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If you enjoy growing cannabis at home, you might be curious about other ways you can make use of your harvest.
Hash is a product that you need to consider making. If you have never understood how to make hashish from trimmings – or its many benefits – you might be confused about this process.
However, it’s quite simple to understand how to make hash. Hash, or hashish, is the resulting product when trichomes separate from the cannabis plant. Trichomes can be found all over the plant, which is why so many growers want to know how to make hash at home.
Making hash is not difficult, but it does require some basic know-how. In this article, we will teach you how to make hash in a variety of different ways.
Why Do You Need to Know How to Make Hash?
Making hash from kief allows you to make the most out of your plant. While the trim is usually discarded from the plant, the process of making hash allows you to recycle parts of the plant that would ordinarily be wasted.
Discarded trichomes can be used to make edibles or they can be pressed or heat-treated to make hash. The process of making hash results in a product that offers a unique high, texture, and aroma.
Whether you choose to make hash in the lab or you want to know how to make hash out of kief in your own kitchen, it’s a great way to extend your product. There are old school techniques as well as more modern methods you can use, but regardless of which one you choose, the process is simple. When making hash, you will engage in the following steps – agitate to remove the trichomes, gather your resin, sort it by size, dry the resin, smoke it, and savor.
That’s all there is to it!
How is Hash Made?
Water and Ice
One of the most modern methods of how to make hash, the water and ice method is used to mechanically separate the trichomes from the rest of the plant. Then, filters are used to concentrate glands into loose hash. You can also choose to further refine the hash using machinery, which will lend you better control of both humidity and temperature.
Pressing
Pressing is another common method of making hash. Pressing involves shaping hash into slabs, cakes, or even balls. These can be consumed immediately, but the rest of the process will make it possible to obtain a better product.
If you want to know how to make hashish from weed, you need to understand how the pressing process works. First, you must combine mild heat and excessive force to condense the trichomes into a mass. You can do this via hand pressing, flat pressing, or mechanically pressing. All will produce the same final outcome, but it will change the shape and texture of your final hashish.
Making Hash: What Does It Look Like?
If you have any interest in learning how to make marijuana hashish, it’s probably because you understand the exceptional high that it produces. The high that is produced by high is more complex than that of typical cannabis.
While this factor remains the same among all kinds of hashish, no matter how it is produced, there are other factors that can influence the color and the pliability of your hashish. For example, the temperature, method of manufacturing, strain of cannabis, and kief purity can all play a role in the color of your hash. It can be anywhere from a charcoal black to a pale yellow in color. Its texture can be soft and rubbery or brittle and hard.
The Best Strains of Cannabis For Making Hash
You can use just about any kind of cannabis to make your own hash, but there are definitely some that will work better than others.
Look for a strain that is high in THC and puts out a great deal of resin. You can grow cannabis plants for hash either indoors or outdoors, but you will want to choose plants that are known for producing buds offering euphoric, buzzing highs.
Some of the best strains to consider include Sour Diesel, Royal Gorilla, and ICE, just to name a few.
How Do You Make Hash? Pressing Kief or Water Hash
To press kief or water hash, you must allow the material to dry completely. Use a food dehydrator at the lowest setting or microwave it on low. You can even put it in a defrosted freezer to dry.
Drying your water hash is important because it will prevent mold from spoiling your final product. You do need to keep your hash cool while it is drying, though, because temperatures that are too warm will cause you to lose some of your terpenes.
When you press hash, you change the matter on both a physical and chemical level. The glands will crack open and be warmed, releasing sticky oils that are essential to produce the final smell, flavor, and psychological effects of the hash.
Hash can be pressed mechanically or manually. While manual methods of pressing work well for small amounts, mechanical methods can be more economical and efficient.
How to Make Hash at Home: 5 Methods
Shoe Hash Method
The shoe press method of making hash is one of the easiest as it allows you to multitask. To do this, you will wrap a few grams of hash inside some cellophane or parchment paper. Make sure it is wrapped securely (ideally a few times) to prevent hash from escaping. You should poke a small hole in the package, though, to let air out.
