ok so you figure if I put some in the fridge to dry out and it takes 2 weeks it’ll taste better? lol I can easily falsify or not, any process. Just have to figure out what it is.
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I got this friend he really goes all in for the curing thing. His last batch of weed was so bitter! I’m not even sure how something like that can happen, unless it’s supposed to be gross?
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I do not know how drying in a fridge affects it so I cant comment. As for standard drying, I am not saying it will taste better, I am saying it will taste different. “better” or “worse” is in the eye of the beholder. 
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yah but the thing is I’m looking for specific conditions I have to meet for this “cure” process. So far I am getting: high relative humidity, long drying time. Like 60% humidity and 2 weeks drying time should reach peak “cure”? Using the fridge is just a way of achieving these conditions, right?
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I see your point. So yes, it should be a slow dry time over 2 weeks. That is considered dried properly. Some people call that 2 weeks cured. Some people call it dried, like me. Then I consider the curing starting after that 2 weeks. I find most strains for me will taste even better if they are cured for 2 weeks after the initial 2 weeks drying. Sometimes more, depending on the strain. As it cures it inherently loses terpenes (can never remember how to spell that) and potency but only slightly and often the benefits out weigh that. So I guess you need a list of properties in order of importance that they look for when judging those things. Then you would need to shape your dry process to suit. As for the fridge, yes i guess it is just setting the conditions. As long as you have the humidity and temp dialed in is all that matters. Have you used that method yet?
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Naw but here’s what I do. I get the variables of the experiment we’re talking about and what I should expect to happen. Then I try it under all those variables but in different ways. Like I could just spray it with some water when it’s about to dry out and keep it moist for as long as possible. Years? This way I’m testing if the variables I am playing with are actually bullshit and it’s something else or it works out just as long as you hit that variable.
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I only just properly absorbed your comment above
So the conditions to meet are 2 weeks by controlling the temp and RH. Think of it like this. The moister needs to evaporate out of it at a specific rate. If you have a high temperature then the moisture will want to try and evaporate out. So you need a high humidity to slow the evaporation rate to the specified rate. If you have low temperatures then the plant will start to dry to slowly so you drop the humidity low to encourage the moisture to evaporate out of it. So in short, low temp and low humidity OR high temp and high humidity. You obviously need to stick within certain boundaries to prevent all your usual issues.
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what about almost drying it out then soaking it in a bag of water in the fridge for a week then completely drying it out? A bridge too far?
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AND SCREW YOU FOR GIVING ME IDEAS!!! My mum has a deep freeze at home she is not using. Would be perfect for drying… 
… oh and on it goes… the quest for the ultimate product.
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This can only be determined through testing 
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lol! Ahhh all too true. What I propose, is fermented buds. I’ll add some kosher salt and make a brine. Then stick my buds in there to ferment for 5-10 days… off to the fridge. mmm tasty with a slice of ham and tomato.
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absolute genius!
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oh, you know I’m going to do it too. Can’t wait to ferment some buds!!! rushes off to get a mason jar too bad I have to wait till next harvest to get some freshies. Shoulda thought of that insane idea a couple weeks ago!
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It is so hard to be patient. I will be finishing up the current grows I have which has grown out all that i had. So no strains left and then a huge clean up, then room can sit for about 2 to 4 weeks followed by another clean and reset. So it is going to be a long wait for me between harvests. I was the lucky recipient of a clone with Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Now I have a collection of strains with TMV. Nuke time.
It turns out they have had it in their grows amongst a group of growers and they dont do anything about it. Just live with it. It just keeps hopping around the strains as they come and go. bah! By the time i identified what it was it had already spread to my other mothers. The plants still produce but I just dont have room for imperfection that I have control over.
yah they say that shit spreads via infected surfaces through a cut on the plant. Crazy shit. Lucky I never seen anything like that around this area…yet. They say the only way to get rid of it is destroy the clones and take the cuttings from the mother using sterile tools. nice.
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Yeah for sure. I figure it should not live longer than 2 weeks on a bare dry surface. So a full bleach, followed by 2 weeks of air circulated through the room rigorously followed by another bleaching should do the trick. Followed by NEVER FUCKING GETTING CLONES OFF ANYONE AGAIN.
I have done it 3 times in my life. First time, spider mites, second time, spider mites, third time TMV. Those 2 spider mite times are the only 2 times i have had any sort of mite problem in my garden at all. The TMV is the only virus I have ever had to deal with. The only things other than fungus gnats that i have had to deal with pest wise in all my growing have come from the only 3 clones i have received.
heh heh yah preaching to the choir, protocol 1 was never bring any plant material into the grow room that didn’t come from there. I replaced that with protocol 0 clean it first. Probably won’t help against viruses though. I don’t use tools for cloning though, I wonder if that helps?
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strange, they suggest since it takes a bit to spread, you can grow the plant fast and clone the newest growth just a small piece and it should be uninfected. Cray-cray! Of course they recommend actually testing for the virus then testing after to see if you got rid of it. hah hah who is going to do that?? Just restart with feminized plants.
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Oh now you are moving into murky territory generally called “water curing”. So one of the goals of long term curing is to give some of the natural starches time to convert to sugars, and in the process allow the flavors to mature. Mellowing of the chlorophyll also leads to a smoother smoke. I will admit that I do not believe I have ever encountered a proper scientific paper on these processes which is cannabis specific, but that’s so often the case. I have always seen an improvement from a long cure subjectively myself, but I have also done a few head to head tests on friends where I’ve taken the same strain, same grow environment, two back to back harvests all done the same except for cure time. Whenever I take the two month cured buds from the previous harvest and put em up against the just dried buds from the next harvest it’s always the same winner.
Water curing is a weird one, never very popular and understandably so. There are a few threads about it on icmag I think, but the whole idea is a bit nuts. Instead of taking all that time to let the chlorophyll break down and mellow out the smoke, well fuck it that chlorophyll is water soluble, if you soak it in a large volume of water for a week you can just leach a bunch of it out. Then you are free to dry it as fast as you want without ending up with smoke that burns harshly. That was the idea as I’d always seen it presented anyways.
But chlorophyll is of course not the only thing that is water soluble, and while the trichs and THC are not going to dissolve a whole shitload of the flavor is. What the process seems to produce is herb with very little remaining taste or aroma and such a hideous look that you’d might as well just press it into a brick like it’s the early 70s. It will still produce a high though, and will apparently burn with a significantly reduced and far less specific odour. This reduced odor was a reason that seemed to come up often in the few threads I found on it. Mostly seemed to be prohibition state guys experimenting with part of their crop because they had heard you could make weed that doesn’t stink. But in the end who the fuck really wants weed that doesn’t stink!?!? I guess when it gives me the munchies I’ll just go ingest a lovely tube of tasteless, odorless, engineered nutritional paste, because that’s all we want from food right, the baseline chemical effect? 
The only other context Ive seen it discussed beyond trying to make stealthy weed that ultimately dissapoints was old school cats talking about processing brick weed in the 70s.
So don’t drown your flowers, there’s no good to be had there.
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