What is Kief?

Trimming weed can often be a time consuming job that isn’t immediately rewarding, but turn that frown upside down. When you clean up your trim space, you should find a nice pile of kief that’s ready to smoke right away. There are even products that make separating the kief from your trim even easier, like the Trim Bin. If you’re dying to get a taste of your fresh harvest before it’s dried and cured, this is the best way to get it.

There’s a grinder out there for every movie, hobby, favourite musician or clothing brand. But there are grinders that are designed for functionality, too. 3 compartment grinders are common these days, so chances are you might have one already. The third compartment always sits under a screen that your ground up weed will sit on top of, leaving just enough room for kief to fall down and collect below.

Unscrew the bottom section of your tiered grinder, below the screen, to find and collect the kief that builds up in your grinder.

Tumblers come in all different sizes, but are better suited for a home grower trying to collect kief from low grade flower. There’s other methods for larger volumes that would work way better, but for an at home method this is a great step up. Some are manually operated while others are electric, rotating a cylinder full of flower to knock the buds around breaking off the trichome heads. The final product will sift through screen(s) to be easily gathered and used later.

If you’re processing larger amounts of flower, as in a pound at a time or so, something like the PollenMaster 500 is a solid choice. For smaller amounts, in the ~150g range, look to an option like the Bubble Magic Pollen Tumbler.

Probably the most efficient way of separating all your kief from your flower would be with dry ice and micron screens. These screens, usually 5-6 of them, range between 190-25 micron sizes (microns are micrometers, and micron size refers to how many micrometers wide the openings in the screen are).

Some people call the result of this process “dry ice hash,” but the difference between dry ice hash and kief is negligible.

You’ll throw a bunch of flower into a big bucket with a handful of dry ice chunks, pull the screens over the top of the bucket one over the other until all your screens are on top. The dry ice makes the trichomes extremely brittle, causing them to detach from the flower easily. Once they’re on there, flip the bucket upside down and start shaking. You’ll want to shake the bucket over a large smooth surface like a pane of glass or a countertop, that way you can take a card and scrape it all into one big pile.

GrowWeedEasy has a fantastic guide to making dry ice hash that is definitely worth a look if you’re interested in collecting your own kief.

Dry sift is the same process as the dry ice method, but without the dry ice or the bucket. It’s just bud being shaken and vibrated through increasingly tighter micron screens. The difference here is that there’s no dry ice making the trichomes fragile. The more stable they are, the less broken or ruptured trichome heads you’ll get, and that’s the goal. Your yields might be lower than with the dry ice method, but some hash connoisseurs believe that dry sifting produces a higher quality product.

What if I told you you could make some hash with the kief in your grinder right now? It doesn’t take much to make some low grade hash. Rolling kief between your fingers, or squeezing it in some parchment paper with your hands will be enough to rupture those trichome heads. That’s what helps kief go from a dry sandy texture to a sticky greenish brown ball. The oils will saturate the trichome heads and all the stickiness will give shape to the hash you’ve made.

For a slightly more advanced technique, check out the Frenchy Cannoli Hot Water Bottle Method.

Moonrocks are usually a “love it or hate it” kind of thing for most people. A moonrocks is a bud, coated in shatter or hash oil, then coated in kief. Obviously this is a very potent treat. The reason some people aren’t so fond of it is because while it’s great for your social media upload, it’s super hard to bust up for a joint, smokes pretty harsh, and takes a billion years to finish burning. Some folks love that, some don’t.

This is another picture perfect use for your kief. Once you’ve got your joint or blunt rolled up, you can either baptize it (wet it with saliva), melt some shatter on it, or rub some rosin on it. Once it’s nice and sticky, roll it in a pile of kief and you’ve got yourself a kief coat.

Pucks are a convenient way to keep your kief weighed out and separated. With just a little bit of moisture and a whole lot of pressure, you can squeeze down kief into any shape you wanted, but pucks are usually the go-to. Kief presses, or pollen presses, are relatively cheap and could be diy’d with plumbing parts very easily.

Just like the flower kief is collected from, it can be added into foods for a psychoactive experience. Once it’s been decarbed, the THCA is converted to THC making it bioavailable. The kief is especially potent so a little will go a long way.

To make simple edibles with kief, spread your pollen on a piece of parchment paper on a baking tray, bake at 250f for 20-25 minutes, then mix it with something fatty like butter or oil. You can strain the oil or butter after 24hrs if you find the taste too strong.

If you’re trying to start your day with a bit of extra vibrancy, try adding a teaspoon of kief to your morning cup of coffee or tea. As long as you have a bit of dairy in there, or something fatty, you’ll give the THC something to bind with so your body can absorb it. The heat from your drink will be enough to activate the THC and cannabinoids for the desired effect.

Using the dry sift method to separate kief from flower will give you top quality trichomes for processing. When pressed and heated, the trichomes release their oils, and all the psychoactive properties inside them. The final product is a sticky rosin substance that can be dabbed, cooked with, or added to blunts for an extra kick.

While it’s possible to make low-grade rosin with household materials like a hair straightener, we definitely recommend getting a rosin press if you’re serious about making solventless extracts.