How To Make Your Own Dry Ice Hash

Let's get straight to it:

Making hash with dry ice is the easiest, fastest, and (more importantly) the most efficient means of extracting resin from your cannabis. In short, it's our collective opinion (all 2 of us) that Dry Ice Hash is the best means of making hash...period!

Pretty big statement right? It's even bigger when you consider how seriously people take hashish in today's world!

Regardless, we'll stand by that statement, and we're confident that by the end of this article you'll be itching to try making some dry ice hash. And we're even more confident that once you do try making it, you won't go back to any other method unless someone invents 'Resin Teleportation™'.

We'll make sure you get set up with the all the information you need, but first, let's start things off with a picture of what we collected in under 15 minutes total!

What is Hashish (Hash)?

There's a very popular book written in 1998 called Hashish!, and it tends to be treated as the end-all source of hash-related information. Here's their definition of hashish:

"Hashish is a psychoactive drug prepared from the resin glands of the female (pistillate) Cannabis plant. [...]The idea is to isolate (and thus concentrate) the THC-containing resin in order to make hashish."

Simply put, hashish (which we'll now just call hash), is just the isolated resin glands of the cannabis plant. Even simpler, hash is when you get the good sticky stuff from your cannabis all by itself. In a sense, hash is distilled cannabis!

Keep in mind that not all hash is the same. Some types of hash are made with solvents and can still contain said solvents when finished. BHO (Butane Hash Oil) has become very popular lately, but there have also been many cases where batches still contain significant levels of butane. That's not to say that BHO always contains excess butane, just that it has the possibility. When hash or hash oil is made correctly, no trace of solvents should remain in the finished product.

That being said, using dry ice to extract resin will leave you with nothing but the resin itself as there is no solvent. The CO2 is used to freeze off the resin, and then turns directly into gas. Your trim/bud never even gets wet! So you can make hash using this method without any additional concern other than careful handling and usage of the dry ice.

How is Dry Ice Hash different?

Here's another pertinent piece of info from the book Hashish!,

"The process of hash-making can be divided into two parts - resin collection, and resin preparation."

Although not all hash is the same, many types of hash are pretty darn close. Water hash - also called ice hash, bubble hash, gravity(Gumby) hash, and dry ice hash all produce forms of the same product: isolated resin glands. The difference between methods comes down to how the resin is taken off the plant, and how the hash comes out afterwards. 

Although many methods produce the same or a similar product, using dry ice has advantages in many areas that end up making it superior to other means of resin collection:

• It's faster than other methods.
  • You can finish making dry ice hash in about 1/25th of the total time it takes to make gravity hash! Although that example is extreme, it only takes a few minutes to make dry ice hash and is much faster than other methods.
• It's insanely easy
  • And that ease translates to it being quickly gratifying. You get top grade hash at the cost of shaking a bucket and a bag for a combined total of less than 15 minutes.
• There's no moisture!
  • That means the resin is ready as soon as it's shaken loose!

So, back to that quote: "The process of hash-making can be divided into two parts - resin collection, and resin preparation."

We know that collecting the resin is easy with this method, but what about preparation? Let's go back to 'Hashish!' one more time to see why we need 'resin preparation':

"Primarily, [preparation] makes resin powder a more easily transported and marketed commodity. Secondly, since early-smokers lacked metal pipe screens that could contain raw resin powder during smoking, they made the loose powder into solid pieces, convenient for smoking."

In short, preparation makes your hash easier to sell (which we STRONGLY RECOMMEND AGAINST) and easier to use (if you're somehow reading this 40 years in the past). In other words, it's completely unnecessary in our case! We'll save time and effort by skipping any post-processing, and there are no real drawbacks!

Alright, enough background and quotes, let's get started!

