Find Out How To Make Hash From Cannabis Plants At Home

WHAT IS HASH?

From the Arabic word for “grass”, hash or hashish is a concentrated form of cannabis that has been around for a long time. Many centuries ago, the Indians already knew how to extract the best parts from the cannabis plant by rubbing it with their hands until they were coated with sticky resin. The resin was then rolled into what’s known as charas—little balls of hash.

Hash is made from the most potent parts of the plant, consisting predominantly of trichomes, which carry the glands that produce the sticky resin found on buds. Hash contains high amounts of cannabinoids like THC, as well as aromatic terpenes. Hash-making is all about separating the trichomes from the rest of the plant material. What’s also great about hash is that it can be made from just about all parts of the plant, with the exception of the stems and seeds.

KIEF

Trichomes—the sticky, microscopic, and crystalline parts of the marijuana plant that contain most of the terpenes and cannabinoids are sometimes also simply called kief. Kief can be extracted from most parts of the plant, including the sugar leaves. This is why many growers save their trim for hash-making or edibles.

Extracting kief from buds is easy and can be done with a three-chamber herb grinder that collects the kief crystals in the bottom. But it is the more elaborate methods of hash-making that give hash its distinctive aroma, effect, and consistency. Here are some of the methods you can use to isolate the trichomes and turn them into some fine hash.

THE VARIOUS WAYS TO MAKE HASH FROM CANNABIS

TURNING KIEF INTO HASH

Collecting kief with a decent 3-part grinder is just one simple way you can separate and collect the good stuff from your plant material. Obviously, just collecting the shiny kief crystals on the bottom of your grinder isn’t all there is to it. When you have amounted a good amount kief, you want to make it into hash. You can do this with a pollen press.

The pollen press (kief press) is a simple mechanical device that you load up with the collected trichomes. Similar to using a vice, you turn a knob and press your kief as tightly as you can into a solid mass of hash. Next, open the other side of the press. Turn the knob again and a densely-packed cylinder of compressed hash pops out. To smoke your hash, just crumble some in a joint or put it in your bowl.

DRY SIFT HASH (FLAT SCREENING)

Dry sifting your trim to separate the trichomes is another relatively simple method you can use. For dry sifting (also known as flat screening), you will need a silkscreen or a fine metal mesh, usually made from copper or steel. The finer the perforation of the mesh, the purer your hash will be.

Before you start dry-sifting, put your plant material in the freezer. Freezing your trim for several hours will help separate the trichomes.

Place a clean, flat surface, such as sheet of paper underneath the screen and rub your trim against the screen. The trichomes will fall on the paper below. When dry sifting, a scale can be quite handy. Sift your material until you have collected at least 10% of the weight of your plant material in trichomes.

HAND-ROLLING

As we mentioned already, hand-rolling cannabis is a very old method of turning cannabis into hashish. It is often done right at harvest time where growers handle large amounts of trim and buds. Most folks who have harvested a cannabis plant are familiar with the principle behind hand-rolling. The trichomes will stick to your hands, eventually forming a thick and dark layer of resin. You collect the sticky goodness when you rub your hands together and the resin forms into small hash balls.

The hand-rolling method can produce hashish of good quality, but it is usually tedious and time-consuming. Likewise, hand-rolling makes the most sense when handling large quantities of material since the finished hash balls can be rather small.

CHARAS

Turning cannabis into charas, an old-school hash-making method from India, is very similar to hand-rolling. The difference here is that charas is often made from fresh and uncured plant material. Some cultivators use cuttings from their plants to make them, usually when their plants are still a few weeks away from harvest. Otherwise, the process is the same as hand-rolling. You rub the buds or your trim between your hands until the resin forms a thick coat and can then be moulded into small spheres of hash.

MAKE HASH WITH A BLENDER

You can also collect trichomes to make hash with a kitchen blender. For this method, you will also require a silkscreen, just as you would with dry sifting. Put your trim into the blender and add water until the material is just covered. Now, add ice to help separate the trichomes, and blend your mix for about a minute.

After blending your plant-water-ice mix, drain it over the silkscreen into a glass jar. Have the jar sit for about 30 minutes until the trichomes settle on the bottom. Now, empty two thirds of the water in the jar, but try not to lose any of the trichomes. For the next round, take some more ice water and refill the jar again. Wait another five minutes until the trichomes settle, and once again drain two thirds of the water that’s on top. Repeat this 4–5 times.

When you’re finished, empty out as much water as you can without losing any of the trichomes at the bottom. Now, drain the remaining solution through a coffee filter. Squeeze the filter until all that’s left is pure trichome goodness. You can now take out the kief from the filter and let it dry. One advantage of this method is that you won’t have to further press your hash when it is dry, you can enjoy it like this in your joint or bowl.

HOW TO MAKE DRY ICE HASH (BUBBLE HASH)

Making hashish using dry ice (also known as bubble hash) is one of the purest hash-making methods because it will give you nothing but pure resin at the end.

You will need a bucket, dry ice, bubble bags (which are bags that have fine mesh on the bottom), and safety gloves.

You can get various types of bubble bags. Those with very fine meshes (73μm) produce the purest results. Larger mesh bubble bags (160μm) can yield you more, but at the cost of purity. When using bubble bags, think about what’s important to you, quantity or quality, so you can get the results you want.

To get started with making bubble hash, fill the bucket with your trim and dry ice. Shake and stir the bucket for a few minutes. The chilled temperature of the dry ice together with the stirring and shaking will loosen the trichomes.

Now, take the bubble bag and wrap it on top of the bucket that holds your cannabis and dry ice mix. Over a clean surface, invert the bucket with the bag on top and let everything from the bucket go into the bag. Careful, don’t let the bag slip! Get a good grip on the bag and shake it. After shaking for a few minutes, you will see amber-coloured trichomes collecting on the surface below. With a clean kitchen scraper or a credit card, scrape together what you’ve collected. As a final step, put the resin into a pollen press (as described above) and press all this goodness into hash of the finest quality.

There are some refined methods of making bubble hash. Some growers use two buckets and a set of bubble bags with different-sized holes that they stack together, from smallest to largest, sort-of like a Russian doll, with the bag with the biggest holes (200μm) on top. This way, you can collect various grades of hash.

You can also use an electric whisk to mix your plant material with the dry ice in the bucket. A longer mixing time means you will get a larger quantity of hash, but it will be less pure. A mixing time of 45mins is recommended.

There are numerous ways you can make hash, from simple to quite elaborate. However, once you understand how it works and you have some experience under your belt, you will find your own way that provides the best results!