Full melt is a quality grade, not a method. It describes ice water hash, and occasionally exceptional dry sift, consisting almost entirely of intact trichome heads with very little stalk, leaf or other plant matter. Heated, it liquefies and vaporises leaving minimal ash or char. Growers often grade hash on an informal star scale, and full melt corresponds to the top, five- to six-star end.
In practice
Only a small share of any wash reaches full-melt quality, and some cultivars almost never produce it, because their heads are small, fragile or stick tightly to plant tissue. Hash makers therefore talk about "washers": cultivars that release large, sturdy heads in ice water. Full melt is commonly consumed as is, rather than pressed into rosin. The grading scale is informal and not standardised; two makers' "six stars" may differ.
Don't confuse with
- Melt (half melt): lower grades that partly melt and leave residue.
- Rosin: a pressed oil, not a hash grade.
- Full spectrum: a marketing label for extracts with broad compound profiles, unrelated.
Bubble hash, or ice water hash, is a solventless concentrate made by separating trichome heads from cannabis in cold water and collecting them on graded mesh bags.Kief is the loose, powdery collection of trichome heads that falls or is sifted off dried cannabis through fine screens; it is the simplest solventless concentrate.Trichome heads are the bulbous resin-filled tops of capitate glandular trichomes, where cannabis makes and stores nearly all its cannabinoids and terpenes; they are the raw material of hash.Hash is any concentrate made by separating trichome heads from cannabis and collecting or pressing them, from dry sift and ice water hash to hand-rubbed charas.Rosin is a solventless concentrate: resin squeezed out of flower, kief or hash using heat and pressure, then collected as an oil free of plant material.Full spectrum is a marketing term for a grow light with broad output across the visible range, usually a white LED, sometimes with added red, far-red or UV.Micron bags are fine-mesh filter bags graded by opening size in microns, used to separate and size trichome heads in ice water hash making and to filter rosin.Solventless describes cannabis concentrates made only by mechanical or physical separation, using screens, ice water, heat or pressure, without chemical solvents.
