Nutrient selection plays a large roll in the health of your plants, whether you choose organic or synthetic, it can affect the quality, color and clarity of the trichomes. Carefully testing and selecting the right products for your individual fertilizer requirements is crucial for a positive outcome when harvest time rolls around, Cannabis plants are comprised of the environmental and nutritional factors they are exposed to throughout their lifetime. As the roots absorb nutrients up into the plant

Rosin bag slippage is an issue that most extractors have had to deal with at one time or another. As press plates apply pressure to the starting material during extraction, the rosin bag should remain perfectly fixed in position. But sometimes, as pressure increases and rosin begins to flow, the rosin bag and material drift out of place. This slippage can create various problems like reduced yields and torn parchment paper.

Somewhere between the living and the dead, the world of zombies exists in an enigmatic limbo. While much less dramatic than the creatures popularized in contemporary culture, zombie bubble hash is definitely worth the attention of discerning cannabis connoisseurs. But how can hash be a little bit living and a little bit dead? Bubble hash, or ice water hash as it’s also called, is made with a solventless extraction method that involves mixing ice, water, and cannabis. Agitating cannabis and ice water together knocks trichomes free from the plant material on which they grow.

There are several ways to prepare cannabis material for ice water extraction, or washing bubble hash. Traditionally, hash makers hung cannabis upside down to fully dry, prior to extracting the resin. Drying cannabis flowers, and then subsequently curing in glass jars, is the same preparation for smoking them as well. But throughout this process, exposure to the open air (even inside an environmentally-controlled drying room) leads to terpene loss and oxidation. But there’s another way to prepare cannabis right after harvest, that can minimize oxidation and also preserve the abundance of terpenes locked inside the plant trichomes.

With the recreational cannabis market flooded with lower grade quality products and burdened with excessive taxation rates, there is no better time than now to start growing your own cannabis at home. But if you’ve never grown before where do you even begin? Let’s start out with a few questions that will help you decide which pathway is best for you. 5 Important questions to address prior to starting your indoor grow build out.

2-way humidity packs are thin pouches that contain water vapor, natural salts, and food-grade thickeners which help regulate humidity levels within airtight spaces. Traditionally used by cigar aficionados to preserve moisture levels inside humidors, 2-way humidity packs have been adopted by the cannabis industry to keep flowers at just the right humidity. Relative Humidity, or RH, is a measurement of moisture in the air (given as a percentage), and helps us aim for the right amount of moisture within cannabis flowers.

Microplaning bubble hash is a way to break apart fresh, wet bubble hash for drying after Ice Water Extraction. Hash that’s just pulled from bubble wash bags is soaking wet, and in order to air dry properly, it needs to be prepared accordingly. Wet hash sticks together in globulous patties. Even if it’s spread into a thin, uniform layer to air dry, it will still trap moisture within. Moisture locked inside can’t evaporate by itself in the open air, and this invites mold growth before the hash gets a chance to fully dry.

Bubble Hash, or Ice Water Hash as it’s also known, is a type of solventless cannabis concentrate known for its purity and potency. Bubble hash is made through a process called Ice Water Extraction, a method utilizing only ice, water, and cannabis material to extract trichomes from cannabis. Extractors sieve the ice water and cannabis mixture through a series of mesh filters, called Bubble Wash Bags, in order to isolate and collect cannabis trichomes. These trichomes, also collectively referred to as “resin”, are the main object of interest

Ice Water Hash and Dry Sift are forms of solventless cannabis concentrates, or extracts made without any chemical solvents such as CO2, Alcohol, or Butane. The goal of extracts is to isolate the most powerfully therapeutic compounds of the cannabis plant. These natural compounds, most notably cannabinoids and terpenes, deliver the highly sought-after benefits that cannabis has to offer like pain reduction, sleep enhancement, and stress relief. While these compounds exist throughout the plant, they’re produced in the highest concentrations within trichome heads

Dry sift is a form of solventless cannabis concentrate that’s made by sieving dried cannabis through a series of nylon screens. This sieving, also referred to as sifting, separates trichome heads from the plant material on which they grow during the plant’s flowering cycle. Trichome heads contain significant amounts of therapeutic compounds like cannabinoids and terpenes that we seek from the cannabis plant. The overall quality of a batch of dry sift is measured in part by the ratio of trichome heads to plant material.

