Advanced Hash — Au-delà des bases

Making hashish is a two-step process. In step one, the glands are collected. All collection methods yield a consumable product, but it is not yet hashish. Hashish involves a second step: compressing the collected material into bricks or balls.

Making hashish is a two-step process. In step one, the glands are collected. All collection methods yield a consumable product, but it is not yet hashish. Hashish involves a second step: compressing the collected material into bricks or balls.

Pressing hash involves a combination of force and mild heat to condense the glands into a solid mass. The shape and size of hash varies depending on the pressing method. When hand pressed, hash is often ball-shaped. Flat-pressed hash may look like thin shale rock, with hardened shelf-like layers that chip along the creases. Mechanically pressed hash is usually a neat cake, like a bar of soap. 

Hashish ranges in color and pliability. The variety of marijuana used, manufacturing method, temperature, and the purity of the kief influence its color, which ranges from light yellow-tan to charcoal black, and its texture, which ranges from pliable taffy to hard and brittle.

The Machine Method

There are several key principles for producing the highest-quality, dabable water hash.

First, trichomes must be treated gently. Mechanical agitation in the ice-bath stage is needed, but it’s also the enemy. Paint mixers are too rough for award-winning bubble. Use a special machine such as the Bubbleator (from the Pollinator Company), the Bubble Now, or the gentle cycle on a washing machine modified by removing its filters.

Second, heat is an enemy. It can dry out buds and sap them of their flavors and strength. During drying, high temperatures vaporize the hash’s great flavors. Storing hash at a high temperature degrades its flavor and potency.

The result of paying attention to the fundamentals of the process is phenomenal. High-grade water hash is being rebranded as “solventless wax.” It gives consumers who want to dab a tasty, effective option that doesn’t involve explosive solvents.

Equipment

• 20-gallon (76-liter) Bubble Now, Bubble Magic Extraction Machine, Bubbleator, or top-loading washing machine
• Bubble Bags (microns—220 zippered to hold the grass in the washer; 160, the first filter, removes contaminants; 73 for low-grade; 25 for high-grade)
• Cannabis (1000 to 2500 grams, frozen, high-trichome leaf)Water (filtered for best results)
• Ice—enough to fill the machine 60% full, and refill it as it melts
• 76-liter bucket
• Alcohol or hydrogen peroxide
• Gloves
• Spoon
• Sieve
• Parchment paper
• Thick cardboard

Method

Consider the best location for setting up the machine. The best situation is a sterile lab setting. Hash is very sticky, and captures contaminants floating in the air, such as dander, dog hair, and dust. A room with filtered air is best. Outdoors, dry dusty days are a poor choice, but days after a rain when the air is clean are acceptable. The ambient temperature is best below 18°C with low humidity—between 15% and 50%. Hash is oxidized and darkens when it is manufactured or stored for long periods at high temperatures such as 27°C to 32°C.

Next, consider the source material. Dried, cured, sugar leaf works fine, but the best water hash is made from fresh-frozen material. Trichome-rich leaves are cut from ripe plants, bagged in Ziploc freezer bags, and frozen. Freezing locks in all the terpenes and cannabinoids present on the plant at the time of harvest, rather than losing significant amounts of both to drying, curing, and processing.

Thoroughly disinfect the machine, hose, bags, and buckets using hydrogen peroxide.

Line your 76-liter bucket with filter bags, starting with the finest 25-micron bag and ending with the biggest 160-micron bag.

Place the machine’s outflow hose into the filter bucket.

Place a base layer of ice in the machine.

Fit the open, 220-micron bag in the machine and add the material.

Fill the bag half-full with nine parts trim to one part ice. Alternate adding trim and ice. Zip up and tie the top of the bag, and pour more ice over the bag until the ice level reaches 20 cm below the rim of the machine.

Next, add water until it’s 10 cm below the surface of the ice. Wait 15 minutes for the trim to soak up the water, then add more ice and water, until the water is below the ice’s surface level, and the ice is 20 cm below the rim of the metal basin. Leave room for the mixture to agitate.

Turn the machine on gentle and monitor the agitation. Use wooden spoons to help the bag settle into the ice bath. Add more ice and water as the ice melts and settles. The color of the water should turn completely gold quickly. On a standard washing machine, use the gentle cycle. DO NOT let the device automatically drain. Run two gentle agitation cycles—then let it drain.

During this ice-cold agitation process, the brittle, frozen trichomes will have snapped off the leaf, traveled through the lining of the 220-micron “garbage” bag, and into the ice bath. The water turns green and the plant oils make the surface of the water frothy.

After agitation, the machine pumps the trichome-rich water out of the washer basin and into the filter bags, which are set up inside the 76-liter bucket.

The inside of the bucket will be foamy with cannabis oils. Jiggle the bucket gently to help water pass through the filters and use filtered ice water in a small pump sprayer to rinse the trichomes off the bag’s sides and down and through the 160-micron filter.

Start pulling the bags up one at a time.