Put the package inside your shoe. It’s best to wear boots while you are doing this, as the hard soles will process the kief more quickly. As you walk about, the weight within your shoe (along with your own body heat) will push the kief into a slab. This should take no longer than an hour but you can keep it in there longer if you prefer.
Hash Press by Hand Method
You can also press your hashish by hand. This only allows you to process a few grams at a time, and while it’s convenient, requiring no additional equipment, it is time-consuming.
Use kief that is freshly sieved and of high-quality. The more vegetation your kief contains, the harder it will be to mold it into hash. Begin by measuring out a small portion of kief – an amount that will ideally fit comfortably into your hand (a few grams, in most cases).
Work your fingers to press the material against itself, allowing it to stick together in a solid piece. Rub it between your palms or even between your thumb and your palm. Work it for about ten minutes, at which point you will notice that it is changing in density and texture.
You may find that your kief is having a hard time sticking to itself to form a mass. If that’s the case, heating it up ever so slightly can help. Just wrap it in food-grade cellophane, wrapping several times before encasing it in a piece of wet newspaper. Put the package in a skillet, warming it at the lowest level of heat and turning it regularly.
Hot Water Bottle Method
You can use a hot water bottle to make hashish – knowing how to make kief hash in this manner is almost identical to doing it by hand.
The more heat that you apply to the trichome heads, the better. The goal here is to melt off the waxy cuticle. Therefore, you will want to use resin that is dry and high quality.
To do this, place your resin on some parchment paper. Fold it in half. Bring a pot of water to a boil, then fill a wine bottle (or any other kind of glass bottle) with the hot water. Let it cool for a few minutes. Then, put the hot bottle on the paper and let it sit for thirty seconds.
You should be able to see through the bottle to the warming resin. It should be darkening. If the color changes almost immediately, you can assume that the resin will press quickly. If it has hardly changed after thirty seconds, you may have to work it more by rolling the bottle over the resin.
Work the bottle repeatedly over the bottle, using just the pressure of your hand to press down on the resin. Flip your paper over and repeat on the opposite side. At this point, the resin should look like a patty with a sticky sheen. Repeat the process twice. If you want to shape your hash into a ball, you can do that, too. The goal here is to remove all lines, wrinkles, and lumps.
Machine Press Hash Method
If you have a bit of a higher budget when it comes to making hash, you can learn how to make hash with a mechanical press, too. For this, you can use a bookbinding or nipping press. You can also build your own with a hydraulic jack, vice grip, or hand-pumped hydraulic press.
Dry Ice Hash
When you extract resin using the dry ice method, you will have some of the purest hash around. However, it does require some equipment. You will need dry ice, gloves, bubble bags, and a bucket.
Put your cannabis trimmings in the bucket with the dry ice. Shake it and stir for a few minutes. This will allow the resin glands to separate from the plant material, using the temperature to assist it. It will prevent the hash from becoming too moist, too.
Then, turn the bucket upside down into a bubble bag. Once all the hash and dry ice inside the bag, you should shake it. The surface will fill with amber-colored dust. Scrape it together. This is your resin! You can then press it using one of the methods we’ve already described.
How to Make Hashish Last in Storage
Don’t let all the time you spent learning how to make hash from kief go to waste! Once your shisha is finished, you need to store it. When kept properly, it can last for months or even years with very little degradation to its quality.
The best place to store hashish is in a frost-free freezer, ideally inside a container made out of glass, metal, or silicone. You should not store hashish in a plastic or rubber container because the terpenes can interact poorly with these materials, degrading the hashish.
How to Select the Best Method of Making Hash
As you have likely gathered by now, there are hundreds of ways of learning how to make hashish. Many of these are easy to do at home with just a little bit of know-how and materials.
Techniques will vary significantly among growers, but all involve separating trichomes (kief) from the plant matter and pressing it into a solid patty. To decide which method will work best for you, think about what materials you already have at home. This will help you save money and also choose the most efficient method of making hash.
No matter how you choose to make your own hash, know that there are plenty of ways to upgrade your cannabis-producing experience.
