school me on making bubble

Didn't immediately see the post I was looking for but pretty sure it was in one of the merged threads...

Anyway, regarding temple balls, how long does it take for the insides to get all gooey & awesome? I made a small ball out of 3g or so of pressed OG Skywalker hash & after a couple weeks there was definitely a difference in the outer layer (which became a bit tough) and the gooey innards. Not sure if the potency was all that different, but the flavor of the inner part was noticeably different (& delicious).

I've still yet to get my hands on a 5 or 6 star melty hash. The search continues I suppose.

 

Frenchie Cannoli highlights that you get less of the 'cream' in the centre of temple balls made from less melty hashes. It also seems to be something that takes a number of months to get to 'peak cream'.

I have a number of temple balls curing right now - one thing I will say is that with time, they definitely get meltier than they started off! Something that was barely a 5 star will be closer to a 6 star IME after a few months. The trick to getting the creamy centre is to start off with super melty hash, press it very effectively and uniformly and then leave it for as long as possible sealed in a cool, dry place without touching it at all! I find that my 6 star material starts to get a slight creaminess internally even after a week stored this way. Longer would no doubt be better!

How melty is your temple ball bro, could you share a pic?

 

it is not that melty & quite dark, ha. Just figured I'd test out the temple ball thing with this batch. Hopefully I'll get some malleable bubble hash in the near future to do a proper temple ball. I'll have to make sure to do it when my stash is large enough to preclude me being tempted to pinch a bit off the outside every now & again. I'll try and take some pics this evening. Had the vapcap parts soaking in alcohol (got over-capped & forgot to wait on the cool down click... combustion town ) & plan to set that back up tonight as well. Been a few days since I've hit the hash, the purple dream shatter in the DT 3.0 has been treating me right though.

What's your preferred way to vape the creamy center of a temple ball?

 

IME the best way to vape the creamy centre is to dab it on sapphire (either my sapphire halo or liger). It bubbles VIOLENTLY!

Something that has been so carefully prepared for the ultimate taste should only be enjoyed on sapphire IMO, so that you can experience the taste as much as possible SiC does not taste anywhere near as good for full melt, I generally don't dab 6 star hash on the SiC because of lesser flavor compared to sapphire, unless it is 25u 6 star which has less flavor to taste anyway due to immature resin and hence less resin in the glands.

Man I haven't hit solvent based shatter in years now that you mention shatter, I remember when it was all that I posted pics of! lol Purple Dream sounds delicious

If the hash you have is less melty, definitely best to vape that one in the vapcap after a clean, lol I've missed a click here and there before, definitely time for cleaning when that happens!

 

So a few tests in and still not quite there. I've been getting some great tips and pointers, and thanks for those! The issue is that it's more green and smells a bit more grassy than I'd like. I'm obviously beating the jeebus out of it, and need to be a bit less brute forcey with the whole process...


Speaking of carefully prepared - tomorrow I'm trying an ice-free extraction. The daytime high is around -4c, so I'm gonna let the water chill, then leave the whole thing outside til it starts to get crunchy, and then agitate gently with a paddle attachment.

When the bags are pulled I'm kinda conflicted about whether to leave the pucks in the bag til they freeze and then put them on drying glass, or do it the usual way. The more I think about it the more I liek the freezing part... The bags won't need to be cleaned in quite the same aggressiveness, due to everything freezing and then breaking off. It's kinda how we used to 'clean' sleeping bags on winter training exercises...

I'm also getting an itch to be doing dry sift in this weather... Watch for more experiments

 

Too late to edit above, so here's a new post. I haven't been surfing Skunk Pharm for awhile, and found some interesting new stuff on there.

Such as this article by D. Gold, the guy who wrote the 1971 book Cannabis Alchemy. Here's a quote:

Traditional domestic hash was created around this time. I describe dry screening the resin heads from dry, spicy flowers in Cannabis Alchemy, and Ed makes the first mention of water hash in one of his early books describing “Sensi Sam’s Secret.”

Sensi Sam was the guy who took his super collection of California seeds to Holland and sold them to Neville for $1 each. Neville started the first seed company and made a fortune from the strains selling the offspring back to America. Back to Sam’s secret: Powder up some resinous weed and drop it in a glass of ice water. The plant material floats but the resin sinks. Viola! Ice hash.

