Types of Hash Explained: 14 Kinds and How to Tell Them Apart

Every kind of hash is the same substance arrived at differently: resin glands separated from the plant they grew on. What changes is how you get them off, what you do to them afterwards, and how much of the plant comes along for the ride.

That is genuinely all that separates a £2 lump of Moroccan from a £15 slab of piatella. Everything below is a variation on those three questions.

The quick version

Type	How it's separated	Looks like	Texture
Kief / pollen	Dry screening	Blonde to tan powder	Loose, sandy
Dry sift	Dry screening, graded	Blonde, sometimes green-tinged	Sandy, lightly pressed
Static sift	Screening + static electricity	Pale, granular	Dry, free-flowing
Moroccan	Beaten over mesh	Golden to dark brown slab	Hard, softens when warmed
Afghan	Beaten, then wet-kneaded	Black surface, brown inside	Soft, fudge-like
Charas	Hand-rubbed from live plants	Dark brown to black	Putty, marzipan
Temple ball	Charas, long-cured, rolled	Glossy black sphere	Firm outside, pliable inside
Lebanese	Dry-sifted, field-aged	Blonde or red-brown	Brittle, crumbly
Bubble hash	Ice water agitation	Sandy blonde to brown	Sandy, or fudgy pressed
Piatella	Ice water hash, cold-cured	Pale gold slab	Soft fudge
Rosin	Heat and pressure	Amber, glassy or whipped	Sticky to badder
Jelly hash	Bubble hash + hash oil	Dark, glossy	Sticky, jelly-like
Moonrocks	Bud coated and rolled	Frosted whole bud	Dense, sticky
Soap bar	Bulked and pressed	Dull brown brick	Hard, plasticky

Types of hash grouped by dry, water, hand or heat, and blended separation methods — Grouped by how the resin comes off the plant — which is the only distinction that really matters.

Dry-separated hash

Kief and "pollen"

Kief is the loose trichome powder that comes off dried flower through a screen — the dust in the bottom chamber of your grinder is the same material. Blonde to tan, dry, and completely unpressed.

In Britain, "pollen" means kief, usually lightly pressed, and by extension it came to mean the cheap blonde crumbly Moroccan-style product that dominated the market. It has nothing to do with botanical pollen. Worth knowing that the word does not travel: in continental Europe "pollen" tends to mean unpressed kief, while in Britain it drifted to mean pressed. If you are buying from a European site, check which they mean.

More in what is kief and CBD pollen hash explained.

Dry sift

Kief that has been screened through progressively finer meshes and graded, then usually pressed. The grading is by how much of it is actual trichome head versus pulverised leaf. High-grade dry sift will melt; low-grade goes green because it is full of plant matter.

Full write-up: what is dry sift hash.

Static sift

Dry sift with an extra cleaning step. Friction gives trichome heads and plant debris opposite electrical charges, so the debris can be pulled away. First-pass purity measured in a 2025 peer-reviewed study came in at 80–95% intact heads, against 40–50% for conventional methods.

The distinguishing detail worth knowing: it barely works in damp conditions, and the charge disappears entirely below freezing — so anyone describing static hash as made from frozen material has confused it with something else. Full explanation in static hash explained.

Traditional pressed hash

Moroccan

Around 95% of Moroccan production comes from the Rif Mountains around Ketama. Dried plants are beaten over a fine mesh stretched under plastic sheeting; the resin falls through and is pressed into slabs.

The grading runs opposite to how people assume. Fewer sieve passes means better hash — the first pull is the blondest and cleanest, and each subsequent pull brings more plant matter with it. "Zero zero" or 00 is the top traditional grade. Names like King Hassan and Ketama Gold are commercial labels applied to 00-grade material, not distinct production methods. Triple filtered simply means it went through three progressively finer screens.

One honest caveat: sources disagree about where "00" comes from. Some say it borrows from Italian flour-milling nomenclature, where 00 is the finest grind. Others say it refers to a 100-micron mesh. We could not establish which is right, so we are not going to pick one.

Afghan

Whole plants are trampled and beaten to a mulch and filtered through cloth. Then comes the step that makes Afghan hash what it is: the powder is heated, moistened with water or tea, and hand-kneaded. That wet kneading is the real difference from Moroccan, and it is why the texture is soft and fudge-like rather than brittle.

Black on the surface from oxidation, dark brown inside. Producers stamp finished blocks with a seal. It hardens as it ages.

See Afghan hash explained, and the CBD version we stock.

Lebanese

Bekaa Valley. Dry-sifted from field-ripened, sun-dried plants and traditionally aged for one or two seasons. Noticeably more brittle than Afghan or Moroccan — it crumbles rather than bends.

The colours are the interesting part. Blonde or yellow Lebanese comes from an earlier harvest. Red Leb comes from fully mature plants left standing longer, where the THC has degraded toward CBN. The red is a marker of oxidative age, not of quality — which is why red Leb has a reputation for being heavier and more sedating.

Charas

India and Nepal. Resin rubbed by hand from living, uncut plants and scraped off the palms. Dark brown to black, with the texture of marzipan.

The detail that matters: because the plant is never dried before extraction, charas keeps far more of its volatile monoterpenes — one source puts retention as high as 80%. That is why it smells fresher and greener than sieved hash, and it is the single best argument for its price.