First pull out the “garbage” bag. The material inside the bottom of the bag looks like green silt. Rinse down the edges, get everything collected in the bottom, and pull out the garbage.

Pull the second bag, then spray, jiggle, and repeat. The 73–160-micron stuff is a little green, but not as green as the first bag. Keep pulling, spraying, and jiggling until it’s all collected in the middle of the mesh. Trichomes smaller than 70 microns pass through the mesh but everything from 73 to 160 microns will be collected. (The sweet spot for trichomes is 70 to 160 microns, with tinier ones better for dabbing, and the bigger stuff more suitable for edibles.)

Pull up the bag to the top and spoon out the green-colored wet paste onto parchment paper set on a towel or thick cardboard, or something else that will safely wick moisture away.

The next bag catches the vast bulk of trichomes between 25 and 73 microns. The material in here is both green contaminant and gold trichomes. The goal is to push the green through the screen while holding on to the gold.

Pull the bag up; it’ll be heavy with water, its pores clogged with trichomes. Much like panning for gold, you want to lightly spin the emulsion while spraying down the sides. The mesh holds on to the glands while the fine green particles fall through with the water. Keep spraying, rotating, and pulling until the green is gone and it just looks like a bunch of golden sand.

Remove this light clay-like wet hash from the mesh and place it on a drying surface. Once the bottom of the mesh bag is scraped clean of any remaining hash, use a sieve and spoon to redistribute and aerate the drying hash on a wider surface area.

You will have two piles: the 25–73-micron pile, which is full melt suitable for smoking, and the 73–160-micron pile, which is great for baking.

Leave it to cure for 12 to 24 hours. It’s done when it is totally dry and crumbly between your gloved hands.

Drying

There’s a compromise in drying—trying to remove moisture from the hash without also vaporizing off the delicious yet volatile essential oils, or terpenes. Use a spoon to break up the wet clumps of hash and spread it evenly on parchment paper on a thick cardboard drying board.

Drying should be done in a room with a temperature between 4°C and 20°C. The reason for the low temperature is that some terpenes evaporate at 21°C.

Humidity is also a factor, with sub-30% humidity being optimal, but it can vary by strain.

Under magnification, the final product will look like sandy heaps of full, sticky, oily, trichome heads. Store in a cool, dark place, and don’t press until the material is completely dry.

Tips

• Strains: Different strains yield differently sized and shaped trichomes, and differing amounts of oils and terpenes. Hashing Blue Dream versus hashing Bubba Kush is like night and day at the micron level. Blue Dream trichomes are long and thin, and you can raise the temperature and humidity during drying. Bubba Kush, Sour Diesel, and OG Kush glands are short, stocky, and oily, and need to be processed at as cold a temperature as possible and dried at 4°C under minimal humidity to capture the resin’s odors.
• Cultivation Environment: Outdoor-grown cannabis tends to have smaller trichomes (120 microns) than indoor (160).
• Bag Size and Number: This can vary. You can use as little as two 25- and 160-micron bags, plus a 220-micron garbage bag for simplicity’s sake, or pull and spoon progressively narrower bands of glands and materials at 90, 73, and even 35 microns.
• Agitation: Purists sometimes use something as basic as a pole or paddle to gently hand-agitate the main bag in the bucket; the trade-off is in the yield. A 30-minute machine wash of 1,000 high-quality grams can yield as much as 112 grams of top-shelf hash. Less agitation equals purer hash but lower yield.

Preparing Kief or Water Hash for Hash Making

While kief and water hash methods of collection have different advantages, each yields dry, loose material that can be pressed to make hash. Before attempting to press kief or water hash, the material must be completely dry. To ensure that all moisture has been eliminated before pressing, dry the material one last time. Place the kief or water hash in a food dehydrator set on the lowest setting, a horticultultural heat mat (preset at 23°C), microwave the material on low, or place it in an open dish in a frost-free freezer. The vacuum conditions promote water evaporation, preventing mold from infecting and spoiling the hash. However, when the drying temperature is above 24°C some of the terpenes will evaporate, costing the hash a panoply of unique odors and their effects.

Collecting by Hand: Rubbing for Hash

There are many tales about collecting hash from fresh plants. Hand rubbing for hash has been a common gathering method for centuries in some parts of Asia, and it is still a primary way of collecting for hash in other parts of the world.

Because it requires no equipment, hand rubbing is a novel and spontaneous way to collect for hash, but this method also has several downsides.

First, the effort required to produce substantial yield is greater than with other methods. It can be messy and labor intensive. Second, hash collected this way contains debris from plants and hands, and contains more water, making it more likely to spoil. Hand rubbing requires access to mature plants rather than dried trim and leaf. Unlike the other methods, it is only capable of being made at certain times in the growing cycle and cannot be made from material that has been collected and stored. Removing the collected resin from the hands can be an involved task.

Having pointed out these shortcomings, hand rubbing can be used when the goal is a small amount of quality hash to be used shortly after it is collected. Especially when the leaves and trim aren’t going to be saved, hand rubbing is a good way to salvage some of the THC before or during harvest and manicuring.

