Curing vs. Environmentally Controlled Dry?

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

Can someone explain to me why a jar/sealed bucket/etc. is even necessary?

As far as I've read it's just to slow the drying process down, and it seems simon's "a perfect cure every time" thread is about maintaining proper RH (55-65% it says).

So my question is would you get the same results if you just kept a small closed off room at say 62% RH and just let it dry at that humidity level? What is provided to the nugs, if anything, by being air-tight and confined?

Snype · Nov 23, 2014

flat9 said:
Can someone explain to me why a jar/sealed bucket/etc. is even necessary?

As far as I've read it's just to slow the drying process down, and it seems simon's "a perfect cure every time" thread is about maintaining proper RH (55-65% it says).

So my question is would you get the same results if you just kept a small closed off room at say 62% RH and just let it dry at that humidity level? What is provided to the nugs, if anything, by being air-tight and confined?

I've thought the same thing. I'm going to build a harvest / cure room that always stays at 62% and around 60F to find out myself.

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

I read in the curing containers thread something about oxidation but this sounds like more about long-term storage... if you're going to turn it around in about a month anyway what difference does it make?

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

Snype said:
I've thought the same thing. I'm going to build a harvest / cure room that always stays at 62% and around 60F to find out myself.

Any timeline on this? I've got a bathroom that I'm using now for this purpose and an extra bedroom attached to said bathroom to grow in. Most of the year in the bathroom I can maintain < 70 F easily. And the humidity control bit is cake. Want to try it but don't want to do so until I get some feedback from the masses... next batch is due in another month anyway.

Miraculous Meds · Nov 23, 2014

Jarring or sealing up the herb helps to equalize and condition the herb, bringing the inside to the same moisture level as the outside of the herb.

I do think u are basically correct though that u can leave it in a room at 55 to 60% humidity and it will eventually all be equal moisture. Also u are correct that jarring is for better long term storage so the oxygen doesn't break it down.

Sealing up the herb after its dried and cured though allows u to not have a perfect rh room though. Also the herb will have that much longer of a life if its been sealed.

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

Thanks for chiming in. The burping process is so damn annoying and easy to screw up that I'd much rather just control a room at say 55% RH, let it dry for two weeks, and call it done.

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

For what it's worth, I found this on RIU. Guy recommends skipping jars completely and use paper bags if necessary, but a slow, environmentally-controlled dry seems to suffice

To be honest I've had nothing but trouble w/ jarring. A jar + a boveda is a great solution for long-term storage, but I found myself having funky smells despite staying in simon's ideal RH range (I put a hygrometer in there to check the Boveda was working, never was above 62% ... usually around 55-58). I'm going w/ the controlled room approach I think....

Drying (more properly desiccating) is simply that- removing the water from the herb so that moisture does not influence the quality of the smoke. A properly dried bud's stem should snap, not bend. Don't listen to fools who advocate leaving your herb wet, as this is both dangerous (despite reassurance of it not being "too wet" for mold, such organisms are opportunists and will readily grow given half a chance, especially if it remains in a closed airtight jar for ~23 hours and 50min a day as some people advocate) and unscrupulous (sellers who sling wet herb are selling you a short sac + H2O. If the herb you're going to buy is wet, someone who doesn't truly care about the quality of this good plant is putting cash over care and trying to get away with it. By knowingly buying a soaked stash, you are supporting this kind of practice- pass on the stash).

To best Dry your herb, remove any large fan leaves and uncrystallized portions of the upper, smaller, leaves. Then hang it upside down in a dark place (sunlight will cause THC degradation and also turn your herb yellow/brown) for anywhere from 5-15 days, depending on temp., air circulation, and humidity. Check on it every so often and when the nugs look like something you would want to smoke, break off a small peice and and sample it. If it gets too dry, to the point of crumbling, you can reconstitute it by placing a few nugs in a jar with a few iceberg lettuce leaves for half a day. Any H2O containing vegatative matter (parsley, orange peels, potato chunk etc) will work, but I like to avoid anything that has a distinctive flavor that could be imparted on my herb- I want to taste my hard grown organic love nugs, not some shitty GM, picked-green, citrus peel from half a world away shipped in curtessy of walmart. Lettuce has a high H2O content and has almost no flavor,so is perfect for this.

Curing (or maturing) your finished herb is a art all unto itself. Some previous posters are semi-correct: curing is, in it's most simplest form, a slow extended drying process. However, I can not recommend the "just open your jar for ten minutes a day blah blah blah" kind of stuff. That only results in herb that has hints of ammonia from degradation and a ripe environment for toxic mold if you are not careful.

