How Much Cannabis Do I Need to Make Bubble Hash?

Home Growers with a couple of cannabis plants often ask how much material they need to accumulate for a successful hash run. It’s common to see people washing a pound or more of cannabis and pulling ounces of hash, but do you really need that much material to make your bubble hash? What if you only have a small amount of starting material to work with?

Preparing all the equipment and going through the labor-intensive process of ice water extraction takes a good amount of time and energy, so most bubble hash extractors won’t wash anything under a quarter pound (4 ounces) per run. Anything less may only yield a few grams of high-quality hash, which may not be worth the effort to some growers.

However, don’t let this stop you if you want to make bubble hash at home and you’re not sitting on pounds of material. You can wash some premium bubble hash starting with just 1-3 ounces of high-quality cannabis material.

As always, the key is to start with exceptional cannabis. Aim to use cannabis flower or trim leaf that’s been dried and lightly cured, as older material may not produce as effectively. Or you can use fresh frozen material and skip the drying and curing process altogether.

When deciding how much material to use for making ice water hash, we must consider the volume of our bubble bags. The most common sizes of bubble bags are 1-gallon, 5-gallon, and 20-gallon. We need to fill the bags without overstuffing them for the extraction.

Consider the space needed for water and ice in addition to the cannabis material. The bag should have enough space to generate turbulent water currents while mixing/stirring.

Here’s a reference guide for how much cannabis material you can use for each size bubble bag set.

Dry Cannabis:

1-gallon wash bags: 1-2 ounces or 28-56 grams

5-gallon wash bags: 3-8 ounces or 80-225 grams

10-gallon wash bags: 6-16 ounces or 160-450 grams

20-gallon wash bags: 1-2 pounds or 450-900 grams

32-gallon wash bags: 2-3 pounds or 900-1350 grams

44-gallon: 3-4 pounds or 1350-1800 grams

The conversion from dry weight to fresh frozen weight is around 1:5. So one pound of dry cannabis equals five pounds of fresh frozen material. If you’re washing fresh frozen, multiply the weight by five to calculate the amount of material to wash in each wash bag size.

Fresh Frozen Cannabis:

1-gallon wash bags: 5-10 ounces or 140-560 grams

5-gallon wash bags: 15-40 ounces or 400-1125 grams

10-gallon wash bags: 30-80 ounces or 800-2250 grams

20-gallon wash bags: 5-10 pounds or 2250-3600 grams

32-gallon wash bags: 10-15 pounds or 4500-6750 grams

44-gallon: 15-20 pounds or 6750-9000 grams

With 1 ounce of high-quality dried and cured cannabis flowers in a 1-gallon bubble bag set, you can expect between 3-5 grams of hash.

For Dried, Air-Cured Cannabis, a 15-20% yield is a good target. For fresh frozen, look for 3-8%. The rule of thumb for calculating wet (fresh frozen) weight to dry (air cured) weight is 5:1. So if you get 4% wet, that’s equivalent to 20% dry.

Conclusion

It’s better to err on the side of using less material for the size of your bags than overcrowding the material in bags that are too small. If you’ve got a lot of material to put through 1 or 5-gallon bags, you can always split up the material and run multiple washes.

Success depends not only on the starting material but also on your technique and equipment. See our Guide to Washing Bubble Hash on our website at thepressclub.co for an outline of the entire process.

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Photos courtesy of The Press Club