These are the top mistakes to avoid when making hash. Some of these may be new to you, while some you may have heard of before. Let us know if you have any questions or would like us to add any new topics to this post. Hopefully you learn something new and can improve the quality of hash that you serve your customers.
Not Rehydrating Dry Material Long Enough
When making bubble hash from dried material it is critically important to properly rehydrate the material. This can sometimes only take 15 minutes but for very dry material often takes 30-120 minutes. Inspect the material well before starting agitation. There should be no dry clumps remaining, otherwise you risk shearing plant matter during agitation and contaminating your hash.
When rehydrating material always layer the plant matter below the ice before adding the water. The ice will keep the flower from floating up when you add water, thus forcing it to re-hydrate during the pre soak.
Soaking Fresh Frozen Material Too Long
This goes hand in hand with the previous issue. Many start with running dry material before moving to wpff (whole plant fresh frozen). You then assume either through force of habit, or through overcorrection, that fresh frozen requires the same amount of soaking. The reality is that fresh frozen material is already fully saturated and only required 1-5 minutes of soaking to rehydrate the outside of the buds that may have dried out during the freezing process. Soaking too long can actually lead to green hash via chlorophyll leaching.
Using Warm Rinse Water
Using warm rinse water is another common mistake to avoid when making hash. Many ill advising tutorials posted online have you rinsing bubble hash with tap water. Tap water is rarely cold enough for the rinse, even in Canada where Hashtek is based. You should always be rinsing using a cold water rinse system. Either a pressurized sprayer filled with ice or a tote filled with ice and submersible pump thrown inside. Fully integrated systems like the Hashtek 25t and 65t come standard with ice cold rinse and supply water fed by a demand pump.
Not Filtering Water
Use either RO or filtered water when extracting ice hash. RO is the gold standard but single stage charcoal filters take care of the chlorine taste at a fraction of the cost. Either way do not wash or rinse with tap water or you will be left with hash that has a chlorine residue and taste to it. If you are washing on a farm and well water must be used I recommend using it only for the wash and then rinsing with store-bought RO water due to the high mineral content in ground water.
Freezer Burned Or Oxidized Material
Making bubble hash is an extraction, not a magic process. It is impossible to take poor quality product and make something great with it. While things like like powdery mildew, or dust contamination from outdoor crops can be reliably remediated. Poor quality input material (low potency, low terpenes, improperly aged) will always yield poor quality hash. As the expression goes, fire-in, fire-out.
Not Using Appropriate Storage Vessels
Terpenes – which are a primary constituent of hash- are highly volatile compounds. Which means they easily turn to a gas and ‘escape’, leaving you with a dry flavourless hash. Terpenes are so volatile that they remain liquid in pharmaceutical grade freezers at -40C. To prevent terpene loss bubble hash should always be stored frozen in air tight containers like mason jars or c-vaults. Head space should always be minimized in storage containers (i.e. the volume of bubble hash should be 70-95% of the max capacity of the container). Containers from the freezer should be allowed to come up in temp prior to being opened to avoid moisture ingress and condensation inside the container which can lead to microbial growth. During the curing of hash rosin tight fitting containers with thick gaskets should be used.
For final packaging avoid the use of silicone containers. These do not have a tight seal and will allow terpenes to escape. Input biomass should be stored in thick (6mm or heavier) poly bags that have a light vacuum applied to them.
Overall these items are very common mistakes to avoid when making hash. Happy hash making!