What Curing actually does is allows the plant, which is still alive after cutting, to gradually use up all the sugars and starches and other nutrients within it's tissues. This is only done when the cut plants are away from sunlight, otherwise photosynthesis will continue to happen,making more sugars, and a harsher smoke. Ideally, you would cure your plants by having sooo many plants that their combinted release of H20 from drying would raise the hummidity enough to prolong the 'dry' for around a month (think of the pictures you may have seen of tobacco shed down in the south where bundles of plants are hung in the open rafters of attics/sheds- temp. and hummididty could be controlled by opening or closing windows/vents as needed to produce a supple leaf that burns clean with little ash and a clean, rich smoke). Unfortunetly, due to the current legal sysem we find ourselves in, this kind of supper curing is alomost impossible to pull off. Instead, you can simmulate the same conditions by placing your herb in a brown paper bag (never plastic!) somewhere dark and leaving it for ~14-21 days if not longer. The dark stops photosynthesis, and the paper, which is pourous, prevents the hummidity from getting too high causing mold concerns. Check on your herb occasionaly to see how the cure is going and to turn/move the buds, allowing even drying. I've had herb cured this way that stayed in the cure proccess for over a month, and was phenominal, while dried herb from the same plant, ready after only 5 days, was mediocre, producing a harsher, greener tasting smoke.

Remember though, once the herb has throughly dried through, despite using either a dry or cure process, there is virtually no real way to start the cure process again! That is why patience is a virtue! Ofcourse, depending on where you live, such a long curing time may not be practicle (if you live in a desert for exmple). A way to prolong the cure is to double bag the buds- the thicker the paper the slower evaporation will occur.

Snype · Nov 23, 2014

I've been using the paper bag technique since the late 90's and love it. I have good success this way. I have a thread here on my harvest, drying and curing techniques. Here's a little part where I use the bags:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=267981

Sweating
When my buds are dry to the touch, I place them into paper bags from the grocery store. First, I place the smaller bud branches into the paper bag. If the branches don't fit, I simply cut them in half. I fill the bag about 1/3 of the way, very gently and not packing down, and arrange the branches so that most of the buds are not on top of each other and the buds from the branches above don't squish the branches below them. After I fill 1/3 of the bag with mids and bottoms, I gently place the tops into the same bag until the bag is about 3/4's full. Then I close the bag by doing one fold at the top of the paper bag and placing a close pin on it. This is what I call sweating. You environment will be different than mine and you buds may contain more or less water than mine. You will want to keep a close eye on the bag and check it every 12 hours until you see the buds moisten back up so they are wet to the touch but not soaked. If the buds are too wet where they won't get dry to the touch within 6 hours from keeping the bag open, then you need to take them out of the bag until the are dry to the touch again. When they are dry to the touch put them back in the bag or if they are already in the bag, close the bag again. You will continue to do this until the buds don't wet up anymore. Once a most of your moisture is gone, you will notice that the buds on the bottom of the bag are more wet than the buds at the top of the bag. This is what you want to see. Not soaked though. You simply open the bag until the buds at the top of the bag are try to the touch but the bottom of the bag is a little wet but not soaked. Now you close the bag and the moisture from the bottom branches in the of the bag will redistribute to the branches at the top of the bag. You keep opening the bag and repeat this step until the buds don't wet up anymore. This doesn't mean that the stem will crack at this point. It's a lot of trial and error at first and you will understand after doing this a few times and get used to it.

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

This is your drying technique? I mean you're still w/ me on not needing such a technique should I environmentally control?

Basically I have a busy day job (this is a side project) and I just can't sit around watching the ganja all the time. I'm looking for a better solution. Paper bags seem safer than jars for sure, but the problem is still the same... need to sit around and watch it (unfortunately can't quite take it to work yet, even in Washington, lol).

Snype · Nov 23, 2014

flat9 said:
This is your drying technique? I mean you're still w/ me on not needing such a technique should I environmentally control?

Basically I have a busy day job (this is a side project) and I just can't sit around watching the ganja all the time. I'm looking for a better solution. Paper bags seem safer than jars for sure, but the problem is still the same... need to sit around and watch it (unfortunately can't quite take it to work yet, even in Washington, lol).

You don't really need to sit around and watch the bags. Their is a learning curve to knowing when to put them in the bag and how much because if you do it too early, the product could really wet up and need to be taken out. Once you know what you are doing, you just put it in the bags for like a week. These grows where I used the bag I was only running 4-10 lights so it was easy. Pretty soon i'll be running 25 lights so I'm not really trying to fuck with the bags and would rather have a room because it's going to be a much longer harvest process. I'm hoping that I can hang up full plants in the room and clean them up over a period of time so I can get the next crop into the flowering room. I probably won't complete the room for a couple of months though.

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

Nice. Are you still running RDWC and what are you pulling per 1k these days w/ how long veg? Your guides are great there's just a ton of them....

Snype · Nov 23, 2014

flat9 said:
Nice. Are you still running RDWC and what are you pulling per 1k these days w/ how long veg? Your guides are great there's just a ton of them....

