Maybe I'm a purist or just anal retentive, but to me, "hash" has to be mechanically seperated, pressed, trichomes, preferably aged in the sun.
I find there is quite a flavor difference between "raw" kief and a nice chunk of sun-aged hash. There was a study out there showing there is a specific terpene produced by the action of UV light on myrcene from Cannabis - hashishene, which presumably contributes to the unique flavor hash has.
Extracts - distillate, hash oil, "budder", shatter, wax, honey oil, whatever you wanna call it - are not "hash" in my book but rather "extracts" (I prefer it to what I view as the technically incorrect "hash oil" as many extracts are not
sensu stricto an oil, their viscosity is more of that of a wax, or, er, rosin). They don't burn or handle quite the same as hash does and can be much more potent than hash.
Rosin is not mechanically seperated, but rather involves a phase change (solid->liquid) in the presence of heat and pressure, AFAIK? (kind of a new thing for me) So it's just solventless hash oil.
I guess the metric I would use is the presence of trichromes. Mechanically seperated hash (fingers, rub, kief, bubble hash) all should have plant structures still visible upon inspection with a microscope. Rosin, BHO, etc will not.
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Also seperating THC-A is a dead fucking easy process. It's a
carboxylic acid for fuckssake. US 20170008870 A1 says you basically just run a butane extraction on fresh weed and keep the butane dry-ice cold til THCA crystallizes out. It should be less soluble than THC (more polar). Or go fancy and try flash chromatography
[ref]. (Not sure about pyridine tho)
It probably will just yield a mess if you attempt to form the sodium salt of THC-A. Maybe the calcium salt? I've purified a carboxylate or two by the ol' "soap scum trick" - form the Ca salt of the acid which is just plain insoluble in everything, then acidify later. Or maybe ion exchange resins would help too. Something weakly basic to bind the COOH.
Not sure why you'd want THCA as a psychoactive. It's inactive as a cannabinoid and is also unstable to heat, acid, UV... converting into THC very readily. I'm sure if you attempt to vape it it'll lose CO2 pretty damn near instantly. The waxy "budder" I'm familiar with is probably mostly THCA now that I think of it, but it always got me and my buddies blasted...
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This will be a bit controversial but anyway:take bong resin and put it in a cup cover with acetone
Someone once tried this and tried to pass it off as "hash oil", sure it got you stoned but it reeked of tar, was blood red, just ... you'd have to be fucking dense to believe that came direct from a plant. It was sooo obvious. If you're gonna be "that guy" who does this at least have the good taste not to try to pass it off as first run hash oil.