There is a big difference between emulsifying and nano-emulsions…… if you are aiming for the later, you are gonna need another surfactant such as Vitamin E. Cyclodextrin is a large cyclic biopolymer so you will have a tough time getting it to that nano size (< or = 200nm). Sounds like you are utilizing the “Louche effect” using EtOH.
The big difference between a general emulsion and a nano emulsion is the emulsion will taste better but will operate as a simple infused beverage and tend to not be shelf stable. The nano will taste like shit but hit quick, also tends to have better shelf life depending on the formulation.
I suggest a cost benefit analysis on what you and or your organization are trying to achieve.
Reducing the bitterness is definetly the biggest challenge with nano emulsions. You need to add substances, that modulate the bitter receptors. So far I did not find a single substance that fully eliminates the bitterness.
haven’t seen it used commercially or played with it myself, but I think AMP would be fun to explore as it blocks the neurological perception of bitter rather than at the receptor level like every other one I’ve utilized.
Try HP-ß-CD it will work much better than ß-CD
Start with an excess of HPßCD and find the smallest amount possible. Mixing both in ethanol takes some time. A little bit of heat helps, too.
You can add phosphatidylcholine, which will help. But without sonication you are far away from a nanoemulsion and phosphatidylcholine itself will increase bitterness
Edit: avoid RM-ß-CD (randomly methylated) they are cytotoxic
Absolutely, and yes @MedicineManHempCo sonicating is good. Taste a lot better than the impact of high pressure homogenization. Still haven’t figured out why but did the pepsi challenge on that one and found myself
A lot of trying to mask or alter the flavor/texture has to do with what kind of product you are trying to make…. A cola, sour fruit-ade, Chocolate, coffee, etc.
Been down the flavor modifier rabbit hole and your best bet is trial and error like any good scientist
Have you read up on how cyclodextrin can cause hearing problems?
" All patients in the trial eventually experienced permanent changes in hearing (Ory et al., 2017). Although hearing loss is a manifestation of NPC disease (Pikus, 1991; King et al., 2014), the hearing loss observed in this trial was time-locked to HPβCD exposure."
Excellent reference here by @Kingofthekush420
In particular @Labwork I would immediately scrap all work with the HP-b-CD:
“ Try HP-ß-CD it will work much better than ß-CD”
You do not want to be working with or dosing people or suggesting compounds neurotoxic to outer hair cell.
From the quoted article in reference to outer hair cells (OHCs) of the ear sensory apparatus:
“” it remains unclear why OHCs are preferentially susceptible to HPβCD. It is possible that HPβCD acts upon several targets—…Along with studies linking pharmacokinetics to injury, we need greater mechanistic insight into the means of HPβCD uptake into the cochlea, the molecular changes that result from HPβCD exposure in the cochlea, and the cell-death pathways that are involved in OHC loss.””
Thanks for pointing out. I definetly was not aware of that. Due to the fact that you have to use a ridiculous high amount of CD’s to form a water soluble inclusion complex, we stopped working with CD’s pretty soon. If you want to offer a 100mg cannabinoid portion to the customer but you are close to the edge of offering diarrhea medicine because of those high amounts of CD’s, this never was an appropiate path for water soluble cannabinoids for us. And they aren’t cheap, too.
Btw, this is what I read when working with CD’s (note that this paper is from 2013):
"Safety Orally administered cyclodextrins at high doses (> 1000 mg/kg/day) may cause reversible diarrhea and cecal enlargement in animals. These effects represent physiologically adaptive responses to a large load of poorly digestible carbohydrates and other osmotically active nutrients, of which the relevance to humans is minimal [27]. All parent cyclodextrins are accepted as food additives and “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). As dietary supplement the total daily oral dose of α-CD may reach 6000 mg/day, for β-CD 500 mg/day and for γ-CD 10 000 mg/day, and for HP-β-CD as oral pharmaceutical 8000 mg/day [22]. Preclinically, oral NOELs after a year of HP-β-CD are 500 mg/kg/day for rats and 1000 mg/kg/day for dogs [12]. Oral NOAELs of SBE-β-CD in rats and dogs after 3 months are both 3600 mg/kg/day [27]. RM-β-CD has no oral application. "
Has anyone done any experimenting with using the vacuum blender to make emulsions? Is it possible to get it down around the nano size without using a surfactant and is it stable or does it become unstable when mixing oxygen back in?
