In this edition of HASH WEEK we will talk about one of the most loved types of hashish by tasters: DRY SIFT!
The dry sift is a type of HASH that can be made out of Flowers or trim. The resin heads are sieved through screens with very thin meshes that are the responsible for the process of separating trichomes from the plant material. That will result in a powder texture.
How is dry sift done?
When the plant is placed on top of these sieves (which are usually 25 to 200 microns) and shaken, the heads of the trichomes come loose and pass through the different sieves of different microns.
The quality, humidity of the material that is used to make the hash makes a lot of difference in the type of resin collected, because the drier the material, the more contaminants the hash will have, the greener the color. Gentle sieving enables a quality hash.
When this material is fresh and frozen, the trichomes become more brittle and are easier to separate while the plant material becomes more condensed and harder to go through the sieves, being another strategy of quality control.
This is an ancient process, used by most of the ancestral cultures that have adapted the ancient technique of using screens as a form of separation, that has always been used with the most diverse types of grains, cereals and fabric. Different regions produce Dry sift in the most diverse qualities. Of course in this case, quality and quantity are closely linked, since there is a fine line between how far the material must pass through the screens before dropping too much plant material.
Dry and cannabis culture around the world
Dry sift has become the most common method of collecting resin for trade due to its agility and effectiveness for the large-scale production of hashish demanded by the current market. In more traditional places, such as MORROCO, in a day of work a producer can produce many kilos of dry sift of average quality or less than a kilo of high quality in the technique of scrubbing the hands and these are the two most used techniques in these regions.
Morocco is often a good example of the widespread use of dry sift, because in the Rif Mountains, the region of the country that concentrates the farms, the conditions found are the ideal for this type of process. Air humidity and residual moisture content of flowers are the most important factors, with drier and cooler climates being better for fast and high-volume production, but not always the best for the highest quality. On cold winter nights in the mountains of Morocco, it is common to see local producers leave the plant already dry hung in open places the night before production, because with the night comes the serene that humidifies the plants a little and causes that when sieving time comes, less matter falls through the fine mesh prioritizing the trichomes and increasing the quality.