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Hash Collector

Hash collectors, similar to those who collect baseball cards or stamps, must know how to purchase and preserve their collections.

By Ed GreenPublished 8 years ago 17 min read
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Hash can be fun to collect. From stamps to hash, it is important to study the market and invest properly. Hash like marijuana is a complex world of acquired tastes and exploration. Has collecting is for more than just the enthusiast, but new collectors are experimenting every day. From hybrid bricks to pure Indonesian soft pattys, hash collecting is growing in popularity with some of the most important discoveries made by novices.

If over the years hashish has been a part of your smoking repertoire, then no doubt you have noticed the variety of colors, textures and tastes of the drug, and more importantly, the many levels of potency it displays and the range of effects it can produce. The hashish you may have bought on one occasion has an entirely different appearance and strength than the hashish that was scored at another time in another place.

Given the enormous literature that has been devoted to the subject, the contemporary hash smoker might attempt to reconcile the apparent discrepancies about the drug in its various forms. Yet the writings about hashish yield as many contradictions as our firsthand experiences. The many definitions and preparations of hashish that are recorded in such cannabis anthologies as Andrews' and Vinkenoog's Book of Grass or Solomons' Marijuana Papers serve to emphasize the absence of a comprehensive view of the herb. What we are given in a reading of these chronicles concerning hashish are personal accounts of particular versions of the drug. Most were written at a time when it was not possible for the authors to visit other regions where other types of hashish were being used.

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Sandro the Collector

With all this in mind, I made an appointment with Sandro, who is in possession of a valuable collection of hashish. Sandro is an artist, a hashish archivist and, therefore, an outlaw. I had just arrived in the US and was holding only a small taste of uncertain origin Sandro told me on the phone that he would do his best to identify the hashish I had and, if given 24 hours, he would be able to “visit the vaults” and produce a number of other specimens.

My visit with Sandro took place on a bright morning. The tenth floor view from his West Village studio offered an unfettered vista of the New York skyline and a clear northern light. We had made our appointment specifically for the morning in order to take advantage of this illumination. Both as a painter and a lover of hashish, Sandro had suggested that the only true test for color would be daylight.

He had laid out quite a number of small packages on a white table by the window.

“Almost every kind of hashish is represented there. A taste of almost everything I have ever handled,” he said.

Each piece in the collection was wrapped in either clear or colored cellophane paper, and each was completely sealed with cellophane adhesive. He added a single unwrapped piece of very dark hashish to the top of the pile.

“I’ve already opened one package and had a pipe this morning for purposes of inspiration,” he said. “Generally, I keep it wrapped up all of the time.

“The people who produce hashish live in mountain climates and they live close to the earth. Their houses are made of mud and wood. They live with the weather, and this is probably very good for them and I’m sure it is good for the hashish they smoke. Afghani smokers wrap kilos of hashish in cloth and animal skins and keep them buried. This central heating is very dry and very bad for hashish. Even the best stuff starts to suffer after a while in this environment.”

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Showing my Stash

Out of my pocket I produced my own piece of hashish for his perusal. It was unwrapped, and he chided me for this mistreatment, but I assured him that the hashish had been wrapped all through the night up until an hour ago when I, too, had taken a pipe to enjoy the ride downtown. I was beginning to wonder if Sandro was going to care very much for my idea of unwrapping all of these pieces at one time and exposing them to “this environment.” But Sandro assured me that hashish would not suffer from an hour or so of exposure. He thought that by placing these different kinds of hashish side by side a good comparative lesson would be learned, and with a close-up lens on his camera, we might make some very interesting photographs. Sandro was an artist, an outlaw and a scholar.

As I unwrapped what was a veritable archive of hashish, he examined the slab of hashish I had brought.

His test of this hashish was swift and simple, yet it was precise. He probed the surface of the piece with his fingernail and finding it to be quite hard, he closed his entire hand around it in a tight fist for a moment, attempting to bring the temperature of the hashish up to the average body temperature of 98.6 degrees.

He struck a match and holding the hashish between his finger and thumb he quickly brushed a corner of the slab with the flame several times. From the heated corner of the slab he pinched pieces of the now softened hashish and placed them in the palm of his hand, where he gathered these loosened pieces and vigorously pressed down on them with his thumb. Under the pressure of his thumb, the loose pieces adhered in a single mass, and with thumb-against-palm he kneaded it over and over again. The small piece of hashish that he had formed in his hand became smaller, darker and denser as he kneaded it. The friction caused in this hand-pressing produced enough heat to keep the piece soft, and at one point he picked the piece apart into many small pieces and pressed them all back together again.

Sandro rolled the piece between both his palms and formed a short, thin noodle of hashish which he flattened with his thumb and finger. He held what was now a short stick of hashish in his fingers and struck another match, lighting one end of the stick. The hashish burned. It held a flame as if it were a candle for several seconds before Sandro blew it out and broke the hashish into many pieces that he packed into the small clay bowl of a slim North African pipe.

Image via The Nug

Sandro Approved

“This is good shit,” he said as he struck a third match, inhaling a long steady toke. The flame of the match was sucked into the pipe bowl and when he finished his inhalation the match was extinguished, but the hashish in the pipe was burning like a candle again.

