Increasing Shelf Life On Edibles

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dab science

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People winterize shatter with ethanol and it supposedly lasts longer than just bho. Not sure what that would do for mixability but winterized product is supposed to be higher in thc. Maybe you could mix it in before the alcohol was fully evaporated and let it finish in the product. Just some ideas to kick around.
Its because you remove the fats during winterizeation fats rot hella fast I use to do that with hard candys I found the hard candies last a while I use to use jolly ranchers melt them to hard crack temp pour in the winterized tincture mix then pour into silicone molds (its easier to melt and use already hard crack candy to achieve a really solid hard crack candy)
 
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dab science

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Also this is slightly off topic kinda but so awsome to know if you make edibles and mix in soy lecithin it will make them stronger the soy lecithin makes your body absorb more thats digested and not pass as much im pretty sure it makes your body absorb 10-20 times more of what was consumed
 
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dab science

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If you guys ever make butter after you have removed all the plant material put your finished product in a frying pan and simmer it on low for about a hour during your hour you will notice a white froth on the top scoop that up and toss it it is unwanted dairy fats that will go bad also that froth you just removed allows you to bake at higher temps without destroying your butter so you can make things like snickerdoodle cookies
 
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dab science

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@DemonTrich I usually freeze my edibles for long term for my personal supply. i lately have had need to try and increase that to as long as possible for some patients. i never had any trouble personaly with them molding on my supply, so here i am adapting for my patients.
I added a product by Lorann Oils. Its called mold inhibitor. I made the test batch on 4/18, packaged them individualy and im still waiting to find mold on my test subjects 10 days later.
Ill post pics of the inhibitor and packaging this week.
lets keep going with this however and see what more people have to say.

do any edible makers out there use uv light wands to steralize there product / packaging / workspace? Cant hurt, right?
The uv light in a workspace is definitely a thing mushrooms labs do it to steralize air in air ducts and use it for overhead lighting to keep the workspace cleaner but it might be a bit overkill for food productd
 
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Doc Medibles

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Great thread ... work with chocolate and gummies ... have some other cool edibles will be making soon. Do you use glycerin when making gummies ? also have seen honey in them often. We heat seal ours ... but have seen coated in citric acid and in little tubs as well.
 
GimpDaddy

GimpDaddy

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I make mine using vegetable glycerin tincture. They've always been amazing.
Vegetable Glycerin is amazing for edibles! I don’t see a lot of people using it, but adding just a bit of Vegetable Glycerin to baked goods like cookies and brownies, will help to increase the shelf life.

I also see Lecithin mentioned a few times in this thread. Lecithin is a great binder and does help with absorption- in the experiences of myself and my peers: SUNFLOWER Lecithin is superior to Soy Lecithin.
 
Dirtbag

Dirtbag

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I dont bother with the novelty of making edible gummies or whatever and instead just make capsules with MCT oil and sunflower lecithin that stay good for ages. Ive got some that are over a year old. I just keep them in the fridge for long term storage. But ive had them in pill bottles on the shelf for months without them going rancid.

To make gummies that wont go bad quick you need to keep the water content extremely low, which means using ingredients that most people cant buy at the grocery store. Capsules are just so much easier, and last so much longer.
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HigheRelevationQueen

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Hello everybody.
Ive been on a journey for the past year making edibles with all types of hash oil. Im at a point where demand is growing and i now need to increase my shelf life to make my product safer.

Any advice here will hopefully benefit alot of edible makers as i rarely hear this talked about
So what is everyone using to lengthen the shelf life on their wares.

I primarily am looking to lengthen the shelf life on my gummies So heres the basic ingredients.

Hash Oil (usually in the form of wax/shatter)
gelatin
flavoring
sugar
juice
lecithin

i decarb separately then add the hash oil to the mix at the end, mix while hot and add to molds.

i can elaborate on the recepie if needed.
I have somthing called mold inhibitor from lorann oils and also an natural antioxidant from them.
also how long are candies are keeping for people, are you using anything to control the shelf life?

Thanks in advance for all your help :)
I have also been making mad gummies. I was doing it easy way for awhile with pre flavour gelatin but now I am diving into the regular gelatin with more natural options in I read that potassium sorbate is a good preservative it basically comes in powder but you turn it into a liquid I also have the mould inhibitor haven't used yet but I hear great things about it indefinitely air sealing and keeping them cool I think is going to extend the shelf life cause that's when working for me so far but I am so excited to follow this page because now I have some tips and tricks
 
Eskander

Eskander

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So there are a number of decent suggestions here but for the most part they are dancing around the fundamental question of why something goes off. If you can't answer that then you are going to have a hard time finding the way to combat it.

