Kif in the Rif - Morocco 2018

[titoon29]

Hi everybody, thanks for your comments !

You will find a bunch of explanation on the Kif in my previous post, the weed tobacco mix that has been consumed for 100s of years in Morocco.

Here are some details picts of the process.

1. Leaf Removal



2. Sorting the seeds to remove as much as possible


3. Using a knife to transform the bud into small powder

 

[titoon29]

4. Filtering seeds and branches (speaker filter )


5. Adding Tobacco : Dry leaf of locally grown tobacco is used, small drops of water are added so it turns black.
Tobacco is really strong, probably 10x nicotin compared to the common industrial cultivars.
FYI on this picture there is way too much tobacco that will be kept for later. The kif mix usually is about 10-20% tobacco

 

[titoon29]

6. Testing : a small amount is mixed and put in the sipsi, the local pipe.
Effect is a powerful mix of body and head high, with a blend of the locally grown bildia( likely 1:1 THC/CBD) and the strong tobacco
Taste isn't really what we are associating with good herb, it is quite woody, tobacco taste doesn't really comes out.

 

[mr.brunch]

Lovely stuff, thanks for sharing

 

[titoon29]

This 10 days trip has gotten to an end !
I usually tend to stay 1+ month in one place in order to settle well and get to know the right people, but this time was a bit shorter trip. However, not short of experience that is for sur !
My last trip were always around the city of Chefchaouen at the entrance of the Rif, which is quite convenient as it provides all your common amenities and also a very wide diversity of food and restaurants of awesome quality.

The rest of the Rif has been deemed for a long time reserved to the hash business, and not recommended as a tourist. For instance, if you were to get off a taxi in Ketama twenty years ago, 100 people would surround you to offer you hashish in various quantity or quality - the only way to pass through was therefore to have a connection.

Nowadays, with an increased tourism from Morocco and foreigners that comes for the beauty of Xaouen , the mountains, trekking, and more small time smokers, things have changed a lot. The new generation of Rifman are more open to exchange with non-buyers, and you can find places to stay for a while with no hassle and without having to buy kilos at the end, which is awesome!

During my last trip, I had the chance to meet a fellow hash smoker with good connections within the villages around Ketama.
Luckily, our paths did cross again, and I was offered to get within a village where pretty much everything has to do with hashish. Our host would be a small time farmer, hard worker, non smoker, whose work solely involves Cannabis, as everybody in his village.

We had two options to get to Ketama where our friend would come pick us up. The shared way was.a bit cheaper, but we decided to take a private taxi there, a bit more easy than having to switch taxis in big business places (though nothing dangerous just potential annoying hasslers) - and also option to smoke in the car. So here we go, 9am, meet up with our driver (who happens to only have a license for taxi outside of Xaouen) a bit outside of the city. And here we go for a 2 hours+ trip.
As soon as we got outside of the city, our driver offer us a little bit of Bildyia hashish to smoke, and here we go . The road is in good condition, the surroundings are wonderful - we pass many famous hash villages, many mountains which sides are filled of terraces used to grow the only crop of the Rif. A couple of time, our driver ask us to be a bit discrete on rolling/smoking joints, at the entrance of villages where controls can sometimes happen -though that is more to avoid annoying interaction with the state police rather than truly have any kind of problem. - here around 50-100g will be considered as simple consumption and you will not end up with more than a fine - and usually only your material ceased. There used to be an issue with cops looking to hassle tourists for «*bakshish*», but this time is past now.

Our driver lives in Chefchaouen, but has got family in the mountains working the Kif. He is proud of his Dacia which despite its 14 years, does look much better than my car… On the way, we stop by a place where he met his boss for some cash transfer ˆˆ. The boss is family, and quite big hash producer he told me - here everything works with the family.

After a two hours trip in mountainous roads, with crazy wonderful views on the Rif, we reached the city of Issaguen - or Ketama. There we directly met up with our host, and straight up take the car to head to the small village, about 30 minutes of very shitty road, built 20 years ago and not maintained….

