Making water extracted ice/bubble hash

[HydroPower]

My favourite way of processing trim from harvest (besides cooking edibles) is bubbleman’s bubble hash extracted through his bubble bags (or any equivalent). For those not familiar with bubble (or ice-o-lator) bags as they are called these are produced from very fine mesh.

There are two ways basically to extract it, easier dry sifting and ice extraction for which you need ice cubes, cold water and bucket.

Dry sifted hash

For dry sifting you can create homemade box from parts that can be bought in ikea or homedepot. There are screens sold with which you need to divide box into two parts. Then fill up upper part with trim and put it into freezer to deeply freeze. After freezing you put it out and just tumble it with hands. By freezing THC glands will become britle and stop being sticky so they just drop through the screen to bottom part. Then just collect dust from bottom part using some card.

Water extracted hash

Water extracted method is my favourite. I like the taste and this method can yield great results. You need to buy bubble bags (or ice bags). There are sets of 2 to 7 bags. I like to use 4 piece set. One screen is to filter out material and other three will get you the skuff you want.

Basically you put all the bags into the bucket starting with finest one. Last one is the coarse one which you then fill with mix of (preferably dried) trim material and ice cubes. Then top up the bucket with cold water.

You can never have too much ice. So put every you have. The deeper you will freeze THC glands the better they can be separated.

Then mix it for about 10-15 minutes with hand mixer.

During the mixing, you can add additional ice cubes depending on how fast it will melt down. You want to have cubes in the mix as they crash raw material and force glands to divide and fall through the mesh.

After you are done, you remove coarse mesh with raw trim material.

Then you need to filter all water out through fine meshes. You can use smaller bucket for it as we did.

Then you just put bag up and push water through it.

On the bottom you will find crystals you are after…

You can scrape it with spoon, be careful not to cut through the screen with anything sharp.

In our case we’ve got three different qualities: green, yellow and red (red being the finest).

We haven’t got any cardboard left, so we just put it on the paper above the lamps to let dry…

Great thing about bubble hash is that it is practically smokable even wet :)…

As bubbleman says: If it don’t bubble it ain’t worth the trouble!

There is also cheapo method to make ice hash with coffee filters in growfaq.

Then there is nice picture gallery about using tumbler / washing machine to make hash

What are your tips for hash extraction? What method do you prefer?

[Growinnblowin]

I’ve heard dry ice works well I’ve always thought if you crush dry ice fine mix it with alcohol would that be able to max your yield of hash alc don’t freeze so it’s basically liquid nitrogen what your thought on this?

[HydroPower]

Drying water extracted buble hash

It is crucial to let wet water extracted material to dry properly. Just use desiccant-like cardboard. It serves well because it pulls and wicks moisture from the hash into the paper. After hour or so you can start to crush it with credit card or similar tool. Try to crush it to smaller and smaller pieces and let air in and around. I repeat this crushing every few hours for about first 24 hours of drying. Then I’ve got really fine dust which still is not dry enough to be closed. Just let it sit and let air in. After about 7 days in cardboard box it is ready for curing. To cure it just close it in a jar and let it ventilate each few days.

Once bubble hash is dry you can finally use it as dust or to press it. So make sure it is dry, before you attempt to press it. Breaching of the wax membrane’s that make up the glandular trichome head, when moisture is present is not good.

[HydroPower]

@Growinnblowin

I’ve heard dry ice works well I’ve always thought if you crush dry ice fine mix it with alcohol would that be able to max your yield of hash alc don’t freeze so it’s basically liquid nitrogen what your thought on this?

Using dry ice sounds interesting, I’d like to know more from some chemist if any is reading this…

[lotus710]

dont use dry ice just use dry sift:)

[HydroPower]

@lotus710

dont use dry ice just use dry sift:)

Oh… got it

I’m not on good at chemistry, so I can’t guess if mixing with alcohol would do any good…

[lotus710]

if you use alcohol the hash your goin for will dissolve into it.

[Growinnblowin]

They use alcohol to get resins offblatex gloves an make hash out of it it will be fine it you let the alcohol dry out

[HydroPower]

I’m using oil (which really dissolves resin) and then kitchen dish degreaser. But using alcohol sounds reasonable Thx for tip.

