QUEST FOR THE HOLY OIL
by JACK WESLEY HARDIN
A quest of the soaring ’70s you won’t find in any books or learn in any school was a working formula for the production of hash oil from raw marijuana. Opinions and recipes for the real deal have, over the years, been more abundant than glass pipes at the Amsterdam Cafe. Attempts involving the alchemy of all this usually ended in a gooey mess or a massive explosion that left the would-be chemists stained permanently green for life. Some of these poor souls are quietly employed today masquerading as shrubs on some of our roads less traveled.
In 1977, I had a well established career in Tucson, Arizona, buying and shipping large amounts of Mexican weed to the East. This was before the propaganda of the dreaded U.S. government’s chemical “paraquat” campaign. Paraquat, for those who haven’t had the dubious pleasure, is a chemical spray that was allegedly sprayed on tender leaves of young plants in Mexico to kill them. One death worldwide was reported from smoking the tainted poisoned plants, but it shattered the nerves of the stoned American masses. This would eliminate Mexican weed from the scene from 1977 to the early 80’s.
An associate of one of my East Coast wholesalers appeared one day with bottles of a golden creamy textured product that when smoked would get you higher than the original green leaf would. Somebody got it right for a change. And that somebody I had to find.
The right tools were necessary, so I assembled a stack of hundred dollar bills and pressed forward. My East Coast Associate told me that the marijuana used to make it actually improved in appearance and little was lost making the “used weed” saleable. This seemed to be leading to those horrible words “too good to be true”. Still, my greed and lack of common sense was really beginning to shift my gears. One hundred one hundred dollar bills would be the price for the recipe.
The meeting was arranged and I arrived with pencil and cash in hand. It would be the most expensive two words I would ever pay to hear. Two words? Ten thousand dollars. The only two words I could think of for that price would be “Not Guilty” in a criminal jury trial. Nevertheless, I paid for it.
Yes, I know. I’ve got your rapt attention now. But before I freely give this recipe away, minus the cost of this fine magazine, you must be patient and hear the rest of this stranger than strange fiction saga.
Living in the desert, I obtained a remote house, half a dozen well paid “volunteers”, a sunny warm day, and one thousand pounds of Poncho Villas’s best. Each kilo brick was wrapped in its usual colored thick coarse paper. Close to 500 bricks of moderately pressed fresh ganja. It those days that was around $60,000. Inflation is a terrible thing.
The process was simple. Ready? First unwrap the brick, save the wrapping for a rewrap and put on large rubber gloves. Fill a five gallon bucket with the “secret solution” (not to be secret much longer).
Take the unwrapped brick and slowly dunk it fives times, raising it above the bucket to let it drain the liquid back into the bucket. Next take the brick, still intact, and lay it on something to dry. A thin layer of ice will form around the brick, but it will dry rapidly. We used metal cots without the mattresses. And did all this out in the open desert air without faces mask filters. If indoors, it could get interesting breathing; the fumes could leave you lungless. Speaking of fumes, are you ready for two more words? Freeon Eleven (11). Yes, that’s the stuff that keeps your air conditioner cold. Now you know how I felt when I first heard those words. After a few minutes of hanging upside down from a four-story building, the chemist, still clutching his packet of money, assured me it would work. His credibility got a rise.
Freeon Eleven evaporates so rapidly that’s where the ice comes from. Within the hour the dunked brick was ready to be rewrapped. Once dried, the brick would become very sticky since the solution would pull THC out of the leaves and stems. The brick looked beautiful, sticky, smelled great, and crystally as a photo spread in Skunk. It even smoked better! The loss of weight was offset by the value of the oil.
After dunking around 25 to 30 bricks, the solution would turn a dark green. Roughly a third of the solution would evaporate out of the bucket during this stage. Now comes the dangerous part – how to cook down a very explosive product without removing yourself from the planet.
Using large coffee filters, the liquid is strained numerous times. The more you filter the green out, the more a honey color is achieved. The next step is cooking. Never, ever use an open flame. An electric burner is a must, unless your experimenting with the Big Bang Theory. Using low heat on the electric coils. And a porcelain pan containing the filtered solution, stir constantly until the liquid evaporates and thick creamy past is left in the bottom of the pot. Before it fully cools down, pour into glass containers designed for sale because it will solidify.
So out of a thousand pounds, how much oil did we get? Remarkably scientific procedure was used – a scale. Thins informed us we had made 28 pounds of the magic oil.
Put that in your calculator – 12,712 grams times twenty dollars = $254,240,00, plus the sale of the original – WOW! Not a bad afternoon for the chef in heaven’s kitchen. The only downside is Freeon 11 eats the ozone, but so does the vehicle you drive. So why don’t I play gold with Bill Gates, because soon after the cook-in, Mexican weed, ala paraquat ended, end4ed completely as stated earlier. So now you have the two word recipe. Bon Appetite!
© 2009 Jack Wesley Hardin