The easiest way to make kief at home is with a three-chamber grinder: as you grind your buds, a fine screen lets the tiny trichome heads fall into the bottom chamber, where you can scrape them out. That powder is kief, and you can sprinkle it on a joint or bowl, vape it, stir it into a drink or press it into hash. It's one more example of how versatile cannabis is: for smoking, buds are dried and cured so their cannabinoids, terpenes and other compounds are ready to enjoy.

With a little more work, cannabis goes into all kinds of other products. Flower can be cooked into oil or butter to make an infused fat for edibles. At a more professional level, solvents or distillation can be used to make concentrates for vaping.

But the easiest thing to make from cannabis is kief, which is concentrated in the trichomes on the surface of the flower (and, to a lesser extent, the leaves), loaded with tasty cannabinoids and terpenes. Kief is easy to collect without any fancy equipment, and once you've got it, there are a thousand ways to enjoy it.

How do you make kief?

The easiest way to collect small amounts of kief is with a three-chamber weed grinder. The middle chamber, where your ground weed collects, has a  mesh screen. That screen works as a filter, letting the nearly microscopic trichome heads fall into the bottom chamber while holding back the plant material. After you've ground a few buds, you can scrape the kief out of the bottom chamber.

What are the benefits of kief?

Kief has a lot going for it. For starters, because it's so potent and pure, you inhale less burnt plant material. Like any kind of smoking, that's tough on your body, especially over time. Concentrates let you isolate the cannabinoids more precisely without inhaling the rest of the burnt plant matter. And because kief is so strong, you can use less product overall to get where you want to be.

Kief vs. hash: are they the same thing?

Kief is the collection of trichomes separated from the cannabis plant, a dry, powdery or sandy substance that ranges in color from light green to dark brown. So what's hash?

Hash is kief that's been heated and pressed to make it easier to use, carry or store. Hash comes in all kinds of forms, from dark, compact blocks to softer, stickier balls. Cannabinoid and terpene levels in hash can vary depending on how the resin was collected.

How do you use kief?

The big question is what to do with your kief, and you've got options. The easiest is to smoke it. A glass pipe or a small screened mouthpiece comes in handy if you want to smoke kief on its own. You can also use it to boost the potency of a joint or bong by sprinkling it over your ground bud. It's also used for moon rocks or to coat the outside of joints, using extracts as glue. And with heat and pressure, you can turn kief into hash.

Add it to a joint

Sprinkling a little kief into a joint bumps up the THC. That's exactly why you should only add a pinch, especially if you're an occasional smoker or just getting into it.

Another option is to coat the paper with kief. How do you get kief to stick to a joint? Easy: just dampen the outside of the joint and roll it in kief.

Coffee or tea

Stirring kief into your coffee or tea is another great way to go. First, it needs to be decarboxylated, a slow, low-heat bake that activates cannabinoids like THC into their most potent form. Decarb it at around 100 to 120 °C (212 to 248 °F) for about 20 to 40 minutes. Then just add it to your coffee or tea, ideally with milk or cream, since THC binds to fat.

Make hash

Hash is kief that's been pressed so it's easy to carry or store. There are lots of ways to turn trichome heads into hash, but the basic ingredients are heat and pressure. The easiest way to make hash is with your fingers: take a little kief between your thumb and finger and roll it for a few minutes. You'll end up with a dark, pliable chunk of hash.

Another method: pile all your kief into a little mound, cover it with parchment paper and run a warm rolling pin over it, or a jar filled with hot water. That should give you a nice, compact slab.

What can you do with hash? How do you smoke hash?

Because it comes as a solid, highly potent chunk or block, hash isn't meant to be crumbled between your fingers and rolled into a joint as is. You'll need to work it a little first.

Dry hash can be smoked several ways: crumbled into a joint, or mixed with tobacco in a spliff.

You can set a piece of hash on top of the bowl in a bong or pipe, or smoke it old-school under a glass.

Make weed moon rocks

Moon rocks are dried cannabis buds coated in hash oil and then rolled in kief. Making moon rocks is a bit like making onion rings: dip, then coat.

How to smoke kief on its own

A water pipe or bong is one way to smoke kief by itself. It's easiest with a screen in the bowl so the kief doesn't get sucked down the stem.

If you don't have screens, line the bowl with a little tobacco or some flower if needed.

Sprinkle kief over your buds

You can sprinkle kief over ground bud packed in a pipe or bong bowl. You can also layer it: a layer of kief in the bowl, then ground bud, and repeat.

Vaping bud and kief

For the best results, we recommend using dried flower (here's our guide on how to dry weed fast) topped with kief when you vape, so the cannabinoids and terpenes heat up at the ideal temperature.

Go check your grinder: there's probably some kief in there waiting for you to get creative and use it however you like!

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