- Early autumn marks the beginning of the harvest season. Many months of growing have already passed, and the penetrating smell which your plants emanate is probably making you eager to savour the fruits of your labour. Due to the drying, there's still a while until you can do that, but there is a shortcut: prepare your own Charas, a fresh, high-quality hashish that will give you a glimpse of your crops, and a well-deserved reward for all your efforts.
This centuries-old technique, pioneered by the peoples of the Hindustan region, is based on extracting the hashish from the plants using one's hands a few days prior to the harvest. It may seems like a very rudimentary process, but there's a good reason behind it: upon extracting the trichomes from the plants while they are still standing, one obtains a resin with a high level of THC and an unusually low percentage of other cannabinoids, such as CBD, which increases with the buds' oxidation during the drying process. The result is a psychoactive and tremendously cerebral hash whose mind-altering properties have led it to be used for centuries in religious rituals in towns all across the Himalayas.
The traditional method consists of delicately rubbing all the branches and buds.As we only have access to smaller crops, we will have to make some modifications to this ancestral method of hashish extraction, so as to not squeeze the buds too much. Otherwise we will lose a large part of our crop's potential. With this aim we will also use the manicuring phase to obtain resin, departing a little bit from the classic style in the pursuit of a viable balance.You will need to begin the extraction when the plant is still standing. With your hands nice and clean, lightly press the buds just hard enough so that their amber resin begins to adhere to the palms of your hands, but gentle enough to keep from squashing them.Repeat this operation with great patience and finesse, on all the parts of your plant containing that amber molasses: the resin. Then rub your hands together to obtain some strands of hashish resembling Play-Doh. When you begin to join them they will gradually form a roll. When in search of resin you have to pay special attention to the lower parts of the plant, where you will find buds that have not matured or developed fully. These will be especially valuable as raw material for our rolls of Charas, to be smoked as they are.
Continue to rub your hands together to produce more "strands" of Charas, and turn to your pruning shears to clean them of resin and gradually form a larger and larger roll. If you follow this method at the end of the day your hands will be black from the compacted resin, the buds will not have significantly suffered, and you will have several good-sized rolls of this cannabis delicacy. A good trick to improve their quality is to add a few microns of plant matter from the plant so that they acquire a more distinct aroma and a richer flavour.
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