Concentration

What Does Concentration Mean?

Cannabis can be concentrated through various physical processes. The resulting product, known as a concentrate, contains all of the chemically active components of cannabis, separated from the plant material. Concentration is a solventless process resulting in a solventless product.

Maximum Yield Explains Concentration

Cannabis concentration can take many forms:

Hash

Hash, or Hashish, has been made for thousands of years by pressing or rubbing the flowers between the hands to warm the malleable trichomes and separate them from the plant material. The sticky, resinous result is then pressed into bricks, block, or forms. Originally eaten, smoking hash has only developed since the 1500s as hash grew into an international trade good.

Dry Sift/Kief

To make dry sift, a metal screen is used, over which the cured cannabis flowers are gently sifted, breaking away the trichomes from the plant surface. Increasingly smaller screens are utilized, further separating the plant material from the finer trichomes. The resulting product is of varying levels of purity depending on the size of the sift. Commercial manufacturers utilize vibration to achieve large-scale results.

Dry ice and various commercially-available bags or screens can be used by the home concentrator to achieve top-tier results. The colder, the better, for breaking the trichomes free of the plant.

Bubble Hash

Bubble hash utilizes icewater to break frozen trichomes away from the plant material. These trichomes then sink away from the plant material in the water. They can then be processed through a series of increasingly fine gauge mesh screens to further remove any remaining plant material. The term "bubble" refers to the bubbling that these concentrated trichomes display when exposed to heat. For example, "full-melt hash", referring to quality, is bubble hash that is so fully refined that it will melt completely with no remaining traces of plant material.

Rosin

Precise low heat combined with extreme pressure allows the trichomes to melt into a liquid, rosin, which then flows away from the plant material and can be collected. Various forms of rosin presses, often utilizing extremely fine micron filter bags, can be used to concentrate by both the end user and in a large commercial setting. Recent developments in rosin technology have even led to "live" cannabis flowers (freeze dried instead of dried and cured — even the curing process itself can often destroy key monoterpenes and other trace components.) being introduced into rosin pressing, creating a new product, "live rosin" which preserves an extremely broad spectrum of sensitive terpenes and is growing in accessibility and popularity.

Easy and very accessible for the end-consumer, dry-sift/kief, bubble hash, and rosin can all be concentrated with low-cost, commercially-available equipment.