Kief Donkey Butter

Sold under the name Kief Donkey Butter, this is labelled as kief, the term for cannabis resin glands gathered as a loose powder rather than pressed into a block. Our guide to kief covers how it is collected, used and stored.

A word borrowed from Arabic

According to Wikipedia, kief comes from the Arabic kif, meaning joy or pleasure. In Morocco, Wikipedia adds, kif can also mean a smoking blend of finely chopped cannabis and local tobacco, smoked in a sebsi, the long traditional pipe of the Maghreb.

Beaten and sieved, as in the Rif

Sensi Seeds describes the traditional dry-sieve method known in Morocco’s Rif Mountains: the buds are beaten and passed through ever-finer sieves, a finer sieve giving a finer product, with the aim of keeping only the strongest trichome heads. Sensi Seeds rates kief made only of those heads, or caps, as the best. Wikipedia’s Hashish article describes dry sifting done by hand or in motor-driven drums, and gives kief and drysift as names for the powder it yields.

From loose powder to pressed hash

Kief has traditionally been formed into hashish cakes for easier storage, Wikipedia says, and heating and pressing the collected powder is how hashish is made. Under heat and pressure, the Hashish article notes, pure kief turns sticky and pliable.

In its dry-sift how-to, Sensi Seeds explains that the resin heads in kief have to be joined with heat. Its example seals kief in a bag and rolls it under a bottle of boiling water, about 5 to 10 minutes a side, until the powder sticks together and darkens; after about three rounds, Sensi Seeds says, it can be rolled into a ball or pressed into a block.

Cookies, brownies and a THC caution

Wikipedia notes that in the US and Western Europe kief is also used to infuse edibles such as cookies and brownies. Kief also appears, with hash, wax and shatter, among the extracts Health Canada calls high in THC, and people new to cannabis, or using it only now and then, are advised to leave them alone. For resin that has already been pressed, see our hash.