Rif Road - most intense cannabis growing place in the world

 

[ESTERCHASER]

just found the thread

just found the thread

Hello IC friends and foes !

I have been hanging around Xaouen for a few weeks, likely a couple more. Been digging a little bit more into the culture, the growing, the
[production of Kif, and playing around with some resin I hope this thread will shade even more light on the Moroccan hash production... I will reference some interesting publications found here and there. It will be a follow up of the excellent threads on Morocco here on IC.
url='https://www.icmag.




I grew up in the late 80's smoking hash brought from that area to montreal then it made its way to my families areas...and by areas i mean alot of northern VT,NY, and maybe some of NH as well.......i also think some got as far as north adams mass back then. Im going to start from page one and start reading. Sadly i havent been able to enjoy it since the marine biologu students in the s.lawrence seaway found the last batch............miss it too! I grew up enjoying morrocan and lebanese blonde(on the inside was blonde only)I will say i feel blessed to able to try such wonderful profiles at age 12-13-14...i had no idea how good i had it.....ill never forget going into the bathroom at harwood union with my buddy mattt and the upperclassman head stoner chad says hey man where tha fuk did u get your hands on this? I miss those days! Great thread!

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This thread is a tribute to the moroccan farmers, who have carried along generations this amazing plant, and made it possible for a whole generation in Europe to access the marvelous realm of the getting high. They have an incredible dedication to this plant, which you need when you see the harsh conditions that they must work with.


Little history, source in french
J. Bellakhdar - Contribution à l'étude de la pharmacopée traditionnelle au maroc - la situation actuelle, les produits, les sources du savoir, 1997.




In the end of the 1960s - some people that had travelled to traditional hash producing countries (mostly afghanistan, pakistan, lebanon), introduced the sifting techniques, as well as some new cultivars that required much less water to grow than the original Moroccan ones. Many stories you hear about here, some says the first guy was american, some english, who knows !
From the 60s to the 90s, the old morocco strains slowly got cross pollinated with the lebanese and afghan/paki genetics. It slowly got selected for using very little water, and producing resin. Then, in the 90s a new loads of genetics arrive, some places here call it mexicana. I ld tend to think it would be the cheap Sensi seeds genetics.
Later on came the Amnesia, the Critical, the Kush, the Skunk. Around here, it seems that Amnesia got there around 2005, Critical since a couple of years. They are now switching to feminized seeds, which is





quite different then their old planting method.


What I will be calling the Bildya further in this thread, the local cultivar, is in this case the old moroccan genetics mixed with the Leb & Paki. The old cultivars, the true landraces, are probably nowhere to be found anymore, but their genetics are carried on in the Bildya. While the old people do agree that the genetics of their Kif has changed over the years, the cannabinoid/terpens profile still seems to be tuned with their social and recreational use of the plant - CBD is present in ratio around 1:2, and the terroir seems to still express itself through natural selection despite multiple foreign pollen floating around.

Keep in mind that the knowledge that I am getting locally is tied to the place I am. Xaouen is quite different in term of production than the Ketama Region. Here it is more craft work, so you will find a bit different ways of working than most of the products that can be accessed in Europe, which comes from sophisticated & vast operations…


Now that the context is given, let’ s get straight to the point - the RESIN !

Moroccan have been dry sifting since the 70s. The most widespread traditional extraction is made using a bucket and a fabric screen (in the 200 microns range).
The buds, removed from the stems, are put on top of the fabric screen. Some farmers, for the special quality, do not beat the first resin but only gently break the buds by hands. Then come the plastic bag on top, and beating with two wooden sticks, to get the first to the third quality. These beatings you can hear while walking around the mountains…

The bildya seems like of piece of work on its own. While I have seen some 80+ percent resin heads in the first quality from dutch genetics, the bildya hardly gets to 50% with the same technique.
My take on why is that is quite speculative, but I see few factors
- Bildya does not get much water, so the soil is dry, particles fly and gets on the flowers.
- Bildya resins head are tiny, 20-30 microns
- The resin head seem harder to detach without breaking the stem as well.
- due to mostly natural selection and seeded buds, the overall resin content on the plant is not so good in the first place.

