperatures above 246.2F. This means that yes, I am going against the famous "325 for 5 minutes" you'll get as a recommended decarb method from a lot of other people.

Step 5: Funnel ground up cannabis into your alcoholic beverage of choice

Step 6: Let sit for a minimum of 3 weeks (8 weeks if you did not decarb) in a dark place like your average kitchen cabinet. You don't want any sunlight hitting as this will degrade the THC. Shake bottle daily to help with THC absorption.

Step 7: Strain out all plant material... Using a coffee filter is a very popular method, but their are many ways of doing this

Step 8: DRINK UP! A single shot should be enough to get you BAKED. You will not feel the effects of the alcohol unless you are an extreme lightweight, just the stoney goodness...

If you have any additional questions, tips, or experiences of your own, please feel free to comment!


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## fumble (Apr 10, 2014)

when you say water cure, do you mean a fresh plant? or can you water cure an already dried bud?

...nice tutorial too


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## qwizoking (Apr 11, 2014)

sounds disgusting..


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## Thundercat (Apr 11, 2014)

qwizoking said:


> sounds disgusting..


I've had some dragon that wasn't bad actually. It was made with everclear, and needed to be mixed to be drinkable cus I have no need to drink everclear shots in the first place. But I mixed about a shot with some orange mountain dew and it was good. 

The kid I had it with made it a few times. He never did any decarb and didn't let it sit for weeks. Rather he would put the material into the bottle of alcohol, and then warm it in a water bath. He would warm it until the alcohol began to bubble slightly and then remove it from the heat and let it cool, then repeat doing the process 3-4 times. When he was done it was a pretty emerald green bottle of alcohol that sure would do the job. 

I've done some "infusions" as I like to call them. I have used makers mark whiskey(120 proof) and I tried some regular Seagrams 7 (80 proof). The makers mark worked awesome, the seagrams was just ok. I just put some trim in the whiskey to soak for like a week, and then strained it and drank it. It was delicious, real nice flavor and deffinitely had extracted the oils also. When I poured it over ice the oils and the water from the ice would mix and turn cloudy instantly it was cool like a science project. I need to try this again with some decarbed material and see what kinda difference I get since it never got heated in the process.


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## qwizoking (Apr 11, 2014)

take that ethanol.. run a qwet extracting roughly 70% of the goodies. put it on a double boil and reduce while also decarbing... guess that would just be "Dragon" though..
I like infusing sodas, 1oz of saturated etoh is a good size dose for me (about 800mg), half oz or less for most, most people like 1-200 mg doses


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## kagecog (Apr 12, 2014)

fumble said:


> when you say water cure, do you mean a fresh plant? or can you water cure an already dried bud?
> 
> ...nice tutorial too


You can water cure both fresh and already dried buds, either way it will work!




qwizoking said:


> sounds disgusting..


Without the water cure it is pretty foul tasting stuff, very "green" tasting in a bad way. You can get it down pretty easy with a chaser though!




Thundercat said:


> He never did any decarb and didn't let it sit for weeks. Rather he would put the material into the bottle of alcohol, and then warm it in a water bath. He would warm it until the alcohol began to bubble slightly and then remove it from the heat and let it cool, then repeat doing the process 3-4 times.


This is actually another way to decarb! Has the same effect of turning THCa into THC through heat. Thanks for adding this!


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