I don’t use my sealer anymore. Reluctantly switched to valved zipper bags and haven’t looked back.
But my old supplier is gone. So I been using sou vide bags and ignoring the port all together. Turns out a little airspace doesn’t bother much. Hard to find good sizes and quality
i’m extra sensitive too, i can’t tolerate anything scented, i hate perfumy anything
do you think a regular ol fridge freezer goes thru defrost cycles? and what do you think about putting the cured weed in sealed mylar bags in the freezer, would that work?
I store mine in a stand up freezer ziplock bagged leaving a small amount of air then vacuum seal .
I use 5 gallon food grade buckets with non food grade lids because the food grade ones seal to hard and are a pain to get on and off. 3-4 of the larger bovada packs spread out through each bucket. Then just treat them like giant jars. It lasted a year like that. But if you dont open it for a month, it’ll smell bad for a couple minutes after opening, then go back to smelling good. So I think they still need burped once in a great while. For the first few months I weekly transfer to a new bucket so they get flipped around and mixed up, and I can check for problems. Haven’t found any problems though.
Please let me first say Hello to the OG community.
My question has to do with vacuum sealing dried and cured bud in mason jars, before placing them into a deep freezer for storage.
Should the buds be dried to below 20% and as dry as possible before vacuum sealing it, or can it safely be done with the flowers only dried to the 58-62% (“ideal” ready to smoke) range?
Now, you may already be quite clear on this point and can offer good evidence for your point, GREAT!, but if you may be wondering what the big deal is about 60% humidity, watch a u-tube video on how water boils until it freezes when put under a vacuum. Will 60% moist buds be damaged in any way by some sort of double freezing, once from being vacuum seals and again in the deep freezer?
Are ther other factors I should be considering? Does it make any differance??? 
Thanks for your thoughs.
N2
To get water to boil under vacuum at room temperature, you would need a decent vacuum.
A food saver or other consumer vacuum sealers are not likely to pull such a vacuum. A ‘food saver’ for instance will perhaps pull to around 24 mmHG, which would result in a boiling point of water of 140o F.
See here:
https://www.engineersedge.com/h2o_boil_pressure.htm
However, under vacuum, the vapor pressure will change and you could end up with an increase of what amounts to evaporation / sublimation of some compounds that include water, terpenes, etc. That is one potential disadvantage. The primary advantage is the removal of oxygen and the reducing long-term oxidation.
As far as moisture levels when freezing, I personally do not have any data or experience … as I don’t generally freeze product. My expectation, if I were to freeze a product that will later be smoked, I’d freeze it at whatever moisture levels you are familiar with, after having cured at room temperature for a number of months, without applying a vacuum.
It is generally true that lower moisture means lower water activity which means longer storage life and lower potential for it molding/going rancid. It is not clear to me if there are any botulism risks for low oxygen storage (that could be one reason to consider going very dry).
Although, personally, I wouldn’t overly dry the product unless you are planning on storing it for an unusual number of years. I have some product that is 3+ years stored at room temperature and it’s still fine enough, perhaps a bit oxidized, by having a proper cure and storage container (even have run some lab tests against it).
Also, rather than vacuum sealing, you might want to consider purging a quality vapor barrier bag with an inert gas … if that were an option.
I vacuum seal at 58/60% and freeze with no noticeable effects or damage to the buds.
When I’m satisfied with the cure that is taking place, minimum of 3-4 weeks, most at 3 months, they get sealed up and in the freezer they go.
When I want some, I removed the pouch, slice it open, remove what I want, usually filling a pint mason jar to smoke out of, reseal it, refreeze it.
The buds are as perfect as when you put them in.
We have used the freezer for many years when I’m on game, and doing my do diligence, in the grow areas.
When I lark about, saving bud packages does not happen.
Best to all!!
boveda in a light vac in the fridge is what im going with
entering a sour comp in sept and harvesting rn
Personally I’d avoid a boveda and just seal it up. IME they take away some of the smell. Especially from gassy strains. Pretty much why I stopped using them years ago. If it’s sealed and never opened (and cold especially) it should be fine.
