This is my first season, and curing is a bit of mysterious process. Correct me (anybody) if I’m wrong, but I think the basic idea is to limit oxygen in order to slow any oxygenation and allowing excess moisture to leave the closed system by opening the airtight vessel on a regular basis for a time.
BUT . . . what time? I live in an area where fog often changes humidity rapidly. It makes no sense to burp your jars when humidity is high! If the humidity is 70 and you’re trying to get your buds down to 62, then you’re not helping yourself very much to burp at that particular time.
Go to weather.com and enter your zip code. Go to hourly reporting, and there’s not only a forecast of temperature; there’s also a forecast of humidity. I would suggest using this resource to schedule your . . . (urp) . . . um . . . burps for the point in the day when humidity is lowest.
Once you have dried it, the curing/burping can be assisted with Boveda packs. Maintain RH at a specified % (62% is designed for weed) so as long as there is no excess moisture, this is supposed to help. Check their website and see what you think. https://www.bovedainc.com/
I bought a ten-pack of the Boveda 62. Bit of a debate about whether you should use during the cure, or whether you should wait until after curing to keep longer-term. I’ve been using them for my cure, but I’ve monitored the humidity inside the jar, and the Boveda packs are overwhelmed with the humidity from the curing buds . . . so you still need to burp.
I wonder if they should be dried longer before jarring them up.
Did the stems snap after drying? Im almost there so I need to learn all I can as well.
Have a drying tent setup and ready to go, have 12 one quart mason jars, and 12 8gr Boveda packs ready.
So they didn’t snap . . . into two! But there was a snap feel/sound. Seems like it’s going ok; they smell great and the humidity gets closer every day. I cured the 4 Liz harvests separately for a time, but now they’re all in the same large clamp jar. I figured the drier bud would help the bud that was more moist and vice-versa. Again: almost there.
I’m also curing the portion of Jane that fell over – just 3 week buds, and really small. I cut all of the leaf off that I could to get just the small dried buds; I spent a long time! Definitely a reward. When I burp that jar? I could blindfold somebody, give them a whiff, and they would swear they were smelling sliced peaches!
I’ve been smoking from both jars as they cure. As you’d expect the young Jane buds don’t have a lot of THC, but love the taste and there’s a sweet mild high. Liz is stronger, smells a little earthier, and more medicinal, still with strong trace of sweet peach. Nice bud. Not blow away, but nice.
I ended with a quarter of an ounce from the premature Jane harvest, which is cool. If I could have got them to maturity, I would have had a LOT more bud – probably over an ounce more. Ah well.
If the buds aren’t pretty much bone dry you should probably cure a week and burp daily before adding more RH, no experience just makes sense to me personally
Sorry, but if there is that much moisture, I don’t think they are ready to cure. Take the boveda pack out and check the humidity w/o them in there. It should be within a few % of the 62% one way or the other. The packs don’t “cure” or “dry”, they maintain.
Good post that gets at the crux of the issue. So my big clamp jar contains probably an ounce and a half of bud, a single 8 gram Boveda pack, and a humidity meter that currently reads . . . 62. The bud looks great, feels right to the touch, smells great. So does that mean I’m done with the cure? Should I keep burping?
The bud that is in the jar was dried across 4 small harvests over 2 weeks. The oldest bud in the jar has been curing for 4 weeks. If I took out the Boveda pack, what would the RH be in the jar? I don’t know. But it seems like it’s all working now, so should I try to fix it?
I think you’re right that you can start curing too early . . . or too late. But there’s probably a range of “dry” that’s acceptable and will get the bud to where you want it. Given my result, I think I’m within the range . . . though maybe on the early side.
I also think you’re right that the Boveda packs are to “maintain”. For that reason, I think I’m going to hold off on adding them in the future until I get to a point that I want to “maintain”.
Yes. You definitely want to pluck or cut off any of the multi-pronged, non-sugar leaves. But even the sugar leaves with trichomes don’t smell as good as the buds! Easy to prove. Put your well-trimmed buds in one curing jar. Put the trim in another jar and compare the aroma coming from each over time. Trim will smell more . . . grassy.
OK. The headlines on the Times Picayune the day I was born at Southern Baptist Hospital, downtown NOLA, was that the fan-vote had been decided and “Saints” was the official mascot for the new team. Oddly enough, it took them as long to get their shit together as it did me
USE THEM! When you are curing, the fooking point is to maintain the perfect environment!!!
Check your flowers with a hygrometer and NO packs (in a sealed environment like a jar) and see where they really are. Big buds will retain more than small ones, so check separately. When they are within a few % of perfect (62%) then you should use the packs.
So don’t even start the cure until the buds get to 62. I think that does make some good sense! Thanks.
A couple of other tips. I don’t see them on Amazon, but there are several choices for small LED hygrometers on
. . .eBay. I’m not sure if the link is allowed, but easy to find. Some as low as $1 a piece!
So looking across the internet at various “pot sites” there’s a broad range of instruction regarding drying/curing. There’s a general consistency, but the details can be very different from site to site. I don’t see anywhere where they talk about a two-stage dry, which is what your process implies. (Like I say; it makes good sense to me!) If your large colas/big branches are hanging up to dry, then at some point you’ve got to cut the buds off of the branches (and perhaps trim) in order to get the buds into jars to measure the humidity of individual buds. If the buds measure high, then you continue drying them – either re-hanging or with drying rack. So likely two stages.
Good idea! Where did you get it? Original with you @Whodat66?
I guess. I mean, I read stuff everywhere, including the stuff from the Boveda site, and it just makes sense to me. The only thing I want more info on it the actual drying. How long should it take? What humidity is your goal before curing? Since I can’t find the definitive answer, I came up with this:
If the perfect storage RH is 62%, that is my goal.
The packs will save you if you dry a little too much, or not enough, so you just need to get close.
When mine hit under 70% I pit them in a tin with the pack.
I am still opening it every day, and I even fan the innards with the lid, but I have seen no adverse reaction so far.
I think that the main reason there is no “definitive” is because your bud is more dense than mine, but mine is bigger, etc. Ergo, I shall use the humidity as my guide.
