Are you looking for an alternative to cannabis oil? Making cannabis sugar is a great way to infuse your own edibles! Discover how to make a simple, delicious, and versatile cannabis sugar using a cannabis tincture and sugar for a basic staple recipe that can be used to make a wide variety of other tasty infused cannabis products like baked goods, candies, and more.
Table of Contents
- Recipe Features
- Why You Will Love This Recipe
- Easy Cannabis-Infused Sugar Recipe
- What You’ll Need
- The Step-by-Step Process
- The Sugar-Making Process
- Tincture Resources
- Notes & Expert Tips
- Use The Right Dish
- Choose a Breathable Cover
- Find a Safe Drying Space
- Stir Your Sugar Often
- Use A Fan To Speed Up The Process
- How to Make More Potent Sugar
- Determine The Dose
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Recipes To Make With Cannabis Sugar
Recipe Features
- A simple two-ingredient recipe: cannabis tincture and sugar
- Sugar-free alternatives included for many diets
- Want to make it easy? Shop my high-quality cannabis products and have them delivered directly to your door!
Why You Will Love This Recipe
Most of my recipe inspiration comes from my Well with Cannabis Community, and somewhere in the early days, I saw someone making cannabis sugar.
I fell in love with cannabis sugar because once it’s made, it can serve as a staple recipe for infusing all other recipes easily.
I also love the versatility. Once it is made, you can use it in so many different recipes like brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cocktails, or even a scoop in your morning coffee or tea.
Plus, if you need higher doses and are looking to increase the potency of your cannabis recipes, great news!
You can use both a cannabis-infused oil AND infused sugar together for a double dose of CBD or THC.
In this guide, I will share my guide designed to help you learn how to make delicious cannabis-infused sugar, my notes and expert tips, and fully answered FAQs so you feel confident getting started immediately.
Easy Cannabis-Infused Sugar
Ingredients
- 2 cups white granulated sugar
- 1 cup cannabis alcohol tincture
Instructions
- Add the sugar to a glass baking dish.
- Pour the tincture over the sugar.
- Use a spatula to stir the sugar and tincture together, ensuring all of the sugar is coated. The mixture will resemble wet sand.
- Cover the baking dish with a breathable fabric and place in a safe area to air drying. Allow the mixture to dry for 48-72 hours, stirring every few hours.
- You will know when your sugar is ready when all of the alcohol has evaporated off and the mixture again resembles dry sugar.
- Place the infused sugar in an air-tight jar and store it in a cool, dry place.
Notes
- You can not make cannabis-infused sugar without the alcohol tincture You can not make cannabis sugar with butter, oil, or any other type of fat.
- You absolutely do not want to put a solid top or a lid on the pan while the sugar is drying.
- If you do not stir the sugar enough, it will harden together on itself and create a hard chunk of sugar. If this happens, you can use the food processor or a ziplock bag and a rolling pin to break it back up into granules again.
- If stored properly, the cannabis sugar should last at least 3 months, if not longer.
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Nutrition
What You’ll Need
- Cannabis Tincture: Before getting started, you will want to prepare a cannabis tincture. The Green Dragon and Golden Dragon tinctures are very popular. You must use an alcohol-based tincture for this recipe; oil will not work.
- Regular Sugar: White granulated sugar or table sugar is the standard sugar for this recipe. While I have not tried making sugar with anything aside from this, members of my Well With Cannabis Community report having success infusing brown sugar, cane sugar, coconut sugar, turbinado sugar, monk fruit sweetener, erythritol (non-nutritive sugar alcohol).
Members also report NOT having success infusing Splenda or other powdered artificial sweeteners.
The Step-by-Step Process
- Step 1 – Add the sugar to a glass baking dish.
- Step 2 – Pour the tincture over the sugar.
- Step 3 – Stir the wet ingredients well.
- Step 4 – Place in a safe area for drying. Cover with breathable fabric.
- Step 5 – Allow the mixture to air dry for 48-72 hours or until completely dry. Stir every few hours.
- Step 6 – You will know it is ready when it is completely dry and resembles traditional sugar.
- Step 7 – Store in an airtight container.
- Step 8 – Enjoy.
Storage Instructions
Once your own cannabis-infused sugar is made, you want to ensure you keep it as dry as possible, just like you would store other dry ingredients.
Storing it in an airtight mason jar or even a ziplock bag will work if it’s sealed properly.
Then, it is a good idea to store this in a cool, dark place.
The Sugar-Making Process
Unfortunately, cannabis enthusiasts know this is not a quick recipe; there are a few things you need to do before you can get started making infused sugar.
Here’s what you need to do first:
- Decarboxylate your cannabis flower according to the cannabinoids present. You can decarb in an oven or an Instant Pot.