We are fortunate to host Tyler Markwart in our lab today to talk about his experience developing and using the Buchner Funnel Tech for air drying bubble hash. Tyler is a cannabis activist, farmer, hash maker, syndicated journalist, and consultant with over 25 years of experience. It's an honor to have him here with us. No budget for a freeze dryer? No problem. Let's start with a note from Tyler about how he came upon the use of this technology for drying bubble hash.

Making Rosin Jam, also called Rosin Jam Tech, is a way to transform freshly-pressed hash rosin into a jam-like consistency. It’s not a complicated process, but it can yield some truly stunning results. All we need for making rosin jam is heat and pressure inside of a glass jar, and we let chemistry do all the work. While there’s nothing wrong with dabbing fresh rosin, there’s a strong case to be made for curing rosin to enhance flavor, increase smoothness, and optimize consistency. Jam Tech is a form of curing, and it’s the main way that extractors

Sieving bubble hash refers to the process of breaking down freshly-made ice water hash using a stainless steel kitchen sieve in preparation for air drying. Sieving is a simple and effective way to grind wet bubble hash into tiny pieces that can release moisture quickly and thoroughly while air drying. Evaporation of moisture is more efficient from small grains of bubble hash than it is from a large patty of hash, which has a tendency to trap moisture within the center of the globby mass.

Bubble wash bags, rosin filter bags, and dry sifting screens are various types of filters that allow extractors to mechanically separate pure, unblemished cannabis resin from the cannabis plant. It’s thanks to these nylon filters that we can collect high purity cannabis concentrates without the use of solvents. Solventless cannabis extracts exist in a variety of premium forms, including bubble hash, rosin, and dry sift. Thanks to quality bubble wash bags, rosin filter bags, and dry sifting screens

When it comes to hash yield as a percentage of total weight of your starting material, there is a significant difference between dry material and fresh frozen material. The amount of moisture in fresh frozen is much higher than the moisture in dried cannabis, which accounts for the variation in yield percentages between the two types of starting material. For Dried, Air-Cured Cannabis, 15-20% yield is a good target. For fresh frozen, look for 3-8%. The rule of thumb for calculating wet (fresh frozen) weight to dry (air cured) weight is 5:1. So if you get 4% wet, that’s equivalent to 20% dry.

The main benefit of using fresh frozen cannabis in the production of solventless hash is preservation. Specifically, preservation of the profuse amount of terpenes and flavonoids that exist in the cannabis plant while it’s alive. Harvested plants quickly deteriorate, and these valuable terpenes are lost as the plant’s metabolism halts and compounds within the trichomes begin to oxidize and degrade. Air drying can lead to around 40% loss of terpene content.

Solventless extractors create bubble hash through a process called Ice Water Extraction, in which we mix cannabis flowers together with ice water in order to separate the small appendages called trichomes away from the plant material. These trichomes (and specifically the heads) contain all the therapeutic compounds that cannabis is known for, and they’re the main ingredients of bubble hash. The purest hash is composed almost exclusively of these trichome heads, with only trace amounts of other plant material.

Fresh frozen cannabis refers to cannabis flowers and trim leaves that are frozen to subzero temperatures immediately after harvest. Extractors use fresh frozen cannabis as starting material in the production of bubble hash. This process is called Ice Water Extraction, which involves mixing cannabis together with ice water using either a hand paddle or a washing machine. This mixing together of ice water and cannabis causes cannabis trichomes to fall away from the material and float freely in an ice water and cannabis slurry.