How to Make Cold Water Hash with Bubble Bags™

Table of Contents

- Simple Instructions
- Detailed Instructions
- Download Instruction Pamphlet


Simple Instructions

Note: If you are using an electric mixing device, we recommend mixing in a separate bucket before pouring the mixture into your Bubble Bags and allowing it to settle.

In addition to the Bubble Bag kit, you will need ice, water, a spoon (or a mixing device such as a hand mixer), a tea towel and a bucket (the size will depend on the kit used).

The original Bubble Bag system offers you eight layers of industrial grade filtration, which will allow you to extract the essential oils from almost any plant.

  1. Line the bucket with your Bubble Bags, starting with the 25 micron bag and ending with the 220 micron bag.
  2. Fill the bucket with enough cold water to cover the bottom of the Bubble Bags (about halfway full).
  3. Add your dry or frozen plant trimmings.
  4. Add enough ice to almost fill your bucket to the top.
  5. Stir your mix for 15 to 20 minutes, adding ice if necessary to keep the water cold. A 50/50 mix of ice and water is ideal.
  6. Pull out your Bubble Bags one by one, draining them into the bucket.
  7. As you pull each Bubble Bag, turn it inside out after it is finished draining to collect your herbal extract.
  8. Gently press the excess moisture out of your herbal extract using your pressing screen and a dish towel.


    Detailed Guide

    Some of the things you will need:

    A large wooden spoon - if you plan to mix by hand; or
    A kitchen mixer (For a perfect mix every time, we recommend the Bubble Now machine - gentle mixing is very important for a top quality end product!)
    A bucket -the size will vary depending on what gallon size kit you have
    A spoon
    Ice and water

    1.Place your bags into your bucket.  The first bag to go in is the 25µ bag. It is the smallest micron bag in the kit, and often the full melt bag for sativa strains.

     

    2.The second bag, the 45µ bag. This bag produces a very nice grade of herbal extract. When used with certain types of plant material, comes out blonde to white.

    3.The third bag, 73µ, often called the full melt bag. If your bubble is going to bubble, it's often found here first. 

     

    4.The 120µ bag! Makes a nice grade of bubble.

    5.The 160µ bag. Sometimes very nice when used with a dominant indica variety with large glands, or it can clean contaminant out of your 120µ and 73µ bags.

     

    6.The 190µ bag. It pulls most of the contaminant out of the final product, and that's why we use it all the time.

    7. The final bag, the 220µ work bag, our most durable bag. It does not get caught in hand mixers and such. This is the last bag to be placed in your bucket.

     
     

    That is the conclusion of part 1, for a seven bag kit. If you have a 3 bag kit or an 8 bag kit, you would just place them in the bucket in the same order – from smallest micron size to largest. Ok, now that we have added the last bag, it is time to put our water in the bucket. A recommended practice is to have your water and ice settling together in a separate bucket. This will get keep the water nice and cold and eliminate a common problem of not putting enough ice in to get the temperature to 4 degrees Celsius or lower.


    8. Four small bags of Fresh Frozen plant trim in them.

     

    9. Here is a large bowl of trim about to be tossed into the bags to be turned into sweet Bubblehash.

    10.Adding some nice cold water from the tap helps in keeping the ice from melting all at once.

     

    11/12.Add your leaf! This is the most important part of the process. Any plant containing glandular trichomes will work with this process.

    It is important to note that when adding the leaf, do not put any in until you have raised your water above the level of the screen. This will keep contaminant from entering your first few bags right from the start.

    13.Adding trays and trays of ice will do the trick.

     

    14.Nice large cubes of frozen glacier water will surely make this batch a success. The ice makes the melt.

    15.Mixing for fifteen minutes is all you need to procure the finest heads.

     

    16.Keep the mixer well out of the water as this can be dangerous. I suggest using a hand mixer for all those that don't want to play with electricity.

    17.Let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes after mixing to allow the gland heads to settle.

     

    18.Once this bag has settled for half an hour you can pull it out, being careful to not let small pieces of leaf into your bags underneath it.

     
     

    From here we settle the bags for half an hour. This allows the resin glands to sink down, now that they have been broken free from their cannabis wombs. They sink down in the water and fall through our series of screens. The first to be pulled will be the blue bag. Containing all the leaf material, you can do one of two things here. A: dump the contents into your compost , or B: save the washed material in order to run again another day. We recommend throwing it away once you have gotten used to the process of using the Bubblebags. It is important to now flip your work bag inside out and rinse it off completely with cold water. Doing this immediately after emptying is important. Then leaving it out to dry is important as well. Folding this bag up wet will produce dry rot and ruin your bags over time.


     

    19.Pull the blue bag and allow it to drain back into the bucket.  For a higher quality extract, simply do not squeeze it out. This is to keep contaminants, which floated to the surface, from entering your herbal extract.  We recommend not squeezing this bag into the next one.

     

    20.Pulling the second bag, the 190u, we will drain it back into the bucket and look to see what is on the screen.

    We now have the 160µ to deal with. As it is sometimes has a decent resin, we use a simple bowl method to gather the resin. If you can, use a large salad bowl to wrap the bubble bags around the bowl, inside out, in order to stretch the screen for easy glandular removal.

    21.We see that it is almost all contaminant.  You don't have to be an expert to see that its green, and grainy looking not much like what we want at all.  The herbal extract from the 190 micron bag can be used for cooking, or discarded.

    We now have the 160µ to deal with. As it is sometimes has a decent resin, we use a simple bowl method to gather the resin. If you can, use a large salad bowl to wrap the bubble bags around the bowl, inside out, in order to stretch the screen for easy glandular removal.

     

    22.We can now safely pull out the 160µ bag.

    23.There is some more material we have separated out from the 190µ and 120µ bags.

