Drying room questions

Hi

About to harvest some parts of my plants.

My dry room is dark except for 2 computer monitors, is that ok?

My temperature is stable around 18-22c, and my humidity fluctuates from 30 to 60. Will that be ok, or do I need to stabilize that humidity a bit more?

Thanks for any tips!

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Ideal is around 65F and 50 to 55% RH: lots of airflow across the drying flower.

Unless they’re blaring stark white you should be fine haha. Just dim space to avoid degrading THC. I incorporate clear totes I can seal, use small hygrometers and by manipulating the lid and air across it I can slow down the drying rate to get close to 10 days. This is after being in a drying rack.

I also strongly recommend doing a bud wash in 3% peroxide and water with a water rinse: a large percentage of home grown flower harbors white powdery mildew that the peroxide wash will neutralize. Your flower will cure more readily and will retain fresh cured flavor longer. Storing flower in the refrigerator works great BTW.

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Awesome thank you! I will have to work out the humidity somehow. Temp is relatively stable, thankfully, but looking at my hygrometer the past 24h has been between 47 and 65 RH.

Oh and how soon after starting the drying process until I can sample effects via vaping? :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Immediately. I use the vape to dry the flower out. I don’t pack it full, but I take a few draws and the first few minutes it’s drying it out, and you get a lot of flavorful moisture, and then then the trichome start to vaporize.

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oh my that is exciting :smile: :smile:

going to be a fun evening of testing then, ty!

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Bear in mind… things happen chemically to cannabinoids during the curing process that will change the cannabis significantly after a couple months. So dont expect ideal until the cure is finished. Stuff like chlorophyll is still there, and terpines will change with age and curing too.

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my experience just then was: no flavour, very smooth, great little effect but short lasting. definitely not going to do that a lot, but very interesting for sure!

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Well let it dry properly, and cure it… see if things change for you. It may surprise you? Like a fine wine.

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This is so true.

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You can slow down the drying process a bit by trimming less off. I’d always remove the large fully-formed fan leaves, but leaving more stem and “crow’s foot” leaf material will slow things down. Conversely, removing more material will speed things up. You mentioned humidity issues, and 30% is pretty low. In my mind, slowing the drying process down allows the moisture to equalize more between the inner and outer parts of the colas, which is good if you want to avoid mold once you jar your flowers.

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Thank you!

Somehow it is now perfectly at 55% RH and 20c in the room.

My aircon has a humidity regulator option, just doesn’t seem to let you set what humidity/temp you want to aim for and is kind of random… but right now it seems to be spot on! :smiley:

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ok so I don’t know if anyone will see this.

I started drying one plant on the 19th.

Conditions the whole time were 21c and 50% RH. Bought a dehumidifer etc, worked great. I know the temp could be a couple degrees lower.

On the 24th the stems started snapping, so I jarred it all (no boveda yet, but have them on standby)

So that’s a 5 day dry. Too fast? Too Slow? Somewhere in between, I’m thinking?

Am I doing everything right so far :sweat_smile:

Hygrometer in the jar after a couple of hours is reading 19c and 59% RH :smiley:

So far so good…

I am in South America semi arid and grow outside,
I hung my plants for 5-7 days(I did say Arid) or so in the dark tool shed and then Jar up the crop.
I use 1 Gallon glass jars and open them for a half hour a day and rotate the crop top to bottom every couple of days. After a couple of weeks I opened the jars weekly for a quick rotation and to make sure everything is OK and after a month of that I transfered them to pint jars and sealed them tight. I am still smoking last years harvest and when I open a fresh jar the buds are still a little moist. Very happy with the results.

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Thank you for sharing, appreciate it.

I hung 2 plants up to dry, both had stems snapping after 5 days, so I put them in jars

They both actually quickly stabilized at 18c and 59% RH. Even after 24hr, still the same readings in the jars. I was like, woah, I nailed it!

But even completely stabilized like that, they both smelled like ammonia - it’s grosssss, so I’ve got them sitting in the jars with the lids off now. Not sure why that happened when everything seemed perfect.

Did you let the jars breath occasionally as I described in my earlier post.
they should be OK I think as long as you give them a couple of months of occasional breathing.

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Since they were at the perfect temp/RH when I first put them in the jars, I only let the breathe once a day and not for long, but since I smell the ammonia I have left the tops off for a while now, the smell seems to be disappearing already, will try lids again soon

Had them in jars with lids off for hours and hours, ammonia smell has dissipated a little but it is still there… should I just jeep the lids off until the bad smell goes away completely?

I am not an expert GB but I would put the lid back on for the day and open again tomorrow for a half hour or so and continue on like that for a month or so. I found an article in Leafly dot com, below is an excerpt.
Importantly, the container must be “burped” regularly while curing in order to replenish the oxygen in the container. When curing is still incomplete, the cannabis will smell like freshly-cut grass or lawn clippings when it is opened for burping. However, once the process is complete, it will begin to smell like cannabis again.

If you receive cannabis that has an ammonia or a freshly-cut grass smell, this is an indicator that something went wrong during the drying or curing process. Most likely, the cannabis has not cured completely.

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