Hash: varieties, differences, and how to identify them

Hash is about the oldest cannabis product there is. You collect the trichomes — the resin glands on the flower — and press them together. Everything below is a variation on that one idea, and what separates them is how the resin was collected.

Once you know the method, the differences in the jar stop being mysterious.

Traditional hash

Charas

Where it comes from: India, Nepal and Pakistan.

How it’s made: fresh cannabis is rubbed between the hands and the resin that collects on the skin is rolled into balls or small cakes. Yes, really. By hand.

What it looks like: dark brown to black outside, soft and sticky.

Afghani

Where it comes from: Afghanistan.

How it’s made: trichomes are sifted from dried cannabis and hand-pressed with heat and pressure.

What it looks like: dark brown to black outside, often with a lighter greenish-brown interior. Dense and pliable.

Moroccan

Where it comes from: Morocco, historically one of the largest producers.

How it’s made: dried cannabis is sieved to collect kief, which is pressed into bricks.

What it looks like: lighter brown to gold, dry and crumbly rather than sticky.

Modern hash

Bubble hash (ice water hash)

How it’s made: the plant is agitated in ice water, which makes the trichomes brittle enough to snap off. They’re filtered out through a series of mesh bags, then dried and pressed. No solvents at any point.

What it looks like: light gold to dark brown, sandy or sticky depending on grade.

Where the name comes from: good bubble hash bubbles when heat is applied. It’s a reasonable rough test and a mildly satisfying one.

Dry sift

How it’s made: dried cannabis is tumbled over screens and the trichomes fall through. Also solventless — just mesh and movement.

What it looks like: a fine blonde powder, or pressed into a cake.

Rosin

How it’s made: heat and pressure applied straight to flower or to hash, squeezing the resin out. No solvent, no water, no drama.

What it looks like: sappy and translucent, pale gold through to amber.

Telling them apart

Three things do most of the work:

1. Texture. Hand-rubbed hash is soft and sticky. Sieved and pressed hash is firmer and often crumbly. Rosin is sappy.
2. Colour. Lighter usually means less plant matter came along with the resin. It’s a clue about the process, not a grade in itself.
3. How it behaves with heat. Ice water hash bubbles and melts; drier sifted hash tends to smoulder.

Ask to look closely at whatever you’re considering. We’re always happy to get it out of the case and talk about how it was made — genuinely, it’s a good day when somebody asks.

There are three pressed hashes in our own product line — Blonde Lebanese, Diamond and Gold Seal — plus kief for the press-it-yourself crowd. New to hash entirely? Start with our introduction.