     

    24. The resin is easily scraped off with a spoon and some water by stretching the bag over a bowl like this.

    25. The 160µ bag, wrapped around the bowl for easy resin removal. This bowl is a must if you’re using a five gallon kit.

     

    26.Cleaning off the 160µ bag in the sink is ok when the resin is as low quality as this one. We use the bowl method once again to get rid of this resin as it's minimal and not worth keeping.

    27. We can now pull out this mysterious 120µ bag.

     

    28. The 120µ heads floating in the water. Nice color so far.

    29. Bubble water works wonders!

     

    30. Using the bubble water is great for pooling the resin into one section of the screen. Place the bag inside out in the large bowl, and push down on the middle of the screen, allowing the resin to naturally go into that pool. Sprinkle gently with water.


    We can clean the spoon off inside the rest of the weed bubble bags that are waiting to be pulled. Also with the 120µ bag the resin was high enough quality, that we rinse into the bucket as well.  This will trap all the left over resin we couldn't get off inside the next bag. A nice trick to know. We then move on to our 73µ bag. This is always a fun bag to pull no matter what strain you are using. It’s the standard bag to look for your quality full melt herbal extract. However,  your profile can mix it self up and end up in different size gland heads – depending on the strain, the best quality herbal extract can be found in the 90 micron, 73 micron, 45 micron, or 25 micron bags. We can never predict, and have seen interesting things since we started making this many years ago now.


     

     

    31.Cleaning your spoon by rinsing it in the bucket is a good idea - remember saving potentially lost resin is A GOOD THING.

     

    32.Cleaning the 120µ bag inside the other bags and bucket, a very good way of saving potentially lost resin.

    33.The 73µ is now ready to pull.

     

    34.The 73µ bag can sometimes drain slowly. This is a simple thing to remedy, just cinch the bag at the top and jerk it upwards about three inches, then let it drop. This will allow the water to drop through while the resin is lifted in the air off the screen.

    35.Some nice 73µ full melt bubble sitting awaiting harvest.

     

    36.Up close, you can see why we call it bubble.

    This resin up close shows right away that it is of top quality. These photos show really well how cleaning the spoon in the bucket saves you a lot of resin. That’s a whole lot of heads floating around in there.

    37. Stretched over the bowl for easy removal, again.

     

    38.A very light colored 73µ, but highly fragrant. This strain is well known for its alcohol soluble terpenoids, a strain that will thrive in the breeding world of water hash enthusiasts.

    39. Cleaning it off good.

     

    40.Cleaning the spoon off in your bubble water.

     
     

    The 90 micron and 73 micron bags produce some of the finest resin.  We clean our 73µ's inside the bucket, in order to once again trap potential lost resin gland heads. This is a great method while the bag is wrapped inside out in the bowl. A few turns inside the water and it’s clean as a whistle. Also remember to do this immediately after cleaning the majority of the resin off. We then come to our 45µ bag. For those of you that have followed the birth of bubble bag, you would remember the 250µ bag which we discontinued and added a 45µ bag. The 25µ was always enjoyed when it first came out, but we knew we could improve upon that resin by splitting it up yet another size, and what we have is some very consistently nice bubble hash. Always with a light sandy color. Often the lightest hash in the group.


     

    41. Upside down and ready to go in.

     

    42.We can clean the yellow 73µ bag inside the bucket and save any potentialy lost resin heads.

    43. Closing this bag at the top and grasping it tightly while lifting it out of the bucket makes for quick and easy draining, the trick is to give it a quick jerk upwards.

     

    44. By dropping the bag down six inches after jerking it upward, you allow the water to pass thru the screen while the resin is floating off the screen. Doing this a few times in a row will quickly drain a slow draining bag.

    45. Light tan coloured bubble spread over 45µ screen.

     

    46. The bowl method is used for removing resin from the screens, we have yet to find something that works better.

    Here we have more spoon cleaning going on. This time from the 45µ resin heads going into the 25µ bag. As you can see this 45µ resin is absolutely bright beige to white. It's realy a nice sandy resin, i'm sure a full melter by looks alone.

    47. The infamous white lady.

     

    48. You can clearly see that’s a good amount of resin we will trap in the bag.

    49. More spoon cleaning, 45µ into 25µ bag.

     

    50. Draining the 25µ bag will be quick and easy with this cinch and jerk method, we drained this one in ten seconds.

     
     

    For those that are wondering what we do with the resin once we have scooped it out of the bags, we will get to that. We take the resin and place it on a pressing screen.


    51. 25µ the tiniest of the heads available spread out over the 25µ screen, ready to be removed.

     

    52. Once again the bowl method, a nice tight screen can solve a lot of problems and eliminate potential mess.

    53. Cleaning the 25µ bag inside the bucket, not that we will collect any of this resin it still needs to be cleaned off the screen.

     

    54. All of the six sizes of gland heads.

    Once all the grades are on the pressing screen, you can simply place it on a towel, close the screen, cover it with the towel and press lightly with a large wooden roller or what ever you have available. Pressing lightly is important as when you pull these cookies out you want to break them into powder over piece of thick cardboard.

    55. Close the pressing screen, cover with the towel and press.

     

    56. Towel covering the pressing screen, ready to be pressed, this should be done lighter with higher quality resin, as it will quickly press together and not break up easily in which case will not dry properly.

     

    Finally we have the end results all pressed nicely into cookie shapes. You should note that leaving the bubble in this pressed cookie form is by no means a proper drying process, they should be broken up into powder while still wet and placed over a thick cardboard that will act as a dessicant and remove the water from your bubble. Be sure your bubble is fully dry before pressing it – otherwise mold can form on the inside.

     

Call us toll Free 1-866-MELTING (1-866-635-8464) (North America) | 604-254-3338 (Rest of World).