How to Make Cannabis Concentrate - Beginner's Guide
"How to Make Cannabis Concentrate" is a tutorial on how to make cannabis concentrates at home. While solvent extraction is best left to the experts, there are plenty of solventless extraction methods you can experiment with, without any specialized equipment or licenses, including kief, dry sift, dry ice hash, bubble hash, rosin, tinctures, and three kinds of cannabis oil.
Concentrates can be added to bowls and joints, infused into food and topicals, dabbed if they are "full-melt" (more on this later), and vaped. Because they are more concentrated, you will use a much smaller amount than you would with cannabis flower.
How to Make Solventless Cannabis Concentrates
The following are nine solventless extraction methods that you can try at home. Be sure to start with fresh, high-quality cannabis buds and store the concentrate in an airtight container in the fridge when it’s done.
1. Kief
Kief refers to the unrefined extract that you get from shaking or lightly rubbing dried cannabis plant material over a sieve or mesh screen. You can also find it in the "kief collector" of your cannabis grinder.
Kief is composed of plant matter and trichomes, which are the crystal-like resin glands that you see covering the buds and sugar leaves of the marijuana plant. These trichomes are rich in cannabinoids including THC and CBD, both of which have been shown to have various therapeutic properties.
How to Make Kief
Gently rub dry cannabis buds over a screen to separate the trichomes from the plant material. Alternatively, invest in a three-chamber cannabis grinder and collect the kief that falls to the bottom of the grinder.
How to Consume Kief
If you want to smoke kief, you can leave it in its natural state or refine it further, press it into a hash brick, and smoke that. Many people sprinkle kief on their joints to enhance each hit or add it to a bowl to increase the bowl’s potency.
2. Dry Sift
Dry sift is the refined version of kief. Depending on your starting material and equipment, dry sift should contain almost 100% trichomes and very little (if any) plant matter. If you're interested in pressing hash or making edibles, dry sift is preferable to kief because of its higher purity.
How to Make Dry Sift
You can use a pollen box or a series of mesh bags to refine kief into dry sift.
Pollen box method: Put the kief in the top of the box and shake the box. The trichomes should separate from the plant matter as they fall through the graduated series of screens.
Mesh bag method: Put the kief in the mesh bag with the smallest holes and shake the bag over a clean, flat surface like a table. Use a scraping implement like a credit card to wipe the trichomes into a mason jar, then repeat with larger-size mesh bags to collect the lower grades of dry sift.
With both methods, you can expect to collect the highest quality trichomes in the 70μm to 120μm range. You can then use static technology to clean the extract further.
How to Consume Dry Sift
Premium dry sift can be pressed for rosin. Lower grades of dry sift can be used in edibles and tinctures.
3. Dry Ice Hash
Dry ice hash is a cannabis extract made with the help of dry ice pellets. Because dry ice is so cold (around -109 °F), it breaks the trichome heads apart, leading to an extract that's more abundant than other methods but contains a lot of plant matter. If you decide to make dry ice hash, it's essential to follow safety protocols to avoid frostbite and carbon dioxide poisoning.
How to Make Dry Ice Hash
To make dry ice hash:
Wearing snow gloves and safety goggles, put dry cannabis buds and dry ice in a bucket covered with your smallest micron-rated mesh collection bag. Wait for a few minutes so that the trichome heads have time to freeze.
Turn the bucket upside down so that the material falls into the bag and shake the bag over a flat, clean surface like a table. Scrape the extract into a mason jar and repeat with larger-micron collection bags to collect lower-grade extracts.
Put the dry ice outside to sublimate into the air. Never leave dry ice in an enclosed space, as the gas could cause carbon dioxide poisoning, or in a container with a lid, as the buildup of gas could cause the container to explode.
How to Consume Dry Ice Hash
As we mentioned earlier, dry ice hash contains a lot of plant matter. While you can add it to joints and bowls, it's not pure enough to dab or press in a rosin press. As with lower grades of dry sift, you can add dry ice hash to edibles (you'll need to decarboxylate it first) and use it to make tinctures.
