Im not travis.
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Masking bitter taste in a NE is >50% of the work. We also dived into this and tried a lot of bitter blocking / taste masking substances.
We worked with a polysorbate surfactant based NE with a THC content of 10mg/ml.
We tried all products of âTastes Naturalâ, many different amino acids and their derivates (glycine, L-alanine, GABA), sodium gluconate, sodium acetate, cyclodextrines.
To summarize it briefly, all products except the commercial products helped with the bitterness. The amino acids added sweetness, that masked the bitter taste at first, but the unpleasant bitterness was still present after a while.
Cyclodextrins by far gave the best results.
We were able to completely block the bitterness, BUT if you increased the amount of cyclodextrins to the level of completely blocking bitterness, it destroyed the NE.
You may have a look into pickering emulsions. This could be the answer.
Since this was just a R&D for us, we only worked with spontaneous emulsification methods and therefore couldnât test it.
Hope this helps 
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Where are you guys getting food grade cyclodextrins?
So Iâve been following this thread, and I too am looking for a solution for the taste issues. I have only made one round of nano that should be at ~50mg/mL with a 3:1 SOR using the all in one nano from Cannasol Technologies. I used country time lemonade mix to make up a 350mL cup with 2 spoons of mix for flavoring. I then added 2mL of the nano that I made up and it was VERY bitter. It truly amazed me how bitter it was for just adding 2mL. I tried the 1,3-propanediol at 1mL,2mL,3mL to the cup but I couldnât tell whether it was placebo or if it tamed it by a hair. Either way it was still very bitter.
It seems that Cyclodextrins may offer the best solution for masking the bitterness. Are the cyclodextrins added after the initial course emulsion or after the sonication? @Labwork
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50mg per mL in 350 ml lemonade is still quite strong, especially nano encapsulated. I doubt you will have any noticeable success with cyclodextrin as an alternative.
Two things you can try:
-
try a 10mg/ml in 350ml lemonade and compare the resulting taste
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try the 50mg/ml in 350 ml of a different lemonade, one that has more sour and bitter flavors to compliment the nano.
Bonus) soda water (carbonation) and nano compliment each other well
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So Iâm not sure who is confused here! (Itâs probably me.) Are you suggesting to further dilute my nano before adding it to the drink? I only added ~100mg (2mL) to the drink. Or are you suggesting to run a higher SOR?
From my time working with nano, you are not necessarily tasting the surfactants and emulsifiers, you are tasting the cannabis oil. The emulsification allows your tongue to experience/taste overall more surface area of cannabis oil. If you encapsulated just surfactants and no cannabis oil, wouldnât taste all that bitter.
I suggest you try a lower cannabis oil to surfactant ratio
Or
Try the same SOR but decrease overall surfactant and cannabis oil.
The whole point of nano encapsulation is precise dosing because you can feel the 5mg for example in approximately 10 minutes.
Like @Zoraku is saying, the smaller those particles get sonicated, the more bitter the taste will be.
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I have a solution that is, well, very close to being nano, itâs probably more of a macroemulsion that is homogenous and stable that has no taste issues. In fact itâs slightly sweet. Now this could be a problem because itâs not being used as a beverage in my case but as a tincture, so itâs not designed to just drink straight away.
Having said that, you could certainly use it to dilute into a beverage. I can literally just drink it straight from the dropper with no distillate taste, bitter taste, or burning sensation after consumption. Itâs only 1mg/mL though as well. So there are a lot of factors at play but itâs certainly possible to find creative ways to remove the taste if youâre willing to sacrifice a bit on the concentration or being a completely translucent nanoemulsion.
I canât recall my particle size exactly but itâs on the mid to higher end of what would be considered ânanoâ.
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See, I donât really mind losing some of the bioavailability as long as it improves the flavor. We make noids in house so it is very cheap. I am currently looking for a method to produce a premium water soluble product that doesnât make people wretch when they taste it. I was hoping for 100mg per bottle of lemonade/juice/whatever. On a 12oz (350mL) unit, that would end up being 0.28mg/mL at final formulation. I may try a higher SOR and add cyclodextrin to see if that helps. I would definitely be interested in what methods you are using to get the taste down for your product.
I understand the particle size to bitterness tradeoff. My whole goal is a good tasting product that doesnât crash out in the fridge/on the shelf. I appreciate the fact that I could actually feel what 1mg of my product felt like just by doing 1mL sips of the drink. What I didnât like was the extreme bitter. I will try a higher SOR to make a more dilute product to see whether it improves the flavor. Are you familiar with working with Cyclodextrins? I am curious whether they need to be sonicated with the oil and surfactant or if they are added after sonication.
