Different production method Blonde VS Red Lebanese Hash?

[Cvh]

Hi guys,

I hope any of you know the answer or could set me on the correct path.

My question is, does anybody know that there was a different method involved in producing Blonde VS Red Lebanese Hash?

I once heard that to produce Blonde Hash they would harvest the plants earlier and vice versa for the Red Hash. That the red colour comes from the amber colour of the trichomes when left growing for longer.

Or is it because of genetics? Which I personally doubt.

Anybody any input?

Thanks.

 

[troutman]

Without having done major research on this yet. I suspect Blonde was from earlier harvested plants and the Red from later ones.

Ok, did research already 1 minute ago.

As the plant matures, the clear resin glands typically become opaque. The glands will begin to turn colors, ranging from amber to dark red,
as the plant reaches the end of its life cycle. If you wait too long or over-expose those resin glands to light, they can oxidize. Oxidization
can darken the color of and degrade cannabinoids.

How to Know When It's Time to Harvest Cannabis

 

[troutman]

More research.

Red Lebanese is made from older plants than its yellow cousin, and it is said to contain higher amounts of non-psychoactive CBN but less THC.

The different types of middle eastern hashish

 

[yesum]

I saw the same thing ^^ on the color of the hash from the boss of an operation in Lebanon.
He carried a machinegun in his SUV, had multiple wives and other sex partners. He was the BOSS!!!!!

I only had the blonde Lebanese and it was quite cerebral. Had a nice taste. Back in the 80's. Likely you would get similar today.

 

[Switcher56]

I heard the same AAMOF, I plan to do exactly that when I grow them next winter

 

[ElGato]

i'm not sure about the manufacturing process, but ime the Lebanese Blonde was a more commercial product, the Red was always more potent and much more scarce, the Red always seemed to be the fresher product too, softer/more pliable and better/strongr tasting

edit: Me and my Boys used to get both, they were both packaged exactly the same - full kilo's in the burlap with the red stamp from the Jaffe Family. It's hard to remember exactly cuz this was in the early-mid 80s but the Red was always more desirable and more expensive

 

[tobedetermined]

My latest purchase of red leb a couple of months ago. It is mid-grade at best. Like everyone else, I always heard that red was late harvest.

Lebanon legalized medical growing - but not recreational - back in April this year. Their goal is to establish a legitimate industry as well as to try to get control of the Beqaa/Bekaa Valley where it is grown. That has been a Hezbollah playground & cash cow for many years.

 

[ElGato]

My latest purchase of red leb a couple of months ago. It is mid-grade at best. Like everyone else, I always heard that red was late harvest.

View Image

Lebanon legalized medical growing - but not recreational - back in April this year. Their goal is to establish a legitimate industry as well as to try to get control of the Beqaa/Bekaa Valley where it is grown. That has been a Hezbollah playground & cash cow for many years.

wow, that is a good bit darker red than what we used to get

I wish we still got imported hash around here, i haven't seen any in years and years

 

[Cvh]

I found some info on the Dutch blogs.

They state that it's not the harvesting time.

Everything is harvested at the same time. Then dried and sifted to produce kief.
The difference is in the curing time of the kief.

If they want to produce the Red variety, they leave the already sifted kief to cure for up to at least 6 months. Which turns the trichomes amber.

For the blonde variety they let the sifted kief rest maximum for a few months before pressing.

 

[troutman]

The longer you wait to process it and store it. The more oxidation happens and hence the Red coloration.

BTW: Do you have some RSC Lebanese seeds to test this all out?

I wish I had a field of Hash plants like this.

 

[Cvh]

BTW: Do you have some RSC Lebanese seeds to test this all out?

There are reasons why I'm asking this question. And it's not the theoretical kind.

 

[troutman]

There are reasons why I'm asking this question. And it's not the theoretical kind.

 

[ElGato]

I wish I had a field of Hash plants like this.

View Image

love that photo, awesome shot!!

 

[therevverend]

There's a few things going on that cause the color difference in different types of Lebanese hash. A lot has changed in the last 40 years, some of the info in my sources came from the 80s and earlier. The civil war, Syrian and Israeli invasions, the growing dominance of Hezbollah, the ebb and rise again of cultivation in the Bekaa Valley, means the hashish now is different from the old hashish. As we can see around the world with landrace cultivation, the massive commercial demand and skyrocketing prices have resulted in a massive drop in quality. Lebanon has always produced a lot of mediocre commercial but it seems like the finest red isn't available. Now it's a watered down version. Or people's tolerances got higher..

