So I’m new to making edibles, and am confused on the process. So you have to decarb the weed to activate the thc for psychoactive consumption. Then you cook the weed in with the butter so the thc jumps from the weed to the fat in the butter. Then you bake it. So there’s 3 times the weed is getting hot, so why even decarb it in the first place? Wouldn’t cooking it in the butter decarb it at the same time to skip the first step? And decarbing you have to keep it under 240 degrees or the thc degrades to cbn or CBD right? So when you bake cookies at 350 doesn’t that do the same thing? So couldn’t you really just break up the weed and dump it in cookie batter and when it bakes it will decarb it?? It’s just confusing to me and hoping someone can help me understand it?
Decarbing is a low and slow process. Lower than you’d bake cookies and much longer than you’d bake them.
I decarb in boiling water which is 212 for 45 minutes. I use butter. It is plenty psychoactive at this point.
I often make cookies which means another 11 minutes at 340
All the best
The recipe I saw after the 40 minute decarb you simmer bud in butter and water for like 3 hours. So wouldn’t that decarb it as well?
You are asking the right questions. 
THCa decarbs to THC which will degrade to CBN.
You’re correct, if you are cooking with the extract then that counts towards the decarb time and can be factored in.
The various curves gives you a ‘feel’ for time vs temperature.
Cheers
G
Decarb > Infuse > Bake/Cook
Try putting cannabis straight into Cookies. It’s not that it doesn’t work, but it’s not the best use of the product, and cookies with pieces of cannabis are pretty nasty.
If you eat a raw bud it will not really get you high. When you smoke/vape bud you heat it and it gets you high. You are converting inactive thc (THCA) into active thc (THC) with heat. This is why you decarb - to get the most out of your product.
Infusing is getting the thc from the flower/extract into the fat soluble product (butter or oil).
You are then free to bake or cook with that infused butter/oil as you choose.
That’s the simplest way to put it. 
Gpaw’s chart is how I read it, tried it and it works, thats 30mins decarb at 120c.
And Danny’s method works too, the thc binds with the fat, just as it does in our bodies.
Like Danny said, they are different goals. The time spent in the butter should be done at a low temperature, that would not decarb it. The goal is to get every bit of cannabinoids out of the plant material into the butter.
Something I did- I took FECO and added it into coconut oil. I then decarbed it because I forgot to before hand. I did this by holding the oil tincture at like… 140 give or take. For maybe 10 minutes. This worked ok, but I prefer decarbing the flower. (And I did try the FECO before decarb and it was non-active, so I for sure decarbed.)
Another advantage of doing it prior to infusing it in butter or coconut oil . If you make a non bake item or just want a dab of butter on your baked potato no problem.
Thanks for the chart @Gpaw thats science! Awesome this is all great info, clears things up for sure, each step has its reasons and it’s why it’s done this way. Ya that makes sense chewing in bud and stems in a cookie probably wouldn’t be tasty lol. Thanks for the replies. I followed the instructions the way it’s done, decarb, simmer in butter. 1 oz of sugar leaves with some larf, in 4 sticks of butter. Used half a cup of butter in a recipe that made 50 cookies. I ate one. One was too much!!! I was baked out of my mind! Had a bad trip had to go to bed lol. Shits no joke people!!! Next I need to find out how to stop having bad trips while high. Nothing worse then being baked out of yourself and feeling like you’re a horrible person and need to do better in life. Being an over analyzer sucks
I use a little simple math.
Assume weed is 15% thc unless you have a reason to think otherwise.
My cookie recipe makes 30 cookies. I use a half cup of butter in my recipe.
I use 4 grams per half cup.
150mg per gram = 600mg
/
30 cookies
20 mg per cookie.
It’s very rough math but it works for me.
I’ve used 8 grams before and it’s twice as strong.
Ymmv
All the best.
Edit: not sure why it went all bold but oh well.
sounds like you did a good job with the decarb and infusion. gotta use caution with homemade edibles because they will generally stomp the guts out of store-bought.
the old rule #1. you can always eat more. start small.
keep some CBD handy for when you go too far. a little CBD edible with your THC will help keep you out of trouble. personally, I really like CBD flower in a vaporizer for emergencies. keep vaping until the ride starts to slow down a bit.
exercise can really help too. lift weights, ride a bike, paddle a kayak. put all that potency to work for you instead of against you.
@Foreigner 's method for calculating mg is great.
Imo. I prefer to just consider grams. I feel mg is more for mainstream/corporate products. We have no way to accurately test the amount of mg in our product (unless we actually test it). But we can know exactly how many grams we are using.
There’s always a fine line between a good dose and an “over-dose”. I’d suggest, never consuming more in edible form that you’d smoke at once. Then under-dose yourself a couple times until you get the right dose.
…start at 1/4 of what you’d smoke (if you smoke 1g, have a 0.25g edible). Then next time have a 0.4g edible. Then 0.6g edible. Then 0.8g… etc.
…or 1/4 of a 1g cookie. Then 1/3 of a 1g cookie. Then 1/2 of a 1g cookie. Until you find a dosage that works well for you.
And never double dose yourself. (Ie: Don’t take a small dose, then think it didn’t do anything and then take second dose. Give it a good 6+ hours between doses. Even then compounded doses and add up!)
Also, the strain used will greatly effect the overall experience as well.
One slightly subtle ‘take away’ from the chart is more time is not better.
You get into the situation where the rate you are converting THCa to THC is dropping off and the rate you are converting THC to CBN is increasing. That point is about 70% decarb.
Another issue is the more volatile (lower boiling point) Terpenes and Flavonoids will be gassing off with longer times.
Cheers
G
It’s true. I should also add that I’ve got one strain that has become my butter strain (mostly because I have a LOT of it.)
Even if my numbers are off a little this allows me to repeat/tweak the recipe.
I went to 8g because I wanted to eat only one cookie instead of two😂
Also because Mrs Foreigner prefers to use half regular and half medicated butter in her recipe. It makes for a better quality baked good independent of potency
I agree. We all smoke and build up a tolerance, but we forget that’s edibles are a different form of consumption. We also need to build up a tolerance to edibles, much like we did when we did to smoking when we first started.
Everyone has a story that goes “I didn’t feel anything after an hour so I ate another one.”
Don’t do this 
I was hiking/camping with a guy and he plowed into the snacks because he was hungry. Without realizing it he ate 10 cookies. Big mistake.
Jeeez lol 10?!
…also a good idea to not take your hash sieve and dunk it into a glass of bhang (not knowing how much hash is it in). Boy did that wreck me… but at the same time was almost quite spiritual LOL.
Yeah he didn’t have a good time. “When does this end?”
Hash in baked good is delicious (don’t use chocolate it masks the flavor) but I’ve found it very difficult to dose accurately because we’re talking like 0.1 grams.
