Easy Green Dragon Recipe » Cannabis Alcohol Tincture

Why You Will Love This Guide

If you are ready to try making a marijuana tincture recipe at home, welcome; you’re in the right place! 

Here are a few important things to know first:

1. This post is specifically dedicated to the traditional method of creating a long soak, alcohol-based cannabis tincture called Green Dragon.
2. If you’re looking for another option, be sure to check out my different tincture recipes:

• Golden Dragon QWET freezer tincture
• CBDA tincture
• THCA tincture
• Cannabis root tincture
• MCT oil ‘tincture’

This recipe is the easiest method for beginners to follow, and this guide will teach you everything you need to know about making your own tincture at home. 

In this guide, I will help you discover the best way to make a tincture, what ingredients you need, the step-by-step process, and all the different ways to use it once it’s prepared, with fully answered FAQs to help you along the way.

Weed Tinctures 101

Before we jump into making our own cannabis tincture for the first time, let’s quickly look at what a tincture is because the process can be new to most people – it was to me!

Tinctures are a type of extraction that is made by soaking the bark, leaves, or roots of herbs in a solvent like alcohol. 

To get a better understanding of this process, think of vanilla extract. It is simply vanilla beans soaked in alcohol to capture the flavor.

The alcohol pulls out the plant’s active compounds and dissolves them in the liquid. This liquid can then be reduced, concentrating the potency.

Essentially, we are using alcohol as a tool to extract the active ingredients, cannabinoids like CBD and THC, and terpenes from the plant material to create a powerful plant-based medicine.

There are many other types of tinctures. Green dragon is simply a name for this specific type of cannabis tincture and the process used to make it. 

Benefits Of Tinctures

As a cannabis consumer, there are many benefits to using tinctures to enjoy the effects of cannabis. 

Traditional weed tinctures are easy to make at home, easy to consume, and don’t add many calories to your diet.  

Smoking or vaping can be harsh or unpleasant for some people, which means tinctures are also a great alternative to smoking. 

Unlike smoking, tinctures don’t have a strong smell once they’re made, so they are more discreet and easy to use in public. 

When taken sublingually, it has a very fast onset, so you can quickly tell whether or not you’ll need to take more to feel the effects.

Because tinctures are easily measured, you can add a precise amount to any dish without greatly affecting the final flavor. 

It’s also easier to test out the exact amount needed to feel the effects and find the minimum effective dose (MED) so you don’t use too much.

Of course, this will be dependent upon your own unique endocannabinoid system.

It’s important to remember that cannabis works differently for each person, so trying a few different strains and dosages is important to find out what works best for you. 

What You’ll Need

• Dried cannabis flowers: Choose your desired amount of dried cannabis flowers, in grams, to use. Measure and record this weight if you want to calculate the potency at the end. You can choose THC, CBD, or CBG flowers. You can purchase flowers from my online shop. Do not forget to decarb before getting started.
• High-proof alcohol: You want at least 150 proof, ideally 190 or 200 proof grain alcohol. Lower-proof alcohols, like vodka, are not as strong. Be sure to check out my guide for where you can order high-proof grain alcohol online.

Note: The recipe card below has a complete list of ingredients with amounts and printable instructions.

The Step-by-Step Process

1. Using a digital scale, measure the amount of cannabis you are using. This will help you calculate the potency later. If you haven’t already, decarb your cannabis if desired. You can use an oven, Instant Pot, or decarb machine. See the decarboxylation guide below for different CBD, CBG, or THC times. 
2. Put the decarboxylated cannabis flower (or trim, shake, kief) in a mason jar. 
3. Pour the alcohol over the cannabis. You only need enough to cover the plant matter. Any more is a waste. 
4. Attach the lid and shake the cannabis mixture gently.

Tinctures can be stored for up to several months or even longer if made properly. 

Always keep your tincture out of direct sunlight to preserve as many health benefits as possible. 

We have guides for decarboxylation in an oven of Instant Pot if you need them to get started.

If you forget – or don’t want to – decarb first, you will end up with a CBDA or THCA tincture instead. 

Using your favorite cannabis strains is one of the easiest ways to personalize your cannabis tincture recipe to make it suit your needs and desired medicinal purposes. 

You can also make different cannabinoid-dominant tinctures, like:

• CBD alcohol tincture using a CBD flower
• CBG alcohol tincture using a CBG flower
• THC tincture using a THC flower

Just remember to record how much cannabis you start with, in grams, if you want to try and calculate the potency of your cannabis tincture.

If you cannot access high-proof alcohol, 151 proof will work as well, although it is not as strong of a solvent. You will not achieve the same results with lower-proof alcohol like vodka or rum. 

Here is my complete guide to where you to get high-proof alcohol for making tinctures.

Evaporation Recommendations

Your homemade tincture will burn when you place it under your tongue or in your mouth for sublingual use. 

To counteract this, you will want to evaporate the alcohol. This process will leave you with a more concentrated tincture, meaning you will be able to take less

How much alcohol you evaporate off will depend on the type of final product you want, but many people typically evaporate off anywhere from 50-100% of the alcohol. 

If you evaporate off 95-100% of the alcohol, you will be left with full-extract cannabis oil (FECO), a powerful concentrated cannabis extract. 

There are many different ways to evaporate the alcohol, some safer than others. The most simple way is to let the tincture sit out without a cover to let the alcohol evaporate away naturally over time.

You can also follow the instructions here on how to make full-extract cannabis oil with complete instructions for evaporating the alcohol.

Different Ways To Make A Tincture

You can scour the internet and find hundreds of different ways to make a cannabis tincture. 

There is no one right way to make a tincture, and in fact, several ways different ways are often shared in my Well With Cannabis Community.

However, there are different methods used to make a cannabis tincture with slightly different outcomes.

This long-soak Green Dragon cannabis tincture is one of the two most popular tincture-making methods. 

The second most popular is the Golden Dragon, also known as a QWET, quick wash extraction technique, or a freezer tincture.

A traditional cannabis tincture like the Green Dragon recipe involves steeping the cannabis flowers in alcohol for a prolonged period of time, with no freezing required.

I’ve seen traditional tinctures steep anywhere between a few hours to up to 4-6 months or longer in some cases.

Fans of the traditional tincture prefer this method because it is believed that the longer soak times help extract a full spectrum of plant compounds. 

In contrast, the Golden Dragon QWET tincture combines frozen cannabis and frozen alcohol for only a few minutes, often called a ‘wash’ or ‘wash times’.

Some prefer the Green Dragon tincture because it produces a complete plant extract that includes additional plant compounds, like chlorophyll and terpenes, producing a more medicinal final product.

Compared to the Green Dragon, the Golden Dragon is preferred because it produces a much lighter colored tincture with a much more mild cannabis taste.

So which option is better? I ran my own lab tests to compare the Green Dragon tincture to the Golden Dragon tincture, and the complete results are posted here. 

According to the results, the Green Dragon long soak tincture method produces a more potent tincture. 

The results suggest that the longer the soak, the more potent the final product – but not by much. 

This leaves you, the consumer, with the decision of choosing potency over taste. 

How To Use A Tincture

Okay, yay, you’ve made it! Hopefully, you have made or are ready to make your tincture. But before you do so, let’s talk about how to use a tincture.

There are multiple ways to use a tincture, which basically all comes down to personal preference. 

Thankfully, we have a complete step-by-step guide for how to use a tincture here. 

In short, a tincture can be used:

1. Under the tongue
2. Swallowed as an edible 
3. Dropped in a glass of warm water
4. Added to a wide range of cannabis-infused edibles or to make a green dragon drink