How to make Dry Ice Hash

We'll be showing you how to make dry ice hash using hash bags of the following sizes: 73, 160, and 220. Here's why we picked these sizes:

• 73 will catch nothing but resin in this case
  • The good stuff - only actual trichomes with no vegetative matter at all! Golden colored and powerfully potent!
• 160 will catch mid grade with with a bit more 'green stuff' in it
  • Not as high quality as 73, but still great and definitely worth collecting!
• 220 catches pretty much everything else that's not an actual leaf or stem
  • This will have much more plant matter than the other two, but still much less than actual bud. This will smell like a concentrated form of your buds! Some people skip 220, but I would strongly suggest collecting 220 at least once before dismissing it!

The actual instructions are in text and video! Scroll down a little further for the text version.

What You'll Need

• One sanitized 5 gallon bucket
• Cannabis trim/bud
• 3lbs of dry ice
  • You may need more or less depending on how much bud/trim you use. 3lbs will cover a little to at least 6oz.
  • Click here to go to a page that will let you search for dry ice in your area.
• Bubble bags/Hash Bags/Pollen Bags
  • You'll need 3 sizes for this tutorial: 73, 160, 220. These sizes are standard for this type of bag.
• Thick, insulating sturdy gloves
  • No latex gloves, you need protection against -109.3°F cold. Snow gloves or BBQ gloves will do the trick.
• A scraping tool
  • A unused paint scraper works great, but a credit card will do.
• A large, CLEAN, flat surface
  • This will collect your hash, so make sure it's clean!
  • We used a large piece of new plexiglass  (cheap at Home Depot) on a table.

Dry Ice Handling

Dry ice has some inherent risks due to it's extremely low temperature and the fact that it sublimates (turns directly into a gas), but it's actually very safe to use! Just check out these quick safety tips, exercise a little caution, and this will be a smooth and fun experience!

1. Make sure you work in a well ventilated area.
   1. Dry ice turns directly into CO2 gas. Although it's a small amount of CO2 and doesn't really pose a threat to you, it's better to be safe than sorry!
2. Don't put dry ice in an airtight container.
   1. Dry ice turns into gas which will pressurize the container it's in. Eventually you'll get a top shooting off unexpectedly, or worse, an exploding container!
3. Don't touch dry ice with your bare hands
   1. Dry ice measures -190.3°F at its warmest. It won't kill you to grab it, but it's no fun to get freezer burn either.
4. Dispose of dry ice safely
   1. If you put dry ice down your sink or toilet, you could freeze your water pipes and end up with a massive repair bill. When you're done with dry ice, just leave the it in a well ventilated area and it'll simply turn into gas and leave.

Step-By-Step: How to Make Your Own Dry Ice Hash

Basically you just shake a hash bag full of cannabis + dry ice and piles of resin will start raining out!

You've got your materials together and you know how to handle dry ice... let's have some fun!

1. Dump your (ground up) cannabis and dry ice into the 5 gallon bucket.

2. Take the size 73 hash/bubble/pollen bag and fit it over the opening of the bucket, then shake and swirl the bucket around for 3-4 minutes. The process of shaking the cannabis around with dry ice freezes the resin so it starts breaking off from the cannabis and is more easily collected.

3. Turn the bucket upside-down, emptying both the dry ice and cannabis into the hash bag, with the mesh side facing down.

4. Shake the bag over a clean flat surface.

   This will cause resin to sift through the mesh part of the bag and fall out onto the surface like it's raining resin! Keep shaking until you don't see any resin falling out or you just can't shake anymore :)

5. Use your scraper to collect the newly fallen resin into a pile and transfer it into a container of your choice.

6. Dump the cannabis and dry ice back into the bucket and repeat steps 2-5 with the size 160 pollen bag. Then again with the 220 bag.​

You should now have 3 grades of your own solvent-free, homemade hash: 73 (pure resin), 160 (not as pure but still really good stuff), and 220 (it's super fragrant and super free!). Enjoy!

FYI: Hash can be sprinkled over bud, vaporized, smoked directly with a screen, and mixed into joints. If you're unfamiliar with hash, starting slowly will help ensure you don't use too much - this stuff is powerful!

Jump to...

Make Your Own Cannabis Capsules (Canna Caps)!

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Flushing for Better Buds

The Perpetual Harvest