Curing by Drying Longer?

Hi All,

I'm 8 days into drying after harvest and the temp/humidity has been pretty stable around 70 F and 45-65% (dropping slowly as time went on, now at around 45%), and I'm at the point where I have to decide whether to jar cure or not. My biggest worry is losing my harvest to mold, I already had to throw out my sugar trim to mold, which I had left in open jars (just covered with a paper towel) and changed jars twice a day for the first 3-4 days.

I live in a relatively humid and very mold-prone climate, so I'm thinking I might just leave my plants hanging for the same time they would normally be curing. I don't mind bone-dry weed, the last bunch I just got from the dispensary was and smoked just fine, but I tried water curing a small amount of my harvest and it was an awful high, had to abandon that bit. Is there any major negative for leaving it to dry completely hanging up instead of moving to jars when it's dry to the touch?

Thanks!

I think people prefer to dry faster and cure longer because once in the jars there is a limited amount of oxygen that can begin degrading terpines and THC,

Dont hold me to it though

Once your buds get so dry (around 55%) they do not cure.

Freeze it for a couple of months.

Snip off some popcorn or medium buds and put them in a jar with humidity gauge for 48 hours.
This will tell you whats the main plant is like.

I'm sympathetic towards growers in humid areas because they have a much bigger problem wrt mold than we have here in Denver. They start out w/ a lot more mold spores on the plants & in the air than we do. Since mold growth is expressed as a doubling function they're a lot closer to problem thresholds. If I start at 2, they start at 8 or 16, maybe even higher. Those differences are undetectable to the eye but real nonetheless.

Having said that, jar curing is both science and art at the same time. The objective is to create an environment inside the jars where mold is inhibited but where the complex chemical cascade of curing can occur. A certain amount of moisture is necessary for that cascade to occur. Once the moisture level goes too low the desired process stops & locks out even if the buds are re-hydrated. It's like a fork in the road & there's no going back.

The opening post in this thread is very, very helpful-

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=156237

When I think they're ready, I jar the buds w/ hygrometers & let sit overnight. If the hygrometer reads over 70% at that point, I remove the buds & spread them out in open air for several hours, try again. Just burping the jars has little effect. As simon points out, the danger of mold is largely past when the RH in the jars holds at anything under 70%. At that point I extend the time in the jars to 24 hrs & reduce the time in open air to an hour or 2 until the RH in the jars holds in the 60-65% range at which point actual curing begins.

If you don't have the equipment or the patience for that, it's better to be safe than sorry, particularly in a mold prone environment.

I don't even try to cure popcorn & close trim. I air dry it, sometimes under a heat lamp. I used to gift it to a small oil making MMJ non-profit but they're having problems so I now render it into ice water hash in bubble bags.

I hope that's helpful.

I often water cure for 3-4 days and never had an awful stone as a result

it is an art that improves with practice,

some water cure for 5-7 days thats leaves it tasteless

it saves on space, its fast plus you can re feed your plants with the waste

good luck

go to paper bags first then move to jars...yeehaw

i had tried a water cure on some outdoor bagseeds that had a bad taste and smell...that made it literally no taste or smell...haha but it worked and was very soft and smooth exhaled

also should have drained those jars through some bags to salvage some bubble

I don't think 'curing by drying longer' is what you want. In fact, once buds are dry, they cannot cure. The point is to dry as slow as possible(without mold) and then slow it down even further by cure.
I like the ol' stem snap method (assuming you leave your buds on the stalk like I). Once the buds start feeling dry, I check the stems. If 80-85% snap I then start the cure. Wick it, wick it real good!

i read in an ed rosenthal book that suggests building a curing room, set at about 50% rh 75f (this is from memory). plants cure in about 2 weeks

Well lots of things to look into for the next grow, sadly I got lazy and left them hanging in my tent thinking I could take it down later and they molded anyways! Lost 3/4 my harvest

Thanks for the replies though!

Curing is not fermentation from what I understand

I understand what your saying , a slower dry does seem to bring better smoke I think the flower is still alive and it eats its stored sugars and nutes . Curing theres many ways to do it but a sliw dry is great for herb.

I use 8 gram Boveda 2-way 62% RH packs in my jars to ensure they do not drift above 70% RH between burping to avoid mold. Think of it like the silica gel packs in beef jerky that keeps them from molding. They also help keep the RH above 60% for months to ensure the cure process does not cease due to too dry conditions.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about what happens during curing.

Prior to harvest, the life forces of the plant maintain very complex chemistry at a relatively high energy level. That begins to wind down at harvest. As it does, some of those complex molecules start to break down & to recombine into lower energy states in a complex cascade. Moisture acts as a solvent in which those reactions can occur. Those reactions are temperature dependent as well with somewhat different cascades occurring at very warm temps vs cooler ones.

As the material dries, those reactions slow down & ultimately finalize when the moisture level goes too low. Once finalized, they can't be started back up. It's like a fork in the path. What tokers find most pleasing is material that takes a long path, one where the chemical reactions cease because they're done, not because there wasn't enough moisture to let them continue.

OTOH, mold will rapidly attack material that has sufficient moisture in which it can thrive. There's always some mold. The plant can fight it off when healthy & alive but wet plant material can't.

The objective, therefore, is to reduce the moisture content sufficiently to deter mold yet maintain it high enough to keep that chemical cascade going until it tapers off to nothing. That's what curing is all about.

What simon & other long time growers discovered is that jarring the stuff up with ~62% RH in the jars accomplishes that well. That's optimum. Anything in the high 50's to the high 60's gives good results in my situation. I use the 62% bovedas as insurance.

That quantifies what other long term growers arrived at in a more intuitive seat of the pants kinda way.

Everybody's situation is a little different. People who live in high humidity mold prone areas need to do it differently than here in dry Denver. I don't have a good place to dry whole plants or branches so I wet trim & cut it down to buds at harvest, put 'em in mesh bags in a mesh rack in my cool, dark & dry crawlspace. I turn the buds in the bags & the bags in the rack every day for 4-6 days. I really have to pay attention the last couple of days, test jar the dryer bags overnight to see where they're at because the temp & humidity in the space both run wild. It's never quite the same. Commercial growers will create more consistent means & methods beyond the scope of personal growers like myself.

It's like catching a fly ball in many respects. Don't take your eye off the ball.

wow excellent post jhhnn, thanx to you...........

TheMan13 said:

I use 8 gram Boveda 2-way 62% RH packs in my jars to ensure they do not drift above 70% RH between burping to avoid mold. Think of it like the silica gel packs in beef jerky that keeps them from molding. They also help keep the RH above 60% for months to ensure the cure process does not cease due to too dry conditions.

View Image

Click to expand...

I also use Boveda packs to try and stabilize things in the jars.

I agree with the OP. i recently did a 2 month long dry. it wasnt intentional, it just turned out like that cuz the room was so humid. No mold at all. Why? cuz it was cold. Like 45 degrees. 45 deg and high humidity worked very well here.

^Hey, that makes sense^ So much info on drying/curing, but I can't recall hearing about lower temps for higher humidity...

OP: Have you seen this thread about drying in the freezer? (whole other idea than lower but above freezing temps) I haven't tried it myself but I want to experiment with it when I get growing again. I think it'd be more attractive in humid climates since it would inhibit any mold growth at least for the period that it's in the freezer.