The Making of Blueberry Powder To Flavour Gummies

Yeah, folks have been asking me to make a cannabis infused gummy recipe, that isn’t loaded with crap...

You know, like with a tonne of refined sugar and food colouring....

“That’s a tricky hack.”, I thought.

Well we’re burning daylight, so grab your hat, load your pipe and Walk With Me into a blueberry patch.

Blueberries grow on bushes.

See What I See:

In the photo (above) you can see what a domesticated blueberry (high) bush looks like growing in a meadow.

These domesticated bushes can grow to be over 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide. They are a plant, but are similar to fruit trees in that, you can expect them to provide fruit for approximately 20 years (once a planting has become established). This type of bush, typically produces bigger, juicer berries. They’ve been cultivated to be high yield producers, known for being able to grow quantity.

Wild blueberry bushes are usually only a few feet tall and a few feet wide. They aren’t as full in leaf. You could describe them as looking small and sparse (comparatively) and more like low ground cover rather than dense bushes with some height to them. Wild blueberries can be described as low bushes, for that reason.

As a result, wild blueberries are smaller, usually not as plentiful on the plant, or as juicy but they have a more intense flavour and potentially more phytonutrients.

I think that this is because the wild plants haven’t been hybridized (or messed with). That, and they grow best on a rocky terrain, with very well drained, slightly acidic soil. (A completely different environmental condition than a grass filled meadow.)

A mature blueberry (high) bush can produce upwards of 4 kilograms or about 8 pounds of blue berries. The current price per pound (if you pick them yourself) is $2.50 Canadian. Wild Canadian blueberries are about $8 a pound.

Just like crypto-currencies the value of this commodity (blueberries) is set based on certain perceptions which include:

• perceived value (of superiority, based on taste)
• perceived use
• and sheer number of plants known to exist.

Wild blueberry plants and their fruit are rarer. They taste stronger in flavour and it takes way more of them to do anything with because they’re so tiny.

To be clear, the berries in the photos are high bush berries that I picked at a berry farm.

When the plant forms berries, they start out green. As they ripen (in the sun) their colour changes from green to red, then to a dark blue.

In the photo (above) you can see each different colour of berry represented.

When the berries are blue, they are ready to pick. Picking season is usually a 4-6 week period.

I picked 17 pounds. $42 worth.

After I cleaned them and discarded any that had already started to ferment,

These berries contain natural sugar and can be used to make wine.
Bears get hammered.
People get hammered.

( The berries will also continue to ferment into vinegar so that’s why I removed any that looked shady. I’m going for sweet not sour, this time.)

I juice blended them whole, using a high powered blender.

Then into the freeze dryer as a thick liquid, they all went.

After 48 hours, I removed the blueberry purée from the freeze drying trays as a solid.

I could lifted it up like pieces of purple styrofoam.

Now to pulverize it.

For this, I used a Vitamix dry blending jar and powdered small batches at a time.

The finished blueberry powder milled into a fine powder.

So fine, I was able to store all 17 pounds of berries in two, one litre, sealer jars!

I am now going to smoke a bowl myself.

I don’t know whether to be happy about that or pissed right off.

Water is proving to be the most valuable commodity on the planet. Lolz!

To be continued...

~ Rebecca