Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, congratulations to Mr. Bobrow for having put together the first book-length printed matter on cannabis cocktails. Potable cannabis is a fascinating subject with a long history that deserves to be treated seriously. Since about half of American states now allow some form of cannabis use, Americans are experimenting with what is for many is an new way to consume cannabis, both medicinally and recreationally. They deserve a guide with deep experience who can take them by the (figurative) hand to give clear, safe instructions for drinking, rather than smoking, this virtuous plant. Mr. Bobrow is not that guide. “Cannabis Cocktails” is a reckless, irresponsible foray into the burgeoning field of potable cannabis. It is a shoddy, shallow skimming of the subject held together with a veneer of scholarship. The book is so riddled with errors of history, botany, law, and basic kitchen knowledge (not to mention grammar, usage, and punctuation) that I simply gave up counting and categorizing them after the third chapter. It seems Bobrow has conned not just his publisher and editor, but gullible readers as well who lack combined scholarly backgrounds in alcohol and cannabis but who are so thirsty for something — anything — on the subject that they don’t realize that they’ve been fleeced. I certainly sympathize with that thirst. The book oozes a semblance of expertise that passes only because so few people understand the topic — which is all the more reason a reliable, truthful book is needed. I’m not at all convinced that Bobrow himself comprehends how jarringly he has stumbled. He misunderstands the topic so fundamentally that he fails utterly in his central promise of describing how to use precise doses of cannabis safely in drinks. For that alone, the author of “Cannabis Cocktails” deserves pillory. Yet that is far from his only mistake. Let’s start with the introduction in which Bobrow declares “In chapter 3, I’ll show you how to decarbolize cannabis at home…” The term he meant is “decarboxylate.” It, along with solubilization (a term I have not found in Bobrow’s book but which in this setting refers to the concentration of cannabinoids in sugar, fats, oils, alcohol, and other solvents), is core to understanding how to incorporate cannabis in psychoactive beverages and edibles. For cannabis users, decarboxylation describes a chemical reaction in which THCA molecules (a non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in raw and live cannabis plants) lose a carboxylic group when heated to become psychoactive THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) with which so many of us are familiar. At higher temperatures, it also converts CBD (cannabidiol) to a non-acid form. There are further nuances and greater detail, but that’s enough for most day-to-day purposes. To be fair, he does use the proper term later, but that this self-professed expert promises to show readers how to “decarbolize” cannabis is a telling mistake, characteristic of the book, and an early sign for knowledgable readers that we’re in for a sloppy ride. Ah, wait. Who am I and why do I profess to know anything about the topic? I’m Matthew Rowley. I live in California where medical marijuana is legal and I drink cannabis to combat both arthritis and a sporadic, but crippling disorder called trigeminal neuralgia. I’m a retired museum curator and historian who has made a career of studying illicit beverages and those who make them. My last book, “Lost Recipes of Prohibition,” was nominated for a James Beard Award. My first, “Moonshine!,” was the result of three decades in the field with home distillers and moonshiners from the Western US to Western Europe. In my American field work, cannabis was rarely far from discussions of moonshine. It was, in fact, American moonshiners who introduced me to “potka,” a rudimentary cannabis/ethanol mashup in the early 1990’s and I’ve been on the trail of cannabis beverages ever since. I write for various magazines, am an editor for a forthcoming Oxford University Press book on spirits and cocktails, give talks on illicit booze at events such as Tales of the Cocktail and Tiki Oasis, am a cocktail and spirits judge at various competitions, travel the world to interview subjects about food and beverages and delve into archives and historic collections, then tell stories about what I find. That I rarely write about cannabis is testament to the low profile I have preferred to maintain about the subject until now. But this book is a glib disservice to a topic I happen to care about with the potential to do real damage through its careless, neglectful handling. Bobrow lays out two techniques for preparing cannabis to use in drinks. Done correctly, they are both solid approaches. He describes one, sous vide cooking, as “boiling.” It is not. Nor is it French for “in a vacuum” as he writes. “Under vacuum” is more apt. Ok, maybe dinging his translation is picking fly feces from ground pepper. But here’s the thing: the boiling method he describes and depicts in photos is not sous vide cooking. Why? For starters, he doesn’t make a vacuum seal or use a workaround. Cooks who lack an actual vacuum sealer or who are working with particularly delicate foods can hack the process by putting them in a sealable plastic bag (which he does) then simply displacing excess air in it by slowly submerging the bag in water and sealing it just before the water reaches the opening (a well-known practice among those who, like me, use sous vide methods to prepare food and cannabis). But Bobrow doesn’t do that; instead, he places whole cannabis leaves in a sealable bag, then puts this sealed bag in water where — as everyone who has ever tossed an inflated beach ball into a pool can tell you — it would float. Removing the air would have allowed the bag to sink. Weighing down the bag with heavier, nonreactive material would have assured it. That way, heated (not “boiling”) water would surround the plastic-sealed cannabis, assuring a more even and thorough conversion of THCA to THC. But that is not done here. Sous vide cooking is inappropriate for decarboxylating CBD; not even boiling water will reach temperatures high enough to affect the necessary conversion. As an aside, the photos for both the sous vide and oven methods of decarboxylating cannabis don’t match the directions. The plant matter shown in the inflated sealable bag is not the ground flowers Bobrow specifies in his recipes (or even relatively THC-rich “sugar leaves”), but appears to be fan leaves, those iconic clusters of 5 to as many as 9 marijuana leaves which, according to experts, including Ed Rosenthal, author of the definitive “Marijuana Grower's Handbook,” contain 1-3% THC. Sure, you *can* use trim such this to make tinctures and infusions, and many do, but it’s not practical for non-growers or those without connections to them; you almost assuredly won’t