Hash Making for Dummies

Greetings kids, Jeff here with what I hope is a helpful guide to making one of the most wonderful of treats, hashish. I have many fond memories from the 80's in Europe of hashish which has its own unique taste and is about twice as strong as todays stronger cannabis.

What is hashish and why should I go to the trouble of making it?

Well, first of all I think it makes sense to understand what hashish actually is. Before I knew, when I heard the word hashish or hash, I conjured up images of meth labs and heroin junkies. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The main part of cannabis that has any medicinal value are the trichomes that grow on the buds of a female cannabis plant at full maturity. All of the THC, CBD and other magic is here. Todays stronger cannabis clocks in at about 20% THC; hashish historically runs about 40% THC. All hashish is is cannabis that has had the trichomes removed through some method. One of the older and simpler methods is using cold to do the job. Hashish is therefore a type of concentration or extraction of cannabis, much like a half-strength wax.

Basic Bubble Bag hashish making setup

Bags are nested in a 5-gallon bucket

In the case of Bubble Hash, a series of bags are nested one inside the other. Each bag has a successively smaller/finer grade mesh bottom; my kit ranges from 25 microns to 220 microns. These bags are then fitted over a 5-gallon bucket and dried cannabis along with lots of ice and water are poured in and stirred/agitated for 30 minutes to 4 hours. During this agitation process the frozen trichomes are knocked off and washed through the filters, catching on the last one they can't fit through. You can stir by hand but I use a paint-stirrer attached to a power drill to do all the work.

Once the mixture has been stirred enough, each bag is removed, drained and the remaining silt-like substance is your hashish. The finer the grade of mesh, the finer of grade of hashish (stronger/smoother). The lower grades will have more plant matter in them whereas higher grades will be very fine and little plant matter if any.

As each bag is removed from the bucket, I stretch it inside-out over a large mixing bowl to make collecting the hashish easier. After each is collected, it is put on what is called a pressing cloth which is nothing more than a 4 x 4 inch sheet of 25 micron mesh. This is then pressed with a paper towel to remove as much water as possible, then dried on coffee filters.

At the end you have hashish. It can be smoked in a stone or metal bowl or you can crumble a bit onto your normal bowl of flower, rolled into joints for added kick. The point is pain relief, appetite enhancement and anti-anxiety relief. Hashish stores well and if properly made, is a taste to behold.  Sometimes straight flower is sufficient for your medicinal needs but most of the time, you want/need something concentrated. If you went to a dispensary for something like this, you would be steered toward any of the hundreds of kinds of wax. More than about 20 years ago? You would be steered towards this. And of all the methods I know of to concentrate cannabis, this is one I consider safest for the newbie as well as patients with disabilities.

Here is a pictorial I made demonstrating the steps...