Here's the link to the whole article - a great read for the burgeoning alchemist!

https://skunkpharmresearch.com/d-go...shares-cannabis-extraction-history-unfolding/

 

Lol none of us are alchemists here man, that is outdated pseudoscience and we definitely do not want to be associating MMJ with these ideas (I hear this term used all too often, I do not mean to single you out at all ) it lends a lot of things to our cause, but credibility is not one of them! lol

I read that write up a month or so ago too, it was a fascinating folk-history!

Too much agitation is very likely the problem if your material is too grassy and green. If it still smells grassy when you are getting 4/5 star melt, then you have a problem with immature resin or if it is an old grassy smell, overly dried out, decomposed material (especially trim).

I am so interested to hear how the ice-free extraction attempt goes! Just make sure to get no freezing up of your water there as you say You actually do not want the material crunchy, but supple. So let the material get soaked through with water before agitating but do not rely or allow freezing of the material!

Your idea for cleaning your bags will definitely work quite well. You might find you need a very light iso rinse of the screens and water rinse to get the iso off to clean the last remaining resin, but then again, you may not I envy your conditions!!! Definitely the right time and place for sifting!

 

I skimmed through the whole thread, but did not take mental notes; @herbivore, what happened to
Hashtag46&2 ? I have seen the rather expensive Frenchy Cannoli products listed @local collectives, never bothered to try them. Not a mention of Matt Rize here??? Skunkman Sam, over on ICMAG was vigorously claiming he invented the coldwater hash extraction tek back in the day well before Bubbleman arrived on the scene.

According to this site/guy, making high quality water hash is simple...any comments?

http://www.drysiftwizard.com/tutorials.html

https://www.facebook.com/DrySiftWizard/

Matt RiZe tutorials YT vids in links here in this thread: http://kylekushman.com/topic/ice-water-extracts-full-melt-hash-bubble-ice-wax/

When I was @HTCC So.Cal Feb'14 (think there was a HT podcast available after), the discussion panel included extract makers, the legendary DJShort, (who commented he was more interested in strains for hash making, than CO2 or BHO extracts), think it might have been Ken[Kenneth “K” Morrow, founder of Trichome Technologies, the Handbook of Essential Oils] that said he was on the panel of judges@Seattle Hempfest, that eval'd 12 oils, and he said that they almost universally tasted the same, and didn't give him effects he wanted.

https://www.medicaljane.com/2014/07...future-of-terpene-rich-cannabis-concentrates/

Quoting KenK:^"he expressed his sentiments that HolyWater is “a very incredible product."

also found these comments on reddit thread interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/CannabisExtracts/comments/542nys/best_dabs_for_body_high/#bottom-comments

"I find it is nothing amazing or more "stoney" than any high end live resin I've had. Hell even most of the HTFSE stuff is way terpier and has much higher levels of active cannabinoids. There's nothing really special about 6 star hash that makes it get people higher, thats just a placebo effect honestly since I've never experienced any sort of "better" or "fuller" high from full melt bubble and I've had some of the best including cuban grower stuff."

 

Greetings,

I truly miss my old friend Hashtag. He has not been around since earlier this year. He disappeared from these parts seemingly overnight, I hope that he is well wherever he is now!

Bubbleman never claimed to have invented bubble hash IIRC, others had made water extraction units before him. As you may know, I am a professional scientist and the only position I can arrive at by scientific methods is that it is a waste of time to enter into discussion of who came up with water hash first. All we have is very spotty anecdotal evidence from individuals who claim to have discovered it and those who may have encountered them. None of it can be considered adequate evidence to support the claim by scientific standards, not that this is any of those people's fault. This is a direct result of the prohibition era that all of this early cannabis lore came from. Nobody was likely to be keeping compelling evidence of having done this shit at the time!

BTW that DSW link you shared basically described the very small yield of easily obtained full melt dry sift that you get from the first negligible agitation of your material.

Same thing happens when you make bubble (not that I see any mention of bubble on the DSW site?), that first very short wash gets very very melty material. The most mature resin falls off the plant with very little encouragement. This is by no means going to be making you enough full melt to dab regularly unless you have mountains of trim/flower to work with lol and you are gonna have to do a lot more sifting and carding/etc to clean up the rest of your material to make a meaningful amount of melty sift - the % return you get from that first high-purity, few-second long sift is tiny!