The simplest explanation I've heard for the red vs blonde difference is that the dust that blows on the plants is different colors depending on where it's cultivated. Higher in the mountains you've got red dirt, lower in the valley it's blonde. It would explain the quality difference as well.

Strain is also a factor. Red hairs and plants that turn red and purple as they mature produce a red color versus plants that turn yellow. As other posters have explained, the red likely comes from mature resin glands on fully flowered plants vs immature glands. This allows them to develop deeper coloring the immature plants wouldn't have.

Often the plants are allowed to die and dry in the field. I find a couple things interesting about this. If they're harvesting 'immature plants' does it mean they don't allow the plants to fully finish flowering? Maybe as soon as the plant produces hairs and crystals, regardless of hair color change, irrigation is stopped and the plant is allowed to die and dry out. It sounds weird but I've heard of it happening in Morocco in the 1980s. The plants are easier to harvest and resin collection is easy.

I'd think leaving your plants to dry and allowing the resin to completely turn amber wouldn't be a good thing. The resin would be partially degraded. Considering the high level of CBD in Lebanese strains would it change it's chemistry? I don't know how degradation effects CBD, I'm curious how it would change the effects.

Another reason the blonde hashish is often inferior. After pressing hashish shouldn't be blonde it should be light to dark brown depending on the plants and pressing techniques. Blonde pressed hashish means there's little resin, the hashish mostly consists of powdered leaf, dust, and other contaminates that fell through the screen. Usually the darker colored stuff will be stronger. The red color isn't ideal either, it means the resin glands are degraded and it's also contaminated with dust and leaf but it's probably not as bad as the blonde.

 

[funkyhorse]

The mythical lebanese of old is extinct, same like Thai Stick or Punto Rojo
Hopefully you can help me understand what happened and what it was and avoid dramas
As you know in order to become a grower you need to be a historian, a geographician, a climatologist, a lighting engineer, a botanist, an anthropologist among other professions, so lets try with history


Some historical facts
It happened in 1983:
Wikipedia is not the best of resources but it is good for an introduction to what happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

From the link:
…"The Israelis managed to push to the eastern Bekaa Valley, and on 24 June, began to shell the outskirts of Chtaura, which was at the northern mouth of the Bekaa Valley and served as headquarters of all Syrian forces there. It was also the last major obstacle before the Syrian border, as well as Syria's capital Damascus itself. The Israelis managed to reach the mountain pass near the village of Dahr el-Baidar, which was the last obstacle before Cthaura. The Syrians fought fiercely to hold the pass, and the Israeli advance halted, with the Israelis holding their ground and harassing the Syrians with artillery fire. By 25 June, with the remaining Syrian positions on and north of the highway no longer tenable, the Syrians withdrew. The Israelis allowed the withdrawal to occur but conducted artillery harassment and continued to shell the outskirts of Chtaura. The Syrians attempted to deploy a SAM battery in the Bekaa Valley at midnight, but Israeli intelligence detected this, and the battery was destroyed in an Israeli air attack. By the end of the day, a cease-fire was announced. The Israelis stopped at their present positions.[13]"...

Rumours say that after the syrian army withdrew, there was rampage all over Bekaa Valley. Hashish was a big industry and a main financial resource of the israeli enemies, so they attacked and destroyed everything. Jeeps and tanks came back to Israel full of hash up to the tits. Literally tons and tons were taken as a war trophy. Hash masters and their apprentices assasinated.
As indirect evidence of these actions, we can see that lebanese hash was never sold again in the markets. Same happened with the mythical jet black afghani of the 70's. I honestly doubt there is documented evidence of the hash story
In the 1983 attacks on Bekaa Valley, chemicals were not used, so it probably didnt exterminate the landrace. They just killed the masters and destroyed all infrastructure

That hash was packed in sacks made of sackcloth weighing 200grams each
Every single sack had a different high
Those sacks came sealed with a yellow stamp or a red stamp. And the content of the sacks was brown colour hash. Darker or lighter brown, I dont know which was which
There were two very distinct highs: one was uplifting hash. A chillum of it and we would go outdoors. The other was for indoor parties, it made your ass very heavy. Today this is called couchlock
So I believe it was two different strains and not just one.