- Make a cannabis alcohol tincture – either a Green Dragon tincture or QWET tincture.
Please Note
- You can not make cannabis-infused sugar without the alcohol tincture.
- You can not make cannabis sugar with butter, oil, or any other type of fat.
Decarboxylate the Cannabis Flower
Making cannabis edibles involves a bit of science, and there are tried and true processes to follow to get the best quality final product.
Dried cannabis flowers do not naturally contain high amounts of THC or CBD.
Instead, they contain high amounts of THCA and CBDA, an acidic but non-intoxicating form of the cannabinoids.
Applying heat helps to convert the THCA and CBDA into the active forms of THC and CBD through a process called decarboxylation.
Using decarboxylated cannabis is one of the most important factors in getting the best result from your final product.
Skipping the decarb process is a common mistake that may result in a weaker final product with inactive or non-intoxicating effects.
Make a Tincture
After the process of decarboxylation comes the process of using alcohol as a solvent to extract the active cannabinoids THC and CBD from the plant matter.
This is the process of making a cannabis tincture and is essentially the same extraction process as making vanilla extract.
You will want to use a high-proof, food-grade alcohol like the options listed here.
You can make many types of cannabis tinctures at home, a traditional long-soak Green dragon tincture or the more modern cold alcohol infusions known as the Golden dragon QWET tincture method.
Once you make your tincture, pour the strained liquid tincture directly over the white sugar and stir.
Tincture Resources
Articles & How-To Guides
Where To Buy High-Proof Alcohol For Tinctures
Cannabis Infusions & Extractions
Easy Green Dragon Recipe » Cannabis Alcohol Tincture
Cannabis Infusions & Extractions
Golden Dragon QWET Cannabis Freezer Tincture
Articles & How-To Guides
Green vs. Golden Dragon Tincture with Lab Potency Tests
Evaporate All Of The Alcohol
This recipe’s outcome is based on the complete evaporation of all alcohol in the tincture.
Evaporating the alcohol will leave behind just the extracted cannabis oils bound to the sugar crystals.
It’s important to note that there are many different ways to evaporate the alcohol; some are more safe than others.
Please note: it can become dangerous if you decide to use high temperatures or an open flame, so be cautious because alcohol is extremely flammable!
While it may be tempting to use heat to evaporate the alcohol, I think the best way is to let nature take its course and let the alcohol evaporate off naturally, even if the process takes longer.
The process of leaving the sugar at room temperature takes a few days, but some things are worth waiting for.
If you’re impatient, using a food dehydrator with a low heat setting is a great next-best option.
If you’re even more impatient, be sure to check out my guide for safe alcohol evaporation before getting started.
Notes & Expert Tips
Want to make this recipe perfectly the first time?
Check out my notes and expert tips to help you along in the process.
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Use The Right Dish
Remember, with this recipe, the more surface area exposed to the air, the faster the alcohol will evaporate.
This means you want a bigger container with a shallow amount of sugar when filled.
I have used a glass 9×13 inch (3 quart) baking dish in the past and thought it worked perfectly.
I’ve seen suggestions to put foil or parchment paper on a baking sheet but found this was way too messy, especially when stirring the sugar frequently.
Choose a Breathable Cover
You want as much airflow as possible to the sugar, so you do not want to put a solid top or a lid on the pan while the sugar is drying, or else the alcohol will not be able to evaporate.
But you will likely want to cover the sugar while drying to prevent contamination, so I suggest a coffee filter or thin cheesecloth over the top.
Find a Safe Drying Space
You will need to leave the glass baking dish out to dry for several days, so you will need a safe drying space where the sugar can rest.
An empty pantry shelf or even on top of the refrigerator works. Ultimately, we chose to keep ours in the oven because we have little ones at home.
This wasn’t ideal because the airflow wasn’t great, but it worked well for keeping it safe and out of the way.
One thing to note is that we put a prominent note on our oven to ensure we did NOT turn it on while the sugar was inside.
Again, alcohol = flammable. Please use caution!
Stir Your Sugar Often
The more often you can stir your weed sugar, the more you will be exposing the alcohol to the air for it to evaporate.
We used a small silicone spatula to stir the sugar and tried to stir it as often as possible, every few hours, at least 4-5 times daily.
If you do not stir the sugar enough, it will harden together and create a hard chunk of sugar.
If this happens, you can use the food processor or a ziplock bag and a rolling pin to break it back up into granules again.
Use A Fan To Speed Up The Process
One option to get the alcohol to evaporate faster is to place a fan over the sugar and allow it to run while stirring the sugar consistently.
This helps move the air and the sugar around, allowing for quicker evaporation.