Nepalese temple ball

Charas rolled into spheres and cured at length. The extended cure lets oils migrate to the surface, producing a glassy, mirror-like sheen — that shine is the visual tell, and a temple ball that looks matte has not been cured properly. Interior stays dark and pliable.

See Nepalese hash and temple balls.

Water-separated hash

Bubble hash / ice-o-lator

Material is agitated in ice water. The cold makes trichomes brittle, agitation snaps them off, and a stacked set of mesh bags catches them by size.

Bag sets typically run 220, 190, 160, 120, 90, 73, 45 and 25 microns, largest on top. The 73–120 micron fraction is the premium band, because it captures mature gland heads with the best oil-to-cuticle ratio. Graded one to six stars by how completely it melts: five to six star is "full melt", three to four is half melt, below three is for cooking.

Language note: "Ice-O-Lator" is a Dutch brand name — Mila Jansen's — that became generic, in the way Hoover did.

Full detail in what is bubble hash.

Piatella

Six-star bubble hash from fresh-frozen material, vacuum-sealed and cold-cured at 4–10 °C for four to six weeks. No press, no heat. The vacuum forms the flat plate the name refers to.

Correct piatella is pale gold to amber — the entire technique is designed to avoid oxidation, so the pale colour is the quality claim. Dark, oily piatella means poorer input or a badly controlled cure, whatever the seller says. Full write-up in piatella hash explained.

Pressed and processed concentrates

Rosin and hash rosin

Solventless, using heat and pressure alone. Flower rosin presses buds. Hash rosin presses bubble hash or dry sift and is far cleaner. Live rosin is hash rosin where the input was fresh-frozen.

Attributed to Phil "Soilgrown" Salazar around 2015, working with a hair straightener and bubble hash. He released the technique unpatented, which is why it spread as fast as it did. See hash rosin vs CBD rosin.

Jelly hash

Bubble hash blended with hash oil to a jelly consistency. It is the only entry on this list that deliberately mixes solventless and solvent-extracted material, which is worth knowing if avoiding solvents is why you buy hash.

Moonrocks and hash rocks

Whole bud dipped in concentrate and rolled in kief. Commercialised by Kurupt and Dr. Zodiak from 2013 — it was a brand before it was a category.

"Hash rocks" is used more loosely for bud coated in hash rather than oil, but we could not verify it as an established term with a settled definition, so treat it as a product name rather than a type. We cover the distinction in CBD hash rocks vs moonrocks. Both formats appear in our CBD hash collection when they are in season.

The one to avoid

Soap bar

The default British street hash for a generation — hard, dull brown, wrapped in cellophane in 250g bars, burning with black acrid smoke.

You will find long lists of alleged adulterants attached to it: boot polish, turpentine, henna, milk powder, pine resin, animal faeces. Those lists come from 1990s campaign material and were never laboratory-verified. They are widely alleged, not established.

What is defensible is that soap bar was heavily bulked and very low in actual resin, and that its dominance is the main reason hash carried a poor reputation in Britain long after it had a good one elsewhere in Europe. More in soap bar hash explained and the great British hash revival.

Names that are marketing, not types

Some of the most confident-sounding words on a hash label describe nothing in particular:

Gold seal — a stamp, historically applied to Moroccan slabs. Says nothing about grade. See gold seal hash explained.
Cali, cali plates, cali gold — originally meant California-imported. Now means a packaging style and a price tier. See cali hash explained.
Cali mousse / la mousse — a texture, whipped and airy. Not an origin or a method.
King Hassan, Ketama Gold — commercial names for 00-grade Moroccan.
Six-star, full melt — real descriptions of behaviour, but graded by eye with no standardised methodology behind them. Test it yourself.

How to tell what you have got

Smell it cold. Fresh, floral or fruity suggests fresh-frozen input or hand-rubbed charas. Flat and hay-like suggests age or heavy plant content.
Press it with a thumbnail. Brittle and crumbly points to dry sift or Lebanese. Soft and yielding points to Afghan or a cold-cured product. Oily and sticky means concentrate territory.
Look at the colour in daylight. Green means plant matter. Pale blonde means clean sift. Very dark can mean age, oxidation, or simply a wet-kneaded Afghan style.
Do the melt test. A small amount on a hot surface. Full melt bubbles and liquefies, leaving almost nothing. Lower grades char and leave a black residue.

Detailed version in how to spot good quality CBD hash. Once you know what you have, how to smoke CBD hash covers what to do with it, and CBD hash prices in the UK covers what it should cost.

Dark temple ball with a wedge cut out showing the lighter interior

The CBD versions

Almost every type above has a hemp equivalent, made the same way from hemp rather than from high-THC cannabis. Our range covers pressed and filtered grades from 26% to 40% CBD — Afghan, Double Zero, Kush Mints, Apples & Bananas and the rest of the CBD hash collection.

If you are weighing hash against bud, CBD hash vs CBD flower sets out the trade-offs.

Legal note

Hash made from cannabis is a controlled drug in the UK. Section 37(1) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 gives "cannabis resin" its own definition — "the separated resin, whether crude or purified, obtained from any plant of the genus Cannabis" — and contains no percentage threshold. Hemp-derived CBD hash occupies a more contested position, which we set out in is CBD hash legal in the UK. This article is educational and is not legal advice.