Making Bubble Hash - Bopper's guide from start to finish!

Discussion in 'First Time Marijuana Growers' started by Bopper, Dec 23, 2005.

  1. Hi everyone, as some of you will already know I have a journal here and have grown some pretty nice plants in my first year of growing indoors and following the advice and tips here has made my little adventures more productive and rewarding that they otherwise would have been. Because of that I thought I'd share my experiences with making bubble hash from my trimmings and harvests so you can see for yourself how easy it can be!

    OK, so here's what I bought to get started:

    The cheapest 3-bag Bub-L-Sac on the market £35
    2 x 3 gallon buckets
    1 x Grassleaf hash press from Ebay £10
    1 x electric mixer £12 from Argos

    In addition you will need:
    Ice and lots of it
    Water
    A large bowl
    A desert spoon
    Some cardboard
    Some trim / Kif / Green stuff
    Some warm clothes
    A sense of humour

    OK, so before you begin, this would be a good time to skin up 'cos there's lots of pictures to come! Also, I'll try not to get side-tracked into the theory behind how all this works, you can read that for yourself elsewhere, this is just how I've been doing it and you can decide for yourselves how successful I've been.

    Sitting comfortably? Good, so once you've assembled all your gear together, here's what to do.

    Take your bucket and fill it with cold water. If you have room in your fridge, stick the bucket inside for a few hours or better yet, overnight. This gets the water nice and cold but if it's winter, and it was -7 the night I took some of these, then just leaving your bucket of clean tap water outside will have the same effect.

    Now it's time to pour in your trim, buds or whatever you are going to make your hash from. Personally I've tried to keep my strains separate so I can compare Orange Bud hash with SCROG hash once it's matured, anyway, now is the time to add your trim to the water. Once in, add lots of ice on top of your trim and bud, stur it round for a bit then leave it to stand for half an hour or so.

    Personally I freeze all the trim I intend to use for several days first. This makes the little trich crystals very brittle which allows them to be more easily separated from the veg / leaf. You'll see from the pictures that I had something approaching 2lbs of trim for this production!
     

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  2. Now that you have left your mix to stand for a while it's time to start working on your bud to break off as many of the glands as you can. All the books and articles I read said to use an electric food mixer but be carefull!

    Tell you why. These mixers are for small domestic cake makers who use them to blend generally light materiels, like flour and sugar. Take a look at the tangles mass of canna stalks, leaves and so on, not to mention several lbs of ice and you'll soon realise that these electric mixers need to be carefully handled.

    My first one lasted less than 45 seconds before one of the paddles snapped off completely, the other lasted 10 mins before that also snapped off leaving me to continue mixing by hand. (did I mention that it was -7 when all this happened?) Oh, and the other thing, if your mixer starts shooting out blue sparks like mine did, generally this means that it's fucked!

    So, I thought I'd use a little lateral thought here and as I have a pond with air pumps for my fish, what I did was take my buckets outside when I put one of the air bricks from my koi air pump into each bucket. The bubbles this produced were enough to make the ice churn against the veg matter in the bucket which did the jobfor me. I just left them bubbling outside for 2-3 hours - easy!

    The final picture here shows what the buckets and mix looked like once I'd finished!
     

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  3. OK, so the bubble sack manufacturers tell you to put their bags inside each other, then inside the bucket, then add the water, ice and trim, then mix. Fine, but I have to say that it's pretty boring to keep having to untangle the bags from the mixer blades and it's not like you are going to loose anything by mixing first then introducing the bags - IMHO.

    Anyway, now's the time to get your bags ready, give them a quick rise through then put them inside each other with the finest mesh on the outside and the biggest on the inside. This is to allow you to separate the kif from the water as you are about to see.

    One thing I learned was that the bag with the biggest holes can be shaken over the bucket to empty the water from it quicker while the smaller, finer mesh bags should just be suspended and allowed to drain slowly.

    Time for more pictures, the last of which is the iced and strained veg mix after I've put it through the first bub-L-sac!
     

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  4. This series of pictures demonstrates how to recover your hash from the sacks.

    The red sack is my smallest filter and once the water has drained, take the back and open it over a large bowl as I have. This isolates the screen at the bottom of the bag which allows you to take your spoon and scrape up the grains in the bottom. This is then tapped out onto cardboard and left to dry thoroughly.

    On the subject of cardboard, the better quality card you can get the better it works. I used an old corrigated box initially but it was crap compared to the stiff card at the back of an A4 writing pad. I'd suggest you just get the best you can and try for yourself but remember - once it's dried you've got to get it off again using a sharp knife, so poor quality card will just cause you frustration and possible the loss of your raw hash!
     

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  5. Having run your mix through once, now's the time to re-group and start again!

    There is something of the Law of Diminishing Returns about all of this as you will get less each time you pull your harvest through the screens, but hey, you got this far so 2-3 more times isn't gonna kill ya (NB - See my earlier comments about blue sparks first - electricity and water don't mix folks so BE CAREFULL)
     

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  6. Because I bought the cheapo bag set, I'm not sure how much more I'd get from the water if I had a £250 7-Bag set but one thing I have noticed is the rich golden brown colour of the water.

    So if it was clear when I first poured it in, the only thing I can think that's making the water golden brown is little hash granules. It drove me nuts to pour this away before but my bags just didn't collect it, so I've tried something a bit different. If you leave your drained water in a clear plastic bottle overnight, everything settles so you can see the hash sediment at the bottom of the bottle.

