So more on the hash making process…
What a fun but also a bit exhausting process. Hash making is legit! It’s a lot of work but also super rewarding (most of the time… more on that in a bit). I can’t imagine washing by hand with a paddle. After the hose debacle, I was finally ready to wash some buds!
I went with the bags from The Press Club. I picked up a bunch of supplies during their Black Friday sale. I hold off on a lot of big purchases in the weed game on 4/20 or Black Friday, it always seems to pan out.
Since I live in the good old north, creating a cold room was as easy as opening the window in December. It was a balmy 8 degrees in there. I used a water filter on my garden hose for the water and had the sink close by for rinsing. Not the best set up but it did the trick just fine.
The first strain I washed was my Afghan Lemon hashplant. I was super jazzed for this one but it was a major disappointment in yield (as mentioned in my outdoor thread) but really outperformed in the smell department! I can’t wait to dab it. When I see how much it yielded and think about the time and effort I put into this grow all the way from seed, all the feedings, waterings, teas, care, trimming, processing, washing and sifting… it kind of blows my mind. All that time and effort for this (1/4 teaspoon for scale):
A few dabs!!! Lol
I know there’s a method for testing strains where you can shake a few grams of buds in a mason jar with ice water to see if it’s worth your time but obviously I didn’t do that. I figured “it’s a hash plant, it’ll produce…” haha… at the end of the day I had a ton of fun throughout the entire process of growing this plant and washing it. I’m experimenting, learning and smoking a few bowls here and there along the way. Either way, fresh frozen is now my unicorn. Gotta figure that one out.
The second time I washed I decided to do it outside. I waited for day where it was near 0 degrees out and went to town. I washed a huge mixture of buds. I had some dry cured stuff and some fresh buds too. A mixture of four strains I grew outside last summer: Sour D x Sweet Skunk, Snow G, Japhy and some Goji OG I believe. This wash DUMMMMMPED, it was nice to see! This is the first run:
Giving off major Juicy Fruit gum terps!
The way I would work was I’d process the hash in the bags while the machine ran the next wash. It’s time consuming and a lot of work but I had a lot of fun doing it. It’s a bit of a learning process and I’m sure I’ll get more efficient with a bit of practice.
The more difficult part for me was the sieving process. I’m not quite at the level yet when I’m buying a freeze dryer so my option was to sieve this onto parchment paper that’s sitting inside of a pizza box, then into the freezer for a week. It took a bit of trial and error to get the chunk of hash cold or just frozen enough that it would sieve well without clumping or sticking to my strainer. This was the hardest part IMO… I can totally see why people just splurge for that freeze dryer. Either way, I had to work pretty hard for this hash! It was very sticky and my hands were cramping but I got all the hash sieved into pizza boxes. Having the sieve and spoon in the freezer helped a lot. I guess I was too busy with that I forgot to get pics but here’s the result after a week in the freezer.
Sadly, I couldn’t press it right away so I had to vacuum seal it and store in the freezer for a few wks during the holidays. This made it completely clump and bind together…
I’d love to know what’s going on at a microscopic/scientific level there, it’s amazing. Brings me back to my hash smoking days when I was a teenager, only we never smoked anything close to this quality level. I wanted to eat it! This was right before I pressed it.
So this was basically a large bar of hash. I cut off about 20 grams to the size of my rosin bags and just went for it… again, just sort of experimenting here but it totally worked out.
Rolling this into a ball was super difficult and an interesting learning experience. I did this in my kitchen and I won’t be making a habit out of that unless it’s super cold in there. I got this hash EVERYWHERE!! Lol literally everywhere… it’s just amazing that it would just turn into syrup in my hands suddenly, then I’m sitting there with my hands in the freezer trying to cool it off until I could roll it back into a ball. Obviously I was wearing thick black nitrile gloves for this but still… having a cold room would have been a lot easier. I’d cool the hash ball enough that it would pick up the stickiness off my gloves but made the mistake at times touching the fridge and freezer door handles, all over the counter and floors and stepping in sticky hash with my socks was a lot of fun. Good thing I had a lot of iso on hand lol… anyway it was an interesting learning experience. I did two presses of a little over 20 grams each and ended up with two nice hash balls. I put them into this stupid jar for some idiotic reason.
Here’s a pic of the last hash ball that I decided to weigh without a piece of parchment under it. This ball absolutely melted to the surface of the scale… it was fun!
I used the thread by @ReikoX called ReikoX's Solventless Hash Rosin Cartridges for the next process of getting this hash into carts. Thanks again for posting that homie! If you haven’t checked it out yet I highly recommend it.
I used a sous vide method to heat the hash to 140F for about 36 hrs. I also didn’t do this the most efficiently. It I did it again I would use a Ball or Mason jar with a metal lid and I wouldn’t vacuum seal it. I’d submerged the jar in the water just enough so that the water level in my sous vide vessel was just above where the hash came up to in the jar.
Here it is after that process:
The hash got a bit darker than I wanted but I’m sure it will improve in time. It’s terpy as all hell!!! Like flavour explosion! It almost tastes like soap hahaha it’s strong too! I’m loving it so I’m chalking this up to a win.
This post is getting a bit long but I wanted to tell this tale in full. If you’ve been tossing around the idea of making hash, I highly recommend you try it! Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it. It’s a lot of work but the results are worth it or will be worth it if you take the time to practice and learn. I can’t wait to try to make a temple ball and smoke some bubble hash out of a chillum!
If you’re just getting started, here are the resources that helped me get prepared for Hash making:
RESOURCES
The king… Frenchy Cannoli. watch this guy wash and explain his process. Some very valuable info here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdz6GX4tiTlK6NN3y2_wQDG-WTYBcReiX
This Build a Soil video with Pedro and Jeremy is really great and will get you started quite well in the right direction: https://youtu.be/ObWhj2QiONo
Read this entire blog (seriously): The Ultimate Solventless Rosin Pressing Resource – The Press Club
Then read this one: Solventless Processing
Then this one:
Some helpful stuff here:
A very thorough guide:
Typically I’ll read through just about as much info as I can and note down the similarities in the procedures. I also note down the things that aren’t similar and try to figure out if they’re useful to try or leave out of my own procedures, what procedures and practices are best, why and why not… then I’ll try them out if I think they’re beneficial. For instance, the video with Jeremey from BAS and Pedro. The way he explains how he folds and tucks his rosin bags… that’s very valuable info that a beginner could use. Instead of wasting time blowing out bags while pressing. Little things like that.
My next experiments will be temple balls, curing bubble hash and rosin, jar tech curing (cold vs hot), whipping vs not whipped, etc etc. If you have any resources you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to post a link, share some tips or whatever you think I might be interested in.
Thanks for reading!