Afghani Apple Hash

Afghani Apple Hash is sold as Afghan hash. In Afghanistan the product answers to more than one name, hashish or charas, and the 2009 UNODC survey of the country’s cannabis found that the name shifts with the processing method.

Garda, chars and other Afghan terms

• Garda: the resin-rich powder sifted from dried plants, which farmers sell and which is later made into hash, in UNODC’s account.
• First garda: the top grade, holding the most resin and usually collected in the first gentle shaking and sieving. Second and third garda, and a fourth in a few southern cases, probably carry much more plant matter.
• Jooshi or Balkhi garda: first garda processed the traditional northern way, with more resin and no leaf mixed in; about 25 kg of ordinary first garda reportedly makes only 14 kg or so of it.
• Jooshi hashish, Balkhi hashish or Sherak-i-Mazar: three names for the greenish-brown hash rolled by hand from Jooshi garda, the last translated by UNODC as “milk of Mazar”.
• Chars: the term Sensi Seeds uses for dry-sift hash in Afghanistan and nearby areas.
• Black Afghan: a market name Sensi Seeds gives Afghan dry-sift hash.

From drum to rolled hash

UNODC’s survey lays out the traditional sequence:

• Knocking: dried plants are beaten on a drum until the buds break away, and the seeds are picked out of the powder that collects.
• Sifting: the material goes through cloth stretched on a sloping wooden frame, then gets about 5 minutes of shaking in a cloth bag, and the whole sifting happens three times.
• Warming, in the north: one farmer holds a handful of Jooshi garda while a match is lit and a second sprinkles powder over the flame, until the powder turns sticky enough to press and roll by hand.
• Cooking, in the south: resin-rich garda is rubbed between the palms until sticky, weaker garda is moistened with a little water so it binds, and the mass goes through rounds of rubbing and low-flame heating.
• Kneading: traders, not farmers, have taken to machines from Pakistan that knead garda into paste, a more recent development.

Our primer on what hash is and how it is made covers the basics.

Balkh’s place in Afghan hash

Balkh’s reputation suffered, UNODC notes, because of the Mazari or Balki cannabis grown there, and in the 2009 survey Mazari was the variety farmers named most, at 58%, and the main one in the north. Afghan folklore, as Wikipedia tells it, credits a legendary Sufi figure from Balkh, Baba Ku, with bringing hashish to the country, and Sensi Seeds notes that Afghan smokers chant the name in their circles, Baba being the word for grandparent.

Pacing a high-THC extract

Health Canada counts hash among high-THC extracts it advises new or occasional users to skip. Its timing for smoked cannabis is a first effect within seconds to minutes and a peak that may take as long as 30 minutes.