Bizarre results with bubble hash extraction

Hey folks, using bags produced by a local company. Heard good things.

The sizes are 220,160,90,73, and 25.

I added roughly 2oz dry trim and performed the extraction. The results were discouraging but here's what I got;
Most of the trim was flower, almost no sugar leaves. Highly resinous, and the weed going in (Afghan Kush in this case) was well grown.

After extraction, I got next to nothing in the 160, got .5g from the 90. Absolutely nothing in the 73. Nothing. Then, 2g in the 25. So I thought well, I have .5g of something decent.

However, I did collect all of the 25 and dried it out. It was very dark whereas the 90 was amber colored. But, smoking it revealed better potency (worse taste) than the 90. Matter of fact, lately when I reach for a hit of hash, I reach for the 25 which is supposed to be shit.
But, it occurred to me that the spacing of the bags was rather unconventional.

So for example, after the 160 bag, it goes to 90. That means everything between 90 and 160 is collected in the 90 bag. A lot of people use a 120 in between 160 and 90 which to me would seem to provide for a more consistent concentrate.

Now, if you go to 73, you would only get between 73-89. There was nothing there. But, looking at the 25 which many regard as low quality (or I saw someone on these forums call it, "outright horseshit"), it occurred to me that the 25 had 72-25 particulates. A lot of people have a bag here say, 50 microns. In that scenario I'd get 50-25 so less yield of course. Perhaps a lot of what is making the 25 so good is a large amount of 70ish stuff that never got collected in the 73.

In any case, I thought it odd to pull out 2.5g but not even any color at all in the 73. I may try some different mesh specs or add a bag and see what happens. I've extracted bubble hash before so I'm not an idiot, but I am also not well trained or read on the subject.

Thoughts?

PS- props to Matt Rize. I had been looking around and saw some of his stuff on this forum and can say that without him, there'd be a lot less hash smoking going on

this is going to sound dumb sorry, you did use ice right?
and what order did you have your bags in?

Oh yes, plenty of ice. Bucket was a sanitized and impeccably clean (5 gallon). Ice used was from distilled water, and water was all distilled. Sides of the bags were washed for collection. Watched a bunch of videos online, emulated as good as or better than most of what I saw.

Not sure what I missed.

The order of the bags were from largest mesh (220, which is the work bag) with subsequently tighter clearances in succession. 220 into 160, 160 into 90, etc down to 25. I triple checked the order of the bags while in the bucket holding material. The only thing I've been able to come up with is that the order of the bags and their specs are a little non-standard and so extraction may pan out (no pun intended) differently. I've done quite a bit of gold cleaning, processing, and panning. The concept here is almost identical to a lot of gold recovery methods except that ice is used for cannabis and gravity is used for metals refinement.

I'd really like there to be more separation between 160 and 90, like maybe add a 120 bag. But, yield is already relatively low. Maybe I lost some of it somewhere in the process, although I doubt it.

Has anyone done a run like this and got like 2.5g and NOTHING in the 73, not even color or any particulates? Really seems impossible to me... unless the 73 is not in fact, 73 microns.

Overall, I'd say 2.5g out of 2oz trim isn't too bad at all. But, the concentrate is not in the range it should be and I don't know why.

hmmm this is not my area of study but i am sure someone will chime in, if not ask mr. rize

I would check to see if your bags are labeled corectly

Damn dude, sounds like a bummer..maybe buy some better bags, water hash should not be hard to make...........when I make water hash I use 3 bags 220 70 20

yea doesnt rize only use 3 for his ice wax?

Is it possible that the plants the material came from picked early? Such a majority of small trich head size could suggest that....most of my 25 hash I never bother to smoke cuz it's just so black/green but the 45, 75, & even 90 bags always have some gold

I'm not sure bout rizes tek, I watched his youtube video a while back and it seemed pretty straight up...one thing I did get from him is use a spray bottle to collect the stuff on the sides of the bags...but i always pulled 2 dank ass grades of hash with 3 bags, 70 bag the better stuff usually

The plants were picked at the peak of ripeness. Great dope, no question.

I did look for holes in the bags. None. I checked sizes only as much as I could see. At least from what I can tell, the mesh does get progressively tighter with each bag.

I can't imagine going from 220 to 70. That means your 70 gets all of the 120, 160, all the way up to 219 garbage. That's just me though...

I may try some other bags, but these are pretty good. The entire bag is mesh filter, as opposed to just the bottom, they drain fast, and I've read nothing but stellar reviews on them. I have another run to make tonight, I'll post on how that turns out. If the same shit happens, I'll switch bags. In light of that, I'm only throwing in 1oz of flower and we'll see what we get. Hopefully it's just that I fucked up somewhere. Otherwise, new bags.

Bublonichronic said:

Damn dude, sounds like a bummer..maybe buy some better bags, water hash should not be hard to make

Click to expand...

Exactly. It's so simple that there is little to go wrong without knowing what it is. I've cleaned lots and lots of black sand from gold with far more elaborate equipment. I have extracted before without issue. But, I've not seen anyone have this problem. Yep, it should be easy, and since it isn't, something is amiss.