4. Bubble Hash
Bubble hash is a cannabis extract that is made using ice, cold water, and agitation to separate the trichomes from the buds. This is one of the safest and cleanest ways to make a high-quality concentrate that contains no additives or contaminants, especially if you use filtered or reverse osmosis water.
If you start with fresh frozen cannabis buds, you can conserve more of the natural cannabinoids and terpenes with this method than you can with methods like kief, dry sift, and dry ice which are typically performed with dried and cured buds.
How to Make Bubble Hash
To make bubble hash, you will need dried or fresh-frozen cannabis buds and a clean vessel like a bucket or new trash can. Alternatively, you can use a bubble hash machine. Then, you'll need filtered or RO water, high-quality cannabis buds, and mesh filtration bags in various sizes, known as bubble bags.
Soak the cannabis buds in the ice/water mixture for a few minutes, until the trichome heads freeze.
Use a hand paddle to gently agitate the mixture or set your bubble hash machine to run a wash cycle. The trichome heads should separate from the plant material and fall to the bottom of the vessel.
Remove the plant material and tip the contents of the vessel into a clean bucket fitted with bubble bags. The largest micron size should be at the top, with smaller micron sizes at the bottom to collect the smallest trichome heads.
Scoop the wet extract onto trays lined with parchment paper and dry it in a freeze-dryer for around 24 hours or in a cool room for several days.
How to Consume Bubble Hash
Bubble hash is graded based on how completely it melts when dabbed. Six-star, full-melt bubble hash is hard to make without specialized equipment and fresh frozen cannabis buds. At home, you could expect to make 3 or 4-star bubble hash. This grade is suitable for rosin pressing, adding to bowls and joints, and decarbing and infusing into edibles.
5. Rosin
Rosin is the filtered resin from the cannabis plant. It is extracted using heat and pressure and can then be hot-cured or cold-cured to create textures such as budder, shatter, diamonds, and jam. Rosin has roughly the same potency as butane hash oil (BHO) in terms of its effects. However, the THC percentage is a bit lower: 60-80% for rosin compared to around 80-95% for BHO.
Rosin is popular with cannabis connoisseurs because it reflects the chemical composition of the original plant (this is especially true with live rosin), it can only be made from high-quality plant material, and no solvents are used in the extraction process.
How to Make Rosin
You can make rosin with a setup that's as simple as a hair straightener and a piece of food-grade parchment paper. However, you'll get the best results with this extraction method if you use a specialty rosin press. Industrial presses generally cost several thousand dollars, but there are some smaller models that are affordably priced for home extraction.
Put some dry cannabis buds, kief, dry sift hash, or dried bubble hash in a rosin bag. Rosin bags come in different micron sizes depending on your starting material. You'll need a larger pore size for pressing flower and a smaller pore size for pressing bubble hash or dry sift. Fold over the open end of the rosin bag after inserting your starting material.
Tuck the rosin bag inside a piece of folded food-grade parchment paper.
Place the rosin bag and parchment paper "packet" between the metal plates of your hair straightener or rosin press.
Heat the plates to a temperature between 140 °F and 220°F. You'll need a higher temperature if pressing flower and a lower temperature if pressing very pure bubble hash or dry sift hash. Once the plates are at the correct temperature, press them together to squeeze the cannabis material. The trichome cuticles will melt and rosin should start to trickle out onto the parchment paper.
When the rosin stops flowing, release the pressure and turn off the heat.
Cold-cure or warm-cure your rosin, if desired.
Store the rosin in an airtight glass jar, such as a mason jar, in the fridge.
How to Consume Rosin
Rosin is usually dabbed. You can also use it to make topicals or decarb it and infuse it into edibles. It's important to keep in mind that rosin is a very potent cannabis extract so you only need a tiny bit.
6. Tinctures
Tinctures are made by soaking plant material in alcohol. The alcohol works as a solvent to dissolve the active compounds in the plant material. The tincture can then be applied to the skin or taken orally in very small amounts for its therapeutic benefits.