EDIT:

I watched Matt Rize's tutorials early on and tried them out but I found his methods were not useful (similar to bubbleman's methods, which were the first I tried and found to similarly have some major shortcomings). Rize uses much more ice than I would ever want to use. He also uses a work bag in the bubble machine which is counter-productive (bubbleman has the same problem). One idea that I did pick up from Rize first (although many of us do it) that I should give credit for is the use of a pump sprayer to assist the filtration through the screens.

Frenchie's tek produces higher yields of meltier material hands down than either BM or MR technique as described in their videos. The decision is a no-brainer IME. When I do a nug run, I get nothing but 5 and 6 star hash. Bubbleman and Matt Rize's techniques as they describe them in their videos produce much less full melt and more of the lesser grades of hash from a given run.

This isn't to say that they don't have good medicine available for retail, clearly they do! I produce ice wax using my own technique which retains more terps than traditional methods used to achieve the requisite nucleation. I should say that I generally prefer pressing my resin similarly to how Frenchie Cannoli does, but also with my own proprietary twists to prevent oxidation/degradation.

Ice wax is harder to store long-term without terp loss IME so if you use full melt for your daily medicine like I do, you want to use the processing technique which keeps best. Pressed hash stored in large balls/bricks etc form a solid outer membrane of hardened resin which protects the material within from oxidative degradation. The quality of the stuff you end up with in the centre of a pressed piece of full melt is TO DIE FOR!

IME, if you are getting a small amount of full melt to use quickly in the short term, ice wax is no problem! For medicine that you're using over a long period, pressed material stored in a large dense solid mass is best (make sure it is properly dried though for obvious reasons lol).

Holy shit, I think this is a new topic of discussion in this thread too - don't think we've ever discussed the nuances of ice wax vs pressed full melt etc. Thanks for the questions!

By the way, your last comment taken from the reddit page really does not coincide with my experiences. Let me explain first that I am used to running the same quality/variety of flower from the same source and that I am not only well-versed in making full melt, but also rosin and all solvent extraction types (I could make a HTFSE myself lol, but will not be fucking with one of those necessary solvents in my current processing space for safety reasons).

In my extensive experiences, the taste of full melt bubble, dry sift or charas/finger hash is incomparably better than the best live resin, low-temp rosin and especially typical solvent extracts from the same material. HTFSE is another story of course, and the only different kind of extract that IME is worthy of mentioning in the same breath as full melt.

The sameyness that you quote some of those great extract artists describing about most 'oil' type extractions very much chimes with my experiences btw, I definitely find the same thing quite often - there are some exceptions though, stand-out oils are absolutely possible lol

 

Sadu Sam is the first one I know to popularize it, i think back in 1987 in High Times supposedly. although, I don't know that he invented it, but I'm pretty sure he was the first to widely spread the word about it.

 

Who cares? Same discussion as "who created Original Haze" or "whats the origin of the term OG?"
A lot of rumors and nobody knows. For sure it would be interesting to know. But we'll never know the right answer. All we can do is peddling the same old rumors.
Tek alone is important here IMHO

 

History is important - it's how we learn! I really enjoyed reading about their eureka moments for things we just assume everyone knows these days, like decarbing for example. It's not about the who did what, it's about what they did. Ice water hash, for example. It's great to see how things have changed over the years.

Anyways - ice-less extraction notes

-4 Celsius, or about 4 degrees below freezing for you non-Metricites (metrices?). A bunch of trim into a 5 gallon bucket, with 4 gallons of not frozen water. A long stirring spoon from a brewing shop and stir, stir, stir. It took a good 4 or 5 rotations before the slurry would start to spin - in future I might want to do this with a larger water:herb ratio. Anyways, a bunch of back and forth, not to violently, just to make it all whirly, and then switch direction.

