How to make good quality bubble hash quickly and easily - a step by step guide

[Backward_Z]

Love the post, there are several things I'll take from this in modifying my method.

That said, I have some questions.

Firstly, and chiefly, in my experience with bubble bags they take so long to drain. Before I do another batch, I'm going to have to build some sort of pulley for draining because the bags are so heavy! Especially to hold up for so long while they drain! You're standing there, holding this pregnant sack in the air watching this tiny little trickle of water drain out the bottom... The question is--how do you minimize on this? None of your pictures show how you remove your bags from the straining bucket. How are you holding them up? You said you shake them back and forth and run water against the sides, do you run the water the whole time or just as it's getting empty? Does that make it drain faster?

Also, I know you said to NEVER mix in bags, but something I did once was to put a tap in the mixing bucket, elevate it above the straining bucket and line the mix bucket with the work bag alone. If I hadn't been in a position to easily elevate the bucket, I'd just as well have used a pump and run clean water through afterwards.

I'm not a big fan of "Pick up heavy water laden trash can and pour it slowly into another can." I've seen what happens when people damage their back. It's really not pretty. If I have to buy new work bags to save my back, then so be it.

 

[Blaze]

I'll try to answer those Q's as best I can BZ:

As for the draining, there are a few tricks to get your bags to drain easy. First and foremost, keep your screens clean, as clean screens drain more easily. This is also one of the reasons I recommend washing them with cold water only, as I have found that rinsing them with hot water seems to melt any remaining trichromes into the screens.

Second, install a drain valve on your bucket. This way much of the water will already be drained out of the bags by the time you lift them. This helps quite a bit and will save you work and time.

Third, do not over load your bags. This is in my opinion, the main reason why so many people have such a hard time draining them. If you get too much hash in the screen on the bottom of the bag, the hash will prevent the water from draining out. This is why I only do about 1-1.5 lbs of shake at a time. A 20 gallon set can handle much more than this, but the result is usually a clogged screen. Not only are clogged screens slow to drain and a pain in the ass to deal with, it tends to put a lot of strain on the bags themselves.

I used to have the same problem with the bags not draining when I first started making bubble hash many years ago, and it was because I was over-loading them. I used to do a few lbs. of shake at a time and the result was that they were so damn heavy that I had to use a cherry picker to lift them up and drain them. It took FOREVER for them to drain, and I started getting little pin-hole leaks in them as well, and some of the stitching started to give way due to all the weight. I was pulling as much as 4 oz a run, BUT it took so much time and so much work that it was not worth it. I realized after some time that by doing less per batch, I could in fact do multiple smaller batches in less time that it was taking me to do one big batch, and get a better over all yield. Plus, I didn't have to strain myself with all the heavy lifting, and I wasn't beating up my bags.

If you keep those three things in mind you should be able to drain your bags very easily. I can usually pull mine up one handed (not the work bag with all the ice and material of course - this takes two hands usually), and with a little shake, the water is all gone in a minute or less.

You can in fact see me pulling the bags in one picture, you just may have not realized what was going on. Look at the pic where the outside of the bag is being washed off. My buddy was manning the house, I was holding the bag up with one hand, and holding the camera with my other hand to take the pic.

If you do not want to lift the mixing bucket and pour it into the straining bucket, there are ways around this. Probably the easiest way is to have the two buckets at two different levels, so you only have to tip the one bucket over instead of lifting it. For example, you could mix in the back of a pick-up truck, and then tip the bucket over and pour it into the mixing bucket on the ground. I've just personally never bothered with this step because I am 6' 2" and 250+ lbs so a little heavy lifting is not that big a deal for me, but I TOTALLY understand why some people would not want do it this way, especially if you have an injured back.

There are always ways to improve the process - it is just a matter of putting in the time, thought, and money to make it happen.

 

[Backward_Z]

Great advice.

Smaller batches it is, then.

Yeah, I'm more like 5'7", 135 lbs and can't put on weight when I try. AND I've had back spasms before. There's nothing like being locked to one position on your floor for a long weekend to get you to think twice about picking up that heavy object...

Do you usually only do one wash? In my experience, yields are still decent into the third/fourth wash and as long as you use new water for each wash the color remains consistent.

I have some designs in mind to automate the draining process but haven't had the time or capital to build any prototypes yet. Nothing I'm ready to talk about yet, but I ever get anything running, I'll be sure to let you know.

It just seems that everybody gets their panties in a bunch about the mixing--"Gotta convert an old washing machine, man." The mixing is the easy part! Like you said 5-10 minutes with an oar (I use a brewing rake) and that's it! The draining, however...

 

[Blaze]

Lately I've been doing two washes. The second time I usually use less bags and stir for a bit longer. Generally I look at the material with a jewlers loop or something similar to see if there are more trichromes worth harvesting. No point in continuing to re-process the material is there is nothing left to get.

 

[greenjoe]

Ok...i have about 9 og kush and 3 "the purps" and 9 iranian g-13. Now i prefer hash over pot. I am going to use all the plants for hash...I probably will keep 2 oz's of each strain just for a change. Someone once told me to just use shake and leaves. Should i break up the bigger colas or just mix away.... I am using 5- 5 gal bags

all are females

 

[Blaze]

If you are going to use the big colas, break them up into very small pieces. You want as much surface area as possible exposed for maximum extraction. If you leave the big colas intact, all those trichromes inside the bud will not be extracted.

 

[greenjoe]

Excellent...thanks

 

[Backward_Z]

Just for the sake of it--an additional knowledge bomb re: ice-water hash.

