hahhah when I was laying there no strength left I couldn’t help thinking there were so many experiments left incomplete, but at least I tried. Meh still alive yet, but the real question is why?
Guess the answer is: “So I could super-crop this big plant”.
lol Woke up this morning and the phone system is dead. Got online asked the phone company what’s going on they said they knew it was down but didn’t know why yet. You think 2020 is year of the mega disaster yet?
ok here’s a photo of the cropping method. I just tie the branch down, force it to grow horizontal as much as I want.
One of my girls is about to get tied down too.
Once I did it with three plants so they formed this dense canopy under 2x1000watt hps. The canopy was so dense it blocked out the light and we gave up trimming after 1500 grams. Made the rest into hash. I promised we would never do that again. I only lightly super-crop them now, don’t want to face that kind of trouble.
Hah hah did I just post that too many buds are a bad thing??
Why don’t always find the info I need when I’m not looking
well I went down to the lab to sample some of the long term things I got going. One of them is the “bud curing” or whatever you wanna call it. Here’s my take right? All I have to do, is dry my product in a way that once it’s dry I can just put it on the shelf and it shouldn’t change much at all for the next year at least. So to test that I tossed a sack of buds on the shelf behind everything when it was 6 months old. Each month I add I take it out and give it a sniff. It smells aged, like plant fibers age. When I taste it, it still burns my tongue. I don’t smoke it lol, perhaps I should try. The thing is, I’m confused by this process most people undergo with the jars. It was something I did 20 years ago? But I never noticed the difference between the bud I had just harvested and dried and buds that sat around for months. After a long time it’s like old plant fibers, but it looks the same to me. Mind you… I do store it in the dark in cold storage.
OK so here are my observations on the subject:
All I have is my control group - who knows what happens with other people.
- I’ve grown the same clones as someone else, but come out with way more taste and flavor. <-not caused by curing
- Some people’s weed taste just like ashes. <- can curing add flavor??
- Why is the industry all about live rosin/resin isn’t that where the goods are at? I mean, it’s not like anyone is making bubble hash out of cured buds are they??
LOL!!! I guess I have many questions about it.
I sometimes prefer dried and even cured weed over live. The live aspect can sometimes pull out and amplify aspects of the flavour I don’t like as much. I imagine a majority of cases I would prefer live but I cant say for sure as I have not been privileged enough to have tried that many different strains as live rosin. Curing changes flavour. Product that is dried to quick gets a shit taste locked in it. Curing can sometimes help that if it is done right as it keeps breaking down the chlorophyll and removing some of the shit taste. The chlorophyll burns and creates that taste that I think you are referring to. Even if it has been dried well it still has some chlorophyll in it. So curing continues that process of breaking it down. I had some Silver Pearl I grew for 3 runs. It had a nice manky skunk taste after drying. After a couple of weeks cure it was just tastier. After 6 months of cure it had changed to a rich plum flavour. Oh and yeah, your question 1, how it is grown can affect taste. Both amount of flavour and the profile as well. I did not realise myself until the last couple of years.
ok! I will actually smoke some of that old stuff. I have additional information or observation and questions.
I notice when I am growing the cannabis, that the smells undergo transformation while it’s growing. I am the type of guy, who waits forever and sniffs the air when I go in there to check for ripeness then I get the microscope out and check the trichome for full growth, with amber in some. You think this process results in flavor profile? You think perhaps… some people harvest early and it costs them in the profile?
Alright next. I noticed the absolute bottom limit on drying is 3 days. If your weed dries in 2 days on the rack, it’s ruined, tastes like green shit. Harvest too early, results in total green tasting shit.
So that brings me to this story about a weed strain I grew. When I harvested it, it stung your eyes with this strange coffee smell. It produced shitty hash also the weed didn’t burn very well. I tossed it in the garbage. Is that the kind of cannabis we’re talking about that has to be cured?