So after a couple of minutes ice started forming around the sides of the bucket, meaning lots of scraping and then swirling. It started to get chunky to I thought it best to pour. I had 220 and 190 in one bucket, and everything else in another. Dunno why, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

Yields looked good, but scooping them out I realized there was a lot of ice in there. Still, easily scooped and dumped on glass. I really regret not using the pressing cloth, as the next day the Pyrex was more water than herb. I syringed a bunch out, being as careful as possible. It's dry now, and has been sieved a few times and looks good. Will take some for a test drive soon. Yield could have been better. I thought it was really good, til I found out that was ice...

Next time
- wrap the bucket with insulation to keep it from freezing, or wait til it's just above freezing, and experiment again. Today it's +4, for example...
- Let bags warm up a little in the garage to let the ice get out
- Hand the bags outside until the pucks freeze, then bring them inside and sieve. If it's cold enough...

I didn't use the 220 work bag again. I might try it again, just because, in theory at least, it seems to make sense. If I was working with perfect bud I would probably avoid it, but for trim I'm thinking it might be handy. But more playing required...


EDIT - so here's a hypothesis - in this weather, at these temps, I should just be able to put a bunch of trim in a container with water, let it sit around freezing for 'awhile', with very little agitation (a couple of light swirls maybe?), and then let it settle for awhile, wouldn't all the heads be on the bottom?

One could, in theory, valve the bottom and drain that directly into bags, or just save it, dry it, and hash it. It's trim, right? Or maybe a slotted cooking spoon to skim all the trim bumpf from the bucket. Anyways, work bag is going to be used for trim going forward, just to keep it tidy. But, on the other hand, will be treated with more decorum...

But using the same valve on the bottom of the bucket idea couldn't you drain right into the bags, avoiding pulling all together? I saw something kinda like that on a vid last year called Ice Water Hack or some such. Anyways, they let the water sit in a monster barrel. and kept siphoning off plant water, replacing it with clean water (slowly) and when the water was nice and clean you could see all the heads on the bottom of the clean water. That, along with reading about it again in the 1971 book about ice water, made me think that all my outdoor water is close to ice right now... Soon, I suspect, an experiment with some actual real good quality buds might start happening... Heck, in this weather I could be doing this in a glass water pitcher and filming in slomo... barely agitated, vibrating sander under the container perhaps? Maybe just the occasional swipe with the big spoon - just to make the water move a little, and let the cold water do it's work... This is kinda exciting - new ideas for Xmas

PS - Happy X!

Click to play YouTube Video

 

I believe I recall Bubbleman pointing out that actually Skunkman/Sadu/Sensi Sam (these are all names for the same person btw for those who do not know) was not the first to have done it. I wonder if it was one of the originators of the bubblebags that bubbleman gives props to, each European's named Rinehart and Mila IIRC, forgive my spelling as I may not have this correct.

Regardless of that, the original high times 'sam's secret' article was hardly a pathway to producing large yields of full melt lol - a lot of development still needed to be done before the 'trichomes sinks in water' realization became more useful for our purposes lol.

I like to understand the history, as any good philosopher will tell you - context is everything! I am sure there are those of us in other professions/walks of life who will appreciate the importance of context

Still, I agree it is important not to get bent out of shape or into heated debates about who came up with this stuff first, given that the quality of evidence that we are working with is necessarily poor.

Most definitely man, it is important to learn from historical progress in anything that we do - this is the surest (not only) path to mastery.

As for your insulating comment - definitely important to insulate the agitation vessel/machine in a lot of other cases too - if you are in weather that is too hot, also helps to be insulatin'

Man no pressing cloths with freezing conditions is brutal! I can only imagine the water as it dried! Definitely pays to always use them as you say lol

You actually don't want your flowers to sit around freezing for too long in those conditions btw, that will cause formation of large ice crystals which tend to rupture cell membranes and lead to more inactives getting into your collections. You want the flowers in the cold water for long enough to get wet and supple, then you wash. You don't want brittle material because it breaks up into contaminant with minimal agitation. Think about how little shaking of a bunch of freezer-dry nugs it would take to turn them to powder - this should help to illustrate why I stress minimal agitation from movement of your material in the water rather than stuff bashing up against it too.

Draining straight into the bubblebags through the bottom of the agitation vessel is exactly what we do when we use typical bubble machines btw works a treat for sure!