I have worked with cyclodextrin, gum Arabic, and other big biopolymers that you see if soft beverage formulation such as cola. They work well for emulsifying but they are such big compounds to sonicate down to a <200 nm particle size.
Depending on your SOP, you could go either direction for when to add it. Some chronology helps with the time factor but over all it can be done during, before, or after
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I appreciate the info. I will play around and see what works. I made up ~600mL last time. I will work on much smaller batch size so that the rapid iterations do not get too expensive with regards to surfactant. 100$/batch will add up quickly! Any idea as to what I should base my Cyclodextrin on? Should I add it as % of the oil or the surfactant or both? Any idea on starting %?
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You know, I would try 1:1 cyclo to oil, 1:1 cyclo to surfactant, and 1:1 cyclo to oil and surfactant. These ratios should be units of moles though and not mass, so itâs gonna take a little bit of gen Chem to calculate those molar ratios.
This side of science gets more into colloid chemistry, hence the bigger cyclic biopolymers such as cyclo dextrin.
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Whats your input material? Isolate? Distillate?
I use have only used cyclodextrins on making a small emulsion for when I make gummies. I personally use a combination of water, liquid coconut oil and glycerin as my liquid base for my tincture emulsion. I use a little citric acid for both low pH for preservation as well as to help add a bit tart which I think helps. But between the base containing glycerin, the overall tincture is generally on the sweeter/neutral testing side of things. It was specifically made so it would have just enough water to be homogenous in any other aqueous based beverage while passing our states requirements for water activity, so it wasnât under the scrutiny of the beverage category of products and instead is considered an edible or tincture product, which is nice.
I would also suggest for anyone who uses some surfactants to try to stick with the ultra high grades. From my experience you can definitely taste the difference between various grades of polysorbates and things of that nature.
@406_Chemabis have you noticed any specific FDA requirements with cyclodextrins in regards to how much you can put in a food product? When I was working with them, I was specifically using Beta-cyclodextrin as I seemed to have the best success with that creating an emulsion stable enough that it was easy to work with for a gummy recipe but I also recalled looking into allowable levels of cyclodextrins and they were supposed to be quite low but maybe that is inaccurate and I am recalling something different.
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You are freakin awesome! I really appreciate the starting points. I can calculate molar ratios, so I should be able to enumerate those different batches and report back on findings.
Are you sonicating your emulsion or are you just mixing well to produce a homogenous mixture?
I am using d8 distillate that we produce from CBD isolate. Our distillate is fairly neutral tasting as we produce fairly high dosed edibles and the taste is slightly bitter but nothing overwhelming. Even when we have made batches that ended up giving the tooth coat, it surprisingly wasnât that bitter. Mostly annoying to get off the teeth.
I do both actually. I have a high shear homogenizer that is submerged into the main tank that I am mixing my bulk formulation in. This bulk container has two nipples, one at the top and one at the bottom. After I get the high shear homogenizer running and it looks to be mixed well, any solids dissolved, etc⌠I have a peristaltic pump connected to the two nipples and to a sonicator with a flowcell around the horn. I will then, over the course of X amount of time, pump from the bottom of my mixing vessel, through the sonication flow cell, and back into the top nipple of the bulk container.
The time I keep the cycling going through the flow cell is batch dependent but Iâve found once I lock in the time, I get very consistent particle size results.
This allows me to leverage both techniques of high sheer homogenization with sonication to produce a very homogenous mixture, that also gets me at a particle size where I have 30min or less onset of the high after ingestion.
Edit: Here is a quick snap shot of my setup. I can run about 6kg of liquid formulation in this setup for now.
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I made nanoemulsions often a yearish back, made our own emulsifer etc etc. Long story short i had some guy from coke who found a way (i forget exactly so bare with me) but i think it was calcium, he found a way for it to be diluted vs suspsended in the drink. long story short made the drink taste/feel better(bare with me if it wasnt calcium he has a patent under coca cola if youâd like to delve deeper and find exactly) Anyways i thought i landed the deal of the lifetime supplying the dispensary/soda line he was starting in california. After giving him x amount of samples and slightly different variations he gave up on the project.
I could be wrong here and someone may be able to dilute/flavor it in a way to make it taste better but i honestly believe while we are using polysorbate, coconut oil and similar things as our emulsifier we will forever have a funky taste. The emulsifyer itself requires a 5:1( you can get away with less by manipulating the recipe a bit speeds up sonication to sub 150nm as well) but fact is if our emulsifier tastes like shit and it cant be removed and bitter blockers and many strong flavorings can not cover it so the only real solution in my opinion is EXTRUSION(far more effective than sonication) or a completely new emulsifer recipe that isnt a repeat/variation of everything on the market rn
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