Why cure so long?

Those caliber 3's are sick. How much are they? Wouldn't you kind of need a lot of those for an average harvest? Is there anything cheaper?

Beansly said:

Those caliber 3's are sick. How much are they? Wouldn't you kind of need a lot of those for an average harvest? Is there anything cheaper?

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Yes. And smaller. Check out humidor monitors. I have several that are a round disk, about the size of a silver dollar, thick as a 20oz cap, that have a sticky backing that affixes to the inside of my jar lids. I put one in a single jar of each strain curing, they work very well. Simple but effective. I'm a little too lazy to provide a link at the moment, I blame the Kush.

They are like $16 apeice. I think once you get the feel for the cure you'll end up using them to just double check.

ebay has them

I bought 6 of them on ebay. Got them for around 12 a piece.

I'm going to try the drowning method on half of the current crop to see if there is something to the anaerobic on plant fermentation process. Seems like a failsafe method to guarantee that you won't end up with harsh smoke.

The difference between commercial and medical is that the medical users actually know what proper high quality weed tastes and smokes like.

IMO, one of the main causes of harsh versus smooth smoke is the plant material's content - tars, terpenes, cannabanoids and other "stuff".

If you dried out your herb too much, try leaving a piece of fresh apple in the container or do what I do and flick some water off your wet hand. I try to do everything using the KISS principle.

Uncle Ben said:

IMO, one of the main causes of harsh versus smooth smoke is the plant material's content - tars, terpenes, cannabanoids and other "stuff".

If you dried out your herb too much, try leaving a piece of fresh apple in the container or do what I do and flick some water off your wet hand. I try to do everything using the KISS principle.

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This is true, but I can take an oz of whatever I've just harvested, dry half normally without any cure time, and dry/cure the other half for 1+ month and there will be no comparison which smokes smoother. I've tried this many times, with many strains (trying to find a decent balance of time vs. quality) and I always arrive at the same conclusion.

Ditto. I have also read that while trying to reconstitute your too dry weed will make it damper, your opportunity to cure the bid through fermentation and convertion of nitrates is gone and there is no way to get it back. No I didn't do a controlled laboratory study where I purposely over dried half of my crop, but I did let some if my crop hang too long, it got too dry and anything I tried would not bring the aroma and taste of properly cured bud.

When it comes to curing leaf, go to the experts, the people who have done it best for the longest - the Cigar maker. Cigar manufacturers cure their leaves as long as several years. They control the moisture content of the leaf letting it fall off very very slowly. Sometimes they ferment the leaf in order to get a sweet flavor from the tobacco. But the short of it is that they do not simply dry the leaf and then let it sit somewhere - as Brick says, nothing happens if the material is dry. On the other hand, tobacco is not cannabis and I don't know what years of fermenting would do to the potency and activity of the magic in the plant.

I have been a fan of exotic cures for about 30 years now. It started when I got a great deal of authentic Columbian gold. It was the most wonderful smoke I had come across and I got to know the people who were responsible for it. It seems that they took their entire plants, laid them 2 or 3 plants deep and covered them in a tarp in the sun. Each day they would rotate the plants and let them air out for a bit. Finally they let it dry and trimmed it. This stuff was a butter gold and the taste and smoke was just as "Buttery", there is no other way to describe it. The high was uplifting and wonderfully vibrant.

Another worth recounting was a cache of what they called "chamba". This was a dark, almost black-green moist "wad" of plant matter wrapped in a large leaf that was spongy on one side and slick on the other. They came in bundles of several ounces each. The smoke was smooth and darkly fragrant. Earthy, leathery. The high was deeply disturbing, some found it highly pleasurable and some were frightened of it. Many believed it was tainted with some other hallucinatory substance but I don't think so. I cannot recount the particulars of this cure except from hearsay as I never met the growers. It was said that the plant was bundled, then partially dried and then wrapped in this leaf and buried. For how long I do not know. I have managed to somewhat duplicate the appearance of this "chamba" by using a hot water bath cure but of course the high was not even close to the same.

For my $0.02...I agree about the Caliber III's...fucking awesome! Easy, foolproof method of curing, so easy a noob like me could do it! Or a caveman..

I also agree that we should look to the cigar/cigarette industries for truly tried and true tested methods of drying and properly curing plant matter. It makes sense if you think about it...

X

Well the fermenting idea sounds really good to me and makes sense if you look at the chemistry behind it. I was planning on throwing everything in a box for about 3 days and letting it heat up and ferment but what I am really worried about is what the buds are going to end up looking like. My excess meds go out for donation and it is a very very competitive market. Even if you dry on a rack or screen your buds get that flat side to them. What is going to happen if I throw them in a big pile?

Ahhh the Cuervo Gold, the fine Columbian....

Those were the days, back in the 70's it was the best, always wondered what that aroma was, just thought is came from the boards of the tractor trailers it came up on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAHQ-9Fniac

Screw it just click on the link

legallyflying said:

Well the fermenting idea sounds really good to me and makes sense if you look at the chemistry behind it. I was planning on throwing everything in a box for about 3 days and letting it heat up and ferment but what I am really worried about is what the buds are going to end up looking like. My excess meds go out for donation and it is a very very competitive market. Even if you dry on a rack or screen your buds get that flat side to them. What is going to happen if I throw them in a big pile?

