What's your curing technique?

Smoker's Lounge
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Are you drying indoors? Can you get calcium chloride in bulk? That’s what they use in damp rid and other passive humidity collectors. Trays of that ( so it has high surface area) will remove humidity quickly.

Could you dry in a refrigerator thats set to its warmest setting? Trays of calcium chloride at the bottom, a small fan set to blow air around. Like for a meat curing or sausage drying chamber?

Point fans at them as already mentioned, remove as many leaves as possible, and try drying smaller pieces, more spaced apart. Exhaust the space periodically too, to remove that moisture that has already come out of the plants if the room gets really humid despite your efforts.

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@ShiskaberrySavior and @minitiger I followed your advice, did the cleaning, hung it up and put a fan under the plants, 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off … the humidity is between 85 and 90%.

I’ll research the dehumidifier too …

as the plants were tall, i made some cuts, but there were some bigger parts, i will try a slow drying to see the difference …

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thanks for the tip @PhilCuisine

Yes @anon93244739, at the moment I have a makeshift room, and I installed a fan as I said …

I’m going to study calcium chloride … I have a refrigerator to do that.

I am thinking of drying it for 2 weeks or more, and then make this system to adjust the humidity to 60% (I have a hygrometer) …
Afterwards, put one part in the freezer and the other in pots …

thank you all for your attention…

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Beautiful plants.

I enjoy watching your grow, and how different your situation is. It let’s us put on our thinking caps.

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could layer them in paper sacks to pull some moisture out. stack of branches/buds and then dry paper or paper towels. I would put nothing in jars until dry enough to cure in those circumstances.

Could definitely benefit from drying in a refrigerator in those circumstances…then jar cure when you no longer need to burp.

@Gugumelo

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I would just leave the fan running the whole time, 24/7. No need to be running it fifteen minutes on, fifteen off. Especially if the humidity levels are still in the 80’s and 90’s. Your plants are not gonna dry too quickly with humidity levels like that. Running the fan constantly might even get the humidity level down to like 75%.

When I hang my plants, I hang them whole. I don’t trim the fan leaves or anything else, I just cut them at the base and hang them. For the first few days, I try to keep the humidity levels right at 50%. After three or four days, I’ll raise the humidity up to 60-65% and leave it there for another four to six days. Or as long as it takes for the medium-sized branches to almost snap. Then I do the paper bag thing for another week or so. I mean, ideally. It gets really dry where I live, sometimes even if I have two humidifiers running in my drying area, I still can’t get it up above 40%. But ideally, that’s how I do it.

With your humidity levels running as high as they are, you really don’t have to worry about things drying out too quickly, especially with plants as big as the ones in the pic you posted. Those fuckers are not going to dry out too quickly in 85% humidity. And not even in 75% humidity, if you can get it that low. Looking at you drying area, if you have another fan, I’d put one at each end of the room, basically blowing at each other. As long as they’re not blowing on the plants, you’ll be fine. The flowers might feel a little crispy on the outside, but there’s still plenty of moisture in there, especially with flowers as big as the ones in that pic.

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Personally I have set up a dry tent in order to keep things in check. People tend to cut before plants are ripe creating a grassy smell or they dry too quick and get to low a humidity level which never allows a cure to happen leaving the chlorophyll in the plants. I set up my tent to dry at 55 to 60 % RH. I keep a fan blowing across the bottom of the tent and an Infinity T4 running to pull air out the top. The room it is in is dry, around 25% RH in winter so I put a big bowl of water in the bottom of the tent with a towel hanging out of it and draped across the floor. That lowers my RH to where I want it and keeps it there. Just have to add water every day. Seems to work well. Than I put a humidity sensor into each jar to make sure I know what is happening in them. That’s what works for my anyway, may trails lead to the watering hole. It’s just such a shame growing plants for months and than having issues with the very import stop of drying and curing. This is one of my 4 plants, the first one chopped this run. I tried to do some dry trimming this time but didn’t like it so it’s back to wet trimming.

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if you are losing buds to pm keep temps above 75 F …but if it’s a different mold got to lower the rh or kill the mold. Not sure running a fan is going to help on that front.

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Would a MERV 12 air filter help him out by removing spores from the air? A cheap mycology trick is putting a hepa filter on the back of a box fan, securing it with duct tape, and drawing air through it to reduce contaminations

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To clarify, I had problems with fungi in the cure from last season … Possibly because some buds went into the pot with a lot of moisture, like you said @Herbie .

@anon93244739 , i spread indigenous fungi all over the place, for some time, i believe it helps in some way. The walls and the most humid areas do not have molds of fungi, despite the high Rh …

I did a test with a button picked last week, put it in the green box, inside a paper bag. The green box is at 8 ° C (47 F) at 80% humidity. I have no experience with curing in the refrigerator, but at this temperature I believe it is very slow …

As for paper bags, I’ve seen something similar in Bahia, they rolled up in newspapers to dry or keep dry, but it dries very fast and gets chlorophyll, so I was in doubt about this, in addition to the ink of the newspaper in direct contact with plant.

Should I put the herb in bags first, and then dry? I mean, after a week or two of hanging, or should I put it in the paper bag now and let it dry?

@minitiger, these high humidity levels can vary, we are heading towards autumn / winter, and with the arrival of the first masses of cold air, and high pressure systems, the humidity can drop to around 40 or 50%. I believe that in this case, the herb can dry out too fast, I must be aware …
As for the fans, I will post a photo, it is large, and it is positioned towards the door, which is between open for air exchange, in addition to some cracks. Therefore, the air knocks on the door and disperses, without the plants moving. Every time I visit the room, I feel the air very fresh, different from before without the fan.