[lotus710]

Yeah but were talkin quality here not no shitty alcohol “hash” XD

[cannabissequoia]

Why is there a hammer in the first pic, may I ask? That’s probably excessive force for trichomes…

[Smokesomelearnsome]

I tried making bubble hash with bubblebagdude 8 bag full mesh bags, 5 gallon pail, a drill, and a cement mixer bit. The issue that I am running into, is that as I agitate the water, the bags follow the water flow and fold into the middle of the pail rather than staying to the sides where I need them so that I can mix the water well with the cement mixer and create a sort of vortex. It doesn’t get stuck on the cement mixer/it isn’t picking it up but the whole bag seems to pull to the middle. Does anybody have a trick to prevent this?

[LemonadeJoe]

Sounds like cheap bags to me… Every bags I had were pretty solid… from heavy fabric that was staying in place… Also you need proper size of bucket… Bags need to fill whole circumference… I also fold it over edges of the bucket and that fixes it completely.

[StillSmoking]

Watch more videos…

Do not beat the living crap out of your ice and weed with a power drill and any attachment…

[PanchoVilla]

I have done ice hash/bubble bags and dry sifted hash. Dry sifted yields a better result. It is far less messy and easier to make. It makes more final product. Adding water anywhere in the process is not a good idea IMO. I use an old ice cream maker to tumble it. I cut out and wrapped the metal barrel with polyester mesh screen. I got the idea from another forum. Cost me about $20 to make it. I run it outside in winter when the temperature is below freezing. The results are piles of beautiful golden fluffy hash powder.

[Jetdro]

1. Material frozen for 48 hours or more in freezer before using
2. When placed in buckets, must allow for it to RE HYDRATE before agitation…30 minutes sitting still
3. It is the COLD, not the physical beating that removes the glands, more ice means nothing if water is not COLD
4. Too much agitation just increases shit in your product, electric tools are not needed.
5. 99.9% use way too much force agitating.
6. Use of “spacers” between bags will greatly aid in draining, makes it much easier .Cut down a 5 gallon bucket to make
7. Multiple agitations at 5-7 minutes will produce much better product than a single 15-30 minute one.
8. Forget the 220 work bag, product directly into buckets or washing machine. The mesh zippered work bags really raise Hell with production, I no longer use mine…product directly into machine(I use cheap washing machine as agitation is far better and way less destructive than other ways)
9. 3 -5 pulls on each load to effectively get all you can
10. When pulling material from the bags, do NOT press out all the water in it, leave it a bit wet. Collect it all and just barely press it into a block with your hands. IF you press all the water out, when you go to plane or screen it, it will just gum up and make a MESS!!!
11. 4 hours in freezer, then micro plane or fine strain over an old Pizza box. Frozen with some water left in it, it will grind or plane well, and break into sand. 5-7 days to dry in a coll dark place in the pizza box.

Use quality bags, there IS a reason some cost 100 a set, while other 3 times that, I use Bubble Man’s bags and always have. Cheaper bags(used plenty of them) return less , been there done it .

Biggest key is cold. IF we could get 32 degree water we would not need the ice. Ice is for making the water cold, NOT for breaking off combs like most think.

Spacers:

[Jetdro]

Way to make mid grade at best

[Foreigner]

Folding the bags over the sides is good advice.

If for some reason you can’t do this (wrong bucket size) you can try floating your bags. Do not submerge them to the bottom but let it float suspended and higher up. The bags twist less that way.

[Smokesomelearnsome]

They are the full length mesh bubblebagdude ones. They were supposed to be “better”. You’re probably right where I would be better off it it wasn’t all mesh and had a more rigid side to hold them up. Might have to hack up an identical bucket and remove just a small section that I could use to insert over the bubble bags just when spinning

[Papalag]

I no longer use the drill I turn the ice water and weed mixture with a small paddle by hand 5 or 10 minutes smoke a bone do it some more total time maybe each run 20 minutes

The hash is cleaner less crap in it and a better color not green at all

Second run I get lazy lol