The Importance of Drying Cannabis
The importance of drying cannabis; this is one of the most important steps, and if it’s not done correctly it can have an extremely negative impact on the quality of your final product. Once you’ve harvested the flowers you’ll need to dry them in a particular way so they conserve their properties and improve their quality; to get the best flavor and effect out of your buds you’ll need to dry and cure them properly.
Cannabis flowers are full of active components; resin contains a lot of THC, CBD and other components. The issue is that when your plants are recently harvested, they’re still quite green and most of its THC is inactive. The only way to make it active is by drying it for around 10-15 days depending on quantity and location.
Once it’s dry, you’ll need to do another process called curing. This is done to get the absolute best flavor out of the bud possible. When you cure buds what you’re doing is basically rotting the chlorophyll so that the buds don’t taste too green of fresh which is extremely characteristic of weed that’s been force dried with heat or harvested much too early. When the chlorophyll rots, the weed stops looking so green and starts looking more yellow or brown; this is a sign of some potent gear.
How to Dry your Cannabis
To dry cannabis properly you’ll need to isolate it from heat and from wind, as well as high levels of humidity which can cause buds to rot. You need to make sure that no light is getting into your drying room or it could negatively affect the trichomes, turning the THC into CBN which would ruin most of the psychoactive effect. You need to pick somewhere that’s not too warm, airy but without any breezes near the plants nor fans or anything like that and then all you have to do is have some patience. Make sure that the air in the room doesn’t stagnate or else humidity will rise and the buds won’t dry properly. One of the best ways to dry weed is by using a drying sock.
Once it’s dried you’ll be able to tell if your grow room was too hot or not; the hotter it is the earlier it dries, and the cooler it is the longer it takes to dry. If it’s too hot and your gear tends to dry out too fast, then you should dry it with the leaves and everything so that the process is a bit longer. If it tends to take too long then you’ll need to remove as many branches, stems and leaves as possible, and you’ll need to use a drying sock as you won’t be able to hang them without the trunk and stem.
How to Cure your Cannabis Buds
When drying your buds, some days they will appear to be super dry and other days they’ll feel a bit more humid… You’ll need to stick your buds in some glass containers at just the right moment to cure them after drying. The best time to do this is when you can bend a bud or branch and it doesn’t break, it just bends. That’s when you’ll need to put the buds into glass bottles to cure them.
Once they’re in their new home, you’ll need to open the bottles every 24h to make sure that the buds are doing well. If you put them in when they’re still too humid and you don’t open it for days, it will definitely begin rotting. This is why you need to open it for 5-10 minutes every day until it’s completely dry. The first few days it’ll still be soft again as if you had just harvested a few days ago, but that’s normal. Little by little you’ll see how your buds get dryer and start smelling much nicer.
Once it’s completely dry and nice and crungy, then you can leave the bottles closed for as long as you want and smoke whenever you want. You can keep it for years if you want, however it doesn’t ever last that long in my case. The flavor, aroma and potency will be absolutely amazing if you’ve dried and cured properly.
Author: Javier Chinesta
Translation: Ciara Murphy
Brandon Dee Terry
17/11/2019Ummmm. I have to disagree on when you put buds in a jar. You want the stem to snap completely in half. If it bends there is to much moisture and u risk mold. Once it snaps then u put in jar the next day when u open it it will not snap like it did the day b4. Because you are drawing the inner moisture out of the bud. Idk about rotting chlorophyll but you do want it gone and it does take time.
Ciara
Autor del post 19/11/2019Hi Brandon,
Everyone has their own method. We’ve been curing our buds like this for years and have had no issues with mold at all. If you wait until it’s drier you definitely won’t be able to cure it to the best of its abilities. We test our stems and once they bend at a sharp angle but don’t fully break, we begin to cure and burp them. Maybe it works this way for us because of the environment here, but I can assure you that we’re not lying nor are we smoking moldy weed. If you prefer to wait until it’s drier, as many growers do, you’re sure to get great results still. However, when done slightly earlier and when using humidity controllers in your burping jars you can cure weed to the utmost extent without rotting it.
Heather
14/10/2020In no way did Brandon suggest you were lying. I thought it was weird that you assumed that and became almost defensive. As I’m typing this I am wondering if maybe you ARE lying now..
I don’t know this Brandon person.
Ok felt compelled to comment. Didn’t know about the burping part. I hate trimmng sp I wait until the buds are SO dry the leaves just break off. Ridiculous I know but trimming sux.
Ciara
Autor del post 14/10/2020Hi Heather
Sorry if it came off as “weird” or “defensive”. We answer every single person that comments here. Every grower has their own truth and while Brandon may disagree, I was simply explaining that in over 10 years of experience as growers and as a company as a whole, we’ve never had our buds go moldy using this method. So yes, the implication made was that we’re not doing it right or that we’re giving false information, and I simply have to disagree.
Also, it sounds like you’re letting your flowers dry out way too much. Again, as long as there’s no mold you can still get smokeable bud, but the curing process needs to be started with a small amount of moisture still left in the bud as explained above. Overdried cannabis can lose aroma and taste, whereas underdried cannabis can go moldy.
Regards,
Matthew
28/11/2020Well, this has turned into quite the page hasn’t it! Good article, but I suggest you do change the bending vs snapping part. To put it simply, you may do that, but you will mislead a lot of growers and teach them how to fuck up their first grow by telling them to wait until it bends and then put in the jar. Don’t you understand what you’re saying? Essentially my weed will bend and not snap after a day or two of drying and that certainly isn’t the right time and wayyy too early. Perhaps you should give the instructions in a different way like estimated # of day or something else. That is not a good indicator in your case.
And also, your tone is very bad. I can read it in you responses to the comments. It would probably serve you better to not respond rather than do so with an attitude like you are.
Just some tips to think about if you are planning to keep posting. The rest of the info was great and very helpful!
Ciara
Autor del post 30/11/2020Hi Matthew,
I’m sorry you consider our tone to be negative – we try and be as factual as possible when answering comments, and I’m pretty sure you’re referring to the misunderstanding in the comments below. Sorry if the tone was off, that was most certainly not our intention.
This is a translated post, from the original in Spanish, therefore there’s not much leeway in as far as editorials that can be made, although I will pass the comment along and see what can be done. Most growers don’t have access to perfect drying conditions, and we do state that the optimal amount of drying time is 10-15 days, giving an exact estimate for when the buds should be at perfect curing point isn’t realistic with the amount of variables involved in each growers’ situation.
Regards
Caterina castaldi
12/11/2020In the drying process at what temperature should we be hanging the cannabis tree?
Ciara
Autor del post 12/11/2020Hi Caterina,
Anything over 25°C (77°F) is going to dry it much too fast, with optimal temperatures for the first few drying days being between 18-20°C (64.4 – 68°F). Excessive heat can actually degrade terpenes quite fast.