Pashley, R.M. 2003. Effect of degassing on the formation and stability of surfactant-free emulsions and fine teflon dispersions, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol. 107, pp. 1714 - 1720.
Abstract:
The results reported here demonstrate that the formation of surfactant-free, oil-in-water emulsions is significantly enhanced by the almost complete removal of dissolved gases. However, in an apparent contradiction, the reintroduction of dissolved gases does not destabilize already formed emulsions. Removal of dissolved gases enables the formation of much more turbid and stable hydrocarbon oil in water emulsions, which can be further studied without the effects of various additives, often needed as stabilizers. The observations reported here suggest that the dispersion of oil droplets in water is opposed by an attractive, hydrophobic force, which is dependent on the presence of dissolved gas.However, once formed, the stability of the emulsions appeared to be unaffected by any attractive hydrophobic force, in either gassed or degassed conditions. Degassing was also found to enhance the dispersion of fine Teflon particles in water
There are examples of O/W emulsions that are formed without the use of any surfactants. I’ve observed it as a bi product of SC-CO2 extracted terpenes… the fraction comes out with a layer of terpenes as well as a layer of hydrosol. The hydrosol is very aromatic just like the terpenes, but oxidizes quite quickly. It also is very transparent and what we know is it only takes a small amount (ppm, sometimes ppb) of various aromatic and flavor compounds for the smell and taste receptors to detect.
It would appear that the size of volatile organic compounds makes it easier for these non-surfactant O/W emulsions to occur in comparison to the larger structure of a cannabinoid molecule.
Very curious how the addition of lecithin and other cheap and readily available emulsifiers would aid in the suspension. Looks like I gotta buy a vacuum blender!
My solution was to just change various ratio’s of the liquid portions of my emulsion, with water being kept just high enough that the product could be homogenized when added to downstream products. So it was more of a water soluble emulsified tincture that would mix homogenously with water or any beverage of the consumers choice.
The base liquid product itself actually tasted slightly sweet to me, very little bitter taste present and I would actually just consume it straight from the dropper since I thought the taste was fairly pleasant.
So it’s definitely doable, to create something with a quicker on-set time that doesn’t separate in water based formulations. The base liquid formulation I created had a water activity level below 0.85, which took some time to develop properly but I didn’t need any special bitter blockers or anything like that.
Yes, the droplet size of the encapsulates are much too big in terms of stability. Although this is considered an emulsion, the opaque milkiness is an indicator of product inferiority. You will need a sonicating probe or high pressure homogenizer in order to make something stable. But if you are satisfied with the process and have the product labeled “shake well before use”, that works too.
Aha! So this is where the vacuum blending stuff originated, @cyclopath ? Seems like good a place as any for me to put the brain splooge your messages with @Akoyeh induced me to e…lucidate!
And I replied with this:
I’ve done this naturally by preheating everything, sealing it, and allowing the vacuum to form… I used one of those mason jar adapters for the blender.
To me, it stands to reason this works by the same principle as heating and mixing at the same time, however… This gets the water near or at its boiling point, but by pressure instead of heat. As you all know, steam has far different properties than the liquid from which it arises; namely, rapid and voluminous expansion of volume, dramatically lowering density, improving its permeability and permittivity (thereby strengthening its polarity, which even makes the plasma state possible, among other things like increasing its attraction to itself—it wants to condense like 2 magnets held just apart by an external energy—and its ability to induce dipoles and dipole moments in other molecules, which is possibly the most underestimated of the 4 Van der Waals forces…I agree that the lack of gases around the oil droplets (and the water molecules) will improve the oil|water interface… I’m just trying to explain it to myself. Air is insulating, so the electrical interactions are improved by its absence.
