Hash. if made from cured/aged kief, should it be cured more?

[Bootsy]

Hi folks. I assume there must be experienced hash makers here to give me some insights. I had an ounce of dry sift from at minimum lat spring, and a bunch more from this fall and inddor christma grow. Really like hash so thought it time to give it a try. For comparison - I recently bought some from two sources (one sold an ounce of decent stuff for $80 on sale - how is that possible?). one source to had potent but not super tasty gooey stuff, that I figured must have oil added while the other had some really hard old school Moroccoan Blonde (exactly like I remember). without experience, from online research on hash making methods, I have now tried four methods. 1. hot pressing by rolling between parchment paper with a hot water filled bottle, 2. shoe pressing in a cellophane bag, 3. mixing kief with a little alcohol produced oil and then rolling with the bottle, 4. heat press at 150F wrapped tightly in turkey bag plastic. They all look and smell like hash so I am very ready to start sampling. The bottle rolled and the heat press versions look and smell fantastic.QUESTION - if the kief is already aged/cured, is there any advantage to curing the resulting Hash further? I have them wraped in balls right now. deciding which homemade to try first! Cheers.

[Farmbuck]

I cure my Kief for several months and I cure my Hash for several years. I've got some hard press Afghan Hash over 3 yrs now and take my word, it's still very potent and it taste like sweet middle-east spices. I'm also aging some Asian Hash like Thai strains from Ace. Heck I've got also some Nepalese & Mazar-I-Sharif curing right now. So IMHO yeah do it age it (curing) in a cool dark and dry place. I put my hash in a mason jars inside of a large oak box.

Some reading : https://www.weedworldmagazine.org/20...-curing-aging/

https://highlydutch.ca/blogs/blog/the-importance-of-curing-and-aging-hash

[Bootsy]

thanks. cool article. do you cure yours in balls, as I see the artyicle from Frenchy says roll lile a cannoli? again only from reading, but mine are now in rolled balls wrapped in cellophane in a small mason jar. really open to suggestion? thanks

[Farmbuck]

You don't need to keep it in a cellophane if you store in a mason jar. Yup got balls, bricks, rolled sticks with my Thai hash.

[Bootsy]

Great. Sorry to keep bugging, but I have always loved hash, so this is more than fun! have a half dozen now and I am breaking down and trying one little ball after only 2 weeks/weaks.
SO- I have a bunch of little batches (2 to 3 grams typical), that I wanna hash up (is that what it's called?). would like to keep em in same jar(s) if that makes sense. would you or anyone have a tip for keeping track of them? maybe a pin with a number?

[Farmbuck]

Some of my aging Hash. From 1 yr to 4 yrs old.

[Farmbuck]

Well thank you Jeff JeffInCanada
!! Just like a good wine you need to be a bit patient for something that is worth waiting for non ?

[Puglover1]

Farmbuck do you ever combine kief from different strains to make hybrid hash?

[Farmbuck]

For landraces I don't for hybrids I do Puglover1

[Smallgrow]

Definitely long curing is important Farmbuck covered most of the reasons in that nice article he posted.

I follow Frenchy Cannoli’s technique and philosophy, he talked about hash in the Middle East being 10+years old and how new compounds are created during the cure that are not present in the flower and add to effects.
If your interested in more good hash info check out this and the rest of his site

https://frenchycannoli.com/science-behind

…heres a couple pics of my last run and stash. I store in natural cellophane and in a jar, in a dark closet, a fridge would be better I think. The cellophane gives me a place to note all the info for each batch. I track strain and grow, screen sizes, weight, production date

[Blowdout2269]

You've got some beautiful balls there! Rofl 🤪
Seriously though, that is amazing work. I'm sure you'll be rewarded with some great smoke when u get to it.👍
Bravo! 👏

[Farmbuck]

Kool balls you have !!

[Bootsy]

Wow! The knives are soon to come out?

[Bootsy]

Holy Ballls of fiiiire, Batman! Your selections were so inspirational that we have started in on converting most of the 2 oz kief collection to hash, keeping some for the required enhacning of my regular smoke. Using the heat press at 140 a few times seems to work almost identically to the hand rolling or hot bottles. Tooooo cool. the hot knives were scorching to Bob Seger and Tom Petty, and lost 45 years for a little while. Canty believe i didnt do thi earlier. Oh yeah, did another version where we presse3d a little rosin, addded that to the kief and the pressed her a few times. Cant wait for them to mature. So glad i reached out.

[Bootsy]

As I am using up my kief collection, i came upon a chunk in the do-si-dos batch that I had simply compressed with kief press. at the time it seemed silly because still tasted same, but now after 1.5 years it tasted a lot like old Moroocan blonde. Aging/curing - wow! thanks for the info.

[SoOrbudgal]

Bootsy i don't have any type of press but i've sat for hours watching a movie and took kief say a few tablespoons at a time and placed it in a piece of plastic wrap twisted it up like a ballon and held it tightly used both hands rolled and rolled it into a ball small and stored it in a old glass lab tube they've been in there for a couple yrs now. Yes it's blond/light brown but not shiney. Smells great, taste smooth but i don't smoke it very often. Just heat from friction in my hands, relaxing

[SoOrbudgal]

I thought i'd show you my kief balls LOL they are petrified now

[Bootsy]

they are very cute. petrified - one way to fix that. mmmm

[Puglover1]

I used a pollen press to use up some darker sift off the top of my packed little jar. The rest is light tan from the top chops of Mag. I was going to decarb and infuse olive oil or some such. I love hash, hard to wait that long for it to get better. Maybe I'll make a small ball and try to hide it from myself ... and the cat. The 1 g test 'nickel' in pic was awful.

[Blowdout2269]

Hey, I used to make those same pollen pressed pucks with my bubble hash!

[Bootsy]

That looks exactly like the little chunk I made (as above), and when i sampled right away it tasted like kief, not that that's bas. just finished a few knives with the same stuff after long time and it tastes like hash. all these years....

[Smallgrow]

The heat part of pressing is key to good traditional hash.

Flower contains the acidic form of the cannabinoids we want, which have little to no effect in that form. That’s why we decarb before we make edibles, to transform the THCa to THC (same with the other compounds). When you burn flower in a joint or pipe you are transforming the acidic form through combustion. Unfortunately, combustion at that temp destroys many of the compounds before you can consume them.
When you press the hash with “low” heat you transform some of the compounds prior to combustion and making a whole bunch more accessible for ingesting. That’s one of the reasons why the effects of consuming hash are different from flower from the same plant.
This is a very brief explanation, there is some more in-depth info here

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59cd905351a5846569cfbbca/t/5e7b97bbdddec44f6b374c75/1585158145602/Weedworld+142.pdf

I have one of those little pollen presses and I’ve experimented with gently heating it in the oven prior to pressing with it. You may be able to get some decarb action that way. I just do mine Frenchy style with the hot water wine bottle