Kief is the loose powder of resin glands, or trichomes, that falls off dried cannabis flowers. Caught in a grinder’s bottom chamber or sifted through a screen, it is far more potent than the flower it came from, and it is the starting point for dry sift and pressed hash.
What kief is made of
Kief is made of trichome heads, the tiny resin glands that cover cannabis flowers and the sugar leaves around them.
Under a microscope the biggest of them look like mushrooms: a round resin head on a thin stalk. Those stalked glands on the flowers make most of the plant’s cannabinoids and terpenes, and a 2020 study in The Plant Journal mapped how they swell and change as the flowers mature. Once the plant is dried, the heads turn brittle and snap off at the slightest touch. That loose resin is kief.
What kief looks like
Kief looks like a fine, sandy powder, anywhere from green to pale gold. The color tells you how clean it is: green kief carries a lot of leaf dust, while tan, blond or nearly white kief is mostly resin heads. Clean kief feels a little greasy between your fingers and starts to stick together; dusty kief stays powdery. Under a loupe, good kief is a pile of round heads.
Is kief stronger than weed?
Kief is stronger than weed because it is mostly the part of the plant that holds the cannabinoids, without the leaf and stem around it. How much stronger depends on how clean it is: dusty grinder kief is only part resin, while well cleaned dry sift is nearly all heads. Either way a little goes a long way, so start small when you add it to a bowl or a joint.
How to collect kief
To collect kief, let a fine screen and gravity do the work: the heads fall through and the plant stays behind.
- A three chamber grinder. The bottom chamber sits under a fine screen and fills a little every time you grind. Cold helps, because brittle heads fall more easily.
- Sifting screens. Tapping or brushing dried trim and buds over a fine screen collects kief on purpose, in quantity. That is dry sift, and the colder the room and the better the screens, the cleaner it comes out.
- A tumbler. A slowly turning drum lined with mesh tumbles dried trim and drops the resin through. Bubble Bags sells them as pollen tumblers.
Kief vs dry sift vs hash
Kief vs dry sift vs hash comes down to how clean the resin is and what has been done to it.
- Kief is loose resin, cleaned or not.
- Dry sift is kief sifted on purpose through screens and cleaned until it is mostly heads.
- Hash is resin pressed into a solid piece, by hand or with a press, or washed out of the plant with ice water.
The full comparison is in hash vs kief.
What to do with kief
What to do with kief: sprinkle it on a bowl, roll it into a joint, press it into hash, turn it into rosin or cook with it. Each one is covered in what to do with kief, and pressing it into a solid piece of hash in kief pressing.
Kief meaning: where the word comes from
The meaning of kief goes back to the Arabic kayf, joy or pleasure, which became kīf in Moroccan Arabic and was borrowed into English from there. Kief, keef, kif and kef are all spellings of the same word. In Morocco, kif meant the cannabis that was smoked, not just its resin. An English account of Morocco from 1809 already used the word: “The kief, which is the flower and seeds of the plant, is the strongest.” Today the meaning is narrower: hash makers use kief for the loose resin alone.
How to store kief
To store kief, keep it in a sealed glass jar somewhere cool and dark. Light, heat and air dull it over time, and a jar keeps it from picking up moisture or smells from anything else.
Kief questions
Kief questions, answered short:
What is kief?
Kief is the loose resin that falls off dried cannabis: trichome heads, caught in a grinder’s bottom chamber or sifted through a fine screen. It is the raw material for dry sift and pressed hash.
Is kief stronger than weed?
Yes, kief is stronger than weed, because it is mostly resin glands, the part of the plant that holds the cannabinoids. The cleaner the kief, the stronger it is.
Is it spelled kief or keef?
Kief is spelled both ways, and also kif and kef. All of them come from the Moroccan Arabic kīf, and kief is the spelling most hash makers use.
What does kief look like?
Kief looks like a fine, sandy powder from green to pale gold. Greener kief has more leaf dust in it; blonder kief is cleaner.
Can you smoke kief by itself?
Yes, you can smoke kief by itself, but it burns fast and hot, so most people sprinkle it over flower in a bowl or a joint, or press it into hash first.
Sources for this kief guide
Sources for this kief guide:
- Livingston et al., Cannabis glandular trichomes alter morphology and metabolite content during flower maturation, The Plant Journal, 2020, PubMed
- kif: where the word comes from, with the 1809 quotation, Wiktionary
- How to make dry sift (kief) with Bubble Bags, bubblebag.com
- Cleaning up some real dirty dry sift, Bubbleman’s World on YouTube