Rick Simpson Oil is an example of a cannabis tincture that's used in the medical cannabis community. It is made using dried indica buds soaked in a solvent like food-grade ethanol or strong isopropyl alcohol and contains high concentrations of THC.
Cannabis Oil
"Cannabis oil" can refer to several different things, including tinctures. Here are three other kinds of cannabis oil that you can make at home:
1. Cannabis-Infused Oil
Decarboxylate cannabis plant material and infuse it into olive oil or coconut oil on the stovetop. You can use the infused oil to make weed cookies or put a tiny bit in your coffee or on salads for a psychoactive hit.
Alternatively, you can make infused oil with cannabis buds that haven’t been decarboxylated to enjoy the therapeutic benefits of THCA and CBDA without the intoxicating effects. However, most people prefer to activate their cannabis before infusing it in oil.
2. Hemp Seed Oil
Pressing hemp seeds will yield an oil that you can eat or use to make topicals like balms and salves. There are specialized presses that you can buy for making your own cold-pressed hemp seed oil.
3. Vape Liquid
You can turn rosin into vape liquid by "warm-curing" it in an oven. This involves keeping a sealed (heat-resistant) jar of rosin in the oven at low heat for around an hour (sometimes more). You can speed up the process by adding around two or three drops of pure terpenes per gram of rosin.
Solvent-Based Methods of Making Cannabis Extracts
Solvents are used for industrial concentrate production to create products like butane hash oil (BHO) with various consistencies including shatter, wax, crumble, badder, budder, and live resin, hydrocarbon-based cannabis oil, CO2 cannabis oil, and distillate. The most commonly used solvents include hydrocarbons (butane, propane, hexane, heptane, and blends of these), ethanol, and supercritical carbon dioxide.
While many brands extract cannabis concentrates using chemical solvents, this is not something you should ever try at home. Safe solvent extraction requires a licensed C1D1 room and expensive closed-loop extraction equipment that usually runs into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Open-loop systems, which are commonly used in home-based operations, are extremely dangerous and usually illegal. In Washington State, only closed-loop extraction systems can be used for hydrocarbon extraction.
FAQs
Is it dangerous to make solvent-based concentrates?
Open-loop solvent-based extraction methods are extremely dangerous and should never be attempted at home. People have blown up their homes and even died from blasting cannabis material with butane.
What's the difference between concentrates, extracts, and dabs?
The main differences between "concentrates," "extracts," and "dabs" are the extraction methods used to create them and the final potency and consistency of the products.
"Concentrates" typically refers to more potent extract forms (60-95%+ THC), including hash oil, shatter, waxes, budder, sugar, and distillate, which are often refined through a more intensive chemical process. Rosin is also considered a cannabis concentrate.
"Extracts" refers to products in which part of the plant material has been separated from the rest to make a more concentrated product. With sifting and ice water extraction, the cannabinoid-rich, resin-filled trichomes have been separated from the cannabis flowers to achieve a stronger product (typically 60% THC or less).
"Dabs" are waxy cannabis concentrates that will melt completely when placed on a hot surface. This is generally the "nail" of a dab rig. Once the concentrate turns into vapor, the vapor can be inhaled. BHO, rosin, and full-melt bubble hash can all be dabbed. Extracts like kief and dry sift aren't typically pure enough to dab as they still contain some plant material.
Sift, Wash, Press, and Enjoy!
With the right tools, patience, and a basic understanding of what you are doing, you will soon get the hang of making your own cannabis concentrates. If you have been thinking about trying homemade concentrates but were too intimidated to start because it looked complicated or you thought it required expensive equipment, think again!
Dry sift is probably the best place to start, followed by dry ice hash (with the proper safety equipment and ventilation), and ice water extraction. Once you've got the hang of dry sift and bubble hash, you can try pressing either of these extracts on a rosin press. For something that can be taken orally, tinctures and edibles can be a lot of fun. Just make sure you calculate your doses carefully for a fun ride that leaves you wanting to come back for more.