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@DougDawson, I dream of the day when I manage to implement a similar system with my plants, and it is close … I am building and next season outdoors I will be ready … Or more adapted and less improvised​:joy::joy:.
Congratulations on the system, I will follow as a model … you managed to adapt well to your conditions …

Thank you all…

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Just let the plants hang until they start to feel a little crispy and branches are almost snap-able, which usually takes between five and ten days, depending on the size of the flowers and things like temps, humidity levels etc. Then break the plants down into pieces that’ll fit into a paper bag, like the ones they give you at the grocery store. Put the pieces in there loosely and don’t fill the bag up too too much, like maybe eight inches high. Or a foot, maybe. I leave the bags open for the first few days and then, over the course of the next few days I’ll begin to kind of fold the tops of the bags down loosely. Sometimes I’ll also kind of rotate the flowers at the top and bottom of the bag, just stick my hand in there and do my best to get the flowers that have been in the bottom of the bag closer to the top and the flowers that’ve been at the top closer to the bottom. I don’t always do that, though.

You just want to dry the flowers as slowly as possible, to a point. 14-17 days or so is kind of ideal. Then trim, throw the buds in jars and “burp” for a couple days. I actually will leave the jars open for about fifteen minutes twice a day for like three or four days before I seal them up for a few weeks.

Just kind of use your intuition. You’ll know when it’s time to seal the jars up just by feeling the flowers.

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I think using a commercial Dehumidifier set at 50% really was the one thing that really improved my cure. I hang in the dark and let sit in 50% humidity for a couple weeks. Then into paper bags for a week. Then put the bags into a black plastic bucket. Each bag ends up being a different pheno. I trim before I smoke. By then it just flakes off. Works great to preserve flavors. Slow and easy. No need to add moisture back in and have seen some people ruin batches trying.

Saw a guy that would swear you were supposed to leave a bucket of water in the dry room. “To prevent it from getting too dry.” I thought it was an idiotic idea, but sure enough the farmer of that plot listened to him that year and “cured” up some brown buds ready for the trash. The curing process is supposed to be very gradual and I think the dehumidifier prevents re-moisturization that happens naturally at night without one running. Taste is 10x better that way.

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The bucket of water thing actually makes sense in some cases. The RH in the room I dry in is only 25%, if I left my plants in their as it is they would be dry in a couple days. I put a bowl of water in the bottom of the dry tent with the end of a towel in it and the rest of the towel across the floor of the tent. Than a fan blows across it, this brings my RH up to between 50 and 60 % and moves some air as it hit’s the wall, no fans on buds, no low RH issues. This allows for a 10 to 14 day dry. I suppose it really just depends on what your environment is.

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Yeah you got a crazy low humidity to start with.

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Absolutely, no denying that. That’s Canadian winter. Just though I would mention the water thing does have merit under the right circumstances.

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Adding my 2 cents…it’s dry here.I have hygrometers in every jar which is a big help due to the feedback they provide. I want them to drop humidity from the 70’s to the 60’s in the jars. The last 10% from 72 to 62 is where the curing takes place…no rush. Burp occasionally, nothing will mold at 70% humidity level. Use a big jar, at least 1/3 air. Once they are down to 62% they get a boveda to help hold that.

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Yeah, I put hygrometers in some of my jars for the first time this past harvest, it’s been informative. Those, along with Bovedas in every jar (which I always do), seem like the best way if it reeeaallllyyyy matters to you to have perfect humidity/temp levels in your jars. I personally have never worried too much about it. Although now that I own a press, the humidity levels matter to me a little more. I pressed ten grams of some Smart Move that had been in jars for about five months when I first bought the press. Got like 2% returns :joy::joy: I think if you’re just rolling j’s and packing bowls, the humidity levels only matter to a certain degree. If you’re pressing, though, you definitely want it right at 62% or so.

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Mmmm, I don’t know, I think the biggest obstacle, is not smoking the bud before it’s done curing… lol

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I’m trying this now with merv 13 filter fabric over my intakes. I’ve had pm issues for a while and shut down. Since then I fogged my basement with microban and added these filters. About 5 weeks into flower and nothing yet, but I can’t confidently say it’s gone.

In the end the fabric was like $30 for a lifetime supply and it can’t hurt. It should also stop pollen and any type of insect/eggs.

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On the topic it really seems like not trimming, or barely trimming, before drying is an easy way to get good results with a slower dry. I half trimmed some of my outdoor and it really tastes and smokes alot better.

The only problem is I fucking HATE trimming dry weed lol. Fresh is bad enough, but dry takes me like double the time. Any tricks? I keep meaning to get one of those paintbrush things to try, do they work well?

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Usually by the time I start trimming, the leaves (even the little sugar leaves) are brittle enough that they just sorta flake right off. I don’t even necessarily “trim” per se. It’s more like I just knock the leaves off with the blades.

And that sounds like the weed might be too dry once it gets to that point, but it really isn’t. Even the brittle sugar leaves are all good. I took all of my trim from the last grow, those sugar leaves and larf, jarred them up for a week with a couple Bovedas and then pressed it and got pretty acceptable returns. 10%, which is good enough for me for shit that I usually say,”I’m gonna make hash out of this,” stick it in the freezer and then never make hash out of haha.

But yeah, I agree, hang the plants whole, don’t trim them at all until they’re dried and ready to go into jars.

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