find it in legal dispensaries. Nor is it even as high in THC as the most basic weed on the legal market, much less high-potency bud available in today's dispensaries. Some modern strains push just north of 30% THC, but a great deal of the legally distributed high-THC flowers available today hovers between about 15 and 25% tetrahydrocannabinol. Of course, a reader new to cannabis would never know this because, although Bobrow spends several pages discussing the flavor profiles of various strains, he fails to address variable THC and CBD content of modern strains or how to measure the milligrams of activated THC one may expect from one of his recipes, thus gutting his central claim to provide precise, and therefore safe, dosing instructions. Calling for an ounce or quarter ounce of this cannabis infusion or that marijuana syrup is meaningless — and potentially dangerous — if users don’t know how strong it is. The result: the 2 ounces of cannabis-infused rum called for in one cocktail recipe (“A Fearful Gale” — Bobrow has bestowed his drinks with nomenclature he himself dubs outré) may possibly provide a mild lift if using those low-THC fan leaves for the infusion or a high CBD/low THC strain…or if made with a modern high-potency cannabis strain, it might leave its drinker nearly paralyzed with terror, trembling, and paranoia under the influence of 100-160 mg of THC. Ten to fifteen milligrams is widely considered safe dose for a casual user with mild tolerance. I myself rarely consume more than 30 mg total in the course of a single day. One hundred milligrams would incapacitate and eventually immobilize me. And I’d still be high the next day. After consuming 100-160 mg of THC, a novice drinker may feel no effect at all (this sometimes happens with first-timers) or she may be ensnared in a seemingly never-ending nightmare of unfamiliar sensations, convinced that she is dying. One wonders whether either a physician or attorney ever reviewed this manuscript, much less a copy editor. Bobrow plays at being an historian without supporting his assertions and insinuations. At one point, he writes “Stomach-soothing cannabis would have certainly featured in apothecary-prepared bitters in the days before refrigeration and modern food preservation methods.” Yet there is no proof on offer. No recipe is cited or reproduced from a dispensatorium or compounders’ manual or anything from any historic pharmacopeia that would support this claim. He makes a similar fey dance around truth when he implies that historic absinthes contained cannabis: “…cannabis found its way into just about every kind of alcohol in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Given its popularity, there’s nothing to suggest that absinthe missed the party.” People who don’t know about absinthe may take that as Gospel. Set aside the claim that cannabis found its way into just about every kind of alcohol back then. At best, that’s unsupported. At worst, it’s a fabrication, something our mothers might have referred to as a “lie.” This entire claim is a classic fallacy known in logic as “argumentum ad ignorantiam” or in English, an argument from ignorance. One way to rephrase it: “there’s no evidence that X didn’t happen, so X must have happened!” When I sent Bobrow’s absinthe material to distiller Gwydion Stone, co-founder of The Wormwood Society (a non-profit association focused on providing current, historically and scientifically accurate information about absinthe) and creator of the wonderful Marteau Absinthe, he confirmed my own thoughts: “I’ve never seen ANYTHING to indicate that cannabis ‘found its way’ into absinthe in the pre-ban era. Certainly not commercially…If he wants to infuse his absinthe with weed, fine…but why the lame-ass attempt to justify it with false history?” Why, indeed, Mr. Bobrow? I refer readers to Harry G. Frankfurt’s #1 New York Times bestseller “On Bulls***” (available on Amazon) for possible insight into that query. Bobrow quotes material and gives no source; misuses English and Latin phrases; has inconsistent punctuation throughout; refers to material in the book but fails to list it in the bibliography; seems (for a trained chef, as his biography notes) not to understand sous vide cooking methods; conflates terpenes with essential oils; asserts that the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act forbade cannabis use or possession (it did not; it specifically *allowed* use and possession but required a tax stamp, one which federal authorities were at first loath to issue); claims the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act “made it illegal to use either alcohol or cannabis in medicinal preparations of any kind” (a gross misreading and demonstrable untruth; the act did no such thing, but did require those, and several other substances such as opium and chloroform, to be listed on medicine labels if they were present, and forbade them to be on the label if they were not); writes that it’s likely 19th century New Orleans pharmacist Louis J. Dufilho, Jr. became acquainted with cannabis by interacting with French and Spanish immigrants and their “exotic,” folk-healing ways (not, say, from physician William Brooke O'Shaughnessy whose writings on the medicinal aspects of cannabis in the first half of the 19th century sparked a boom in cannabis research across Europe and America and which were widely known to doctors and druggists of the era); asserts that decarboxylation releases essential oils (it does not — the term refers to the chemical reaction described above); claims “You can even decarb regular garden-variety herbs to make your own infused oils and vinegars” (please don’t roast your tender garden herbs in the oven for half an hour, though you may toast harder, dried spices such as cassia, clove buds, and cardamom *briefly* in a dry skillet or fry them in a small amount of hot oil to good effect)…it goes on and on. There is some cleverness and inventiveness with drink recipes. Here, the playfulness that hamstrings Mr. Bobrow’s fumbling attempts at history, science, law, botany, and writing comes to good use. Given my own background with cannabis beverages that spans three decades, I find his recipes untrustworthy and unsafe as written (see comments about dosage above), but the attention to aromas and flavors is a useful and welcome addition to the literature. Further, the book is well-designed. It fits in hand, is pleasing to the eye, and the fonts — though smaller than what we’re used to seeing in food and drinks books — are easy enough to read. I would like to extend my congratulations to the designer (perhaps this is Mr. Bobrow himself?), but cannot; there is no acknowledgements section. My advice? Save your money and buy a gram or two of decent flowers, smoke them or drink them as your taste and mood dictate, then search the internet for free directions for making cannabis beverages until a reliable, truthful guide comes around.