Let’s get sticky. This homemade finger hash tutorial walks through one of the simplest, most hands-on ways to make your own cannabis concentrate—no grinder, no press, no problem. Just your fingers, some flower, and a little time.

Video: Lindsay Maharry

What is finger hash?

Finger hash—also known as charas—is a traditional, solventless cannabis concentrate made by rubbing fresh or cured cannabis buds between your hands. As you gently break up the flower, sticky trichomes begin to coat your fingers. Over time, those trichomes can be rolled off and collected into a soft, pliable ball of resin-rich hash.

This technique has been used for centuries in regions like India and Nepal, where charas plays a cultural and ceremonial role. But even outside the Himalayas, finger hash remains one of the easiest and most accessible ways to concentrate your weed—no tools required.

How to make finger hash (step-by-step)

Here’s how to make your own finger hash at home using just cannabis flower and your hands:

• Start with sticky, resin-rich cannabis flower.
• Remove any fan leaves from the buds.
• Break the buds up by hand—do not use a grinder.
• Gently roll and rub the flower between your palms.
• As resin builds up on your fingers, continue rubbing to collect more.
• Scrape the sticky resin from your fingers.
• Roll the collected resin into a ball—that’s your finger hash.

How to smoke it

One of the best ways to enjoy finger hash is to roll it into a joint. Just flatten a small piece and lay it across your flower before rolling. It’ll burn slower, taste richer, and give your joint a serious potency boost. You can also drop it in a bowl or top a bong rip—it’s versatile like that.

Final thoughts

In a world of high-end dabs and lab-made concentrates, finger hash is a throwback to the roots of cannabis culture. It’s old school, it’s intimate, and it’s proof that sometimes the simplest methods still hit the hardest.

So get sticky, roll one up, and enjoy the kind of hash you made yourself—literally by hand.

Let’s visit the legendary Luma resin farm to learn about the best strains for making hash. Nestled in the wide and misty Petaluma Gap just north of San Francisco, Luma is an outdoor resin farm that specializes in growing fresh frozen material exclusively for hash production.

It’s planting day at Luma, whose collaborations with brands like Kalya, Rosin Tech, and Punch regularly sweep competitions around the globe. 

The goal? Create the highest quality trichomes possible.

How Luma grows for resin

To do this, Luma implements regenerative growing techniques to build high quality living soil, like cover crops, companion planting, no-till, and creating their own inputs using Jadam Fermentation. These techniques recycle nutrients back into the soil, which helps cultivate new microbial species, and create a rich, balanced environment for plants to thrive.

They select genetics based on what has proven to wash, aka the strain’s trichomes readily release into the ice water bath that separates them from the plant matter. 

Certain strains that are known to wash have reputations for being great hash plants. Their hashburger, for example, washes at 70%.

Each bed can produce up to 500lbs of fresh frozen material, which produces about 2500 grams of concentrate. 

Top strains grown at Luma

Today they’re filling them with some tried and true hash classics, like Lemon Limez, Strawguava, Forbidden Blue Print, Durban Lime, Pineapple Mojito, Grape Gas—and their award-winning Papaya. 

As a hash plant, Papaya shines, producing above-average yields for solventless extraction, while retaining the same deliciously bold terpene profile.  

That combination of strong returns and strong flavor makes it a top choice for solventless. Luma’s cut has been perfected over the years, a must try for all 710 enthusiasts. 

The timeline of hash harvest

Producing these strains for hash means the growers are held to a tighter timeline. Consumers want pale, milky rosin, not amber, so trichomes are harvested at 98% cloudy with only 1–2% amber. 

To hit that window, plants are fed to run out of nutrients early, triggering senescence—the stage when they cannibalize stored food to focus on growing their buds. Letting them finish fully, yet sooner, strips residuals and ensures the cleanest smoke possible. 

Check out the video to learn more about the selection and growing process of these special strains, as well as watch them harvest under a full moon and press them into their award-winning rosin for all of us to enjoy.

Let’s watch First Cut Farms turn loose dry sift into tight little temple balls using the old-world method made famous by Frenchy Cannoli. The whole process is built around heat and pressure and a real feel for resin. It starts with a glass bottle filled with boiling water and a pile of golden dry sift tucked between two turkey bags like a warm squish sandwich.

The hashmaker starts to roll the bottle over the bundle slowly and evenly, like he’s ironing it flat. The heat and weight work together to melt the trichome heads, binding the powder into a pliable sheet of hash. The more you roll, the deeper the transformation. The sheet goes from crumbly blonde to dark glossy brown as the oils activate.

Then it’s flipped and rolled and flipped again until the texture is just right—soft and shiny and warm to the touch.

Now comes the Frenchy part

The hash is spun into a spiral shape called a cannoli—a technique Frenchy Cannoli developed to create internal structure and density. From there, it’s pressed and shaped into a tight ball that seals itself with a resin shell, locking in freshness and setting the stage for the next phase.

The cure

The temple ball is wrapped in plastic and tucked away for three months or more. Some let it go a full year, as the resin inside starts to off-gas and morph. The cannabinoids and terpenes shift and recombine, creating whole new smells and flavors—including one rare compound called hashesene that only shows up in old-school hash.

What you get is a burn that’s smooth and flavorful, with smoke that dances between spicy, earthy, and sweet. It’s a process that takes patience, skill, and trust in the plant. But when done right, the results are timeless.

Temple ball hash is more than concentrate—it’s craft cannabis history in your hand.