If you have moldy buds, they're still good for ice-water. I had a buddy lose a bunch of outdoor purple to mold several years ago so some friends took the moldy buds home and made ice-water hash out of 'em. I was skeptical at first, but the first toke tasted great and a quarter ounce or so and some months later and I was still fine.

Just make sure that everything is nice and frozen before you work it and throw away everything in the first couple few bags.

Like I said, I was as surprised as anybody that it turned out okay. Three cheers for blind experimentation!

 

[Casper]

Thanks for sharing this! Where can I purchase some good quality hash bags with the silk screen?

 

[Blaze]

From another thread:

Graywolf: "It sounds like you have bud rot or Botrytis, which tastes and smells like crap but produces no known afla toxins.

I have been successful extracting the oil, dissolving it in alcohol, and passing it through successive syringe filters down to 0.2 microns.

There was no mold taste or odor left and all the mold parts were removed along with any bacteria.

If you have Aspergillus mold, it does produce copious quantities of aflatoxins, which the above process will not remove and can be pernicious."

WolfDawg: "Aflatoxins are toxic and among the most carcinogenic substances known, High-level aflatoxin exposure produces an acute hepatic necrosis, resulting later in cirrhosis, and/or carcinoma of the liver.

Throw that crap out, unless you Know exactly what kind of mold it is, or you can actually filter it like Graywolf, not sure how much you have but however much it probably isn't worth the risk, of course I'm pretty particular with what I smoke....soooo"

Personally I would never make bubble hash out of moldy bud either.

 

[Blaze]

I thought I’d give this thread a bump, since it’s hash season again! It is always sooo nice having good bubble hash again, making it is by far one of my favorite parts of growing. I love good bud, but I love good hash even more. As always I’ve been working on improving my method and I’ve made a few changes and had a few new thoughts since I started this thread last year.

First off, I did a few tests with other drying surfaces, but the shallow pyrex dishes still win out every time so far. I’ve found that drying it on metal seems to usually dry it a bit to fast, as does cardboard or anything else porous. I’ve really been trying to work on my drying, curing and storage methods as I’ve found they make a big a difference with bubble hash as they do bud.

My theory is that when you dry the hash too fast, terpenes and some of the other more volatile oil break down more rapidly resulting in a loss of flavor, aroma and effect. Dry on something porous like cardboard or cloth, and these more volatile oils are pulled out of the hash as it dries. This results in hash that does not smell or taste as good, and tends to lose it’s oily sheen and pliable texture as well. In my opinion, proper drying and curing technique can and does influence not only taste and smell, but strength and complexity of the high as well.

Also – I’ve been finding that old material does not work as well. I did a few runs at the beginning of fall with some of the exact same shake I had run over the winter. The results after it had sat for an additional 8 months were definitely not as good. The potency was comparable, but the taste was very lacking, it was not nearly as bubbly, and it had lost that nice chocolaty gooey appearance I try to shoot for. This really brings home the point that good quality material to start with is all-important. Old, over dried, or brown shake or buds, or anything that has lots of fan leaves, stems, dirt or other contaminants, or anything that has not been stored well or that has sat for too long will not make high quality bubble hash.

In addition, one change that I’ve made over this last year is that I have been re-processing my material after mixing and straining it one time. Now I run two normal batches, mix the material from both together, and then re-mix and re-strain it using just the 220, 160, 120, 73, and 25 bags. The 120 and 25 is usually not very good, but the 73 has been coming out very nice on most runs and has helped boost the yield per batch by an additional 10-20%.

(pics to follow)

 

[Blaze]

Anyway, that is enough of me rambling about bubble hash theories. Here are some more micro pics of some of my recent runs:

 

[Blaze]

Finally, here are some shots of some of the “C” grade being smoked:

 

[Blaze]

Some shots of freshly harvested hash, all 73 and 90 grade:

 

[johnnyhopkins]

Wow I want some of your hash! what does it mean if my hash just came out green? it hasnt finished drying yet but its definitly not brown like yours. this is trim straight off the plant into the freezer..... so its prolly chlorophyl huh?

 

[Blaze]

Yeah if comes out green that means that it has plant material (ie chlorophyl) in it. This usually comes from over-mixing the material or using very over-dried material. When you use an egg beater or paint mixer or something similar it tears up the plant matter and you end up with little tiny pieces of green that are small enough to work their way down into the screens. Over dried material tends to crumble which in turn causes the same effect - lots of little tiny pieces of green. Ideally you want to harvest JUST the trichrome heads, with a minimal amount of other contaminants.

 

[Bushcrafter]

Awesome guys....great pics and well worth the effort, High times!!
Bushcrafter

 

[conner83]

:sign0005:thx should be helpful much Rep,Keep it up

 

[Blaze]

Finally got a few "A" grade runs a while back. I love it when it comes out silver, hehe. One thing I did differently that I have found makes a big difference is that I've been storing all my shake it turkey bags immediately after it gets generated. I've been finding it seems to help preserve the flavor and aroma more so than storing it in zip locks or contractor bags. At this point I strongly suspect preserving the oils that are not contained within the trich heads themselves is also very important in getting good bubble. These batches were made from Blueberry Pie and Guava Kush and pics were taken @ around 24 hours of dry time:

 

[desertsquirrel]

nice pics blaze. i gotta get in on this...

im interested on your thoughts about the time in the water. have you fond any correlation between the length of time trim sits in the water post mix and the quality/taste of the hash produced?

i always strain my trim the second the mix is finished.