I look forward to seeing some of your collections

 

Gotcha re length of time - here's a vid that gave me a few ideas. 50 seconds in is where they siphone water out, which I'm thinking will make traditional bags potentially a little less critical. Imagine a large run of only heads in a gallon of clean water - sieving/separation could be modified in a few ways, possibly making runs a little less cumbersome perhaps? I'm just tossing ideas around in my own head, so apologies if they don't yet make sense

(insert vid just after this--->

Click to play YouTube Video

Once you get down to small amounts of water to a large amount of heads you should, theoretically, get away with gold pan classifier style pans with screen bottoms. Heck, I could make those out of some of the silk screen in the garage, and use just a small amount of clean water for 'classifying' the material...

 

For the few in here curious about the history of ice water hashish, episode 73 of Hash Church featured Skunkman Sam (Real name: David Watson) AKA Sadhu Sam, Mila the Hash Queen (who was manufacturing bags BEFORE Marcus, and had been making her Pollenators well before the bags)- Marcus actually traveled to Amsterdam to meet with Mila, hoping to purchase and distribute her Ice-o-Lator bags in North America, and was shot down as a "silly American". Upon hearing the news, Marc's wife suggested getting some mesh and material and making bags themselves!

The bags were created based on Reinhart Delph's water hash machine. A man named Eldon was hanging out at Mila's when Reinhart introduced the machine in 1997, and after he ran it, Eldon said "Two nylon bags with screen bottoms and a 5 gallon bucket, you've got the same idea."

Sadhu Sam's Secret was not an original idea, but rather it was told to him by Neville, who heard it from an "unknown American." Sam he thinks might've been named Mike... He later sold this Secret for $10



And that's about as far back as we have facts.

"As soon as I saw the resin settle in the glass of water, I said "I get it." Then I had to figure out how to dry the goddamn resin." -Skunkman Sam

Speaking of which; I've been drying my resin up until this point on parchment paper lined cardboard boxes; then putting the cardboard boxes into a cold, air conditioned, DRY room.



However, I'm soon going to be processing a much larger volume of water hash, and I need to graduate beyond 20 gallon washers, and beyond pizza boxes with parchment, the labor spent here is far too high. Has anyone here had experience with more industrial washing machines and/or freeze dryers?

 

That was the episode I was talking about. I've heard Bubbleman say many times about both Reinhardt and Mila having been doing bubble before him. Bubbleman has to pay royalties to one of them to this day also IIRC

As to moving on past cardboard/parchment - IMO glass is the best short of getting a freezedryer (within which you should still be using glass too of course)! I never used cardboard and quickly moved on from parchment after realizing that 5-6 star melts can get very sticky (especially when wet!) and cause pieces of parchment to stick to it permanently - that was a tough lesson!

If you are doing very large scale commercial processing (holy shit if those pics don't look like it!?), I don't process enough material to have looked at large machines personally. Aside from Frenchie's new machine (which costs $$$, of course if I were producing large commercial I would not think twice to spend this if it delivers on the sterility and cleanability it promises alone), there aren't many options I've seen out there that are much better than the bigger plastic machines we see from all the usual bubble machine companies. Of course, there may be recent products that I am not familiar with!

At the scale you seem to be working at, you probably should be looking at spending the cash on a solid freeze dryer. Ain't know question about it, if you are processing weight, a freezedryer is going to drastically reduce man-hours spent on the drying process! If I were you, I'd be asking Bubbleman if he could get you in touch with Tony Verzura - who IIRC has been using freeze dryers for a long time now for this purpose He'll have more appropriate recommendations in terms of convenient suppliers, being closer to your neck of the woods

Hope you are very well btw brother! Happiest of holidays to you!

P.S. didn't even know you were making bubble brother! Please share some pics in our thread here, especially if you got some full melt!!! Since I lost hashtag, it sure got lonely being a full melt processor around here!

 

Heyo Herbivore, a very Merry Christmas to you!

Yep, after my tenure at W9 came to a close I spent two months harvesting, trimming, and hashing in Northern California. I'd made a bit of bubble before, but things work on a different scale down there.

Yup, that would be Reinhard Delp, who invented a "method and apparatus for extracting plant resins" covered by US Patent #6158591 B-man (and others like Mila) spent years in court before reaching an agreement to pay royalties.