If you do not have a fan, placing your wet sugar container on a baking tray next to an open window may help with the airflow.
How to Make More Potent Sugar
Everybody always wants the most potent end product, but there are a few things to remember when determining the potency of your sugar.
First, the strength of your cannabis sugar will depend on the strength of the cannabis flower you used to make your alcohol tincture.
Using shake, leaves, and stems will result in a weaker concentration of cannabinoids, while using high-quality cannabis buds will result in a higher concentration of cannabinoids.
Volume matters here, too.
The final concentration will depend on how much herb you use in your tincture.
You can either double your flower or half your alcohol volume here for a stronger tincture.
Additionally, you can also simply cut the amount of sugar in this recipe to 1 cup sugar and 1 cup of tincture.
The mixture will be wetter at first and may require more time to evaporate off all of the alcohol.
Of course, your reaction to cannabis edibles is unique and highly dependent on your own unique endocannabinoid system, and you should dose accordingly.
Determine The Dose
Want to get a more accurate guesstimate of the potency of your cannabis infusions and extractions? Try my popular edibles dosage calculator. Not sure what your perfect dose is? Learn more here.
Frequently Asked Questions
White granulated sugar is the standard sugar for this recipe. While I have not tried making sugar with anything aside from this, members of my Well With Cannabis Community report having success infusing brown sugar, cane sugar, coconut sugar, and Turbinado sugar.
Yes! To make powdered sugar, you will want to first infuse the granulated sugar with the process outlined here. Once that is ready, put the dry sugar into a high-speed blender with some cornstarch. You can use 1 cup of sugar to 1 teaspoon of cornstarch. Pulse for 30-60 seconds or until you get the consistency you are looking for.
Yes! You can follow this same process with monk fruit sweetener or erythritol, a non-nutritive sugar alcohol.
If you want to make sugar with concentrates like distillate or sugar wax, first check to see if your product needs to be decarbed first. Then mix it with high-proof, grain alcohol to prepare a tincture. Then proceed with the process of making canna sugar.
The potency of your cannabis sugar depends on the potency of the cannabis material you are starting with. If your flower has a high THC content, it will have more milligrams of THC than if your flower has a low THC content. You can make CBD cannabis sugar with high CBD flowers. Note that different strains and different cannabis plants will all have different amounts of THC and CBD, and the only way to know for sure is through lab testing.
I’ve seen cannabis sugar range anywhere from light yellow to dark green. Color is not an indicator of the strength of potency. The color indicates how much plant material was transferred into your cannabis tincture when you made it. Green dragon tinctures will have a much more vibrant green color than a Golden Dragon tincture, which may have a light yellow to no color at all.
Once you have your cannabis sugar made, you can add other dried herbs as desired. My favorite? Dried lavender. Simply run the lavender through an herb grinder and gently toss to incorporate. A spoonful is delightful in a cup of cannabis tea before bed.
Recipes To Make With Cannabis Sugar
Now that you have your cannabis sugar made try it out in some of these delicious recipes!
Cannabis Dessert Recipes
Chewy Homemade Cannabis Caramels
Cannabis Dessert Recipes
How to Make Weed Brownies with Cannabutter or Oil
Cannabis Dessert Recipes
Creamy Cannabis Vanilla Ice Cream
Cannabis Dessert Recipes
Sweet, Creamy Cannabis Buttermints
Cannabis Dessert Recipes
Thanks for sharing this recipe for sugar. It make the best tasting medibles. I’m still a little unsure of how to dose it in my recipes. Using your calculator to figure milligrams of THC in my tincture. I arrive at 48.6 mg per teaspoon or 2332.8 mg per cup. (14g decarbed flower per cup, 5 cups of everclear). My first batch of sugar @ 1 cup tincture to 2 cups sugar, made some pretty strong sugar so my second batch I used 3 cups of sugar to 1 cup of tincture. Do I simply divide the three cups of sugar by the THC mg in 1 cup of tincture to get the mg in 1 cup of sugar? 2332.8 •|• by 3=777.6 mg/THC per cup of sugar…? Still seems like it’s pretty potent. Any advice is appreciated.
Hi Mary. We’re glad to hear you’re enjoying the cannabis sugar recipe! Your calculation method seems correct, but let’s break it down a bit further to make sure we’re on the same page.
You started with a tincture that contains approximately 2332.8mg of THC per cup. If you then mix this with 3 cups of sugar, you’re effectively diluting the THC across a greater volume of material (the sugar). So when you divide the total amount of THC in the tincture by the total volume of the final product (tincture + sugar), you get the potency of your cannabis sugar. In this case, if you’re mixing 1 cup of tincture with 3 cups of sugar, you would indeed end up with approximately 777.6mg of THC per cup of the final cannabis sugar product.
