Iv read so many different ways on how to dry and cure weed and I’m no master at it either. Drying and curing has been my downfall for 20 years. I tried all methodes. Don’t get me wrong I can come up with a pleasant odor. It’s just not that break the bud in half odor.
Lately I have been drying my buds on the stems for 10 days then I seal them and burp once a day for a few seconds. It smells good but it just don’t have that punch u in the face smell that it should have.
9 Likes
This. So much this. Please help! It feels like a combination of voodoo and rocket science. The only flavor I can apparently cultivate during cure is ‘grassy’.
Edit: So far, I tried the orange peel method. My flower tasted and smelled like a just-used lawnmower attacked a fall potluck spread–and somehow missed the dessert table. Unbelievable. I never want to taste or smell that again.
8 Likes
Depending on conditions (more dry vs more humid) I will trim everything but leaves coming from the buds, and if drier conditions will chop and hang the whole plant or more humid I will seperate sections and hang by individual branch…
Either way… Hang until the flower clusters snap easily off the main stem and then jar… Sometimes you need to burp, sometimes the plant is just good to jar and wait… Just don’t chop the plant too early and don’t jar til ready and you’re fine…
Honestly, the cure per person is slightly different so find what makes yours smell and taste great and you’re golden
22 Likes
@toastyjakes is on the money on this one. Different seasons equal different climates(humidity and temp) thus requiring different dry methods. I always trim before hanging and usually break the plants down into multiple branches to hang. Hang time is determined by feel. Once the nugs are easy to snap off the branch they get jarred. Then monitored by my own super scientific method of smell and feel to determine if they need burping or left alone.
13 Likes
If it goes grassy after you put it in the jar then it’s probably too wet, not ready for the jar. Take it out for a while. I do this almost every time, for some reason.
11 Likes
Do you use Bovedas? I’ve seen a lot of people use 62% bovedas. I use 69% with tobacco, since I’m in such a dry climate. I always worry about my jars drying out. It wouldn’t be an issue if my relative humidity weren’t like 10%.
4 Likes
Hang whole plants untrimmed, let dry 9-14 days (depending on humidity), place in jars when they are just dry enough to not mold. Crispy sugar leaves on the outside, slightly moist interior. The weed is technically dry enough to smoke but it still crackles a bit and burns slow. Trim and jar, burping if it seems too moist. The longer you can keep buds moist and “alive” the better. Curing is a controlled decay, it works much faster the more water is present. Decay stops when the weed is bone dry.
A slow dry is better than a long cure. It can often still take a 2-3 weeks to reach optimum smell, but the whole cure-it-for-6-months thing seems kinda like baloney to me. IME after a few months it loses “oomph” in the smell department. It still has a “best by” window, those aromas are volatile.
But a general simplification would be “hang whole plants, dry trim when you can snap off buds” and that works for me 90% of the time.
27 Likes
For me what’s done the best is chopping and hanging for 14+ days at 60 Faranheit and 60% humidity. No trimming whatsoever until after it’s dry and all the stems snap. Then trim and jar, burp for the first week or more if you left a bunch of sugar leaves on there, and pretty much good to go/seal after that.
If you go warmer it dries quicker, especially on plants with little foliage, and it won’t smell as strong. If you get to dry in under a week you really aren’t going to have great smells. The longer it takes without risk of molding, the better it’s going to turn out.
You don’t want to go less than 60% RH until the last couple days if at all. At the same time, don’t go higher than 65% RH or you risk mold unless the temp is higher. Even then I still wouldn’t go past 75F/65%RH.
15 Likes
Thanks guys. Very intelligent answers. I will follow you guys guidelines. I really need to perfect on this part of the grow.
4 Likes
I also think where you live will change for each of us. I pull one from flower, remove the branches, put them on my trim board, to my work area, I remover any fan leaf left by then.
I’ll give them a rough cut, but not a jar cut if that makes any sense to you.I hang them on a drier rack I made, and if rainy out run my humidifer, just make sure the exhaust is not blowing on the rack.
4-5 days, after hanging, back on the board, a jar trim, fill the mason’s, cap them.
2 days later, burp, 2 days later burp. I do not like mine dry, I like them more spongy, for the next few weeks. I always pull some buds into a smaller jar for partaking, leaving the others, either in the basement, or in the freezer if a cut gives me enough.
Just my $.02
6 Likes
After all these years, I just built a humidity controlled drying box. With filtered intake air of course. I am going to line it with Spanish cedar in the future. This is my first bud drying in it, but so far so good.
Has a fan inside for circulation, exhaust fan of course, and a heater. Keeping the humidity right now at 55% for this first dry.
22 Likes
I am considering taking a mini fridge (thermoelectric one) and making it a cooler/humidor to cure and long term storage.
4 Likes
Nice set up mystery moog if you can get the temp to 60 on your initial dry down 10/14 days at that humidity or even 60% you can even make poor weed smell good !
5 Likes
I dry in a sealed room with no ventilation and only a small fan for air circulation. In the summer they dry in 7-10 days. In the winter it’s 5-7.
Then I take a few branches and put them in a big bag with a humidity sensor. When they hit 60%ish I put them all in jars.
I burp them everyday for 5 minutes. If they smell a bit grassy I take them all out, put them on newspaper for 10 minutes then back in the jar.
All the best
11 Likes
It’s part science, part art. All based on your personal taste. The cure part is like wine. How ever you treat it before aging, will change the outcome. But the key is time! Though it’s ready to smoke once it’s ready to jar, the curing comes with time. Yes over time it will loose color and bag appeal, but the smoothness, taste and aroma come out better.
9 Likes
My curing technique is to smoke everything before it cures. 
37 Likes
Sounds like how I used to cure, until I started getting larger crops. That’s when curing became important.
9 Likes