Do you freeze the glass to get the resin glands off without rupturing? I'm admittedly not familiar with properly dried hash sticking to parchment, or retaining bits of paper. I sure don't want to do that!

I've used the plastic machines a lot, and I'm looking forward to doing more old-school, hand stirred hash. I have used, and disliked, running with work bags in those plastic washers. I agree with your thoughts and Frenchy's on removing work bags to increase plant to water surface area resulting in greater separation.

Good idea on reaching out to the B-man, I wrote him on Facebook and I'll hope to hear back.

I don't have any great pictures of hash I've made. I have some dry sift stored somewhere that I'll have to photograph when I find it, but I'm in the midst of a move right now and don't expect to be hashing again for a month or two. I will most certainly take pictures when I get back into it.

 

Oh great stuff man! Wish I could come out there and work with ya lol, making bubble is therapy for me!

Please do let us here know if Bubbleman/Tony V give the good word re: freeze dryers and what they say as this is definitely going to be interesting to at least some of us someday, if not right now

With the sticking to parchment thing - some varieties taken to the right level of maturity definitely seem to give stickier resin than others. This will probably explain the differences we observed here The full melt that I work with is like glue at first when drying, then takes on a velvety texture with a creamy centre over time (this texture fascinates me!).

Yup cold is the way you remove from glass - If you're working in air conditioning (everyone should do this unless it is already cold, or freezing like in our friend @killick's situation lol) it should be no trouble at all

I knew having seen that you've processed such weight that you'd already understand the importance of maximum water surface area to plant material for best results It is something that becomes much more apparent with larger runs!

Great going with this work in Norcal man! I am glad to hear you landed on your feet brother! I look forward to seeing pics of your work

 

Funny - was just reading that dry sift should be done on cooler days, below 15 c... So I'm waiting for it to warm up above freezing to try another round of bubble, or just give dry sift a shot at -12c and see how it goes

Hi @SamuraiSam - great hearing about how all this stuff came about. Even better that it's not that far in the past! Herbal technology has come a long way since the daze.


Wacky Willies Emporium (online somewhere) has a couple of stainless steel washing machines that use oxygen or co2 as agitation sources. Not Frenchy quality but much easier on the wallet, depending on what you are after.

I have swapped a couple of notes with Bman. He's not that far away from me (couple of hours). I'm sure we'll trip over each other one of these days. Like or dislike his techniques he's certainly done a lot of positive things for the plant and solvent less extracts.

 

100% gotta say that regardless of what I disagree with in his methods, bubbleman's bags are great quality and I've used them for years now with no signs of letting up! Would never hesitate to recommend them as I've had other brands fall apart on me over time and nothing sucks more than problems with bubble tools before (or worse, during) a bubble run!

 

Apologies for the double post, but I had to share this recent 6 star goodness with my hash friends!



45-120u full melt bubble. No need to separate the bags when all of it melts like this This stuff is insanely gooey!

Now whatever you guys do, don't go and stop using all of your different bags expecting to get mixed collections of full melt like this! This is something that can only be done with enough experience to know which screen sizes and how many agitations to use with different starting material. Leaving out the wrong bag can and will spell disaster! You could find yourself wasting or contaminating some of your best resin with plant material!!!

 

Chapeau Monsieur, THAT'S the real stuff!!
Thank you for sharing this pic.

 

I am glad you enjoyed it sir and appreciate the kind words It is delicious Hash like this is its own reward!

 

I love the pics in this thread

What are your feelings on commercially available kief? I'd venture a guess that this may be like asking the French about a croissanwich, but thought I'd ask. If there's any (efficient) way to turn it into a 3 or 4+ star melt that would be le tits.

Current plan is to use a cheap press & light heat to make "coins" & just stick that in the vapcap. If there were a press the diameter of a vapcap bowl that would be awesome, but I haven't found one if it exists.

 

Commercially available kief can be great or awful. It depends on the source. In general I'd expect it to contain lots of plant matter, broken heads, and contaminate compared to anything you'd make yourself. I bought kief from the local dispensary in Boston, and it was beyond horrid. I don't even know if I want to cook with it.

For kief in the VC I'd recommend shaving pieces vs sticking a cylinder right in there. Pieces would allow more airflow and better extraction.