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
