Kief is the accumulated resin glands, mainly the heads of capitate stalked trichomes, separated from dried flower and trim by mechanical sieving. The name comes from the North African kif, a term once used for prepared cannabis. "Dry sift" is the modern grower term for kief made deliberately and carefully through graded screens, as opposed to whatever settles in the bottom of a grinder.
In practice
Quality depends on how much plant material comes through with the heads. Grinder kief is usually greenish and contaminated with leaf and stalk fragments. Carefully sifted dry sift is pale tan and mostly intact heads, and the finest grades approach the purity of ice water hash. Kief can be used loose or pressed into hash. GenetixBay defines the product only and doesn't give processing instructions.
Don't confuse with
- Hash: kief that has been pressed or otherwise consolidated into a mass.
- Pollen: male cannabis pollen, unrelated; "pollen" is also a slang name for kief, which causes confusion.
- Bubble hash: trichome heads separated with ice water rather than dry screening.
A hair-like outgrowth of the plant's skin; in cannabis the glandular types make and store the resin holding cannabinoids and terpenes.The large mushroom-shaped glandular trichome on cannabis bracts, with a multicellular stalk and a resin-filled head; it holds most of the flower's cannabinoids and terpenes.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.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.Pollen is the fine powder released by male flowers that carries the male gametes; when it lands on a female's stigmas it fertilises the ovules and produces seed.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.Pressed hash is loose trichome resin, such as kief or ice water hash, compressed into a solid cake or slab so it holds together and keeps better.Solventless describes cannabis concentrates made only by mechanical or physical separation, using screens, ice water, heat or pressure, without chemical solvents.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.