    What I did was to keep the water in old plastic bottles like this, allow the contents to settle, then I made tiny holes in the bottle below the water line but above the hash sediment so that the water would drain leaving me with just the sediment. Sure, it took some time for the surplus water to drain then evaporate but I did it to just see for myself how much was left in it (not much is the answer, but hey, you'll see for yourself in a few moments!
     

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  7. More of the hash sediment and the cardboard sheet with my drying hash on it!
     

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  8. So now you have a bit of cardboard with some drie and crusty resin stuck to it that is starting to look and certainly smell like hashish! nNext thing is separating your hash from the cardboard.

    Here's where the quality and thickness of the card becomes more important as you'll be using a sharp knife to slide under the hash residue before you start to chip / slice / cut the hash from the card and onto a chopping board. Once you have your chips of hash, now you can either just keep it loose in a bag or press it into a lump for later!

    Personally I wanted to try using a press but the £50-£75 price tag was a bit rich for me. I read up on pressing hash in plastic bags stuck inside wet newspaper and so on but it just looked like a drama waiting to happen, so good ole Ebay came up trumps again!

    So, you now have your hash and your press. What you need to do is compress the hash under heat so that it makes a solid lump. It did take a bit of trial and error for me but hey, doesn't everything, but here's how I got on.

    Firstly I put my oven on and put a shallow tray in it. I only wanted the oven warm, not how, as I didn't want moulten hash running round my kitchen - lmao - so 70c was about right. I then took my knife and chopped the hash into smaller bits which having opened up my little press, I poured inside. I screwed on the other end and then put the whole lot in the oven for a couple of minutes.

    After a couple of mins I remove the press from the oven - it will be hot but still handleable without gloves (but check first huh!) which is when I then tighten both ends more fully. Once tight I then open it up straight away and push the inner cylenders through to reveal a little core of hash.
     

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  9. And finally, here's some more of the press and the resulting hash nuggests!

    You'll notice that 4 of the nuggets are round balls while the others are better formed. That's trial and error for you but I guess it'll all taste the same when the time comes!

    I understand that now I have to let it mature and cure a bit and some people leave their hash for 12 months before smoking it. Just as well I've got some bud left then hh, especially as the little bit that I did try tasted strongly of terpentines although it did do the job - LMFAO.

    How much did I get? Well so far I have just unedr half an ounce but I don't have any wizz-bang scales to give you a more accurate weight.

    So, that's it, Bopper's Hash making laid down for eternity. I feel I've come a long way over the last 12 months, learned a hell of a lot, had some great harvests and I've really enjoyed the fruits of my labours - LMAO. Thanks to everyone here that's provided help, advice, comment, support and most of all, lots of fun throughout the year.

    Merry Christmas folks!
     

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  10. Thats great bopper.... :smoke: i felt i was in cooking school :)

    i bet the fingers are gunna feel it,all that typing in all.....but hey someone had to do it.....
     
  11. Nice one Bopper, looks good hash too man...........No comedy moments though? Why is there a door knob or the end of your curtain pole insome of the photo's?......there must be a Bopper comedy error in here somewhere.......:D

    Happy times man..........

    Polski.
     
  12. HIGH All, *LOL* love the Bubbleling Buckets Bopper *LOL*....each time you do it it will get better.

    This is my beater...been though many a beatings and keeps on beating *LOL*
     

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  13. Hi guys, glad you enjoyed it. I've been taking the pictures for a while now and just needed the opportunity / excuse / time to post them and the story up!

    Unoit, that sure looks like a seasoned beater to me matey, I dread to think how many turns that's had but it looks a bit more robust than my first mixer was!

    Sea of Green, always a pleasure matey, thanks.

    Polski, I hear you but I thought I'd try to keep it straight if possible so those that haven't read any of my journal didn't think me a complete twat. I guess my sense of humour is not to everyone's taste so not to many references to the comedy moments although looking back at the blue sparks, extreme coldness of the water and me being outside doing all this alone, generally in the dark (works for Shamen apparently) and finding my own way past the gaps in other peoples hash-making guides are all comedy moments in their own right!

    Glad you enjoyed it guys.

    Happy new year!
     
  14. For all us beginner hash makers will shake work instead of using trim?
     
  15. legalizebud89: yeah you can use shake but unless you are using a bunch u may not get hardly any bubble

    Bopper: great method.. I use the exact same but I don't have any of those nice bubble bags to make it a lot easier. I use coffe filter and paper towel and a lot of siphoning! Congrats...great thread
     
  16. How much shake would I be looking at for a descent amount of some good hashish?:D
     
  17. ^^ oz and up of leaf material is a good amount..
     
  18. Hi Mate, thanks for that, just trying to put something back!

    Actually I tried that, using paper coffee filters and stuff but I could never get the damned stuff out of them afterwards! At least with using bags and cardboard, it's easier to actually get at your hash after you've dried it.

    Tell you what though, I am tempted to buy one of the expensive bubble bags, one with the smallest filter screen, just to see what difference that would make. It's on the list (but it's getting to be a hell of a list!)

    Cheers :wave:
     
  19. Awesome guide, man! Gonna have to give this a go when my crop comes through. I've never smoked 'proper' hash (I've smoked soapbar in days gone by, but will never do it again!), but it seems like a lot of trim and work to come out with a relatively small amount of hash... Must be pretty concentrated stuff?

    As for the high-quality bubble bags, who knows - maybe you'll unexpectedly come into a bit of money in the near future and be looking for an excuse to spend it on something weedy? ;)
     
  20. Honestly? I've not tried it since I first made it 'cos it was too damned strong tasting back then. So, I've had it sitting somewhere nice and quiet to mature, but it's hard to be objective with your own stuff.

    Perhaps you could test drive it and post your thoughts?
     

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