Ice-o-lator
The ice-o-lator (or bubble hash) is trichome separation in ice water: the cold stiffens them, agitation breaks them off, and filtration bags of decreasing mesh sort them by size.
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The method was popularised in Amsterdam in the late 1990s — Ice-O-Lator was originally the brand of bags sold by Mila Jansen, since become a generic term. The principle is three gestures: stir the plant material in a mix of water and ice, let the stiffened trichomes break free, filter the suspension through bags graded in microns.
It is the method that made the micron scale famous and that produces the meltiest textures, up to full melt grade. Worked on fresh-frozen material (WPFF), it yields frozen hash and forms the base of piattella.
Its strength is also its limit: water extracts nothing chemically — no solvent, no transformation — so the quality of the result depends entirely on the starting material and on the rigour of the sorting. The stated characteristics and percentages of this product appear on its page. Without a dated batch certificate, its product profile is not a verifiable analysis.
Reading the mesh on an ice-o-lator
The figure that often follows the name, 45u or 120u, is the bag that held the fraction, in microns. The micron tool turns each mesh in the stack into what it collects, and the 45u and 120u ice-o-lator comparison sets three ice-water batches side by side, where the finest mesh does not show the highest potency.
Further reading.
- Canna·wiki entries
- cbd
- Which one to pick
- The lab's hash comparison