Why I save my stems (and why you should, too!)

Kief. Everyone loves kief (well, OK maybe if you don't smoke or something, but I'm generalizing here), but really one can never have enough of it. Now I am aware that many people on here are growers and they probably have more than enough buds to last them, but would you really turn down ADDITIONAL kief?

Anyway, whenever I break up buds to put in my grinder (well, whenever I get the chance to) I put my stems in a separate jar. This then goes into the freezer and whenever I am in the mood for some quick kief I simply take it out and pop some into the screen chamber of my grinder along with a few coins and shake the hell out of it. Attached is what I just collected after about 20 minutes or so of shaking using a collection of stems I have harvested kief off of multiple times. I tend to just continuously add to the jar and sieve when I need to or am really bored and want something to do. It may seem like a bit of an odd habit, but it really comes in handy!

Attached are some pics of what I get out of my grinder (it's a Sharpstone). It isn't the most pure (there are some pistils as you can see) but it is almost all trichome stalks and heads and is really quite good considering the method used. It's pure enough that it clumps together quite readily. Anyway, hope this helped some people out!
(the best macro shot I could get considering I'm using a 3.2 MP camera and a cheap 30x loupe lol)

I always save mine and use em for iso hash. Works well.

Yeah that is another great method. Whenever I make QWISOil (it's technically hash oil since it's removed via a solvent as opposed to hash which is pressed trichomes that have been physically sieved off, but really it's all semantics) I toss in all the stems I have saved as well, but this method works well for when you don't want to wait the 24 hours to make QWISOil or just want some real quick kief.

Good to know I'm not the only one who saves their stems. My friends still think I'm odd for doing it, but they don't complain when I bring by a nice pile of kief to smoke.

I got a bottle of liquor I put mine in for the time being.... figured eventually it will be a ticture

I save stems to make dragons breathe, which is as many stems you can fit into a bottle of everclear, shake for 15 minutes for a week and you take a shot of that and you get so fucked up hahaha

Hells yeah foreverstoned!!

I love smoking kief. It's a nice additive to a bowl.. Sprinkle some right on top of the bowl.. and light it up. yumm...

nice thread.

Bump for awesome.

I have a giant bag of stems that I'm going to get kief off of now. How long should I leave this in the freezer?

I'm gonna have to start doing this.

Thats not a bad idea my brother told me about this a while ago he claimed to sit over the stems with a razor and he claims to have scraped over a qp worth of stems for like a half zip of kif which is impressive if you think about it...

I love kief!

I just toss my stems in the freezer for at least an hour, leaving it right next to where all the cold air comes out of. There's no like minimum time, really. The longer they are in the freezer the better chances of getting all the kief off them. Most of the time I just keep the jar in the freezer and just add to it whenever I get the chance.

Mine have been freezing all day and last night. When you say shake with coins... I'm guessing that means literally... shake it up with some dimes? I got my sharpstone grinder with space case ready to go... too bad it's a small one... I'm gonna be shaking all night!

*Austin Powers voice* Shake it baby, yeah!

So wait what...... I've been collecting my stems for so so so long..... I got like over 100 grams of stems in a jar..

Just stick this jar in the freezer, and then take the stems out and then what? Can I just stick them in the bottom part of my grinder and shake it and then just have kief or what?

UPDATE: I'm 15 minutes in, and I have a good 0.3 of kief building up.... I'm no where near even a 1/8 through my stems...

Hahahaha this is genious!

I'll shoot up some pics soon

Supgee3 said:

So wait what...... I've been collecting my stems for so so so long..... I got like over 100 grams of stems in a jar..

Just stick this jar in the freezer, and then take the stems out and then what? Can I just stick them in the bottom part of my grinder and shake it and then just have kief or what?

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Not in the bottom part where you scrape the kief, but the chamber with the screen where you collect the ground up plant matter.

Benassi said:

Mine have been freezing all day and last night. When you say shake with coins... I'm guessing that means literally... shake it up with some dimes? I got my sharpstone grinder with space case ready to go... too bad it's a small one... I'm gonna be shaking all night!

Click to expand...

Exactly, just shake it like an angry nanny shakes a crying baby (that one may have been over the line). Try different techniques to see what works best for you, I tend to hold it by the top of the grinder and swirl my hand around similar to how one swirls a glass of a wine, but much more vigorous.

If you have a lot of stems I suggest rigging up something larger with some silk screen if you can. Maybe modify a paint can and put it in a paint shaker or something if you got one. This is all just off the top of my head so I'm sure someone will come up with an even better idea for processing large amounts of stems at a time with out wearing out ones wrist.

The bigger the coin the better as well, a half dollar works great, and I heard you should wash the coins first to get rid of any oils on the surface which will grab kief

I really honestly thought there wasn't a real point to saving your stems because they don't have alot if any THC in them. Unless you just scrape the outsides of them to collect for a little kief. but i suppose im wrong if so many people are agreeeing to this?

Foreverstoned said:

Exactly, just shake it like an angry nanny shakes a crying baby (that one may have been over the line). Try different techniques to see what works best for you, I tend to hold it by the top of the grinder and swirl my hand around similar to how one swirls a glass of a wine, but much more vigorous.

If you have a lot of stems I suggest rigging up something larger with some silk screen if you can. Maybe modify a paint can and put it in a paint shaker or something if you got one. This is all just off the top of my head so I'm sure someone will come up with an even better idea for processing large amounts of stems at a time with out wearing out ones wrist.

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My wrists are strong!

fapfapfapfap

dtRepeat said:

I really honestly thought there wasn't a real point to saving your stems because they don't have alot if any THC in them. Unless you just scrape the outsides of them to collect for a little kief. but i suppose im wrong if so many people are agreeeing to this?

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It works surprisingly well. The kief I collected in the original pics was from only about 4.4 grams of stems. I didn't bother to weigh the kief I collected, but when those pics were taken there was no kief in the chamber prior to sieving so all of it was from the stems. It looked to me to be about .3 grams of kief and was very potent.