Dear Friend & Subscriber-
Since we last touched on the process for making your own solventless extracts, a lot of you have been intrigued by the process and/or interested in trying it for yourself.
This is awesome! Congratulations. Itās not easy to grow your own cannabis, let alone take the time to process it into an extract, and your interest and enthusiasm shouldnāt be hampered by a lack of information. My goal is to convey the tips Iāve been given to help you through the process.
My process has continued to evolve as my equipment gets upgraded, and I will continue to share what Iāve learned and am learning, even if it might not be completely dialed in yet (like the rosin vape cartridges, for example).
That said, the previous post on my bubble hash and rosin technique dove pretty deep into the concept of making hash and washing it, so Iāll skip the story and cut straight to the meat of what youāre looking to learn: how to do the damn thing.
For this new method, Iāve acquired a few new tools, including a deep freezer and a freeze dryer.Ā
Neither of these are technically necessary, as I touched on previously. But, the cooler you can keep your product, the better. I store the pre-wash material as well as the collected material post-wash in the deep freezer as I work through everything that will go into the freeze dryer.
The freeze dryer allows me to speed up the process while preserving volatile compounds within the hash.Ā
My dry time went from 5-10 days to 36 hours with this upgrade. That said, freeze dryers are expensive pieces of equipment, and you will need certain versions to work with hash. āHomeā freeze dryers used to allow you to lower the temperature enough to work with hash, but many have since been upgraded to prevent that, encouraging hash makers to purchase significantly more expensive pharmaceutical versions.
Once freeze dried, you can collect and/or press yourĀ bubble hash.
Since diving down this rosin rabbit hole, I have acquired two rosin presses, a 2x4ā hand press and a 5x5ā bottle jack press. I use both of them in my process, but you only need one to accomplish your task.
In short, the process looks like this:
Fresh material is frozen (in chest/deep freezer).
Frozen material is washed with ice and water.
Ice water mix is filtered through collection bags.
Collected bubble hash is placed in freeze dryer.
Freeze dried hash is pressed on rosin press.
Rosin is collected and stored or cured.
The nuances of this process will vary depending on genetic and grow conditions.
Without getting too far ahead of myself (and a future letter), not every amazing plant will be great for hash. I was just given the opportunity to wash multiple phenotypes of the same genetics over the past few weeks, and the variances are amazing, and further underscore the value of certain phenos when it comes to making extracts.Ā
Some phenos will all consistently yield well for bubble hash; others will vary by 5-10x.
I washed four phenos of the Zweet OG by Ethos Genetics. The gassiest pheno was the highest yielding (5.8%), the hybrid phenos (a mix of both gas and sweetness) were consistently good yielders (4.9%+), and the sweet pheno was absolutely abysmal (0.65%) in spite of being incredibly appealing in aroma and bag appeal as flower.Ā
Thug Rose (Ethos Genetics) ranged from 0.75% to 2.6% among three phenos.
XXX (Ethos Genetics) ranged from 0.74% - 3.71%.
Same grow. Same genetics. Same wash process. Different phenos.
Your starting material, and its quality, is a big factor, but the starting genetics will play a large role as well. If you have the option of hunting through multiple phenotypes, you may find a specific plant that just trends better for hash. Keep her. Sheās special.
As I worked through these batches, my process continued to evolve as well.
In the beginning, I separated almost every micron. It wasnāt just to make it harder on myself; I wanted to see how the hash trended. Where most of the heads fell.Ā
Are certain bags skippable without noticeable quality?Ā
Can I accomplish this using all buckets rather than a bucket/cooler hybrid approach?
Your hash-making method will be determined by your intended end result.
If you are going to enjoy the product as bubble hash, you wonāt have to worry about pressing.
If you are going to cook with the hash, you wonāt need to worry about losing compounds at room temperature, so you could air dry and skip the investment in freezer equipment.
If you are seeking to enter the best of the best and only the best to win a cup or competition, then youāre going to be separating and going through extra steps to ensure that you donāt bring anything less than optimal quality to the table.
For me, and most of us who enjoy rosin and bubble hash but donāt have thousands of grams of material to process, certain processes decrease yields.
Unless you have a genetic that you know to yield high-quality, 6-star melt, or unless you are trying to identify how a particular genetic washes and where the trichome head sizes fall, separating your hash will add extra work and increase chances of losing material on each step of filtration.
I was told this time and time again by veteran hash makers and I insisted that, no, I needed to separate.
If you are leaving it in bubble format, thereās an argument to continue to separate, but if you are pressing your bubble into rosin, then combining your heads into one bag minimizes material lost, and youāre squeezing the good out and leaving the rest anyways.
Iāve found that if I amĀ washing less than a pound of frozen material, I only separate for cooking and pressing.
If I have more than a pound but Iām not sure if itās a good strain for melt, I might do a test run of a couple pounds and pull multiple bags on the first wash, but combine from thereon. But, if I worked in a facility or with the equipment or team to handle thousands of grams at a time, then I could see separating being worthwhile for the ultra-premium connoisseur.
My Current Bubble Hash -> Hash Rosin SOP
Wash SOP:
220Āµ Work Bag: Fill with bud + Ice (50/50 mix is minimum, can trendĀ heavy on ice as long as you have ability to move material around).
I typically put my work bag on a clean bucket (food grade buckets can be bought at most home improvement stores, or a stainless vessel can be found online) and then fill with frozen material. I weigh frozen material out and dump it into the work bag in batches, layering with enough ice to mostly cover each layer.Ā
In a 5-gallon bucket, I would not exceed 1200 grams of wet/fresh material though 750-1000 seems to be the sweet spot.
I also found that a half pound of dry material was significantly harder to wash than a half pound of frozen material. Something to keep in mind.Ā Once bag is full of your material and ice, slowly fill with water until everything in the bag is submerged. You donāt have to use a full five gallons of water, and you likely wonāt have room because of your material and ice. This allows you to stretch water and ice throughĀ your batches.
Steps:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Hobby Grow to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.