Hashish, it means “grass” in Arabic. It’s known as hash to most everyone and it is a concentrated form of cannabis that have been around for a very long time. People in India are documented to have been making hash for hundreds of years. They used to rub the cannabis in their hands until the friction and the heat coated their hands with resin. The resin for those who don’t know is the sticky substance on cannabis flower. Then they would take that resin and roll them into little balls called “charas” which is simply cannabis oil rolled into a solid form. Charas is different from “Bhang” which is another centuries old Indian concoction and is what you get when you grind up cannabis leaves and buds and mix it with milk. Both of these substances have used for medicinal purposes in India for centuries.
Today, hash isn’t as popular as it was in the seventies and eighties. In fact there was a movie made in 1978 about Billy Hayes who was smuggling hash into the United States from Turkey in 1970. He did it one too many times and got caught. He ended up spending several horrible years in a Turkish prison. Midnight Express was nominated for an Oscar and it really brought a lot of attention to hash. Billy eventually escaped from prison in 1975 crossing the border to Greece. Billy Hayes has written a few books about his experiences and is traveling around with a live stage show called Riding the Midnight Express.
Concentrates these days usually come in vape pens or dabs are made by mixing cannabis with solvents like butane, hexane and CO2. Some people use ethanol and others squeeze the cannabis on a large press and the oil comes dripping out. But lots of old stoners don’t really like the solvent stuff and prefer old school non-solvent hash. The two ways to make hash are ice water extraction known as bubble hash and manually separating trichomes with the dry sift. Today we’re going to talk about How to make Bubble Hash.
How To Make Bubble Hash
You are going to need a few items. You’ll need ice, water and silkscreen filters to separate the trichomes. Fresh frozen raw cannabis tends to make a higher quality hash, so if you get your hands on it, do it. If you grow your own, you can make fresh frozen cannabis by freezing it as soon as you cut it down. These days fresh frozen cannabis is used to make high potency live rosin. Live rosin is very popular because it’s one of the highest quality non-solvent extracts you can buy.
You will also need a two 5-gallon buckets (or larger). You’ll also need a large spoon to stir the water around. The larger your container, the larger your spoon needs to be. Some people like to use a wooden paint mixer and others use a power drill with an extension and mixer tip. Whatever you use, it needs to be sturdy enough to mx the ice, water and cannabis. And finally you’ll need a bubble bag set to fit in your bucket – This bag is a durable nylon bag with a screen on the bottom that acts as a micron filter which enables you to extract valuable plant resins and separate herbal extract into different grades.
Step 1: Get Your Bucket Ready
In order to get your bucket ready you take your bubble bag and line the inside on the bucket. Bubble bags come in different sizes based on the micron size of the particles allowed to flow through them. So you put the smallest micron size in first and then other bags over that one, and continue until you have the the largest micron sized bags on top.
Next you’ll start to fill the bags that are inside the bucket with water, ice and cannabis materials. The more cannabis you use, the more hash you will get, but the return is small compared to all the flower you use. I’d recommend at least an ounce of flower. Just so you know how many grams are in an ounce, it’s 28.395. Some people say to do it in layers to help it mix more easily. Keep filling with fresh frozen material (or dry cannabis) and ice until you get close to the top. Don’t over flow it, so you don’t end up wasting a bunch of weed. Fill it just enough so you can still stir it without overflowing.
Step 2: Star Stirring
Once your bucket is filled, take your spoon or your power drill and start stirring the mixture slowly, again making sure it doesn’t overflow. Stir the mixture for about 15 to 20 minutes. As the ice starts to melt, it will become easier and easier to stir but try to keep it a consistent stir. Your weed needs to be thoroughly mixed so it is completely wet. Then let it sit for about 30 minutes.
Step 3: Strain the Water
Next you need to strain the water until only plant material and ice are left. Start pouring it out making sure none of the ice or cannabis material falls out. The smaller resin glands will fall though the bags until it gets to the last one.
Now you need to remove the bags one a at time. Take out the first bag which will be filled with lots of marijuana plant material that did not fall through the screen and set it aside. Remember to let the water drain out of the bag first.
Then you take out the next bag letting the water drain out and carefully drape it over the other dry 5-gallon bucket, pulling the edges of the nylon bag to the bottom of the bucket and the screen is at the top of the bucket. Make sure to leave about 6 – 8 inches of slack so the final product doesn’t fall off the screen. You can use a spoon to scrape the THC from the screen. It will be a little darker than the rest and a little less potent than what you find in the other bags. Drop the gooey substance on a cotton muslin cloth or a separate muslin screen, and move on the the next bag. Now you can’t put it in your weed pipe quite yet, just move onto the next step.
Take the next bag out and repeat. Drape it over the empty bucket leaving abut 8 inches of slack and take your spoon and scrape that screen. This will be a little lighter in color and have much less plant material. Then repeat until you get to the final screen using a spoon to scrape the screen. This will be even lighter than the previous bag and also more potent.
Then you need to remove the rest of the water from the bubble hash by simply folding over the muslin cloth and pressing it gently with your palms until the water is soaked up by the cloth. And now you have you bubble hash. The darker it is the less potent it is or you can mix it together.
Simply roll your hash into a ball or form it into a hash bar (that kind of looks like a thick candy bar) either all together or separately if you want to have different potencies and let it continue to dry for about another hour.
Step 4: Repeat the Process
Now that you are experienced, you can take the first bag you removed from the bucket that you put aside (the one with all the plant material left), and repeat the process to make sure you got all of the hash available. You can even repeat this process a few times in order to maximize your yield.
So there you have it! Just like an OG stoner, you no know how to make some potent bubble hash. You’ll be the hit of the party when you offer up some hash to your friends because as we mentioned earlier, good hash is hard to find. Good luck!
Step 5: Smoke Up
There are several ways to smoke hash. You can use a standard weed pipe. You can roll it up in a blunt or a joint. You can put it in a glass bong or dab rig. Or you can place it on a knife and heat up the knife.
A pipe is probably easiest way to start you can simply break off a piece of hash and put it in your glass pipe with a screen, light it up and smoke it. Make sure you have a torch though because hash tends to need more heat than a hemp wick or a bic.
A Dab Rig is also very easy because you can treat it like any other concentrate. The problem can be though that sometimes the has doesn’t melt right away. If that happens, you can easily convert the hash to rosin by simply putting in on some wax paper, folding it over and squeezing it with a hair straightener. I will definitely work in the dab rig after that.
If you want to roll it up in a blunt wrap or a rolling paper or even a cone, you’ll have to mix in some flower so it will burn properly. Simply break roll up your hash into a long thin “spaghetti-like” cylinder and add it as a layer and you are filling up the paper with flower. First a layer of flower, then a layer of hash, then more flower and roll it right up. Cones are not optimal for this technique.
However you choose to smoke it, hash can be another incredible way to enjoy cannabis.