Bildya Hash from Amsterdam - aka the Shoe

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I have vaporized a couple of times the Bildya. Interestingly, it does smell almost nothing like the final hash. The one I had access to had this sweet - bubblegumish - smell, that is very different than the final hashish, which is more earthy.
The bildya hash itself has some kind of reddish color, darker then other hybrids hash. Of course, depends on the grower and the batch, but overall that s the rule...

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I also came upon a very interesting piece of information. As most of you know, local people did not remove the males traditionally. That makes little sense to us, because we know that seed production does decrease the resin and terpens content. I thought before that it was mostly because they needed seeds for the next year, but I was surprised by the quantity of seeds that came out of this pollination, way too much then needed.
Well turns out that the traditional preparation of kif, the flowers mixed with some local tobacco, requires pollinated bractas/calyxes to work with. Non pollinated ones are tiny, and have a different "texture". Because of this technique, when you smoke the kif you find some kind of a woody aftertaste, that also translate in the smoke texture. While I am not specially fond of this particularity of the kif, I have to say that overall it is an excellent product for daily use, and it is been well established to cause very little problems to health, lungs, in this form.

I grew up south of montreal and had family who had access to both moroccan and lebanese hash from 84-92' sadly marine biology students discovered and blew apart a beautiful thing back then.......miss it.would do just about anything to rediscover the blonde i used to roll in my fingers as a teen. my gawd man! im going to page one to start reading.great thread thankyou!

 

[mack 10]

Amazing. Keep it coming.

 

[Grapefruitroop]

Wow nice photos!...your pics got me nostalgic of the ol days....
Between 2006 and 2012 I've been there millions of times, have some good friends up there...near Bab Berred

This pic was Jan 2008 and the weed was long gone harvested, this hill was full of beautiful plants in July

 

[ESTERCHASER]

black socks orange sandals

black socks orange sandals

4. Filtering seeds and branches (speaker filter )
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=81771&pictureid=1994145]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=81771&pictureid=1994146]View Image[/url]

5. Adding Tobacco : Dry leaf of locally grown tobacco is used, small drops of water are added so it turns black.
Tobacco is really strong, probably 10x nicotin compared to the common industrial cultivars.
FYI on this picture there is way too much tobacco that will be kept for later. The kif mix usually is about 10-20% tobacco

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=81771&pictureid=1994147]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=81771&pictureid=1994148]View Image[/url]

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

 

[titoon29]

Our friend R. came to pick us up with his farmer colleague, A.S. A.S is in its 60s, and growing and processing weed has been its main activity for the last 40+ years. He is now getting to the point where his son is taking over the operation, which is quite small - around a ton or two of plants per year. R. has been financially helping the family, as Abdul Salam is such a nice guy that he tends to give his time, his money, his hash for free - without thinking about consequences - Farmers are really poor and from one year to another can end up entirely broke if something goes wrong - worse case being the hash ceased.

We drive in a real shitty road for about 30 minutes, while R. explains to us how this road was built about 20 years ago, and you could ride it at 70 mph, but has not seen any kind of maintenance since then. We are surrounded by many fields, and I notice that the farmers use whatever material available to protect their field from the road dust - quite a good idea ! The village we get in is a bit different from what I have seen before, most shocking part is the lack of Cafe (your local, alcool free bar) ! People gather by family, and go to the big city Ketama for cafe. The mount Tidghine is above us, at 2500m high, the village down being around 1600m, and plants are getting grown up to 1900m or so.

R., from his years of experience, considers that the best Moroccan plants are the one from the highest places, which has both to do with altitude and the fact that the higher you go, the less the land has been used previously. 20 years ago, phosphate was largely introduced in the Rif, and according to local farmers it did greatly impact the quality of their plants in a bad way… Not only it did impact the plants being grown, but it seems that it also had an impact on the genetics that is now felt all over the place. The Bildia seeds are not at all selected by the farmers, but rather picked from random plots. Using Phosphate did changed the way nature selected their plants, and after a little while most of the genetics became slightly different : less taste, different potency. All the farmers I could talk to said the 70s-80s genetics are now gone, though some rare places still retain some really interesting genes. The place we just ended up being one of them ….