I was running RDWC until I got robbed about 4 months ago. I had to move and just got to the new location 3 weeks ago so the first couple of crops I'm going with soil because I don't need any problems.

In the RDWC 10 bucket systems with 2,000 watts, I was getting a little over 2 pounds per light in 4 light rooms. The VEG time was a little under 2 weeks in the flowering room and a little under 2 weeks in the veg room under 300 watts of T5's in a 2x4' space. Because of how much light I'm going to have here, I have to take my plant count down so I'm going to be running 1 plant per 1,000. Never done it before but I think it's where I'm supposed to go as of now. Right now I don't have the room to do an RDWC grow that I would feel comfortable with. The main grow room needs a lot of work so I'm using smaller rooms to do soil crops until the new room is built.

Oily Farmer · Nov 23, 2014

flat9, i'm not sure what you are on about with having to sit around and watch, absolutely not necessary. Whether you use the bag technique or a climate controlled bathroom, at most you'll need to check the progress once a day.
Pardon my cheekiness, unless you're busy day job is +23hrs long, you have plenty of time for the minimal effort that is required to simply look, feel, and smell.
Back in the day, when I had a full time job, I had plants in veg., flowering, drying, and curing. The veg. plants used normal daylight, and when I returned from work, I would turn on the MH. The HPS was on a timer, and was lit during the night while I slept. Recently chopped plants were hung in a tent and kept in the dark until branches snapped cleanly, then I'd glass the bud. During the first week, I would check the jars once a day, ensuring the bud wasn't softening. I'd also take this opportunity to sample a small piece.
From my perspective, the best solutions have been given by our fellow growers.
Again, there is absolutely no reason for you to sit around and watch the bud dry, just like it is not necessary to watch the grass grow, but the latter can be fun.
Happy oily farming

flat9 · Nov 23, 2014

Oily Farmer -- I'm obviously exaggerating w.r.t. watching it all day. What I do mean, however, is that I've done several harvests, and followed simon's technique each time. And every time when I throw them in there, the RH meters (which have been calibrated) don't budge above 62% at any point, even when I check them. And several times I've had this dreaded funky smell appear, and with different strains. Checking once a day hasn't been quite enough -- a few times a day has been necessary. And finally, I work fucking crazy hours bro. You literally have no idea. This is a side gig.

It has ruined a few QPs. Not quite ruined, they recovered a lot, but it took a damn long time to get the funky smell out, and they were never quite as strong smell wise as the stuff I just let dry for longer (seemed almost too dry ... stems snapping like twigs).
I don't know what is happening inside that jar, but I've done it enough times to be convinced that it's not a smart way finish the final product. I'd rather have air slowly moving around the buds with the right humidity in a dark room.

What I'm looking for, if you want to be helpful, is an explanation as to why one would ever need to cure in a jar if you maintain proper RH while drying for an extended dry (like 14 days). As of now no one has replied this question with an answer as to why it'd be necessary. I'm not saying it ISN'T necessary -- I'm honest enough to admit that I don't understand the chemistry in the drying process or what happens in the curing jar well enough to say definitively. But what I am saying is that I don't think anyone else seems to know so far either..

Snype · Nov 23, 2014

flat9 said:
What I'm looking for, if you want to be helpful, is an explanation as to why one would ever need to cure in a jar if you maintain proper RH while drying for an extended dry (like 14 days). As of now no one has replied this question with an answer as to why it'd be necessary. I'm not saying it ISN'T necessary -- I'm honest enough to admit that I don't understand the chemistry in the drying process or what happens in the curing jar well enough to say definitively. But what I am saying is that I don't think anyone else seems to know so far either..

You're question is kind of strange. When you cure your product, you cure it for months. You don't dry your product in the jar. You only burp it so it doesn't dry out. The reason why you wouldn't keep it in a room curing is that the oxygen is going to degrade the product. After a 2-3 month cure in Glass, I use a Food Saver to suck all the air out of the jar and then it goes right into the freezer. I've had trees in the Freezer for 10+ years and it was still perfect as if it was just put in there. You can't do anything like that leaving your buds exposed to all that air. The thread title doesn't even make sense to me. "Curing vs. Environmentally Controlled Dry?". You're comparing 2 completely different processes. First you dry, then you sweat, then you cure.

Miraculous Meds · Nov 23, 2014

flat9 said:
Oily Farmer -- I'm obviously exaggerating w.r.t. watching it all day. What I do mean, however, is that I've done several harvests, and followed simon's technique each time. And every time when I throw them in there, the RH meters (which have been calibrated) don't budge above 62% at any point, even when I check them. And several times I've had this dreaded funky smell appear, and with different strains. Checking once a day hasn't been quite enough -- a few times a day has been necessary. And finally, I work fucking crazy hours bro. You literally have no idea. This is a side gig.

