Hash, also known as hashish, is one of the oldest concentrates around, and cannabis enthusiasts today continue to enjoy the added potency it brings to their consumption experience. If you want to make a solventless concentrate that’s been popular for millennia, keep reading. We’ll give you step-by-step instructions on how to make your own hash easily.

What is Hashish?

Hash (short for the Arabic word for grass, ‘hashish’) is a solventless concentrate created from dried cannabis trichomes. Trichomes are tiny, semi-translucent, mushroom-shaped appendages that grow over cannabis plants, but they’re mainly concentrated in buds. Cannabis plants store cannabinoids in trichomes, which is why they’re so valuable for consumers. If you can catch trichomes as they fall from your buds, you can make hash, a dense, brick-like, copper-colored mass of resin.

Benefits of Making Your Own Hash

Other forms of cannabis concentrates are readily available at most dispensaries (such as wax, shatter, liver resin, sauce, rosin, and more), and it’s easy enough to consume them. But here are four benefits to making hash yourself (instead of relying on someone else’s concentrates):

1. It’s solventless. Many types of commercial concentrates available at dispensaries are extracted with solvents like butane or propane. While efforts are made to purge residual solvents from hydrocarbon extracts, there is still the chance of some making it into your hash, detectable on a parts per million (PPM) scale. Hash production doesn’t require chemical solvents, making it one of the cleanest extracts you can use – assuming the flower used to create it is quality.
2. You choose the strain. Want a concentrate low in THC? That’s tough to find in most cannabis retail stores, but you can make your own high CBD hash by starting with CBD-rich strains (like The Wife and G1001).
3. It avoids wasting kief. If you frequently smoke weed and use a grinder to break apart your buds, you’ve got kief in your bottom chamber. Using that cannabinoid-rich resin makes the most of the trichomes you’re passively collecting each smoke session.
4. It’s rewarding. People all over the world have been making hashish since 4000 BCE. When you make hash, you participate in an international, historic tradition connecting cannabis lovers across space and time.

The 2 Easiest Ways to Make Solventless Hash

Forget about butane and vacuum ovens. You can get a super potent concentrate by making hash yourself. Some people rub buds between their fingers, painstakingly collecting resin one flower at a time on their fingertips. The resin is then transferred from fingers into a ball. This type of hash is called charas. Others use a more modern agitation technique where water, ice, and cannabis are combined and stirred to separate trichomes from buds.

Close-up view of trichomes on cannabis flower. Trichomes are collected and formed into hash through various extraction techniques. Source: Unsplash.com

1. Make Hash From Kief (Easiest Way to Make Hash)

Materials Needed:

• Kief collected from your grinder
• Wax paper
• Tape
• Scissors
• Boiling water
• Mason jar
• Towel

Steps:

1. Dump kief onto wax paper, and shape it into a tightly packed lump.
2. Fold the wax paper around your kief into a tight square. Tape ends of the paper to each other to keep the paper sealed.
3. Cut off the excess wax paper so all you have left is a small square with just enough wax paper to cover all of the kief.
4. Fill your jar with boiling water.
5. Using the towel to protect your hands from the jar’s heat, apply pressure to roll it back and forth across the wax paper-wrapped kief square for about 10 minutes.
6. Freeze the wax paper-wrapped kief square for an hour to cool it down.
7. Take it out of the wax paper and enjoy!

2. Make Bubble Hash

Materials Needed:

• Two 7-pound bags of ice
• Dried cannabis buds
• Four 25-micron mesh drying sheets
• Four towels
• Two 5-gallon buckets
• Large serving spoon
• Kitchen sink (with spraying nozzle)
• The BubbleBagDude mini-washing machine

Steps:

1. Place each 25-micron sheet on a towel and set them aside.
2. Layer your ice and bud into the 220-micron bag that came with your BubbleBagDude washer with ⅓ ice, then your bud, then another ⅓ ice. Use a zipper tie to close the bag tightly.
3. Place the bag into the washer, then add the last ⅓ of ice to the washer.
4. Fill the washer with cold water up to the max line marker. Do not exceed the line.
5. Set the machine to mix your weed for 12 minutes.
6. Let your weed rest once the cycle completes for 10 minutes.
7. While waiting for the trichomes to settle, stack the Bubble Bags included with your washer into one of your 5-gallon buckets like this:
   • 25-micron at the bottom
   • 73-micron inside of the 25-micron
   • 160-micron inside of the 73-micron
8. Use the attached white tube to pour the cannabis-infused water from the washer into the layer of bags inside the bucket.
9. Use the kitchen sink sprayer to spray the hash to the center of the 160-micron bag.
10. Use the serving spoon to scoop the trichomes out of the bag. Place the trichomes onto the 25-micron sheet and towel drying area.
11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 for the remaining bags.
12. Repeat steps 2-11 two more times on the same plant material to get as much hash out of the process as possible.
13. It can take up to 2 days for your hash to dry completely and be ready for use. To speed up the drying process, set up multiple drying stations with 25-micron bags and towels.

How to Consume Hash

Hash is versatile and one of the cleanest concentrates around. Here are some of the most popular ways to consume hash:

• Add it to a roll. Pack your spliff, blunt, or joint with an even combination of flower and hash. For example, sprinkle a layer of flower, then hash, then flower, and finally hash again before sealing.
• Top off your bowl. Fill your pipe’s bowl with flower, leaving enough room to pack the amount of hash you want to add.
• Turn it to rosin. Pack a dime-sized amount of hash in between wax paper, and melt the cannabis inside with an iron (hair irons provide the most temperature and manual control). Dab or vape the ensuing rosin.
• Make it edible. Decarb your hash, then sprinkle it into salads, beverages, soups (or whatever food you don’t mind amplifying). You can also infuse it with oil or butter for easy culinary use.

Hash is a concentrate, so consume it safely. You only need a small amount to experience its effects. Start slow to avoid getting too high. Remember, you can always smoke more if needed! Note how your body responds to your first dose of hash and adjust accordingly, but wait at least two hours before consuming more.