The amount of material collected through hand rubbing is dependent on timing and good technique but is likely to be less than an 28 grams per hour. It is best to collect for hash when the plants’ stigmas have just started to turn amber as they reach full maturity, but before the leafy material has become brown or dry. The more dead or dry material, such as dead leaves on the plant, the more plant debris will be mixed in with the hash. If the plants are mature and have some dead or dried material, removing these leaves before collection increases the quality of the hash. Collection should not be done when the plants are wet from watering, as this increases the water content.

Removing the Resin

Scrape the collected material from your hands periodically. Another person can help, or you can do it yourself. Use a blunt-edged scraper such as a dull dining knife. If more resin is to be collected, leave a little on the hands. Another way to remove collected resin is to rub the hands back and forth against each other, as if trying to warm them up. The resin forms into a roll.

After the material is scraped or rubbed off of the hands it is kneaded and rolled between the hands until it forms a ball. It can be worked by rolling it between your two palms. Work it for several minutes to warm it and squeeze out residual moisture.

Hand-rolled hash can be pressed further or it can be considered complete after it has been worked into a ball. It is better to use this hash soon after it is made rather than storing it. Because it contains fresh resins, high vegetative content, and water from the live plant, hand-rubbed hash is more vulnerable to spoilage. If stored, the best place for it is in an opaque container that is not made of plastic or rubber, placed in the freezer. Parchment paper and silicone are excellent containers.

Using water to remove resin from the hands is counterproductive, since the goal is to remove as much water as possible. Instead of aiding in the removal of the resin, water promotes spoilage.

If hash shows signs of molding, such as an acrid or mossy smell, or grainy white lines appear within the hash, it is ruined and should not be used. These bacteria and molds are no good for you.

Pressing Hashish

Pressing transforms the material both chemically and physically. The glands are warmed and most break, releasing the sticky oils that contain the psychoactive cannabinoids, as well as the terpenes—the source of marijuana’s smell, taste, and personality.

Terpenes lend fragrance to the hash. Smells and flavors characteristic to hashish range from spicy or peppery to floral. Many terpenes are volatile at room temperature. When inhaled they contribute to the lung expansiveness (i.e., cough factor), as well as the taste. Aged kief is both milder in smell and flavor, and less cough inducing, because some of the terpenes, not the THC, have dissipated.

Releasing and warming cannabinoids exposes them to air. This has the beneficial effect of potentiating the THC through decarboxylation. Continued exposure to light, air, heat, and moisture leads to THC deterioration.

You can press hash manually or mechanically. Manual methods work well for smaller amounts. Mechanical methods use a press, which is fast, convenient, and efficient.

Decarboxylation Explained

In the growing plant THC is present in the form of THCA, also called THC acid. A carbonate molecule (COOH) is attached to it, which is also called a carboxyl group or acid. THC is only marginally psychoactive when a carboxyl group is attached.

Decarboxylation removes the carbonate molecule COOH by breaking its bond with the THC molecule, which occurs when material is subject to mild heat. This is sometimes called “potentiating” the THC because it becomes psychoactive.

Pressing by Hand
Pressing by hand is a method for transforming kief into hashish a few grams at a time. Fresh hand-rubbed resin is often pressed by hand, too.

To hand press, measure out a small mound of fresh kief that will fit comfortably in the hand. A few grams are usually the most. Work this material with one hand against the other until it begins to cohere into a solid piece. Then rub it between the palms, or between palm and thumb.

After 10 minutes or more of working the material it begins to change density. Dry, aged kief lacks some of its original stickiness and may take longer to stick together, but if it was stored properly it should cooperate, though it may require more kneading. When a piece of hashish has not been pressed properly, it crumbles easily at room temperature.

If the kief is particularly stubborn and won’t stick together to form a mass, mildly heat it. Wrap the material in food-grade cellophane, ensuring that it is completely sealed and all the air is squeezed out. Wrap this package in several layers of thoroughly wetted newspaper or cloth or paper towels. Turning frequently, warm in a skillet that is set on the lowest heat. It doesn’t need to be heated as long as with other methods because the only point of heating it is to get the material to stick together so it can be kneaded into a solid piece.

Another method is to wrap it the same way and press it for a few seconds on each side with an iron that is set on a very low heat setting.

Machine Presses
Making hash is a cinch with a mechanical press. Bookbinding presses, called nipping presses, can be used. Plans are available on the web for building a press using a hydraulic jack.

Hand-pumped hydraulic presses are a less expensive way to get a tight press. Another cost-effective method uses a vice grip, although it takes some adaptation. For small amounts, a pollen press can be used in conjunction with a handheld kief-collecting grinder. Kief is added to this small metal tube. The tension pin is placed in, and the pollen press is screwed shut. The next day, the kief has been pressed into a neat hash block. Many companies have similar presses now, including one made of stainless steel with a low-torque T-handle.