The final chapter is this: I use beta testers. I’m not talking about me smoking some and thinking it’s good. I’m talking about other people who are vowed to tell me the real truth not some stupid story about how it’s the bestest in the world. Do other people use that system of beta testing? hah hah my beta testers get upset if you challenge their impartiality. One of them died though I had to get a new one - that part sucks. He was a good friend, tried to always tell the truth to me.
well that old weed seemed pretty good to me. Stung like terps, and did the job. Doesn’t seem quite as sweet in the fruit salad taste. The meat breath has more overall terpenes I’d say, but this big bud has some nice fruit ones. I know I’ve failed in the processing of materials when my bud crumbles between your fingers after 6 months. After that length of time I expect it to be flexible enough to roll into a ball and hot knife if you wanted.
On a side note the big bud buds taste like hash… because the hash I’m ripping is big bud heh heh. I’m soooooo used to the flavor!
Sorry to hear about your mate. Yeah some weed like that coffee stuff may benefit a lot from the long cure. But its not that it always makes it better, it just changes it. I find most of the time it improves the flavour but not always. However, for me, in nearly all cases, weed gets better after the first couple of weeks of cure. Both taste and high. However I can not apply that to Bubble because I have not tried enough different strains of fresh frozen or live or whatever you prefer to call it to have an opinion.
lol I always make my bubble live, I have never done it any other way. As for the “high” phew that’s an even larger ball of wax. I know…each person is different, right? I can’t say…well that spliff I smoked went straight to my dome. I mean it has an “effect” but not…like… I mean…well I need dabs of hash to bring myself back to normal eh? All these stupid kilos of weed I’m just experimenting with, not even smoking, really. I rip lots of hash, and I know if a normal person tries it they pass out. or piss themselves. So in terms of effect or getting me “high” I don’t know that buds really do that. I mean…like not in the way it does something to someone else. bah, if you want to get high, I brewed this wicked tincture that made my friend hallucinate.
I can absolutely attest to the difference a good long cure can make in flavor of seemingly mediocre bud. I’m not saying growing conditions aren’t the major effect on the full expression of a strain, but curing can really improve things. I have had stuff that was alright, nothing special come out of the jar 4 months later and blow me away with the complexity of flavors that have developed.
But that’s not gonna undo a bad grow. And I find that the difference in flavor between 8 weeks and 9 can be amazing, so much stuff is rushed to market because the timeline and turnover rate is king.
Initial slow drying makes a hiuuuge difference as well, I like to take a week to bring it down to 62% nice and slow, give that chlorophyll taste time to dissipate.
hmm interesting, I usually do it all in 3-4 days at 40% RH and 18-20C. If it’s too warm and dries in 2 days it’s ruined. A week you say? what temps?
Yeah about the same for temps if I can keep it there. I’ve gotta build a new drying box, I’d been using my cab but I’d rather keep it working.
I just never bring the humidity lower than about 60%, and usually the first couple days I keep it closer to 70%. Ive been using a tote with hanging lines in it and a small pc fan for air exchange lately, but when i finish my drying box it’ll be controlled with a temperature sensor so I can ramp the relative humidity down slowly over the course of the week till I hit about 62% around the 4th or 5th day.
lol reading on the other thread… I’m detecting broscience. beep beep beep unsubstantiated claim alert! runs for the hills
roots:
Plants in flower! king tut of course.
the biggest plant requires an additional EC boost. Good thing I got it under control, it would be way taller than the others.
Smoking it has a very different effect. You do not get as high a hit as the open flame destroys about 30% of the cannabinoids from what i have read. But you also get an extra smash to the face from something in the plant that does not come out in the hash runs. I feel it mostly in my face for the first half hour or so. It is what makes my eyes goes red. I remember running around a teenager with my bottle of eye drops in pocket at all times. That is something I do not miss since I stopped smoking with an open flame.
ohhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhhh! for sure here JoeCrow. You process all of your stuff in manners where it does not make as much of a difference. But even when Rosin pressing a slow dry makes a big diff to the taste and high. I have troubles with very low humidity here most of the year round. My dries kept finishing after just 3 to 4 days and it was impacting the taste a LOT. I have now set up a drying cabinet with a lung room and have now stretched that out to 7 to 8 days and it has made a huge difference. I would like to drag it out to 14 days but unfortunately due to lack of space the lung room for the drying cabinet is my bedroom so i cant ideally make the environment exactly how i want or I will impact my injuries because my room will be to cold.