A perfect cure every time

[igrowone]

the weather report was just my cheap way of doing a sanity check, maybe a few others use those, not sure
i did have another cheap meter that seemed to match up to weather reports and with the caliber, so it was a combination of those comparisons
the cheap meter that i got from walmart seems to be ok in the open air, but from what i've read, the cheap meters don't work so well in the jars

 

[Bulldog11]

I don't think the weather report is accurate to humidity in your house and jars. I know here in the Bay we have hundreds of micro climates, would be hard to judge anything from a weather report.

 

[igrowone]

I don't think the weather report is accurate to humidity in your house and jars. I know here in the Bay we have hundreds of micro climates, would be hard to judge anything from a weather report.

to within a few points of RH, definitely not
but i get a sense of RH from the weather reports and my own sense of it
again, more of a sanity check than a calibration test
the cheapo walmart was close to what the weather reports were giving, but the caliber was way off
after the caliber reset, both meters are agreeing again

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

I don't think the weather report is accurate to humidity in your house and jars. I know here in the Bay we have hundreds of micro climates, would be hard to judge anything from a weather report.

Check out Weather Underground, it is very location specific.

 

[navyguy14420]

crap...i may have over dried my buds. I chopped my purple diesel plant on sunday and hung it up in my closet sunday afternoon after the trim job. so it was hanging for 5 days. temp approx. 75 on average and humidity averaged about 55-58%. I checked by touch of buds and tried to bend branches. yesterday, I did not get a snap out of any of them. I decided to let go one more day and jar today. after a couple hours in the jar I'm only at 55% RH. i hope it will increase because I got about 9 ounces out of her. It still feels sticky to the touch but dry on the outside. I have some other bud in a jar that I let dry the same amount of time and the RH in that jar is 67%. I guess the strain makes a big difference

 

[superduperweed]

thanks for this information, going to cure in about 1 months time the information helps alot!

 

[StoneElemental]

Very well done, I love seeing logical and methodical approaches. I suppose I might give it a try one of these days as I like to try most things at least once. I especially want to try water curing tho I think these hygrometers might come in handy for this aswell considering drying the bud back out. My approach and method was always very simple to curing. I would hang the buds till they were almost crispy on the outside with the stem having give left in them and I would immediately jar them for 12-24 hours. After they evened out their moisture saturation thoroughly I'd set them out to hang dry again. I woulld repeat this process until achieving desired dryness and let them cure as normal in jars ocassionally burping the jars. With the hygrometer again I think this is a pretty cool idea, simple and seemabley fool-proof I definately think this would be a great method for novices. Keep it up man and take care all.

-S.E.

 

[Bulldog11]

crap...i may have over dried my buds. I chopped my purple diesel plant on sunday and hung it up in my closet sunday afternoon after the trim job. so it was hanging for 5 days. temp approx. 75 on average and humidity averaged about 55-58%. I checked by touch of buds and tried to bend branches. yesterday, I did not get a snap out of any of them. I decided to let go one more day and jar today. after a couple hours in the jar I'm only at 55% RH. i hope it will increase because I got about 9 ounces out of her. It still feels sticky to the touch but dry on the outside. I have some other bud in a jar that I let dry the same amount of time and the RH in that jar is 67%. I guess the strain makes a big difference

I bet your humidity goes up to 60 over 24 hours.....Good luck.

 

[navyguy14420]

I hope so. It's still at 55 right now

 

[navyguy14420]

now it bumped up a point to 56. at this rate there is no need to burp the jars, correct?

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

now it bumped up a point to 56. at this rate there is no need to burp the jars, correct?

That is my understanding

 

[Spanishwilly]

I finally got my hygrometer in the mail, so I'm finally doing it, and it's amazing. At first they start smelling like lawn clippings, then gradually the beautiful underlying scent starts to come out. Every day they smell better now. Really exciting.
I'm growing awesome pot that is finally smelling like awesome pot.

 

[navyguy14420]

the hygrometer still says 56%. I've got 3 jars. I will take it out of one and put it into another and see what it says. I'll reset it first.

 

[komrade komura]

Field report from the front:

Bought two of those bad boys and using them now. Interesting that this level of precision sure is leading to significant improvement in my curing. Before I was capable of an average to below average cure (on accidents).

