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. This method is the fresh frozen approach to cannabis, where growers harvest both flowers and the trichome-rich “trim leaves”, essentially collecting the whole plant and freezing it as soon as it’s chopped down.

We can refer to this form of starting material as Whole Plant Fresh Frozen, or WPFF for short. 

With access to a commercial freeze that’s capable of reaching subzero temperatures, growers and extractors can preserve many of the characteristics of the living cannabis plant, and also pass those along to the ice water hash that’s extracted from it. 

Rosin that’s pressed from hash made with WPFF is referred to as “live hash rosin”, a nod to the quality of its starting material. 

Ever wonder about mixing both dried and WPFF together for ice water extraction? Read more in our article What Is Zombie Hash?

If you’re new to making bubble hash, check out our article on Ice Water Extraction.