How to Make Cannabis Coffee

Wake and bake is a revered stoner tradition.

Sparking up a doob first thing in the morning may make some people want to roll over and go back to sleep — but when done “correctly,” it can be energizing. Many smokers find it’s the ideal way to get the day off to a great start.

Once someone is up and about after waking and baking, chances are good that the next thing they’ll do is make a cup of coffee. That should get their motor revving even more.

In recent years, it’s been discovered that the advantages of combining morning weed and morning coffee are greater than the individual benefits of each.

It turns out that cannabis and coffee are actually a match made in marijuana heaven. You can mix the two by yourself, but some enterprising entrepreneurs now sell cannabis coffee, too.

Let’s pour a cup, light up, and discuss.

The History of Cannabis and Coffee

Coffee has been around for more than a thousand years. Weed has been around even longer.

And at a famed Paris club nearly two hundred years ago, many of France’s intellectual elite began combining cannabis with coffee.

The club was known as Club des Hashischins, or “Club of the Hashish Eaters.” The members essentially gathered there to get high on hash; they included such literary notables as Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo) and Victor Hugo (Les Misérables).

One of the delicacies they enjoyed regularly was hashish coffee: coffee, hash, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, pistachio, and butterfat. They claimed the combination provided creative inspiration.

Needless to say, hashish coffee didn’t catch on back then, and the club disbanded within ten years. But ever since then — in the parts of the world, weed was available, of course — many cannabis aficionados have been combining morning tokes with morning coffee.

Modern smokers even have a common name for the combination, a Seattle speedball; some call it a yuppie speedball. (You can probably guess where the “Seattle” came from.)

In this era of cannabis research, scientists have looked into the synergistic effects of coffee and cannabis. It turns out that consuming them together can make sense.

The Science of Cannabis and Coffee

Most sativa strains provide energetic, uplifting, and creative effects. Indicas are more likely to make users feel relaxed and mellow.

That would lead to two natural conclusions. One is that combining a sativa with coffee would increase caffeine’s energy boost, allowing the user to focus that energy to be more creative and productive. The other is that an indica could “take the edge off” of caffeine’s effects, mellowing out the experience and making it more enjoyable.

Here are two more reasons why weed and coffee might go together well.

First, both substances stimulate the release of dopamine (the “feel-good” hormone”) in the brain, making the user feel even better than they would when consuming just one.

Second, cannabis use may impair short-term working memory, while caffeine appears to prevent or reverse short-term memory problems. Coffee’s ability to balance out weed’s effects on memory makes the two of them great dance partners.

Anecdotal evidence implies that those conclusions are true. But a study conducted at Northwestern University has shown that there’s a lot more going on. The research found that the more coffee someone drinks, the greater the chance that their body’s endocannabinoid system (ECS) will be affected.

The ECS, of course, is the internal signaling system of neurotransmitters and receptors that controls many of the body’s important functions — and it’s the same system that THC interacts with to provide its psychoactive and medical effects.

High levels of coffee consumption, the study found, reduce the number of neurotransmitters that the ECS produces. That could potentially make the ECS receptors an “easier target” for THC and other cannabinoids in weed.

Those effects are being researched further, but it’s clear that a natural connection might make the combination of coffee and weed more effective and enjoyable.

How to Combine Cannabis and Coffee

The most obvious answer is also the simplest: fire up a bowl or joint as you sit down to pour a cup of coffee. But it’s not hard to guess that companies have seized on the profit to be made by selling weed-infused coffee.

Companies like Ganja Grindz, BrewBudz, and Therapy Tonics have been selling cannabis/coffee products since 2017; Ganja Grindz won a Cannabis Cup award for its coffee in the edibles competition.

Producers initially tried selling those products online, but these days you’ll have to find pre-made cannabis coffee at your local dispensary. They’re often available in a variety of dosage levels, and there are product options like pre-bottled cannabis cold brew and cannabis K-cups.

If you don’t want to spend the money or don’t have a dispensary in your area, it’s not difficult to create your own cannabis-infused coffee.

How to Make Cannabis Coffee

There are several ways to combine two of the best substances ever found on Earth. Here are the two easiest ones.

1. Cannabis-Infused Coffee

All you need for this one is weed, ground coffee, butter, and water.

1. Grind ½ gram of flower.
2. Boil three cups of water and then add two tablespoons of butter.
3. When the butter has melted, add the weed and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring regularly.
4. Strain the liquid and use it to brew your coffee in a coffeemaker.

Your coffee has now been infused with cannabis. If it separates into layers of fat and water, blending it will restore its “integrity.”

You can use coconut oil (a good oil choice for making cannabis oil) instead of butter if you prefer, but some type of fat is important. It ensures that the weed’s THC is fully absorbed and evenly distributed.

2. Cannabis-Infused Creamer

If you drink a lot of coffee with milk or cream every day, this might save you time: if you make a batch of infused milk or cream, you can mix it with every cup you brew.

1. Decarb ¼ ounce of flower. (Heat it in the oven at 225°-230° for 40 minutes until it turns golden brown.)
2. Simmer three cups of milk together with the weed for 30-45 minutes, stirring regularly to make sure it doesn’t boil or burn.
3. Strain through cheesecloth. Refrigerate until use.

Use full-fat milk for this recipe; skim or fat-free milk won’t absorb the THC very well. You can use cream instead of milk if you prefer. Coconut milk and almond milk will work well, too.

One final suggestion: if you regularly make edibles, you probably have some cannabutter or canna-oil on hand. Just stir a tablespoon of the butter or oil into your coffee, and you’re good to go.

Cannabis Coffee: FAQ

Q: Can you infuse coffee with CBD to enjoy its medical benefits without getting high?
A: Many people do. You can add CBD oil to a French press when you’re brewing coffee, make keto bulletproof coffee by adding unsalted butter and CBD oil, or simply buy CBD-infused coffee beans or pods which are for sale online (and at some health food stores).

Q: Didn’t cannabis coffee originate at Amsterdam coffee shops?
A: No, that’s a common misconception. “Coffeeshops” started popping up in the Dutch capital in the 1970s when dealers hung out at real coffee shops and sold their wares. Officials tried stopping the illicit sale of weed, but they finally gave up. They now issue licenses to coffee shops that agree to only sell cannabis under strict regulation — even though marijuana is still technically illegal everywhere else in the country.

Reference

Schoeler, T., & Bhattacharyya, S. (2013). The effect of cannabis use on memory function: an update. Substance abuse and rehabilitation, 4, 11 [1].

Cappelletti, S., Daria, P., Sani, G., & Aromatario, M. (2015). Caffeine: cognitive and physical performance enhancer or psychoactive drug?. Current neuropharmacology, 13(1), 71-88 [2].

Cornelis, M. C., Erlund, I., Michelotti, G. A., Herder, C., Westerhuis, J. A., & Tuomilehto, J. (2018). Metabolomic response to coffee consumption: application to a three‐stage clinical trial. Journal of internal medicine, 283(6), 544-557 [3].