This is a collection of tips and tricks to improve your bubble hash quality and purity. Last updated July 28, 2022.
Pre Soak
Pre-soaking the flower before washing is incredibly important with both fresh frozen and dried material. If the material is still dry it will shard during agitation causing contamination.
Fresh frozen – soak the material for a minimum of 5 minutes and sometimes up to 10-15 for extra “crispy” fresh frozen. Typically if the material has been sitting in the freezer for a long time it will be drier and require more soak time.
Dried material – I have seen dried material take anywhere from 30min to 2 hours to rehydrate properly.
Use the Weight of the Ice
When rehydrating material the best way to keep the flower submerged is to layer it below a thick 2-3″ layer of ice before adding water. Add water only until the point where the ice just starts to float up and no further.
Don’t jump the gun on agitation. Once you lose this ice layer flower that is not fully saturated will float up and getting it to stay down will be a headache. Only start agitation once the material is fully rehydrated. Because the ice will freeze into a block it is recommended that you break up the ice with a metal paddle before turning on your agitator to prevent a large block of ice from spinning around.
Rinse, Rinse, Rinse
The easiest and cheapest way to clean up your hash and increase purity is to rinse the hash well prior to collection. Hit the hash with a spray head on “flat” setting, rinsing multiple times. This will push through chlorophyll and other impurities , increasing your purity. Ideally use RO water for the rinse, and always make sure that your rinse water is ICE COLD (below 2C or 36F).
[fvplayer id=”2″]
Paper Cutter for Parchment
Unless you are getting pre-cut sheets, the best way to get clean cuts of parchment paper for your freeze dryer and press is to use an 18″ paper cutter. Maybe this is the OCD in me but I hate seeing professional hash makers with hand ripped jagged parchment paper. Take pride in your work.
Leave it moist
It might make sense to think that you should remove as much water as possible prior to collection of bubble hash to the freeze dryer tray. The rationale being that you’re drying the stuff anyways, you might as well remove as much hash as possible.
The reality is that freeze dryers work way more efficiently with evenly distributed wet patties vs chunky dry ones. Try having the hash be a smooth-wet consistency prior to scooping from the collection bag to the freeze dryer tray.
Iceless washing
Iceless washing is the next wave in solventless. Try it out. The idea is that ICE can cause unnecessary friction in the agitation tank leading to more plant contaminants in the final product. Washing without ice also greatly increases the capacity in your vessel.
RO for the Rinse
I personally feel that using RO water for the wash is often overkill if you have clean city water. I hail from the great lakes region where my tap water is always well under 200 ppm.
If you want to really clean up your hash run RO for the rinse water.
Use a Freeze Dryer
Goes without saying but a harvest right freeze dryer is worth every penny. Check out our harvest right tek for optimal settings and parameters for the harvest right units.
Freeze dryers were a game changer in the solventless space. Although air drying can produce some very high quality products. Freeze dryers allow us to produce hash that is almost sterile. Some say this process kills off part of the character and that will always be up for contention. Regardless if you are testing product for microbial content as you would in a regulated market- freeze dryers make a lot of sense.
Recirculate Rather than Batch Style Extraction
One of the biggest things we teach customers when consulting is to try to get to a point where they are recirculating water during the agitation rather than doing batch style extractions.
Batch style extraction – agitate for 10-20 minutes, pull bags, repeat 3-4 times
Recirculation style extraction – continually recirculate while agitating for 45 minutes doing maybe 1-2 pulls throughout.
The advantage of recirculation style extraction is that you are constantly removing trichome heads from agitation tank as soon as they are decapitated from the stalk. This protects the heads in the collection vessel and keeps them from getting beat up in the agitation vessel.
Add Ice to Collection Tank
Adding ICE to your collection tank is one of the easiest way to cool down your recirculation water, keep your collected hash cold and reduce the amount of ice needed in the agitation vessel. This is why we have the same size screen in our collection tank and agitation tanks on both the Hashtek 25t and Hashtek 65t units. You can add ice cubes to the collection tank (underneath the collection bags) without worrying about ice cubes getting sucked into your pump.
Keep Everything Clean
At the recent Melting of the Heads event I got to witness a number of professional hash washers working on our 65t extraction system. One of the things that stood out the most was how clean the top hash makers kept everything. From the spoon, to the collection tank, collection bags and even cold room. The better the hash maker the cleaner the environment they work in – simple as that.
Clean Input Water
It should be no surprise that clean water equals clean hash. Kaya from Pacific Northwest Roots explained to me one of the main reasons his hash is considered the best in Washington State and regularly sells for $70/gram when others are retailing for $40. His farm resides on a natural aquifer that has cold 40F water year round. He never recirculates and produces over 500lbs of ice per day with his own clean water. The formula is easy: clean water = clean hash.
Be sure to bookmark this page, we will continually update it with new hash making tips.