Rancidity of oils is driven by a few things. Oxygen is the first issue and can be dealt with by vacuum sealing or by impulse sealing with an oxygen absorber.
Vacuum sealing has advantages if you are going to freeze them too but the oxygen absorber in a heal sealed pouch is going to be way faster to do in bulk.

https://www.amazon.com/Absorbers-Storage,Food-absorbers-indicator-absorption/dp/B07GV8C6RJ/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=13CA2J3ACFJ9S&dchild=1&keywords=oxygen+absorbers+for+food+storage&qid=1622807133&sprefix=oxygen+abs%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzUFpNT0JTOFlUWlVCJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMDIwODUxNVQ4QllNTFEzQjhPJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTEwNDc1NzYyQ1c1M0FXVlJTVEcwJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Next up is retained water in the oil. It is easy to think of them being simple to separate but the reality is that without deliberate effort, you are going to have some water dissolved in the oil after processing. You can centrifuge it out or boil it out. If you have a vacuum chamber (and they are pretty cheap) you can do a low temp boil by just putting the vacuum chamber on a heating pad and pumping it down. You can of course just boil it at room temp but then you are causing chemical breakdown and running afoul of the next issue for rancidity which is heat.

When you have a simple oil like refined coconut oil, you have a fairly narrow range of molecular weights and you have a known smoke point based upon the lipid tail length and level of saturation. Any time you approach the smoke point you drive the oil towards rancidity rapidly. When you are then incorporating the vast array of organic compounds from an extraction then the temperatures at which you start to have degradation plummets. As the oil heats, the reactivity to oxygen skyrockets so ideally you want to limit how hot your extraction gets, how long it is hot or eliminate oxygen exposure while it is hot.

This one is probably the hardest for most people to do but it is manageable. Argon gas for welding is pretty cheap and is widely available. It is heavier than air so you can flood a pot with it and provided you aren't moving it around much or boiling off much, you can keep a layer of shielding gas in place reasonably well. It is easy to test though by reaching into the pot with a flame (assuming you aren't boiling a solvent off) and it will extinguish when you hit the argon. For bonus points, if you want to retain volatile compounds then you can purge a pressure cooker up to operating pressures and do decarb without much terpene loss or oxidative degradation. You will need to put a gas fitting on it but pressure cookers have multiple gas blow offs so you are unlikely to create a dangerous situation doing this. Of course if that is all you are doing you can stick an extract in a vacuum bag and submerse the bag in salt water at your preferred temp. It has to be weighed down or it will float, particularly as it outgasses but it beats the hell out of managing a hot high pressure cylinder. Just be sure your bag material can actually take the heat

Next on rancidity and spoilage in general is temperature. The warmer things are up to a certain point (130F) the faster bacterial and fungal growth are. The warmer things are the faster the process of molecular degradation occurs. In a complex organic mixture, some thing are just going to break down. Refrigeration and particularly freezing, slows this down significantly or stops it outright. Freezing in a vacuum bag prevents freezer burn, oxygen exposure and essentially stops microbial growth and passive degradation. I have vacuum bagged frozen pork that has been in my deep freezer for 4 years and is still as good as when I smoked it.

For practical solutions to edibles, some of these are pretty easy to manage. Vacuum bag and freeze goes a long way on most things. What you are choosing to make is a pretty important thing though and some things are intrinsically hard to manage the above considerations in. Lets first look at a bad choice like gummies. You have significant retained water, periods of high temp exposure and large surface area for oxygen exchange and since oxygen is soluble in water and gummies are quasi-solids you get exposure throughout the entire volume. Can these issues be managed? Except for the water content, sure. Gelatin sets around 60F and your extract can be mixed in shortly before this happens to limit time at temperature. Using a low melting gelatin like fish gelatin might allow you to do the entire process in a vacuum bag in a sous vide. You may need to use an emulsifier like lecithin or xanthin gum to get a stable mixture but those are neither expensive or hard to use. If you toss your gummies into a bag with an oxygen absorber then you can expect a pretty decent shelf life. It does take active mitigation to achieve this though.

Next look at a really good choice like coco butter. You can readily dissolve most anything we care about into it, it has low working temperatures, is solid at room temp so oxygen exposure is less of an issue and chocolate making is a water free process intrinsically. You can infuse coco butter and then make chocolates which will have a very long shelf life at room temp or you can use the coco butter for a variety of other things. Chocolate making is not without challenges though learning to work with normal chocolate before ruining "enhanced" chocolate is strongly advised. Sous vides make life easier for this one too fwiw.

If you are doing dose control, the capsules are a good approach. A room temp solid fat in a gelatin capsule is going to get everything you want other than an enjoyable treat. Pouring chocolate into a mould with a metered dose is similarly easy. For people that really demand a baked good then putting doped chocolate chips onto a cookie (or whatever) when it is fresh from the oven and still soft will get you dose control and allow you to mitigate time at temperature issues.

-Eskander
 

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