Hash comes from the word hashish which means “grass” in Arabic. It is a concentrated form of cannabis that has been around for a long time. Indians have known how to make hash for centuries. In fact, they rubbed cannabis with their hands until the friction and heat coated their hands with the plant’s resin. Then, they rolled the resin into balls called “charas.”
Nowadays most cannabis concentrates are in the form of oils made with solvents. Others are made by squeezing cannabis parts between hot plates to make rosin extracts. However, OG connoisseurs still have a sweet tooth for some of the more traditional non-solvent hashes. The two ways to make them involve manually separating trichomes with the dry sift and ice water extraction techniques.
How To Make Dry Sift Hash
Dry sifting is relatively simple. You just need weed and different sized micron screens.
Starting Materials
There are boxes that have several different sized screens on top of each other to make the dry sifting process simple. The screen sizes get smaller as you move downwards.
If you have no box, you can just use different sized screens. Just make sure to have something like a large piece of paper to catch the sifted materials with. Fold the piece of paper and move the sifted materials to the next screen or to where you plan on storing them.
Step 1: Run Through First Screen
Using a stiff card, you can brush the plant material back and forth until no more resin is passing through. The first screen is usually the largest so there will probably still be contaminants in the sifted material.
Step 2: Clean It Further
If you’re using a box designed for dry sifting, there should be a second screen directly under the first one. Remove the top screen and set it aside. Repeat step 1 until you’re down to the last screen. You can label each sift with the size of the micron size screen used.
The highest quality dry sift and bubble hash falls under the full melt extracts category. You can find out how to ensure the dry sift is a full melt every time by reading Bubbleman’s tricks & tips to make full-melt dry sift hash.
How To Make Bubble Hash
Bubble hash uses ice, water and silk-screen filters to separate trichomes. The name comes from the fact that the concentrate will melt next to a flame instead of burning. Fresh frozen material tends to make higher-quality hash.
Full melt ice wax made with freshly frozen buds can be pressed at low temperatures to make live rosin. Live rosin is one of the highest-quality on the cannabis concentrate market today. As a result, it’s one also one of the hardest to find and most expensive per gram.
Starting Materials
Whether it’s freshly frozen or not, you’ll need bud or trim to make bubble hash. You’ll also need a 1 or 5-gallon bucket and a bubble bag set to fit it. You’ll also need a large spoon or something to stir things up with.
Step 1: Prepare Bucket
First line the bucket with the smallest micron filter you have. Continue lining the remaining bags on top so that they gradually increase in size. The largest size bag should be on top and the first one that you remove.
You want to put as much ice as you possibly can without things overflowing. Once you have the bottom of the bucket covered in ice you can start to go back and forth making layers of weed and ice until you reach the top of the bucket. Make sure the top layer is ice and not plant material.
Fill the bucket with water just below the lip so you can stir without making a mess.
Step 2: Gently Stir
Allow the water to sit and decrease in temperature. Some hashmakers like to put their bucket in the fridge for an hour before beginning the stirring process. Once things have chilled, use a large spoon to slowly stir the mixture. As the ice starts to melt, it will get easier to stir and you can increase your stirring speed a bit. Stir for about ten to fifteen minutes.
Step 3: Strain & Repeat
The next step is to strain the liquid until nothing is left but plant matter and ice. The smaller resin glands will have fallen through, back into the bucket for further filtering.
As you move onto smaller sized screen bags, you will be left with purer hash. Once drained, you can fold each bag at the bottom to allow all of the hash to pile up. Keep them separate and label the size of the micron screen. Trying each one out will help you understand the full spectrum flavors and potencies a single strain of hash can offer.
Final Hit: How To Make Hash
High Times Magazine has had articles on how to make hash and hash oil since the eighties. Our first article on how to make hash the old-fashioned way involved rubbing “grass” against a cloth to separate the resin into a bowl. Before the rosin press, hashmakers did what they could to make their product into an easier to smoke solid. They had clothes steamers and handheld torches for heat. Vice grips applied pressure.
Consider this our contemporary guide on how to make hash. Today, there are better tools you can use to make higher quality hash with less effort than the resourceful hashmakers of the past. The quality of the final product will vary depending on the starting materials used.
High Time rock
Rock on
Thanks for the article. In the steps. You forgot to add any material. You only added ice. After you go through the steps. How do you dry the hash? Do you just let it sit out at room temperature? I want to try making this soon
Thanks
This is one of the worst articles I have ever read on this website. Get a new writer, High Times.
I feel like a lot of the actual instruction was missing here, and that which there is is so poorly written that it’s not particularly informative.
After anxiously reading the article on “How to Make Hash: A Step-by-step Guide”, I actually had to laugh!
The “step-by-step” part is particularly infuriating as not only was the article crudely written, but assumed a great deal of knowledge this reader at least, doesn’t have. I’ll have to search the web for the real process. Gee, thanks a lot High Times for NOTHING!!
The best hash I smoked was in the eighties and it looked nothing like the articles. Ours was a deep brownish green color that was a very fine powder compressed into pieces. To cut it was similar to cutting into a cocaine rock. It burned like incense, slowly. But it was potent. Not as potent as the Thai stick we got from one of our military buddies.But that is another story.
I truly hope that whoever wrote this got fired. This is one of the worst examples of writing of ever seen in my life. Obviously the person that came up with this was high as a fucking kite
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AB Hanna’s “How To Make Hash: A Step-by-Step Guide” provides a clear and informative breakdown of the traditional methods of making dry sift hash and bubble hash. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow and offer valuable insights into the process, making it accessible for beginners like myself. I particularly appreciate the historical context provided, tracing the origins of hash-making back to ancient practices in India. The article has helped me gain a deeper understanding of the intricate techniques involved in producing hash and has sparked my curiosity to explore this aspect of cannabis culture further. Overall, Hanna’s guide is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in learning about the art of hash-making.