Hey everyone, I just harvested one of my first serious grows and will be harvesting another one in a few weeks. I did a practice run first to see how everything would turn out. However, I'm not happy with the taste. Here's the details: -3 Super Skunk plants indoors flowering under 450w HPS -Flowered for ~60 days -Dried for at least a week on mesh screens hanging in a dark bathroom. Stems all dry enough to snap -Humidity during drying ~50% and temps around 74-76 max. I live in a very humid area btw -Wet trimmed fan leaves and trimmed sugar leaves before curing -Cured for a little over 3 weeks in a turkey bag -Burped pretty much daily for a few mins at a time The smell at first was like hay (naturally) and now it is starting to smell a little better BUT smells amazing once it's broken up. The broken up bud smell is how I'd expect it to smell if cured properly. Taste is "meh". Please also note that I may have over-fertilized during the beginning of flowering and burned quite a few leaves, which may have an effect on quality/taste as well. My question is, how can I achieve the smell I get when breaking it up? Which I assume should be how it would smell if processed correctly
If your not happy with the taste its prob cuz you smoke a chemical plant or pesticide or chemical pesticide plant. I have no issues with the taste or smell of mine. Outdoor and in forest soil. She smelt piney and tasted piney. Ive had a blueberry. Smelled and tasted more blueberry than in the stores.
I considered that as a possibility, but since it smells nice when it's broken up that leads me to believe it's something that went wrong during the dry/cure I also had a small fan in the room while drying but not directly on the buds
I've found if the buds are dried for to long in whatever your environmental conditions may lose taste and smell. More so on the taste end of things. For me drying indoors it takes around 3 days. I hang until dry to the touch not until stem snaps. One grow I dried for almost a week until stems snapped and I had the same issue as you the smell still came through but the taste wasn't there really. The strain I dried for 3 days had a much more intense smell and the taste was able to come through. In fact it smelled better ground up thank most dank I'd buy. It's really not an exact science.
To fast a dry results in mowed lawn clipping-hay smell. Drying weed is like cooking a good steak to done is just that and you can't fix it. Better luck next harvest. Slowing down and controlling the dry was the key to all the troubles I was having. Hot and smoking dry here most Oct so it showed up on my first harvest and I fought it for the next 5 or so before I really got things down solid. ================================= Cut and pasted from elsewhere. ==================================== We're giving the remaining chlorophyll time to break down preventing harshness and that mowed lawn stink of dried to fast weed.. Living in a very low humidity zone this showed up in my grow right off the bat with grassy smelling weed that smoked like liquid fire.. All that work down the drain.. --------------------------------- I just posted this on another thread so I'll cross post it here for your enjoyment.. leagalAlaska, on 17 Nov 2015 - 08:13 AM, said: < blockquote class="ipsBlockquote built" data-author="leagalAlaska" data-time="1447776815" data-cid="22166544"><cite class="ipb" style="display: none;" contenteditable="false">leagalAlaska, on 17 Nov 2015 - 08:13 AM, said:</cite>Over the last year or so I've had few successful harvests. I'm really working on my cure. It's really dry where I live in Alaska. The moisture just isn't in the air. I purchased a small humidifier to try to raise humidity in my drying room. I read that a dry should take 7-10 days. Usually mine are crispy with stems snapping in as low as 3-5. Then I move to mason jars, I burp them regularly about once a day for 5-10 minutes. No one has ever complained about my buds, most say it's the smoothest they have had and great flavor. I think I still need to get it better though. Is it drying too fast? And is it affecting the cure? Also I always do a wet trim because I fine it to be the best way to trim. Down side to that is it dries faster, the more materiel I have the slower it dries. Any advice welcome! < /blockquote> Your up against the same wall I was here in Southern California.. We get a local wind condition called a Santa Ana that blasts super dry desert air over the basin and out to sea.. The humidity drops into the single numbers and it was turning all my great smelling harvests to grassy smelling shit for the most part.. Even extended time in jars wasn't helping.. It took me a while but I did figure it out and your on the right track.. Slow dry was the key I needed.. I wet trim as it's the best way to get all the crap off with every leaf standing tall.. Even a few minutes wait and they wilt more then I like.. So keep on trimming just seconds off the living plant.. It's the hang you have to shorten to just a day or 2.. I hang till the pop corn stiffens up.. Not the stem the Buds.. Play squeeze the Charmin with it and do NOT let it get to dry.. Think of it like cooking meat.. To done is just that and you can't un-cook that lovely steak.. Can't un-dry that cannabis either.. Below 55 % humidity all curing process stop and won't restart.. It's a one time deal with no do-overs.. My dirty hippy trim as my friend TTS calls it.. I'm old and don't have the hand for endless trimming and I'll hash 90% of it anyhow.. hot dry garage hang only until the small stuff stiffens up.. 1 or 2 days most of the time but it can go longer if the humidity is high.. While it's still on the very wet side I'll either glove and yank strip or snip off all the buds with grape scissors.. It all gets placed in cut down paper shopping bags.. This lets me move it rapidly back and forth between the cans I use to slow the dry and the top of the washer and dryer I use during the day.. The humidity jumped back up and this group spent about a day on the screen to firm up.. After just about 6 hours it went back in the bags and in the can for the night.. I bought a couple of new trash cans for this and I try and size the can to the load.. I have an Ice Chest I use for smaller runs.. I use several humidity gauges as they tend to be wildly off .. 2 or 3 of them and average the read.. I'll either dig in and fluff the buds up by hand or dump them into another bag to keep things stirred up and drying evenly Your target is 65% after about 7 days.. Then I pack in 1/2 gallon mason jars with a 60 gram size.. 62 % humidity.. Boveda pack.. And your done.. It's perfectly dried to the exactly cure range and the Boveda packs insure it stays on the mark.. No need to play the open and burp game with the jars.. Just what I've worked out here on the Brass Pharm.. Your local conditions may need to tweak this as no two zones dry alike.. Shopping bags and Trash cans FTMFW.. Sorry but it did take a while and I plain ruined a ton of smoke figuring it out.. ============================================== You really have to tailor the dry stage to your local conditions and make the judgment call on when to take it off the line and start slowing things. Sooner is better, Skate closer to mold then to dry. You can always dry more the next day but you can't un-dry it if you forget it for a day. Can ruin it all in a few hours at least here in drys-ville it will Hope that gives you a clue to what's going on with your harvest. BNW