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Check out this link, I can't find the one where Franco talks about pressing several whole plants together into a box so that some of the trichomes rupture but it was interesting. If you happen to have access to the Big Book of Buds 4, Franco has a detailed write-up about it.

http://www.strainhunters.com/portal/content/harvest-and-curing

Wolverine97 said:

Check out this link, I can't find the one where Franco talks about pressing several whole plants together into a box so that some of the trichomes rupture but it was interesting. If you happen to have access to the Big Book of Buds 4, Franco has a detailed write-up about it.

http://www.strainhunters.com/portal/content/harvest-and-curing

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Yeah great, that link starts off by saying do all the things that we just said are not necessary (flushing) Sigghhh. You think all this shit would have been determined by now. I mean, are people debating on some tobacco forum the best way to post harvest process. I'm going to smash them all together in a big loaf and stick them in the oven. This is after my "lawn mower trim".

legallyflying said:

Yeah great, that link starts off by saying do all the things that we just said are not necessary (flushing) Sigghhh. You think all this shit would have been determined by now. I mean, are people debating on some tobacco forum the best way to post harvest process. I'm going to smash them all together in a big loaf and stick them in the oven. This is after my "lawn mower trim".

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Well, I've always been a flusher (straight water anyway, I don't flush with mass quantity of h2o) myself. I do notice a difference in the ash color if I don't. I only do about a week or so, depending on the strain and pot size, but I think it's still necessary. I don't flush to the point of dropping/severe yellowing leaves, but I do like to see a lighter color green by the time I chop.

lol, KISS....go organic, dont have to flush.

the premise is simple but us humans make it complicated: weed naturally grows in the soil, organically, the way nature intended.
there shouldnt even be a debate about flushing...the only way to grow is organic.

if you grow in water/air & load your buds up with chemicals, how natural is that? of course id want to flush out all that unnatural shit before i put it in my lungs. But honestly, i dont even consider anything like chems when I grow...its unnatural, contrived by humans, and essentially wrong..its not the way mother nature intended.

go organic, water a few times, dry ur bud up and smoke that shit down.......you wont go wrong, and youll consider yourself a fool for even considering that chemmed buds was the way to go.

end of debate for me. flame me all anyone wants, but i will only say to them: grow out the same cloned strain in organic and with chem nutes, and then compare the overall growing matrix and sum it up with your smoke report. Organic will win every time in a blind taste test, hands down, in categories of ease of growing, cost of growing, quality of buds, flavor, appeal and more.

chems and hydro, it is my belief, is a sad attempt at growing cannabis, originally contrived by black market dealers trying to gain the maximum amount of yield at the most effective cost to initiate a steady flow of business. if weed were 100% legal, everyone would be growing organically(to the best of their ability), after realizing the beauty and difference compared to other elements of growing.

hope i didnt make anybody too mad...and if i did, oh well, its only my opinion, and hope you can respect it as that.

Snafu1236 said:

lol, KISS....go organic, dont have to flush.

the premise is simple but us humans make it complicated: weed naturally grows in the soil, organically, the way nature intended.
there shouldnt even be a debate about flushing...the only way to grow is organic.

if you grow in water/air & load your buds up with chemicals, how natural is that? of course id want to flush out all that unnatural shit before i put it in my lungs. But honestly, i dont even consider anything like chems when I grow...its unnatural, contrived by humans, and essentially wrong..its not the way mother nature intended.

go organic, water a few times, dry ur bud up and smoke that shit down.......you wont go wrong, and youll consider yourself a fool for even considering that chemmed buds was the way to go.

end of debate for me. flame me all anyone wants, but i will only say to them: grow out the same cloned strain in organic and with chem nutes, and then compare the overall growing matrix and sum it up with your smoke report. Organic will win every time in a blind taste test, hands down, in categories of ease of growing, cost of growing, quality of buds, flavor, appeal and more.

chems and hydro, it is my belief, is a sad attempt at growing cannabis, originally contrived by black market dealers trying to gain the maximum amount of yield at the most effective cost to initiate a steady flow of business. if weed were 100% legal, everyone would be growing organically(to the best of their ability), after realizing the beauty and difference compared to other elements of growing.

hope i didnt make anybody too mad...and if i did, oh well, its only my opinion, and hope you can respect it as that.

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LOL. I am organic, a have a few test/experimental plants that are in soil-less, but yeah. I still give straight h2o for the last week or so. I understand all of the arguments for and against perfectly. Thanks though...

lol i know you do wolverine, that wasnt intended at you...i was more atleast ranting from this tiresome debate about to flush or not to flush. ive been watching you wolv, you do things right homie

edit: my preference for last week or so is straight water myself. i try to use a complete soil mix in big pots(7gal or more usually), so typically since sprout i water straight water till the last week before harvest.

Snafu1236 said:

lol i know you do wolverine, that wasnt intended at you...i was more atleast ranting from this tiresome debate about to flush or not to flush. ive been watching you wolv, you do things right homie

edit: my preference for last week or so is straight water myself. i try to use a complete soil mix in big pots(7gal or more usually), so typically since sprout i water straight water till the last week before harvest.

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Word. It just seems to burn cleaner for me. I hate to admit it, but over the past few years especially, I've learned a lot more from Subcool than I had in the previous ten. My smoke is now a much nicer finished product, and burns very very clean. I really notice it the most when I smoke other people's pot, I'm getting really snobby about it, which kinda sucks, in a way.

edit: my grow is small enough that using large pots of soil isn't such a big deal (legal medical grow), since I've become legal (only grew tomaters before, of course) I've really experimented with different approaches and I think I've reached the final destination.

Uhh ooh. Here comes the righteous organic post. Two words about that: FUCK ORGANIC. My buds dont pass through my diestuve tract nor do they contain any pesticides or other nasty shit. Are some of the nutrients derived directly from minerals? YES. Is this some how inferior to organic? NO


Somehow you missed the point though in your organic rant. So if your organic you don't have to dry or cure your product? Huh that's weird as here I was thinking the plants were the same. I didnt know that organic plants don't have chlorophyl, nitrogen and minerals stored in they tissues

I guess I stand corrected.