by Sirius Fourside
Table of Contents
- Introduction: What’s the Best Hash to Make at Home?
- Dry Ice Hash vs Bubble Hash: The Process
- Our Test Process
- Our Test Results
- Final Judgement
Introduction: What’s the Best Way to Make Cannabis Hash at Home?
Hash is a collection of the extracted resin glands (trichomes) from a cannabis plant. The effects of hash are typically much stronger than cannabis flowers on their own because trichomes contain concentrated amounts of THC, CBD and other cannabinoids. Two of the most popular types of marijuana hash made at home are bubble hash and dry ice hash. After releasing tutorials on how to make your own Bubble Hash and Dry Ice Hash at home, we received quite a few emails on the subject of hash. Everyone seems to love extracts in all forms, but there were two distinct opinions that kept showing up over and over again…
Collecting dry ice hash made from 1 ounce of cannabis.
One group feels the dry ice hash is better, and that bubble hash can be time-consuming and doesn’t always get great yields.
The other group thinks bubble hash has the best potency/effects, and that dry ice hash is a less valuable extract.
Hash is basically a collection of trichomes from a marijuana plant (trichomes are the “sparkles” that grows on buds and leaves).
Pure trichomes are abundant in cannabinoids, so any kind of hash is likely to be much more potent than typical cannabis.
Honestly, I think both forms of hash are great. But peaceful coexistence won’t do in this case. Today, both types of hash are getting judged and we’ll figure out if one really is better than the other. In this experiment, bubble hash and dry-ice hash will be judged by these criteria:
- Appearance – How pretty does it look?
- Difficulty – Is it hard to make?
- Yield – How much hash is extracted per ounce of weed?
- Perceived Potency – How strong does it feel?
Alright, let’s get to the comparison!
Dry Ice Hash vs Bubble Hash: The Process
If you’re not familiar with how to make Bubble Hash or Dry-Ice Hash, don’t worry. Here’s the general gist of what you need to know before going any further:
Weed/Trim + Cold + Agitation = Hash
There are ways to make hash that don’t involve cold temperatures (like dry sift, Gumby hash or hand-rolling), and there are ways to make hash without cold temps or agitation (a rosin press uses pressure and heat), but Bubble Hash and Dry-Ice Hash both use the “cold + agitation” formula to create their respective products. If you want to learn how to make these types of hash before continuing, check out the following links for the complete tutorials:
Full Tutorial: How to Make Cannabis Bubble Hash.
Full Tutorial: How to Make Cannabis Dry-Ice Hash.
Differences Between the Types of Hash
Although there are differences in how they’re made, these two solventless extracts are very similar at heart.
Bubble Hash requires you to combine some weed/trim with freezing cold water. The super-cold mixture is then agitated which causes the resin (good stuff) to fall off the weed and into the cold water. That cold weed-water is then filtered and you’re left with bubble hash.
Dry-Ice Hash skips the water altogether but keeps the agitation. Dry ice is made out of frozen CO2, and turns into a dry vapor as it warms (instead of water like regular ice). Dry-ice is so cold that it gets the resin glands to freeze, making it easy for them to break off. The dry-ice and weed are placed in the same type of sieve you would use for Bubble Hash and agitated until resin falls onto a surface where it’s collected.
Our Test Process
To make sure this is fair, we started with the same weed for each test. We took 2oz of flowers from an Ultimate Auto #1 plant and ground it all up to ensure similar consistency. Next, we mixed up the ground-up weed, split it into 2 containers, and weighed them to ensure everything was equal. We got 2 sets of the same Bubble Bags and made both types of hash using 1 ounce of weed for each test. We processed the Bubble Hash by chopping it up, drying it overnight, and putting the Dry-Ice Hash in containers since it doesn’t need further processing. Then came the weigh-in.
This is the 2 ounces of bud we used for this test. It was some of the larfiest buds from the harvest but covered in trichomes. Perfect for hash-making.
And this is the same bud after being ground up before we split it into 2 groups
Note: When making hash, there’s no benefit to grinding your bud/trim this fine. This was done strictly for the test.
This isn’t a super scientific test, but it should give you a good idea of what to expect if you’re thinking about making either of these two hashes. Although there are many other types of extract (shatter, RSO, etc.), these two are the most common for home growers since they’re easy to make, and they’re safe because they don’t use solvents.
The Results of Our Test
Appearance
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. It might be a cliche sentence at this point, but it’s still true. When it comes to whether or not you find something attractive, there isn’t a right or wrong answer. That being said, I feel there’s an obvious hierarchy here. Although both hashes are great, Dry-Ice Hash is just plain prettier. Check them both out and see what you think.
A closeup of the Bubble Hash…
A closeup of Dry-Ice Hash from the same starting cannabis matter. You can see the individual trichomes.
Winner: Dry-Ice Hash
Difficulty
Neither one of these two hashes is particularly hard to make, especially with the right equipment. In fact, if you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to try making both types at home! You can get a feel for the process of making each type, and as a pretty sweet bonus, you end up with two different types of hash to use.