Thank you for the response. I will remove the fan next time even though it wasn't blowing directly on the buds. I'm wondering if drying the buds on the screen for a week removed too much moisture before the cure process. Maybe leaving them on the branch will while on the screen will make an improvement
Yeah and your temp is too high as well. Aim for 65-69 degrees and humidity around 60-70. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Cheap hydrometer will really help curing. U want between 55 and 65 rh. Once u seal jar and humidity is within these numbers u will not mold. So I dry my stuff for 3 or so days and then start putting it into Tupperware and shutting the lid to see where your Rh is why don't you can keep it below 65 and at least 55 you can seal the jar without worrying about the mold. I've always said that a lot of things are wives tales to me leaving your bud in the dark for 2 days Etc. If your bud doesn't smell good right when you cut it it generally isn't going to smell good later. If you really want the smell you got to push it to 25% to 40% ambering Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
Listen to BnW he knows his stuff. I’ll add that a 3 week cure is kind short and that I bet if you jar your harvest in air tight containers you will continue to see (smell) improvement.
Does bud dry out at all during the cure process or does the moisture just get spread evenly throughout the buds?
I did, but now that you mention it I made the dumb mistake of adjusting Ph BEFORE adding nutes and not after. I would hate to know what the Ph level truly was. However, I'm not sure if that would affect smell or taste after harvest considering they smelt great when they were cut
Well if you don't flush or don't do it well enough (I had to flush a plant for 2 weeks straight once). Those unused nutes can soak up into the buds and make a harsher smoke. The quickness of the dry, the quality of the drying, RH and all can have an impact on the final product. Did you add any sugars or anything during the grow like molasses? Sometimes people do this to increase resin and taste. I would suggest also using a different dirt or setup just so you can rule it out. There are a lot of wonderful organic dirts that make it so you never have to give nutes. Just ph'd water and light the entire grow. Maybe give that a try, see if the taste is better. Some people just have a preference of taste basted on the grow medium as well. There are a lot of things you can do for taste. Pretty much everything can affect it. Best bet is to give it a super long cure. I hope this helps.
I didn't use any sugars but I'm thinking about making a dry/cure journal for my next harvest. The "practice harvest" was only 2.5 oz but I'm expecting over a lb for this upcoming one. I would hate to ruin that much bud! The temps are dropping here so I will avoid temp issues while drying and this time I will actually monitor the RH. Shooting for the 7/70/70% I've read about
A somewhat harsh, not a smooth taste that doesn't make you want to "smack" your mouth around to continue to taste it (if that makes sense lol). The smell is improving slightly but not much. I have also noticed that I can smell it through the turkey bag which makes me think it's not airtight. The buds are still a little bendable, but if I leave the bag sitting open I swear it gains moisture. When I get home today I'm going to check the RH of the room I'm planning on drying it in. I had a fan in there last time, not on the buds, but close. Considering it's a small bathroom I'm thinking that was too much. I'm also thinking the buds were too dry (below 60%) when I started the cure process
I should also add that I live in the southeast where it's super humid and the temps are now just finally cooling off. My AC would struggle to keep it 75 a few weeks back, so I assume the room it was being dried in was at 75 if not 76 or so
A long slow dry that doesn't let the surface get bone dry is the secret to great smell and taste in the finished product. Once the bud goes dry any of that will not cure further and the chlorophyll will still be there. I was using small boxes lined with wax paper and taking up to 5 weeks to get it dry enough to be able to jar and burp for another month before it was dry enough to smoke tho still too moist to grind up in a hand grinder. My last crop I just used doubled paper bags and for the first few days would dump out each bag in a tray to air dry for 30 min or so in my cool, 55F, basement with RH around 65%. 10 - 12 days and they were ready for jars and the results were as good as boxing and a lot less labour intensive. I also trim fresh off the plant taking only as much as I can trim in about an hour so the sugar leaves are easier to get at. I bought a TrimPro Unplugged about a year ago and it's useless for fresh bud but would likely work OK with bud that has been hung to dry as the fresh buds just get the bud leaves glued to the buds. I plant to experiment with hanging branches in a controlled environment to prolong the dry to around 10 days to see if the trimmer will do a decent job with those buds as my arthritis makes hand trimming a tortuous chore that I despise. This is some of the OG#18 I cropped and dried using the paper bag method. Came out pretty good. I gave samples to 3 different dispensaries in Kelowna, BC when I was out there in August for a month and they all gave it top marks. Nothing like that up here in northern Alberta so it was nice to get a professional assessment as my few friends are basically non-growing stoners who just want to get blazed, buy shitty street pot that I think is bug-sprayed garbage but it messes them up and that's all they care about. That sux. Get an error message so I can't post the pic. Uploads OK then disappears. Likely a TOR thing. I think that's why I stopped hanging out here. Won't play nice with TOR.