 

[ESTERCHASER]

gggggggggggggggggg

 

[titoon29]

From talking to R and A.S, it became quite clear about what I wanted to do next, being given the opportunity to be in this place of well known, well grown Moroccan plants. While I do like very much the new genetics, as they hit you much stronger due to their high THC, low CBD ratios, my goal was going to be solely to play with Bildya Resin

For the past few days, we were given many pieces of hash from various sources, and while a couple of the new genetics did stand out ( Original Glue for instance), I was really enjoying the Bildyia much more, which I was not necessarily expecting. The Cannabinoids/Terpenoids blend in those plants have a very different high to what I am accustomed to. It never is too much to be able to interact with people, talk in foreign language or have any kind of paranoia, but at the same time, when smoking large quantities, you may, with good quality, feel some very intense body high, almost like mushrooms kicking in.

Upon arrival, we received a warm welcome, some tea, and were given a room to sleep in, nice sofa... Funny thing, we later discovered that this room was the farmer's place to show off its products, and that we had been sleeping on top of some good quantities of hash !

While we had some decent Bildya to smoke, we were ready for playing around with resin, and inquire what would be the best way. In these villages, the way to go is to buy the plants per kilo, and have the farmers work the way you want - much preferred to buying a weight of hash - because that always leaves you with lesser quality.
A.S had planted some Bildya this year, no water no fertilizers but donkey/horse manure - so we decided to go for that - getting 10kg seemed good for us.

Talking about quantities, the Bildya resin being very small, and the plants not really selected, the return is about 1% for first + second quality, considering a quite good second. The way most farmers work, they end up with 70% first and 30% second. Bear in mind that because the males are not removed ( apparently even less now then before), plants are fully seeded, so in 10kg you may have a good 5kg of seeds, and one kg of stems.

In the corner of the hash room, some Amnesia


The Bildya we "ordered"


Some random Bildya test - not such a good quality but you get the idea....

 

[titoon29]

The bildya has this very particular smell which for me doesn't really relate to the finish cured hash product. It is kind of sweet, somehow reminds me of some kind of bubble gum, and weirdly of some Nepali polm.

The plants we got looked nice compared to what I had seen before, though perhaps cut a bit early to my taste - so I knew we could expect a lighter color than usual. R. who have been in the Rif every year for the past 30, told us many stories about the techniques of the -now dead brother RIP- of A.S, who was a very knowledgeable Bildya grower hashish maker. There was a time where the first quality was only made by hands, without involving any kind of stick beating which is how everybody is doing now. So our take was to try to imitate this process, though from the explanation of R., it sounds very technical.

First you would have to unsure some proper humidity level, both for plants and the environment. R. remembered his friend carefully placing tree leaves between the plants for a night, in order to increase humidity - likely to ensure that the resin did not fell too easily and small plant matter contaminants were not created.\

Then, you would wait colder nights, below zero for the highest villages - which means Mid November. Leaves would be removed carefully by hand, ensuring that no resin fall on the ground. Just this technique of leaf removal likely need some years of experience, and our small trials didn't end up conclusive, likely due to unproper humidity levels and our total lack of understanding on how to "play" with the Bildya resin.
R. told us that he tried many times together with his friend and never truly got the technique....

So that was unfortunatly a no go. Combined with the fact that our hashish maker, the son of A.S, had already started to go crazy on the plants....

His first step was to remove the buds from the stems and collect them in a large plastic bag - with hands but also beating the plants with a stick for the last bit of buds. At this time, it got pretty clear that we were not going to make a special hash only with his method. So we went along and helped him out, I gotta say with a little pinch in the heart looking at these "poor" buds being beaten and thinking of the 100s of small plant matter bits being crushed. But we also knew that our hash maker knew how to produce decent first quality, and the plants were for real !