Part of the difficulty with Bubble Hash is that it can be messy since it involves lots of water. There is also one step when making Bubble Hash that can greatly affect the level difficulty: the mixing. Bubble Hash can go from being pretty intensive (when you mix the ice water and cannabis by hand) to moderate (using a hand drill) to pretty-easy-but-wet when you use a mini clothes washer as a Hash-Machine, (like this mini washer, shown below). With the mixing out of the way, it’s just a bit of scraping, drying and chopping before your hash is ready.
A mixing machine makes the Bubble Hash process a lot easier, but you still have the mess of dealing with tons of ice and water.
Once the ice water and cannabis have been mixed together and agitated for several minutes, the mixture is poured through special bags (called bubble bags), and the hash is collected with a spoon. You repeat the process multiple times.
Dry ice hash takes much less time to make. The main drawback to Dry-Ice Hash is, well…the dry-ice. Dry ice can be harder to obtain than regular ice depending on where you live and it costs more. Additionally, you shouldn’t touch Dry-Ice. It’s inherently more dangerous since prolonged contact can give you a mean freezer burn. Still, even with those issues, Dry-Ice Hash is pretty easy to make and if you follow a few easy safety guidelines like wearing oven mitts, the dry-ice won’t cause any problems and ends up being easier to make overall.
Making dry-ice hash. After mixing your cannabis bud or trim with dry ice in a bucket, you put the mixture in the same type of bubble bags and shake the hash onto a table.
Winner: Dry-Ice Hash
Yields: Amount of Extract per 1 oz of Cannabis
Each hash-making process produces multiple “grades” of hash. I weighed each grade separately and added the results together to get the total yield from each method.
Bubble Hash Yield from 1 Ounce of Buds
Here are pictures of the weigh-ins from the bubble hash.
Bubble Hash (decent quality) – 1.52 grams
Bubble Hash (good quality) – 0.25 grams
Bubble Hash (best quality) – 2.64 grams
Total Amount of Bubble Hash per 1 Ounce: 4.41 grams
Percentage of Weight Returned as Hash:15.6%
Dry-Ice Hash Yield from 1 Ounce of Buds
Here are pictures of the weigh-ins from the dry-ice hash.
Dry-Ice Hash (decent quality) – 2.47 grams
Dry Ice Hash (good quality) – 3.65 grams
Dry-Ice Hash (best quality) – 6.21 grams
Amount of Dry-Ice Hash per Ounce: 12.33 grams
Percentage of Weight Returned as Hash: 43.5%
Winner: Dry-Ice Hash by a landslide! Even I was shocked by this discrepancy.
Potency (Perceived Potency)
What’s the difference between “measurable” potency and perceived potency? Both terms are talking about the same thing – how strong the cannabis is – but they’re different in how each one is measured.
A closeup of the trichomes on a live cannabis plant. All types of hash are made out of these mushroom-shaped resin glands.
“Measurable” potency (or just “potency”) talks about how strong cannabis is in terms of objective measurements. This is the scientific way of determining potency. If you went to a dispensary and purchased cannabis, it would tell you the amount of THC/CBD/CBN the product contains to give you an idea of how strong (or “potent”) it is. Those numbers are measurable potency.
“Perceived” potency describes how strong something feels to the person using it. This means that perceived potency is subjective since it’s based on people’s feelings and can’t be measured. However, there are times when perceived potency is a better indicator than measurable potency, and we think this is due to the entourage effect.
The entourage effect is a way of describing how there are compounds other than THC in cannabis that can change the effects we experience when using cannabis. THC by itself has certain effects, but combining it with CBD, for example, can reduce certain negative effects some people experience with cannabis. We’re still learning what all plays a part in what makes good weed, but we definitely know that it’s not just up to THC or CBD.
This is relevant to our test because Bubble Hash seems to grab a few more friends into its entourage when it’s being made. Dry ice hash is just trichomes; if you look at them closely, you can tell there’s nothing else there. On the other hand, Bubble Hash just comes out different. It’s possible that there’s a water-soluble compound that gets added in, or it could just be the structure of the hash itself. Either way, after some lengthy testing, Nebula and I fully agree that Bubble Hash feels much stronger.
Winner: Bubble Hash
Final Judgment
All this talk about hash has reminded me of how much I love both of these types of hash. Before I render a final judgment on who wins the showdown, let me make a case for why each one deserves to be in your house.
Bubble Hash: Old-school cool with some great potency. A little Bubble Hash goes a long way, and it’s one of the best ways to use your trim.
Dry-Ice Hash: It’s good, easy, and you get a lot of it. Nuff said.
Winner: Dry-Ice Hash
This was a close one. Bubble Hash brings so much perceived potency that it should almost be an automatic win. Almost.
Dry ice hash is a tough act to follow. It’s insanely easy to make and it’s just as fun to make as it is easy. Dry-Ice Hash might not feel as potent per gram as Bubble Hash, but it’ll get the job done and you get a lot each time you make it. It’s less messy to make dry ice hash, and since dry ice sublimates (turns from solid directly into a gas) nothing gets wet and your hash is ready to use as soon as you collect it. As long as you’re just a little careful, making dry ice Hash is almost too good of a deal.
Still, if you learn to grow enough weed you can make both which is clearly the best option. Have fun making hash and let us know how it goes for you!
