We had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Whitener, the executive director of Magical Butter. Magical Butter is the first company to create a countertop botanical extraction machine that among many other uses can create some pretty badass homemade cannabis butter, oils, Tinctures, and more. We asked him some questions about the company, the machines, making great edibles, and more.
Can you tell us How you got started and what your mission is?
Absolutely. Magical Butter has a complete product line to make sure people are successful in the kitchen. It’s started in 2012 with the development of our botanical extractor. Our inventor and CEO Garyn Angel had a friend that was suffering from Crohn’s disease. They sort of ran out of options and began exploring alternative therapy by using cannabis, mainly via cooking it, as smoking really wasn’t a practical option. They began experimenting in the kitchen with old fashion methods, you know cooking it on the stove top, etc. and realized that it was actually a pretty challenging experience.
After botching a few batches Garyn thought, ‘well I’m a pretty smart guy if I’m having trouble cooking with this (cannabis Butter) I wonder how many other people are having similar struggles’, so that was the beginning magic idea for the machine.
Our mission is to put patients first and help people be successful and converting herbs into topical lotions edible oils and butter.
Can you explain to us how one of your machines works, for someone that’s never tried it?
Absolutely, so if you’ve never seen a magical butter machine, you can imagine a stainless steel countertop appliance that has combined a slow cooker with a high-powered immersion blender. So it’s all self-contained. You plug it in and just simply push a few buttons. Once you have your herbs and either butter, cooking oil or alcohol inside the device you select your temperature and time and the machine is going to heat up, mix, grind, extract and leave you with the chopped up plant matter and a beautifully infused oil. When it’s all finished the machine actually shuts itself off and you’ll need to pull through the filter bag that we provide you with. The filter is a micron bag and that’s going to capture all your chopped-up matter and sediment.
We take away that the inconsistency, the machine is going to replicate the same process each time and deliver with a consistent product
Why is it important for you as a company to be able to give people the option to create their own products as opposed to going to buy them at the store?
Power to the people! I think it’s important for people to have options. For some people buying edibles from the store is much more practical and easier for them and they don’t have any desire to make their own. But unfortunately, for a lot of patients that’s not an option and not only it’s not an option because of where they live geographically but it may not be an option based on their income or financial situation.
Typically, it seems that when you are purchasing edibles at stores or purchasing pre-made tinctures or oils you definitely pay a premium. So, I think the economics behind it is number one of why people would eventually be making their own, especially if they’re able to grow their own. If you’re growing your own herbs you’re definitely going to be more likely to want to create your own oils and things.
Another big factor is that it is a customizable experience. When you’re buying edibles from a dispensary there is not always full transparency on the quality of the herbs that were used or the specific strain. Sometimes that’s a big factor in someone’s illness, they may need a specific strain or specific strength and a lot of the laws are restricting the amount of milligrams that can be in a standard dose. I think that’s a good thing overall but for some patients, they require a much stronger dose to beat their pain or their ailment.
How have you seen the industry evolved as legal cannabis continues to spread to new States and regions?
Definitely we are seeing more regulation. I think on the West Coast you guys are the leaders, so the East Coast is learning from things that are happening in the west and using that as a model. You’ve got markets like Canada that have gone full legal for the whole nation but have made edibles illegal for the year.
So depending on where you’re located and what the laws are it kind of will determine whether or not you are able to have edibles as an option or are forced to make your own. For a lot of patients, smoking and vaporizing are awesome and are great options, but edible oils and tinctures ultimately are providing the ultimate wellness.
Do you think that there’s been a decline or increase in sales with legalization or have you not really noticed anything?
We do see a rise in sales, that’s a metric that we are able to measure, we definitely experience a rise in sales when a state goes legal. I think there’s a few factors there, for example, once a state has made cannabis legal, consumers feel more open to ordering cannabis-based products on the Internet. It opens up access and freedoms to doing things that you normally wouldn’t have access to, some people are afraid of breaking the laws. So definitely I think we see a rise as legal markets open up.
Could you share with us some of your favorite things to make using the machine?
One thing I love making that’s a pretty standard recipe is infused butter. It’s a great option just for standard cooking in the kitchen when you’re salting your vegetables, are preparing your recipes you can you can easily slip a little bit of medicated butter in there and away you go. Another recipe that I really enjoy making and everyone that I share it with really love it is gummy bears.
I think they’ve they’re definitely a popular edible and we make it pretty easy with magical butter. You would start first by creating an alcohol-based tincture directly in our machine and once you have your infused tincture, you would reduce that down to a concentrated oil and that oil is going to be your activated ingredient that you mix with some gelatin, juice, a little bit of flavor extract, and once you’ve got all of that mixed together you melt it, and pour into silicone candy molds in different shapes and sizes.
You have a bunch of recipes available to anyone on your website, correct?
Yeah, we just reached over 500 recipes on the website. They are available to be printed and shared, there are also videos for the majority of them so you can you can follow along with the video directly on YouTube to watch a chef on camera. When you’re cooking with precious ingredients, you want to just make sure that you’re giving people as much information as possible.
What would you say is one of the most difficult parts of running a business in the cannabis industry?
I would like to say that it’s all it’s all fun and pleasure, and for the most part, it is. Working in the cannabis industry is amazing, the people we get to interact with are truly special. There are definitely difficulties and challenges to running any business and specifically operating in the cannabis industry. There are places that are illegal, places that are legal and so you sort of have to walk a fine line. We don’t actually touch the plant, so we’re a unique ancillary business.
We don’t necessarily want to be pigeonholed into being just a cannabis brand. However, the majority of the people we market to are cannabis consumers. As a cannabis brand, you can’t advertise on social media, you can’t advertise on Google, can’t use certain SEO words and things like that. So when we are marketing on social media we have to be very choosy with what we put out there and the images, you can’t really show images of cannabis and things without risking getting in trouble in the long run.
Before we close is there anything that you would like to share with our wonderful cannabis community?
You know I’d like to share a nice edible with everyone and teach the world to smile and be happy. I think it’s important that we all do our best to help one another. I know there’s so much more that we can we can learn and know and teach. Learning through experience and sharing with one another is a really big deal.
I hope to see all the Nations of the world come together and embrace cannabis as more than an option for medicine but also so many other benefits like textiles and dietary supplements. There are so many benefits of cannabis. So, just keep on doing the righteous thing out there all those people who are listening at home and thanks for taking the time and make sure you check us out at magicalbutter.co
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