What is kief?
In simple terms, kief is a product made from those gorgeous frosty white trichomes which glitter so appealingly on marijuana plants. You may already know that these trichomes are packed full of the beneficial cannabinoids which are the source of marijuana’s medical benefits and that the more trichomes you can see on a plant, the higher the level of THC it probably has. What you may not know is that the trichomes you can see on a marijuana plant are only one of the three types of trichomes produced by marijuana plants. They just happen to be the largest and because they are the largest, they contain the most cannabinoids. You may also not have known that marijuana plants produce these trichomes as a self-defence mechanism, mainly for protection against insects, who find the smell and taste bitter, but also, to a certain extent against bad weather and even some forms of fungus. In short, kief is more or less the equivalent of essential oil. It’s pure, concentrated marijuana goodness and as such needs and deserves to be treated and used with respect and common sense. One clear sign of this is the fact that the THC content of kief can easily go over 50%, in other words it can go over double what would be expected from a high-THC marijuana strain.How to separate kief from the cannabis plant
So now that we’ve answered the question “what is kief?”, the![](https://www.420-seeds.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/webp_image/sites/2/site//2/what-is-kief-300x180-300x180-1.webp)
Great ways to use kief
So now that you’ve made your kief, how do you use it?Use it to adjust your smoked/vaped dosage
Let’s say you have a medical condition, for which a medium-THC strain is completely adequate - most of the time. Sometimes, however, when your symptoms are particularly severe, you need a THC boost. Rather than keeping a stock of two strains, your regular strain and your “power strain”, you can simply use your main strain plus keep a supply of kief handy for when you need that extra pain-relieving/mood-enhancing power. Simply add it to your standard dosage and consume your marijuana as you usually would.Use it for a super-powered coffee
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Use it for regular cannabis edibles
You can extract kief into cannabutter or just add it to recipes as a powder. In principle, you can use kief in any recipe you like. In practice, probably the best way to get the most from it is to use it in lighter edibles, like smoothies or sweets, so you can digest it quickly and get the fast-acting pain relief for which THC is renowned.Use it for cannabis topicals
With so much emphasis on consuming cannabis internally in one way or another, it can be easy to forget that cannabis topicals can be a great way of providing localised pain relief or even make great beauty treatments. THC has been shown to have great antioxidant properties, which means it’s a wonderful treatment for dry skin and can help to combat the progress of wrinkles. So if your face is your fortune (or you’d like it to be), making your own face masks with kief, or just adding kief to a face mask you’ve bought, could be a marvellous treat for your skin.Use it for hash
There are lots of articles which explain how to turn kief into hash by using the ice-water-solvent method but if you just want a sweet and simple approach, take your kief and put it into something which will hold it in a nice, compact form, parchment paper is your best bet. Wrap this in a towel and then run a warm (not hot) iron over it to compress the kief into your chosen shape.