Drying with a dehumidifier.

I dry with a dehumidifier, there, I said it. The girls are cropped into small flowers as soon as they are cut down, placed on drying racks above one or two dehumidifiers.
There's no hanging upside down, no cure, just the dehumidifier (the sort used to dry buildings, not food) and it seems to work well. Everything is ready within a week, there is no heat and no risk of rot due to humidity.
I realise I may be pilloried for this method but there is sound reasoning behind it - I think!
So, I use this method because of the volatile nature of the aromatic hydrocarbons that we all want to keep. I think that they need to be "crystallised" as soon as possible to prevent degrading. The quicker everything can be "locked in", the better. In my opinion, this ensures maximum potency and flavour, which is what we all want. Plus, I can't see the point of drying stick that has no use to me.
If anyone can tell me why this is a terrible idea I would be interested but it even seems to even negate the need for a cure as the water has all been driven off.
Try it, it might be genius.

Great idea man! I haven't thought of it with my dehumidifier. Thanks for sharing. Hope to hear more from you.

I think I may try this.. I've always been back and forth with the results of my drying/curing. I think it is my biggest weakness at the moment.

You always hear the slower the dry the better, but I have found on mistake a few times the stuff I have that falls on the floor and dries much quicker usually smells great and avoids the hay smell.

Any others have thoughts on this??

I think its strain dependant, as some strains will retain smell and flavour with a quick dry and others are the opposite.

There's a lot to be said for experimentation with drying. We all know heat is bad, humidity is bad, but there seem to be a large amount of quite arbitrary numbers tossed about for levels of things (this might be quite a long post).
We crop the plants at the point at which we think they are ready, why then do we smoke the plant at least 3 weeks after the point at which we decided it was ready? The majority of the terpenes are lost in the first week, at which point, mine is dry and such a loss has potentially been avoided.
Smaller flowers dry quicker, some of the smaller stuff will be completely dry within 3 days. There is no point drying large pieces of stick, they are not what we are after, crop everything to its final manicure as soon as it comes off the plant, put on drying racks (the only issue with this is some flattening of the flowers but if they are cropped small enough it is only noticeable to the hypercritical eye).
I think this completely negates the need for a cure, after all, a "cure" is simply the driving off of all moisture, which is what a dehumidifier is designed to do (I'm talking of the ones to dry out rooms, not ones to dehydrate food). It's the aromatic hydrocarbons that we want to capture, I believe my method dries and "cures" within a week.
I started this way because I got fed up with waiting, fed up with losing flowers as the humidity wasn't right or I hadn't followed the ley lines or sacrificed a turnip to Baal or whatever is that is supposed to help dry.
It sounds stupid, but I thought about this from a chemistry point of view (running ideas past my research chemist boss (leader in his field, liked a smoke), we spent a long time talking about this and came to the conclusion that it was important to stop the degredation, things have a half-life, we wanted to stop decay and capture what we could as close to the point that we thought it was ready as possible.
The initial expense of the dehumidifier is quite high but the time it saves definitely makes it worth it.
Maybe it's worth people trying a small amount of harvest and renting a dehumidifier for a week or 10 days to see how it works for them.
I'll never change my method, I'll never dry massive sticks, I'll always dry it in a fully cropped and manicured state, I might be completely wrong but it seems to work well.

Thanks mac and baron..

Anybody else??

I just dried with a dehumidifier for the first time a few days ago. I chopped and hung all of my plants for a dry trim later. Expected it to take seven+ days. With a dehumidifier drying was sped up by about two times. I'd say my buds were ready for the jars within four or five days. So far it seems like a real good thing to use one during drying.

i think this is a great idea if you give the crop a good flushing and get a nice fade on them or it seams like it would trap a lot of chlorophyll and make it harsh with the slow dry it gives time to break down the chloro and such

It's not more ready than slower drying....it's just dried quicker, the plant material still needs time to break down for the prime smoke but yeah if you want to dry it quicker then there's no issue here. The problem is that most people who have low humidity have high heat which is what causes the issue, not the low humidity.