“It tastes like Afghani.” He spoke exhaling an enormous cloud. “Whatever it is, it is very good.” He exhaled continuously as he spoke. “Good hashish can be picked apart and pressed back together, again and again. Good hashish always holds a flame.”

He toked on the pipe again, stoked up another cloud, lifted the pipe to his ear, and listened. “Not a snap or a pop or a sizzle. This is good clean stuff.” Then he blew gently into the pipe so that the ash that remained in the bowl was ejected into the palm of his hand. It was white and looked fairly soft. “A hashish which contains any additives will produce a black and gritty ash.” Sandro rubbed the ash into a powder in his palm,and remarked that it was, in fact, slightly gritty.

“It is probably Afghani hashish. Sweat often gets worked into this hand-pressed Afghani, and this always gives the hashish and its ash a sandy texture. I have a piece of hashish very similar to this.”

He reached among the pieces I had unwrapped and selected a bar of hashish about two inches long. He held our two pieces together, struck a match, and heated the pieces by passing them over the flame.

“A red hot knife will scorch hashish. You should always heat the hash and never the knife.” He reached for the blade and pushed it slowly, steadily, through a fraction of an inch of both pieces at the same time. The cross sections that were exposed seemed identical—a dark, black-green on the outside with a brown-green interior. “It’s probably the same hashish. I just acquired this taste myself.”

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World of Hash

Using the identification labels that Sandro had wrapped in each package recording the origin of the sample and the dates of its acquisition, I had lined up his entire stash in a geographical arrangement. From the west to the east on the table I placed samples of Moroccan, various tints of red Lebanese, a green lump of Turkish, Afghani, Pakistani, two Indian tastes, and Nepalese. Sandro selected three pieces from this line up: a small piece of Indian that had been rolled into an oval sphere, a chunk of red Lebanese and a plaque of grey-green Moroccan. “Connoisseurs, as well as casual smokers, usually state their preference for hashish of one origin or another. Some say that green hash is the most active and produces the quickest and most intense results.”

Sandro was quick to say that he thought all hashish was green. “It’s various shades and tints of green. North African hashish is particularly green; a very pale shade. Turkish hashish is a similar light shade of green, and when hashish of this coloris good it is very stimulating.

“The hashish of the East is such a deep shade of green that it appears to be black. Black hashish is heavier and has a tendency to produce a specifically meditative consciousness. The cone-shaped chillum is the chief hashish vehicle of India. These pipes hold considerable amounts of the herb, and holy men in this part of the world light chillums with transcendental intentions in praise of Shiva.

“The brown tint of Lebanese hash combined with its natural green color gives it a reddish appearance. Lebanese has the reputation for being the most sensuous of the hashish tastes, and devotees of this type speak of the balance of its effects. They say it is neither too stoned nor too hyper, as if its geographical situation between the other two types made it the mean.”

Sandro pressed the three pieces together in his hand. The surfaces of each piece adhered to one another.

“This is all very good hashish. Good hashish is sticky. But what could be called the best hashish is probably available in every region where hashish is found.”

Image via The Nug

Photographing Weed

Sandro placed the three pieces in front of his camera and focused the lens. He set the timer, tripped the shutter, and walked away from the tripod picking up his pipe from the table along with another redder piece of Lebanese. As the timer of the camera buzzed he prepared another toke. “All hashish, no matter what its origins, will produce a high. This is because all hashish is produced from cannabis plants.” The camera clicked. We smoked the Lebanese as Sandro made several more photos of the three tastes he had stacked in front of his lens. We talked and smoked pipes of the Moroccan and Indian as a theory of hashish was unraveled.

Based on his firsthand experiences in hashish-producing regions, it was Sandro's opinion that although we could be certain that all hashish was derived from the cannabis plant, we could not be equally certain that every cannabis plant would produce hashish. Sandro explained that he had noticed that places which produce hashish have similar climatic patterns: a cold wet winter is followed by several hot dry months during which the cannabis crop is grown.

Sandro hypothesized that basically there are only two types of psychedelic hemp. One type that grows in hot dry climates. Another kind thrives in warm rainy regions where the plant will grow constantly and produce an abundance of leaves. Marijuana, ganja, dagga, grass, etc., are generic names for the herb in places where the entire foliage of the plant is smoked. “The cannabis plants that are grown in hot dry climates are usually cultivated in the mountains where there are many springs to facilitate irrigation through the months of intense sun and negligible precipitation. This type of plant grows quickly, but the energy of its growth results not in the production of excessive foliage, but rather in enormous quantities of resins. Watering of these plants can be regulated so that in its seedling stages and early growth the plant receives a great deal of moisture. Later, in its maturity, the plant is watered deeply and in regular intervals, but between waterings it is left completely dry. Heat and dryness are responsible for the plant's tendency to literally sweat its resinous content. In the heat of the sun the resins dry, covering the plant with fine soft dust. This resinous dust is the essence of hashish.

“Ironically, you cannot see what hashish really is by looking at a very good sample. It is only by examining a poor piece that it becomes obvious that hashish is actually made from resinous dust.”

