Bubble Hash making adventures by monkeydo

I’ve never thought about attempting to make hash before I joined Percy’s, but with trim in hand it was time to give this a go. To prepare for this I watched one of Frenchy Canoli’s introductory hash making videos. The one I used was 58 minutes long and showed the basics of setup and running ice water hash in a small washing machine.

How to make hash, with Frenchy Canoli

This video had a part two that showed finishing but I’ll admit i only watched the washing part of the vid. I had already purchased some 1 gallon bubble bags to make dry ice hash so I set off to use these smaller bags for this run. Wanting to stay as true to the video as possible, I needed 3 one gallon buckets and it was soon apparent that these aren’t as simple to find as the big 5 gallon buckets are. Eventually after looking as several stores I settled on some 5 quart paint buckets. Watching the video, Frenchy was using the bags on stacked buckets with the bottoms removed. These were placed on top of a regular unmodified bucket to catch the water. This was duplicated as close as possible by placing a colander over a 5 gallon bucket and placing the bottomless buckets with their bags on, in the colander. In the video I saw, only 3 bags were used. Following exactly, I used the 160, 73, and 45 bags. The washing machine I used is the same one Chillbert uses, but I’m not as skilled at this yet. Like Chillbert, I didn’t modify the drain hose yet but found a rubber stopper that fit so that was good extra safety. Overall the machine worked well without modifications.

The Setup:

It was apparent that gravity was key in this process so I set up a table high enough for the machine to be able to completely drain down into a bucket. A 5 gallon bucket was placed below the machine and the colander with the bottomless buckets lined with the bubble bags in the colander. The 160 bag first followed by 73 and 45 bags. The 25 bag will be used later to pass all the waste water through to test for missed trichomes. This is exactly how the video described the process and Frenchy called what the 25 bag might catch as “not very good” and the drain time of the 25 bag as very slow. Also on hand was 30 pounds of ice (should have bought a little more) and since I’m working inside a 5 gallon bucket of clean water.

The Run:

My plant mass was a mix of fresh frozen and dry frozen sugar leaf and a few buds. In retrospect I should have weighed the plant mass first to see the yield but I didn’t so the yield is what it is, neither good or poor this time around. Just as done on the video, I put about 1.5 inches of ice in the bottom of the washing machine then dumped 2 one gallon ziplock bags of dry trim and one bag of fresh frozen trim in the machine. Everything was loose in the machine, no bag was used inside. Next another few inches of ice was put on top then clean tap water was added to a level just above the the ice. This keeps all the trim submerged to start the process. Since I’m using some dry trim I let the leaves soak in the ice water for 15 minutes. Frenchy said this helps the leaves be more supple and reduces breakage and contaminants.

 After this soak I ran the machine for 30 seconds only. With all that ice there’s a risk of grinding the leaves. I wanted to start of gently and see how the process developed. The first wash was not very productive and the bags didn’t clog at all so I didn’t clean anything out, just added more water and ice and then washed for 1 minute more each time. After 3 short cycles it was time to clean out the bags. I found this easiest to to do if I gently rinsed the trichomes into a pile in the bags and then blotted the bottom of the bag with paper towels to draw out moisture. This made the hash almost fall out of the bag in a nice lump, very minimal scraping was needed.

 Most of the accumulation was in the 73 bag with minimal in the 45 bag. After a thorough cleaning  of the bags with isopropyl alcohol then water, the machine was run another 4 times for a total of 7 washes. Each wash time was increased a bit. The the final 2 washes were 6 minutes each.

Washes 3 and 4 were the most productive on their own with this material. On wash 7 there was nearly nothing in the 73 bag and the 45 bag was looking green so I called this process at 7 washes. In the end I used 20 gallons of water for this hash run. Running all that water into the 25 bag took forever and after 2 days I called it off. What was in the bag was awful looking and not very much.

I doubt I’ll use the 25 bag again very soon.

Drying:

The trichomes produced were not very wet in the end because of the blotting and could almost be handled with your fingers. I froze everything, then grated the stuff from the 73 bag onto a piece of parchment. The 45 bag hash was just chopped up to dry.

  In several days it was dry to the touch and was feeling a little like sand. It was time to move to the final step

Pressing:

With no press available the boiling hot water bottle method was used to turn these trichomes into one mass. After a few challenges the roller was ready. All the 73 bag contents were hot rolled between parchment 4 times till the consistency was nice.

 Although I made a huge mess with hot water everywhere in the kitchen (don’t tell the Mrs, she didn’t see it and I cleaned it up) I found this part of the job very pleasant. As I rolled the hot bottle across with my welding gloves the hash was releasing a lovely fragrance. Rolled it into a ball (sort of) and we are done!

The Results:

Because this is all new to me I have no benchmark here for good or bad but I have something more important, Mrs Monkey’s opinion on this process. Let’s start by saying that being completely new at hash making, there are many things to acquire first. Let’s just say she wasn’t joyful at beginning of this process. I started early one evening and finished cleaning up around 9:30pm. That felt like a long time. Like most things, with experience things will probably get faster and more efficient but I was tired after all this. In the end there was 11 grams of 73 bag hash and only 1.1 grams of 45 bag hash.

The Mrs and I went out last night after me sampling some of the last run into the 45 bag. This is no doubt the worst of the bunch but if you start with the primo stuff you probably won’t like the other so start here. I made a sandwich in the mighty with weed on top and bottom and a BB size ball of hash in the middle, cranked up the temp to max and WOW! Let’s just say it was a fun night out. The wife is amazed at the potency and taste and said the smoke isn’t at all harsh. This was a ton of work and I’m not planning on doing this a lot. First of all it takes a lot of vegetable material to do this properly and it’s a time consuming process. More research is needed by me because I know this could have been a better result. Another run will come, probably next December 😉. Until then I’ll enjoy what we were able to do this time around.

Thanks for the read Percy Growers. I hope you enjoyed this saga as much as we are enjoying the outcome.