I like drying at rh of 40, opposed to 60-65. It's ready for the cure within a week usually but mostly it allows me to dry the product in a manner that alleviates the need to "burp" the cure jars. Once they go into jars there's no need to open for several weeks.


The absolute key to drying is air movement followed by temp / humidity.

NEGT1 said:

It's not more ready than slower drying....it's just dried quicker, the plant material still needs time to break down for the prime smoke but yeah if you want to dry it quicker then there's no issue here. The problem is that most people who have low humidity have high heat which is what causes the issue, not the low humidity.

I like drying at rh of 40, opposed to 60-65. It's ready for the cure within a week usually but mostly it allows me to dry the product in a manner that alleviates the need to "burp" the cure jars. Once they go into jars there's no need to open for several weeks.


The absolute key to drying is air movement followed by temp / humidity.

Click to expand...

What temp?

Thanks for the replies everyone

I would say it's a good idea, but don't take it too far. My opinion is that you can use the dehumidifier to remove the bulk of moisture quickly and avoid the potential of mildew. But just like tee shirts in the dryer, don't take it down to the last drop of water extracted, or the shirts will shrink and the buds might taste icky. You don't want the buds to get bone dry and crumbly. Don't take it too fast at the end and let the water content equalize throughout the buds. You want the leaves to still be pliable and not crumble. When you get to that stage, you can start curing to get rid of the grassy hay taste.

-r2k

There is no grass or hay taste, all there is is the same amount of flavour that there is after a cure. The major difference is that with it drying so quickly, there is less scope for the loss of the terpenes and aromatic hydrocarbons, thus potency is retained.
I don't believe that anything needs "breaking down" chlorophyll wise, a good flush and then over a dehumidifier will give you weed that is as good as cured in a quarter of the time.

One more thing I observed while I'm in the process of drying and processing right now. The dehuey dries so fast that all the leaves completely dry out and become crispy. If you dry trim, it makes it sooooo much easier and faster. You can knock off the majority of the trim just by tapping it with your scissors. I observed this with the dehuey keeping the room at 40%

I noticed this when I turned off my dehuey the other night for fear that everything was drying out too fast/too much after a night of dry trimming. Came back to find the humidity in the room had climbed up to 65% and all the leaves regained their moisture making trimming a much more difficult and time consuming process.

GuerrillaRed said:

One more thing I observed while I'm in the process of drying and processing right now. The dehuey dries so fast that all the leaves completely dry out and become crispy. If you dry trim, it makes it sooooo much easier and faster. You can knock off the majority of the trim just by tapping it with your scissors. I observed this with the dehuey keeping the room at 40%

I noticed this when I turned off my dehuey the other night for fear that everything was drying out too fast/too much after a night of dry trimming. Came back to find the humidity in the room had climbed up to 65% and all the leaves regained their moisture making trimming a much more difficult and time consuming process.

Click to expand...

That happened to me last time. I trim wet, so I would chop stuff down and put it on screens.. The stuff from the previous day would act like a sponge and get moist from the stuff added that day.

I think the drying them then rehydrating a half dozen times had a bad affect and my flowers were never that loud ..

a dehumidifier works great for large pulls, i use it for the first day or two to keep things from molding.

Anyone still active here?

im jumping on this too, also trying to devise some pre harvest ideas to lower chlorophyll lvls before the chop

Since posting almost a year ago, I've dried every time with a dehumidifer and wouldn't think of not using one now. It really does speed up the process and seems to give the buds a jump start on curing.

used one for years, great help.

GuerrillaRed said:

Since posting almost a year ago, I've dried every time with a dehumidifer and wouldn't think of not using one now. It really does speed up the process and seems to give the buds a jump start on curing.

Click to expand...

What about taste/terpenes?