Around 1990 there was again production of cannabis. This time lebanese didnt grow it for hash but for bud smoking. This stuff which I call Lebanese 90's is extinct too and is preserved by Ace Seeds.
This is what happened to this strain:
From this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beqaa_Valley
…"Illicit drug
Drugs have a long tradition in the Beqaa Valley, from the days of the Roman Empire until today cultivators and tribal drug lords working with militias built up a thriving cannabis trade. During the Lebanese Civil War, cannabis cultivation was a major source of income in the Beqaa valley, where most of the country's hashish and opium was produced, a multibillion-dollar industry fueling the agricultural sector as well as political factions and organized crime. The trade collapsed during the worldwide crackdown on narcotics led by the United States in the early 1990s. Under pressure from the U.S. State Department, the occupying Syrian Army plowed up the Beqaa's cannabis fields and sprayed them with poison. Since the mid-1990s, the culture and production of drugs in the Beqaa valley has been in steady decline, by 2002 an estimated 2,500 hectares[6] of cannabis were limited to the extreme north of the valley, where government presence remains minimal. Every year since 2001 the Lebanese army plows cannabis fields in an effort to destroy the crops before harvest,[7] it is estimated that this action eliminates no more than 30% of overall crops. Although important during the civil war, opium cultivation has become marginal, dropping from an estimated 30 metric tonnes per year in 1983 to negligible amounts in 2004"...

I guess the poison used was paraquat
What is going on and what strains are growing in the 2000's I dont know but it is obviously reintroduced and not the original strains

 

[ngakpa]

none of the above comes anywhere near demonstrating that cultivation was eradicated from Bekaa, never mind evidence that the landrace was

instability invariably means more production

on blonde versus red, read at least two Hippie Trail accounts saying the best blonde was better, so jury out on that

also, pure Afghan garda from the north is often brick red... though darkens and melts into itself with age

 

[Cvh]

^It would indeed be hard to belief that the Israeli and USA managed to completely wipe out the Lebanese landrace strain. The Bekaa valley is huge, and from watching some documentaries about the people in that region, let's just say that they aren't the kind of people who goes down without a fight.

That article also reads like the typical war propaganda. For example, we managed to assassinate all the Hash masters and their apprentices. Lol

 

[tobedetermined]

I bought a few grams of Turkish Red a couple of months ago from a dispensary & it was the same colour as the Leb above. It was just OK. Harsh to smoke & a mid-grade sativa-ish buzz.

Of the 2 different lots of Red Leb that I have stumbled upon in the last few years, only the first had that smell/taste/high that I remembered, but neither could be called anything but mid-grade.

 

[therevverend]

I stated this earlier but the best hashish in Lebanon, best strains, didn't come from the Bekaa Valley. It's always come from the Mountain ranges. Here's a chart I'm copying from RCC's book Hashish!.

Coastal Mountains vs Inland Valleys

Predominately Christian
Smaller fields tended by hand
Less Irrigation
More Manuring of Soil
Plants less then a meter tall
Inflorescences yellow or red: constituting 1/3 or 1/2 of plant
More Potent
Harvested Later

versus Inland Valleys

Predominately Muslim
Huge fields plowed by tractors
More Irrigation
More use of Chemical Fertilizers
Plants one to two meters tall
Plants green and well branched; but with fewer flowers
Less Potent
Harvested Later

I get the impression the Christians are no longer producing a large amount of hashish, the trade is now dominated by the Syrians and Hezbollah. Before 1980 it was Christian dominated. One thing that's interesting from what I've read is that the better Lebanese strains actually finish earlier. Since the season is shorter higher in the mountains.

Almost all the seeds and plants called Lebanese I've seen are what I'd call typical Bekaa Valley, the Muslim type. I've seen a few pictures and seeds of reddish-purple plants but much much fewer and it's been a while. Besides all the disruption during the civil war from 1975-1990 there was a government and UN sponsored eradication program after 1990. Very little hashish was produced in the 90's. By 2010 it was starting to rebound but a lot of damage was done, especially to the coastal mountain ranges. It's possible that prohibition was permanent in areas outside Syrian influence.

 

[troutman]

^^^ Organic nutrients in moderation tends to give better coloration than excessive usage of nitrogen rich chemical fertilizers.

I only grew RSC Lebanese once and got one beauty. If only I had made seeds back then.
I did have one with yellowish tinged leaves. I regret not taking pics of it.