Once buds were crushed, he moved on with the new traditional technique, with filters and sticks. Tadam, Tadam, Tadam, he worked for about an hour, looking a few times at the quality. They have their beating technique, and we wouldn't get even close to take the sticks and beat it ourselves - he wouldn't let us and he was right !

This first beating produced about 25-30g of Resin. Actually, quite impressive quality for the technique, very little plant matters but a bunch of non glandular trichomes and trichomes stems. Looking closely, the purity was around 50-60% heads.

 

[titoon29]

50-60% heads is not shaby, but not really impressive nor close to melting enough that is worth considering for an everyday smoke in Morocco ....
While it is easy to get to 70+% for the new genetics, I have never seen higher purity for the Bildya. Therefore, it was time to get to work....

Having brought my 120 and 73 microns last time, and discovered that it was good for the hybrids but not for the Bildya, I came back with a 120 and 48 microns this time, with the hope that 48 would be the good one....

Starting from the 30g of so for the first quality, the idea was to try once again static cleaning, as well as the common carding through the 48 microns.
To remove potential large contaminants, we first had the powder broken on a local filter, lying on top of the 120 microns, to catch the large contaminants on that one, and get the powder ready for the 48 microns under that. We manage to catch around 5% with the 120 microns, but that did contain some heads - however removing large contaminants is a must when the last process is 48 microns carding.

A bit blurry, getting the resin through the local filter to fall onto the 120.


Then it was time for static + carding. We used a card together with parchment paper for the carding, and here we go.... Temperature was around 5C, and dry, we were lucky !

Material to be "carded", as you see not too much plant matter, but many trichomes stems... ( need a better camera one of these days ˆˆ)


Onto the 48 microns, from previous picture and this one, color is a bit clear for Bildya, plants taken a bit early....

 

[titoon29]

While starting to work on having the contaminants push through the 48 microns screen, I tried again the static technique, collecting heads on the parchment paper and putting them on the side. No picture of the final product, but we did smoke it. I would say we increase the purity to about 70% heads, which ain't bad but not enough ˆˆ
Why it doesn't work as well as it should, I really do not know - perhaps the size of the trichomes, perhaps the way they are grown - with very little water... ?

Anyway it was clear that static would not get us where we wanted to go, so we were in for a couple of hours of carding.
The idea was to check every 20 minutes or so the purity increase using the camera, and check what went through. We started with gentle carding.
After about half hour, we had removed about 10% through the 48 microns, and what went through was definitely contaminants : no bubbling, very dusty like.





While that is cool, more work is needed.... So I kept carding, still gently...Up to 1h30 into carding, the contaminants were still going down quite easily, but after that it really slowed down.

50 minutes


70 minutes

 

[mack 10]

While starting to work on having the contaminants push through the 48 microns screen, I tried again the static technique, collecting heads on the parchment paper and putting them on the side. No picture of the final product, but we did smoke it. I would say we increase the purity to about 70% heads, which ain't bad but not enough ˆˆ
Why it doesn't work as well as it should, I really do not know - perhaps the size of the trichomes, perhaps the way they are grown - with very little water... ?

Anyway it was clear that static would not get us where we wanted to go, so we were in for a couple of hours of carding.
The idea was to check every 20 minutes or so the purity increase using the camera, and check what went through. We started with gentle carding.
After about half hour, we had removed about 10% through the 48 microns, and what went through was definitely contaminants : no bubbling, very dusty like.

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[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=81771&pictureid=1995774]View Image[/url]

While that is cool, more work is needed.... So I kept carding, still gently...Up to 1h30 into carding, the contaminants were still going down quite easily, but after that it really slowed down.

50 minutes
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70 minutes
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Starting to look very nice and melty.

Love the story's of the Rif.

Can't wait to sieve some myself.
High in the mountains, cold and dry.
Perfect time to work.

Ps,. Got some new cleaning tech to try out.

 

[Pepé The Grower]

That's very entertaining Titoon! Can't wait to see what'll follow!

Thanks for sharing!