Sandro placed a chip of Nepalese alongside a cube of Afghani. With a razor blade he attempted to shave a thin strip from each piece. The slice of Afghani separated from the cube in a single sheet, while the Nepalese crumbled into a number of bits and flakes. Looking through the micro-lens at a magnified double portrait of the two pieces I could see that the Nepalese was noticeably grainier and I mentioned then that the density of the Afghani sample seemed to belie the fact that it was composed of dust.

“Dust would be an inappropriate term if it were not prefixed with resinous. The resins which pour out of the hashish plant at the end of its growing season begin to dry as soon as they are exposed to the sun. The surface of each resinous globule dries first and the drying proceeds to the globule's center. Spots of resin become tiny dots of dust, but the center of each speck of dust remains moist.

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Hashish Makers

“The process of hashish making begins by shaking the dust from the foliage. By collecting the dust and compacting it in a press, the heat created by the friction of the press will cause the resin, which is still wet, to expand and moisten the resin which is dry. The dust is pressed together and the resins flowing under the influence of the heat bind all of the particles into a dense mass. This is, however, a simplified version of hashish making. As the details of this process are examined the factors that determine the quality of hashish are revealed.

“Very fine hashish is made from the wettest and most resinous dust, but as soon as resin appears on a growing plant the drying process begins. By the end of the growing season a large proportion of the specs of dust that cover the plant have dehydrated to a point where only the very center remains moist. Poor hashish is processed with large amounts of this dryer dust. When this dust is pressed the wet interior of each particle must saturate the dry crust that surrounds it. Poor hashish does not bind together very well because there is not enough wet resin to saturate and revive the resin which has dried. This is why poor hashish cannot be taken apart and put back together.

“In order to be certain that only the wettest resinous dust is used, the hashish maker filters all of the dust from the plant through a cloth screen. The dust, which is inordinately dry, weighs less than the wetter particles. At the same time the dust which has dried has expanded so that the particles of dried dust are not only lighter, but also larger, than those which are still fresh. The straining process relies on the heavier weight and smaller size of the best resinous dust; a tightly woven cloth that has been stretched on a frame will allow only the smallest and wettest particles to pass through.” Sandro and I were making a photograph of his chillum and an assortment of black hashish. We were halfway through a second roll of film and he was telling me how some Afghani hashmakers often use two cloths to accomplish this straining process.

“They filter all of the best of the dust through one cloth and then store it for months before they take it out and put it in a sack made of another fabric. They shake the sack so that the best hashish dust is strained out of the bag. They collect this dust and press it into little hand patties. A piece of the best Afghani hashish that has been very well pressed can be bent and twisted over and over and the surface of the piece will never show a sign of a crack or a split.

“Of course, there are a number of tricks that can be played by hashmakers to make a poor hashish look good and even excellent. Given a hashish that has been made from too much of the dryer dust, a hashmaker can improve the adhesive properties of the resin by adding a small amount of water and then giving this remoistened dust a very hot press. Afghani hashmakers often add water to their poorer grades of hashish, and this accounts for the white mold that is seen on some of the funkier Afghani that is going around. Poor Pakistani and Indian hashish is often bound together with vegetable oils. But you can always tell when something has been added with the idea of improving the look of a hashish. The oils always sizzle in the pipe and the ash is sooty.” There were several pieces of Pakistani in Sandro’s collection which had been adulterated in this way and there was another piece, which was probably of Indian origin, that had been blended and pressed (and, some might say, “blessed”) with opium. We took a toke of this Indian, the opium bubbled and fizzled in the pipe bowl and emitted its own distinctive aroma.

Some of the lower grades of hashish in Sandro's collection had been better grades at some earlier time. Even the most resinous hashish ages, dries, and begins to degenerate so that eventually its properties will appear to be no better than a hashish that was poorly made. This Nepalese was once a better example of hashish.

“I’ve had that piece for five years and I’ve no idea how old it was when it came into my hands. It's getting quite beat and I think we should probably finish it off.”

He struck two matches, heated the entire piece and fluffed it apart quite easily. He mixed a small amount of cigarette tobacco with the loose hashish and loaded the blend into his chillum. I struck two matches and Sandro stoked up flames and smoke from the wide mouth of the Indian pipe. Although that piece of Nepalese was old and not very strong it had retained its spicy flavor.

“The joy of hashish collecting is the availability of a variety of tastes. The peppery taste of Nepalese may be followed by a toke of the sweetest material that the Balabek region has to offer. The rush of a rare, exquisitely prepared Moroccan can be mellowed with a puff of India's most passive Manali.”

It was midafternoon and the light was fading. Sandro placed all of the pieces of the collection on a laboratory tribeam, and in a small leatherbound book recorded a total weight of 185 grams and the date. Each piece was aligned with its accompanying label and we rewrapped the packages. The label of the Nepalese that we had finished in the chillum was taped to a page in the back of the notebook where there was a section of tags from other tastes that had been toked away in similar sessions....

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About the Creator

Ed Green

Gynecologist. Amateur Farmer and weed whacker. Loves figure skating and Liza Minnelli. Bakes amazing brownies.

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