Alright Dexter’s Laboratory. Help a brother out here. I’ve smoked a lot of hash but never made any. This is a personality fault I want to correct. The mountain of information out there strikes me as conflicted and more lore than reality. So I’d rather just ask a mad scientist like you.
What would you recommend as the best approach for a novice to start with? I’m less concerned with the time and effort required and my primary concern is the quality of the high. Here are my ranked priorities:
quality of high
$ investment required
complexity of process
time
I realize this is a most basic question for you but it could save me a lot of time and money. I appreciate your thoughts.
Get some bubble bags and crank some hash. Freeze dry a tiny bit in your freezer, or you can use the ice wax method to get it dried real quick. If you need really really quick dried, use a dehydrator or toaster oven. lol or a hair dryer. Personally I like it freeze dried, it gets my motor running.
Inspired by watching paint dry, I got out the microscope and recorded water drying. I’m not sure how good it is, I used 100x magnification but forgot the focal plane was so small. Could all be hazy garbage recording
Things went out of focus when I took the dog for a walk. So I cut all that shit and went straight to the end. It was mostly blurry garbage, sorry! But the video is definitely amazing, things are moving.
ok I made three batches with this one. I made a dehydrator meets wax batch, a shelf batch, and also a microplaned water batch of wax. If you are wondering how I made those trichomes on the microscope slide I stirred some hash into a water drop on the slide, then let the water evaporate.
Ok so as I suspected the exposure to heat in the dehydrator actually makes the batch melt less. I can only melt it to itself using the heat of my hand, it won’t do it at room temp 20C. Heat makes the wax process fail. I see that some kind of clear liquid came out and got on the parchment. Perhaps that is tied to the loss of melt.
Yeah I recently read that the variants often good for extraction had short stalks and fat heads. The long stalks that make the trichs so visible are not a good trait for ice hash extraction a lot of the time. That’s not to say a variety with tall stalks cant also produce good hash.
When I get the calibration right on the microscope I’ll measure the big bud stalk vs the meat breath one. I think I still have a single meat breath bud here somewhere. I guess if you look at my photos that have a scale they are off by a factor of 10 where it says 10μm it’s really 100μm hah hah!
ok I got some new bags… sadly here in shithole Canada I could only get some knock-off brand ones. That’s ok! I told her if they were garbage, I’m bringing them back. I put em in the washing machine on delicate cycle, to get the stink out. brr I hate that new manufactured smell, so nasty. Then, I’ll calibrate the microscope again… hopefully for the final time. Really cut my teeth on that one, stumbled over rock, that’s ok, you learn fast that way. Then I’ll be back with some newly minted micron screened hash I can toss under the 'scope. Exciting! Each bag has the micrometer measurement stitched in the side, so we’re good to go.
The bags are ready for their initial run and I checked all the stitching for fuckups, looks clean. I have to say they are twice the size of my old bags. Thicker as well and with mesh going up the bottom like a cup. Also have their own carrying case. hmm what else? Oh yah you can hang them on a hook if you want, through these metal rings. Dunno if I’ll do that, but who knows eh? So it’s got 200μm, 90μm, 73μm, and of course 25μm. I never caught the bubble dregs before, it’ll be interesting to study the composition of each. With the measuring system calibrated and the micron bags, I’ll be as happy as a pig in shit.
oh yah might as well do the 'ol product reveal and actually let you know what they are now that I spent some time downplaying how awesome they are lol!
ok I’m starting my first run! Funtimes!!! We’ll see how it turns out in the end, but hopefully I can filter out a few of the larger plant fibers. I still have to calibrate the scope, but I am sure I can do it properly now. I read some documentation on ocular measuring. It’s not exactly the same as the digital measuring, but the concepts are the same. hah my ocular measuring system is actually broken. The micrometer on the side came off like 15 years ago lol!
Ok what I am going to do is the following: I will get my exacto blade and get a sample of each material in each micron bag. Then I’ll micro plane it on a microscope slide and let it evaporate. This will give an easy to view segment of each bag! Then we can all see, what kind of shit winds up in there. I’m excited to start a new baseline from the material I used in my old bags. About 8 min to completion.
ok great! I cranked my crank, but I didn’t get back as much as I hoped. That’s ok though I am using up the remnants in the bottom of the freezer. The 90 is the biggest, and so it should be, with 73 then a nasty looking 25. I usually never capture that stuff. It could look pretty strange if you just put the 220 and 25 in. Seems like there is lots of plant fiber in 25? I am still waiting for the drop of water to evaporate so I can look at them. I will calibrate meanwhile. I’ll take a photo of the calibration screen so you can see what I’m up against.
excellent news! I got it calibrated this time. It told me the trichome cap was 100μm, then I measured the stalk and it was 450μm! Which means the human eye can barely make it out. Good, I finally…finally got that measuring shit sorted like fffuuuuuuuuuuuccck how hard was it. I guess it was as hard as reading the documentation. Took a while, that’s all
Also the latest ice wax project is complete. I need to have like 30 grams of it produced. This is like 10 grams I think? The first one was 20 so I should be good. Might have to make another wax batch soon! My sponsors for the latest project are generous, they paid for all these upgrades to the lab! Fantastic!
♂:motorcycle:
