What is Kief?

Kief is a common by-product you get when working with or grinding cannabis. Technically a concentrate, kief is super easy to make at home. All you need is a grinder or a screen.

What exactly is kief?

If you were to look very closely at a cannabis plant, you would see thousands of tiny resinous glands, called trichomes, which contain THC, CBD, terpenes, and many other compounds. Up close, trichomes look like crystals, and when these trichomes dry and break off of the plant, they become kief.

How to collect Kief

This powdery substance can be somewhat sticky, like pollen, and is easily collected in grinders, which are used to break down cannabis into small, evenly sized pieces. (Learn more about grinders here.) In fact, grinders have a separate chamber at the bottom specifically for catching kief.

Since kief is a very fine powder, it can take time to collect enough kief crystals to work with. But over weeks or months this powdery residue will build up in your grinder into an amount you can scoop out, oftentimes with the special scraper your grinder came with.

Another way to collect kief is by rubbing cannabis onto a micron screen. This is a great method for extracting larger quantities of kief.

How do I use kief?

Now that you’ve collected a pile of kief, what should you do with it? Here are a few ways of using kief to amp up the potency of your smoke:

Add kief to the top of your bowl

Also known as "crowning your bowl", this is probably the most common way to use kief. Sprinkling kief on your bowl of cannabis will increase its potency significantly.

Sprinkle kief into your joint

When rolling a joint, blunt, or spliff, sprinkle in some kief. This is a great way of giving it an extra kick.

“Twax” your joint

To 'twax' your joint, simply dampen the outside of your joint slightly (give it a lick) then roll the tip of the joint in kief. This will amp up the potency of your smoke.

Make Hash

Once you’ve collected a decent amount of kief, you can press it into bricks of hash. Arguably one of the oldest forms of cannabis extract, you can smoke hash by adding it to marijuana flower, or vaporize it in a vaporizer or a dab rig.

Make moon rocks

Moon rocks are buds of cannabis that are covered in hash oil and then rolled in kief. They are very potent and easy to make at home.

Press rosin

Press your kief between two heated plates and collect the hot oil. You can do this at home with a hair straightener or buy a rosin press.

Add potency to your cannabutter

Making cannabutter at home? Add kief to it to boost potency. (Don't forget to mix the kief in with the flower when you decarboxylate it.)

What’s your favourite way of using kief? We’d love to hear about it! Get in touch!