I’ve even vac sealed and frozen some fuely af gorilla glue 4 for over a year with no decline in quality or the gas. While putting it in a bag/jar/ opening it/ room temp over time will make it evaporate in a relatively short amount of time. I always wait a few hours to open the seal just to be on the safe side.
while ive heard that
I think its mostly because the terpenes aren’t as volatile = less smell
a homie I trust did a side by side and said the boveda was still better
and after the boveda was taken out they continued to smell strong
Nah it’s definitely not that. They actually lose the smell. Not sure if the pack absorbs it or what but doesn’t matter if you grind it up or not once it’s gone it’s gone. Usually takes around 2 or so months IME.
That is my go to for sealing everything in a glass jar !
I love the ‘thunk’ when you pop the lid…
…Like a 60mm mortar clearing the pipe. 
Cheers
G
i freeze my stuff by the weighted ounce in mylar bags, the top sealed with a hair straightener. i put oxygen absorbers in there, and not, and as far as i can tell, no difference, so maybe i won’t be buying those anymore, but then again it’s affordable, and if it does help preserve better, it’s worth it i think, but i don’t know
i thaw an ounce overnight and when i open it it’s like a skunk is pissing inside my house
I used to jar my buds for long term storage but last season I decided to use vac seal bags and I wont look back.
I dried the buds and jarred them at first, burping until they were ready for long term storage and used plastic vac seal bags. My sealer lets me manually pulse the vacuum and seal when I like, so I would vac it until it was just starting to squish the buds and hit seal. It would suck in a little bit of air as it sealed so I learned to time it until I could seal the bags while just wrapping the buds without crushing them into cobs.
I sealed them last october, stored them in a cool room and they still come out fresh, sticky and smelly. In fact they’ve absolutely been curing/aging while in the bags, I notice the smells and highs have gotten better since they were first pulled, to the point where I have deeper appreciation for strains I poo pood at first.
One thing I will change is switching to mylar. After all this time the smell is definitely leaking from the bags, I assume from volatile solvents eating their way through the plastic. No bueno. The plastic is nice because it makes it easy to visually tell when I should let off the vac button but I think mylar will be the smarter option for long term storage going ahead.
True, well close.
Terps boil off faster and at lower temp in a vacuum= less smell 
Nice work! 
This is a bit tougher to get done but may be the best solution!
Well it’s irrelevant now, sour comp was canceled so now I just got a bunch of well preserved sour
Still a win I guess
I am sure you have some good friends to help ya with that.
A friend with the Sowah holds the Powah. 
What I’ve settled on for long term storage is an approach gleaned from a lot of these threads, and trying out a few different things for my particular needs. I like variety, and I like well-cured buds, so I package things down to 30-50g sealed bags for deep storage and curing, that way I can pull out a month or two worth of a strain and take a break in between bags to let it cure longer undisturbed in the next one.
After chop, I’m hanging in either my drying boxes or a grow tent, with ambient temperature (usually 68-75F) and a dehumidifier keeping the basement at 60-65 % RH, I control airflow into the drying space with an Inkbird. Three weeks later I dry trim and buck nugs off stems except for the last few inches of tops, the whole plant minus larf and popcorn goes into a one pound Grove bag with some 58% Bovedas and sits in a dresser for six weeks, with me peeking at it every few days. Once it’s sat and stabilized, and starting to develop some odor again, I break those down into the “one ounce” Grove bags that usually fit 30-50g depending on density. I gently pack them tight and squeeze extra air out, leaving a 58% Boveda in each one, then heat seal the bags, label them with the info including trim date, and shuck most of them into the fridge, leaving the first bag of each strain out in the room temp cure drawer, and whatever was left in the big bags after packing three 30-50g bags goes into my active stash to get picked at while it cures. Heat sealer is a $5 Seal-a-Meal from the Goodwill, it came with some bags I haven’t used yet but probably will eventually for storing edibles.
The fridge is a Frigidaire dorm fridge from Craigslist, $50 and it turns out that the thermostat runs warm enough on the internal controls that I didn’t need to regulate it with an Inkbird like I figured it would. It sits at 48F and 55% RH, and is also my seed storage, so that in case of a blackout my seed vault doesn’t thaw and refreeze. I noticed that a bunch of breeders use fridges at 40-50F to keep their stock in, and realized it was the best way and I could consolidate everything in one place.