To find out how much THC is in a teaspoon of your cannabis sugar, you would then divide this number by the number of teaspoons in a cup (which is about 48). So, roughly speaking, each teaspoon of your cannabis sugar would contain about 16.2mg of THC.
Everyone’s tolerance to edibles can vary greatly, and the effects can take up to 2-4 hours to fully kick in. Always start with a small dose and wait to see how it affects you before consuming more.
I hope this helps clarify things for you, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any more questions. Happy cooking!
is there any way to make a tincture without alcohol? im not really comforting using something that strong to cook with, and dont want to taste the burn at all either but am very interested in making my first tincture. which hopefully i can eat straight or use in a cannasugar? ? thanks
Hi Arlo. You can easily make a cannabis tincture using MCT Oil, but you won’t be able to use it to make cannasugar. Alcohol is required for cannasugar since it evaporates completely off, leaving behind the cannabis goodness on the sugar. However, you can use the MCT tincture under your tongue for quick onset and lasting effects. You can find that guide here: Easy Cannabis-Infused MCT Oil
Can you just infuse cannabis with alcohol after decarbing
Hi Wendy. Absolutely! You’ll want a high proof, food grade alcohol. Here are two different techniques to try:
https://emilykylenutrition.com/cannabis-tincture/
https://emilykylenutrition.com/qwet-tincture/
I hope this helps!
Hi Emily,
If I make a batch of sugar using 7 grams of flower and a batch of butter using 7 grams of the same flower would the effects be roughly the same if each was baked into a separate batch of cookies or brownies etc?
Hello Daniella! Yes, if they are the same strains and the same potency, it should be a similar experience ?
Thank you
You are most welcome, Dawn!
With this work with citric acid?
Hello Jay. I haven’t tried it myself, but you could combine just a teaspoon or two of citric acid with some non-infused alcohol and let it sit out for a few days to see what happens. If it works, you’re good to go 😀
Hi Emily, I am in the process of making RSO sugar ,am I correct that the more tincture you use the stronger your sugar will be?
Hello Roger, yes, you are correct! The more tincture you use, the stronger your sugar will be 🙂
I’ve made this an put it I’m my caramel toffees have not tried it yet
I can’t wait to hear how it turns out for you, Jodie!
Thank you for all the learning! I so enjoy the learning. I make cookies, brownies, tincture, canna sugar. Can’t quite grasp reducing on the gas stove. I got black, hard stuff. Not usable.
Thank you, Linda
Hey Linda! Thanks for reading. I never recommend to evaporate with a gas stove, but here are some safe alternatives to try. It sounds like you simply evaporated too much, but a black, thick, sticky liquid is what you are looking for in the end – this is your FECO.
Soo I evaporated quite a bit of my alcohol off, can I still use it to infuse sugar? Can I use something to make it looser?
Hi there Trixx! If it is still in a liquid state, yes, you can use it to infuse sugar. If you need to make it looser, add more grain alcohol 🙂
For powder sugar should I use the same process?
Hi there, Brain! To make powdered sugar you will want to first infuse the regular, granulated sugar. Once that is ready, you can put it into a high-speed blender with some cornstarch (1 cup sugar to 1 teaspoon cornstarch). Pulse until you get the consistency you are looking for. I hope that helps!
Can i infuse canna sugar twice to make it stronger
Yes, absolutely, Lucy 😀
I made sugar using this technique. Thank you so much! I’m trying to make ice lollies so just bought the ones off the shelf that you can freeze at home. However, when I tried to stir the sugar into it, the sugar melted but the tincture (thc) got stuck to the spoon in a lump? How can I prevent this from happening? Should I warm it whilst doing it? Do you think that’ll help?
Yes Sam, this is one of the most frustrating parts of working with cannabis. The cannabinoids just really don’t like cold liquid. My best advice is actually to evaporate *almost* all of the alcohol from the tincture and then add that directly to the ice pops. The little bit of alcohol will keep the cannabinoids suspended in it, and hopefully prevent separation. I hope this helps!
Thank you Emily!!
You rock!!
You are most welcome, Janet!
So, I made Cannasugar used 7gr of 19% thc flower and 1/3 cup of 190 proof everclear, soaked 7 days and added the tincture to 1cup of sugar.
Using the dosage calculator, I come up with 69.32 MG per tsp.
Does that sound correct?
Once dried, can I mix with more sugar (uninfused) to lower the thc before storing or just use less in my recipes?
Janet, using the calculator, checking the box to account the decarb loss, I got 1108.09mg THC for the tincture. With 48 teaspoons in a cup, that gives you approximately 23mg THC per teaspoon. Yes, you can always add more sugar, or simply use less, to reduce the dose 🙂