Making Bubble Hash​​ with ice and water

The separation with ice and water or water/bubble hash consists of separating the resin glands from the plant’s vegetable matter. You can use both buds and trim , although you should use only those leafs with resin on them, removing all fan leaves which have no resin glands to separate. The more selective you are with the vegetable matter you are using, the greater the final quality and yield.

In this article we will show you how to get the precious Bubblehash, also known as water hash. This test has been made with dry and frozen vegetable matter from the Guayita marijuana strain. It can also be done with fresh matter following the same process.

To make this concentrate, you should take into account that some marijuana strains are more suitable for the production of hash than others. Among our genetics, we recommend using Black Bomb, Jack el Frutero and Early Maroc to make resin concentrates.

What do you need to make Bubble Hash?

The most important thing when making water hash is to have good vegetable matter, either buds or trim, which should be frozen: this will determine the final quality of the extraction. Other materials:

• A washing machine or bucket to stir the mix of water, ice and vegetable matter, and optionally one more bucket if you want to reuse the water.
• A pyramid/round-shaped screen bag, in case you are using a washing machine.
• A set of meshes of different sizes (microns) to separate the plant material from the resin glands. Several brands and prices are available. You will need different micron screens to separate the glands by size because different genetics have different gland sizes. Indoor or outdoor crops also produce different trichome sizes.
• A thermometer to monitor the temperature of the water.
• A strainer or similar to sieve the wet resin into tiny pieces for proper drying.
• Containers for drying your hashish, producing the least possible waste. For this reason, you should try not to use cardboard or materials that may produce some kind of fibre; silicone is ideal for this purpose.

How to make Bubble hash step by step?

As mentioned before, it is essential that the vegetable matter is properly frozen; in fact it is very important to keep it cold throughout the process, so you should put the vegetable matter to be used in the freezer a few hours before, keeping it freezed until everything else is ready.

If you are using a washing machine, fill it with water and ice (how much you want to fill it depends on the amount of vegetable matter that you have: the more you have, the more water and ice you will need) and add the vegetable matter when the temperature is at least 4ºC (or colder). You can also add some ice to the pyramid-shaped bag together with the marijuana to keep it cold.

The next step is to prepare the extraction bags. As usual, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, so the advice we are giving you is the method used by the Philosopher Seeds team.

The most important thing here is the quality of the bags used (in this case, the quality of the mesh and seams) and filtering the remains of vegetable matter properly. The rest is up to the grower.

We usually filter with 220 microns, 190 microns and 160 microns. With mostly Indica genetics - particularly the inner buds - you can get acceptable hash in the 160 micron screen. This would be the case of our Black Bomb.

Then you will need to choose which bags to use. This will determine the different qualities of your hash: the more quantity of bags, the fewer amount in each one and more variety in quality. The Guayita strain was used in this example, with six bags  in the first run and 3 in the second one, in addition to filtering the water with a strainer:

• First run: 120, 90, 73, 45, 37 and 25 microns.
• Second run: 90 microns, 73 microns and 45 microns.

The first round was very short, between 5 and 7 minutes, so we separate the best qualities while the weed and the water are still very cold.
 In the second run, we tried to separate the remaining resin from the vegetable matter. You can perform more runs but take into account that the quality will be poorer as you go.

Once the bags are in place, turn on the washing machine or use a stirrer if you are doing it by hand, using a stick with a good grip. Once finished, drain the water into the bags and transfer it into a bucket for the next rounds.

Once this has been done, you can collect your precious hash which is still wet. You can use the drying screen included in quality extraction bags kits so that you can dry it as much as you can. You can also use kitchen roll - or something that is highly absorbent - being extremely careful, and extract the water by capillarity (always beneath the mesh) until the hash has joint together and you can collect it using a spoon or something similar.

We recommend straining the remaining hash with a sieve, a grater or something similar. The most important thing is to obtain the finest possible hash so that it dries without getting damp inside. If it is not finely sieved you are taking the risk of getting your hash mouldy and rotten.

At this point you only need to do the vital step, which is drying and curing. As you do with the buds of your beloved plant, you should be very careful when drying your bubblehash.

You don’t want to ruin it now that you have made it so far, starting from growing the plant up until the separation, so ideally you should dry and cure it in a dark and dry cupboard while airing it every day. Once it is properly dry you can press it if you wish, but we recommend pressing it just before using it.

You only need to be patient so you can finally enjoy your precious hash. The Philosopher Seeds' team hopes that this post has been helpful and you enjoy top grade resins.