It has ruined a few QPs. Not quite ruined, they recovered a lot, but it took a damn long time to get the funky smell out, and they were never quite as strong smell wise as the stuff I just let dry for longer (seemed almost too dry ... stems snapping like twigs).
I don't know what is happening inside that jar, but I've done it enough times to be convinced that it's not a smart way finish the final product. I'd rather have air slowly moving around the buds with the right humidity in a dark room.

What I'm looking for, if you want to be helpful, is an explanation as to why one would ever need to cure in a jar if you maintain proper RH while drying for an extended dry (like 14 days). As of now no one has replied this question with an answer as to why it'd be necessary. I'm not saying it ISN'T necessary -- I'm honest enough to admit that I don't understand the chemistry in the drying process or what happens in the curing jar well enough to say definitively. But what I am saying is that I don't think anyone else seems to know so far either..

Dry slowly. If ur herb is crispy and snaps in less than 5 days u have done it too fast. After that put it in any container that closes pretty decent. For bigger amounts use a plastic storage tote or the likes. Leave it in there for a half day and check to make sure that moisture in the middle of the buds isn't too much causing the buds to still be too wet. If they are pull everything out in ur humidity controlled environment and finish the process right then with one more drying session. Put back in the tote and check the next day. If it snaps still, ur done for good, and no more burping or anything is required.

The real trick is to be able to dry slow and even enough that u don't have to equalize the inside of the bud to the outside by constantly checking and burping. One check is about all I ever have to do. Its super easy, works very well, and I only have to check once for extra moisture this way. Its better safe than sorry when it comes to checking for extra moisture that u have not removed yet till u get the technique down though. I never have funky smells added by jarring too soon with too much moisture still in the bud. that's the problem u were having. If ur environments controlled and uve jarred and had that funky smell u are not letting the bud get dry enough before jarring it. Add more air flow, make sure ur rh gets to 45 to 50% at the end of drying and dry for a full two days past when u used to jar and all ur problems will be fixed.

prune · Nov 23, 2014

flat9 said:
1. Can someone explain to me why a jar/sealed bucket/etc. is even necessary?

2. As far as I've read it's just to slow the drying process down, and it seems simon's "a perfect cure every time" thread is about maintaining proper RH (55-65% it says).

3. So my question is would you get the same results if you just kept a small closed off room at say 62% RH and just let it dry at that humidity level? What is provided to the nugs, if anything, by being air-tight and confined?

1. Sealed containers are used to even the cure, to make sure there are no pockets of moisture to mold over, and to contain and conserve volatile flavors and meds.

2. See above - large spaces will bleed off flavor elements at the end stages of curing.

3. It's not quite "simple Simon", as the proper process involves over-drying at the start followed by tempering as RH stabilizes. There is a technique and art involved that defies simple rules that can be typed in a post, so it's really more of a "practice makes perfect" paradigm.

bombadil.360 · Nov 23, 2014

hello flat9

how have you been? how are those leds treating you? would love to hear about it.

I'm also not a big fan of having to burp the jars, but from what I understand, the drying, sweating and curing process in the jars provide the conditions for the herb to experience a slight fermentation process (if done correctly that is), this is partially explained by Schultes in Plants of the Gods (epic book btw).

here's an interesting thread on fermentation:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=247378

peace!

flat9 · Nov 24, 2014

Hey bombadil they're doing rather well. I pulled about 1.5 pounds on my last autoflower grow under the 16 COB (4 x 4) model. Strain was THC bomb, 4 of them in hydro. At the wall it draws 610 watts so I'm pretty pleased with it. We'll see how the second round goes... think I can do much better (maybe hit 2+ pounds) since I didn't mess around with any canopy management and now I'm scrogging...

flat9 · Nov 24, 2014

Snype said:
You're question is kind of strange. When you cure your product, you cure it for months. You don't dry your product in the jar. You only burp it so it doesn't dry out. The reason why you wouldn't keep it in a room curing is that the oxygen is going to degrade the product. After a 2-3 month cure in Glass, I use a Food Saver to suck all the air out of the jar and then it goes right into the freezer. I've had trees in the Freezer for 10+ years and it was still perfect as if it was just put in there. You can't do anything like that leaving your buds exposed to all that air. The thread title doesn't even make sense to me. "Curing vs. Environmentally Controlled Dry?". You're comparing 2 completely different processes. First you dry, then you sweat, then you cure.

Think you've got that kind of backwards Snype. Most people who burp are doing it so the humidity doesn't get too high, not too low.

The thread title makes sense in the context of trying to understand what the curing process actually is. If it's nothing more than slowing the drying process down, what's the point of it if you could just control the RH in the dry in the first place? You even said so yourself in the 2nd post...

Curing vs. Environmentally Controlled Dry?

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