But no more! I can see a marked improvement in the cure. Time will be the ultimate judge...but I can tell a difference.

Hanging out with the smart people always has benefits...thanks!

komrade komura

 

[de145]

You know it occurs to me that someone with a little knowledge of microcontrollers and a very accurate hygrometer module for them could build an automatic curing cabinet with fans and carbon filters, just drop them in, hit start and walk away and it alerts you when it's done.

Then we could experiment with different programs for curing to find the optimal one.

 

[de145]

Hey everybody I'm new to the site and new to cultivation. I'm having trouble getting my herb to smell good during the curing process. I have hygrometers and I dry in a tent with an average temperature at 74 degrees and the humidity is between 42-58% in a given day. The herb is usually dry in 3-4 days and then I put it into the jars with the hygrometers and continually burp several times a day until the humidity reaches between 55-65%. But even if I leave it shut for a week and open it up it still doesn't have that knock out smell. Do you guys have an suggestions?

I know this is way late but I just came across it. Terpenes volatalize at a pretty low temperature (I can't find it now but I seem to recall it was somewhere around or just below 90f), I've wondered the same thing as you before and I'm thinking in some cases it's because the buds were exposed to too high a temperature and a lot of the really strong rich smells (terpenes) vaporized off.

 

[chits]

Just finished reading all the way through. Took a couple weeks. Presently trying this method and results good very good (so far).

Thank you Simon and so many others that made some really good suggestions to go along with it.

Maybe this will help someone, so I'll add my $0.02

Started drying about a week ago. Finally had it down to 68% (not stabil though) in the jars, but was not comfortable with it at that point. Looking for around 62%.
Presently we are into a week+ of damp / rainy weather. Ambient air is high 80 to mid-upper 90% RH. a little high for here, but not unusual.
How to get the jar below ambient was a issue for me. So I came up with a test.
1 gal. glass jar
1 lb. white rice
1 qt. jar of bud
2 paper lunch bags.

In the oven at 250 degrees for 45 min. to a hour with the paper lunch bags and rice. Idea is to dry it out as completely as possible.

Once out of the oven, Place bags and rice in gal. jar (loosely capped) to cool.

Okay, now fairly quickly remove contents from jar. Open 1 bag and add rice. Stand it up in the gal. jar. In other bag pour in the buds and install into bag of rice. Slip a hygrometer between outside bag & glass so you can see it's reading, and seal it all up. May take a bit of persistance to get it right where you want it. But go slow.
While aiming for 62%, when the hygrometer rises to 60% I'll put the bud back into it's cure jar and let stabilize. Repeat if needed. The meter will start out really low (being dry) and will rise as it draws moisture out of the bud. Suggest you try and stay right on top of it because it seems to work faster than I expected.
Starting with 72%, made this routine 2Xs and I'm almost perfectly stable at 63%. I may go 1 more time,, but I'll let it sit a day or so before determining that.
This was a spur of the moment idea. Seemed to work for a smaller grow anyways and I'm sure something could be changed or modified to be even better (easier/faster?). This was really flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants as they say. (ie; not very scientific)
Anyways, living in the mold capital of the universe, I had to do something and relatively quickly. Seems to be working fine.

Hope it helps someone else.

Again, Simon.

(in the) Chits

PS; The reading inside the jar when drying has little bearing on the humidity of the bud. I'm using it sort of as a very rough guide as to how fast the ambient in the jar is drawing moisture from the bud. Definately room for improvement on this.

 

[simon]

Nice job, Chits! I'll add your comments to the original post.

Simon

 

[Phedrosbenny]

Get the humidity in the jar below ambient humidity with a fan.Works for me everytime.

 

[Spanishwilly]

One thing that has surprised me is how dry buds feel at 62- 65%. Somehow I thought they'd feel a bit stickier, especially as I brought them down from the 70's really slowly, and it's a fantastic kush.
The lawnmower smell keeps steadily fading every day though. The nice smell is getting a bit nicer all the time. I guarantee this will be the nicest smelling and tasting batch I've ever grown. Additionally, I haven't had this much fun with a new piece of equipment ever, I don't think.