Drying... but in a perfect world.

BreezeEazy

BreezeEazy

Well-known member
I dont plan on this thread being the typical drying and harvesting thread. My curiousity is, in a perfect world where money wasn't a concern and quality was, or perhaps its a large scale licensed grow, what would be the ideal setup?

Would a humidor type room be ideal? A room constructed using interior walls, sealed except air exchanges, neutral scented woods or stainless steel. Then the obvious, tempature control, and the ability to control and regulate rh as accurately and stable as possible with a means of adding or removing humidity?

Guess I'm just curious how they do it on a large scale with as much consistency as possible. Id imagine that is very crucial in this game.
 
Interesting.....this is gonna be a good thread. IMO the dry/cure is as important as the growing process. I have a very specific way of doing this with no shortcuts. Will grab a chair and watch the different techniques and share my thoughts.
 
Docgreenstone said:
60*F @ 60% r/h for 2 weeks in a sealed room (using common drywall) with a Quest 105 dehumidifier.
Click to expand...


Different strokes for different folks.....Dehumidifier....lol not in Colorado. Just the opposite.

I start the room at 60% and slowly let it drop to 50%. When the branches start to snap....time for a dry trim... 7 to 9 days in my room. Temp at a constant 60f.
 
Yep, sealed room, drywall, AC and a humidifier, were usually 40% humidity around here so a little mist helps. Try and keep between 50/60f.

Use to hang Ina room and let er go, but dryer to quick around here. Really like the cold room dry, gives you time to trim, and if it's getting to dry just add moisture. Really sweet for doing your own trimming even with 50lb+ harvest. Saves a ton not having a trim crew.
 
Im in the dry climate too so my situation is different than a dehuey. But thats why i bring this up. In the big leagues, are they using controlled rooms to get a consistent dry and cure for quality control?
 
From what I understood, not many where into the dry/cure, rather a faster trim and dry stage so it could get to market.
Over time I guess some have changed and a cure is more desired, even if it is a simple short one.

I converted my vegy box into a drying/hanging box with input/output fans and it worked well the first time around, winter so cooler temps and higher RH, and had to add heat at times to keep up near 60f.... Should have trimmed off fan leaf first and all might have went real well.

So yes, the general dry room should be sealed off from others, have input/output controlled air flow, with the ability to be hot or cold air coming in, and at the same time a humidifier or dehumidifier if required, usually it is either or but rarely both, unless you have a state like NV, sometimes RH is high, but most is a dry air around the state.

When all is set up correctly and the amount for the area has been figured out, all goes like clock work with very little effort on our part, until trim time and all that.

It would be awesome to have the $ to have sensors and all that turning things on and off according to what all has been set at.

Have to agree, growing is one stage, hanging and drying is another, and than there is the cure stage. This is how I have always looked at it, as I love my fine cured bud over dried shit.
:puffpuffpass:
 
Rushing it to Market.. easiest way to screw up months worth of hard work..

I had a swamp buddy who used to grow 15-20lbs of Hashplant at a time.. he had a decent crop when he was done, a little too much chemical for me though, pushing the PPM as high as possible, short flush, spraying for bugs... nothing organic, all about bigger and more..

Then to take the trimmed buds, spread them out on screens and place dehumidifiers a few inches below the screen firing directly upward into all the buddage.. then come boo hooing to me that nobody wants his weed.. pulls out a huge bud..

I get it because patience used to be a big problem for me, but I slowly learned.. I grow all organic and always have .. drying for me is the old fashion way.. darkness, slight air movement and 10 days min to dry... Jar up while not smoking... for that nice cure.

People would crap if they seen how I dry my weed, really... in a dresser drawer. LOL :yum: Using wire drying racks I got out of an old fridge keeps them off the drawer bottoms... rotate them every 2 days, walla...

Large scale I hear they run dehumidifiers while it hangs in the barn... true story
 
Yeah, in the old days I can agree with that Cartman. No one wanted to just having weight sitting around when it was illegal.

It is probably only a matter of time realhigh before people start doing this since it is a crucial stage. I'm wondering how well a small humidor like the cigar people use will be worth the R&D. Get an oasis humidifier and a wine cooler that cools using a compressor. Just made me think after visiting the local cigar shop and being in their humidor. It is like a 2-3' wide by 6-8' long with a ceiling fan in it and a humidifier over the fan. I checked their levels right before the humidifier came on and their room was at 64% rh. Could probably dry a lot of weed in this room lol.
 
Home depot

Home depot sells these - Hmmmmmm?????:cigar2:
 

Attachments

  • Viagrow 2 ft. x 2 ft. Ultimate Herb Dryer Jr.-VHD1 - The Home Depot.pdf
    168.9 KB · Views: 16
I used to use an old cab in a similar way for drying years ago. Used to grow in the cab itself but when I expanded it was just sitting around so I threw an exhaust fan in it that pumped the air to a small 4in Carbon Filters.
It worked pretty good...the better it's sealed, the better it works. I was actually in Western NY at the time and even though the outdoor humidity was always pretty high, it was always very dry inside with the heater running which left me with a perfect drying environment. I think it used to only take about 4-5 days for the stems to snap.

I don't think I'd ever spend my $ on a box with a screen and fan/filter...I think u could definitely DIY or get a friend to do it imo. Most of the small scale dry boxes are just very simple components but with a high price tag.

Anyways, best of luck with whatever you choose. Take care and stay safe

guerilla
 
If you really want to learn curing tech dig into tobacco curing / processing. They have been doing it LEGALLY for hundreds of years and it's basically a perfected art..... obviously not all things apply but tobacco is leaf matter same as bud..... difference is the color that the product ends up after processing..... tobacco is done over years, where herb obviously is a bit more condensed time frame..... but I think most of the basic concepts apply..... a lot of work is done to move product around in groups / bales which is similar in function to how we've been trained to bag our weed after it gets "dryish" so that it can re-moisturize / cure to where all of the product in the bag is at the same moisture levels and can then be stored more long term some people use humidors etc.....

Prob is that tobacco is mostly grown on the east coast, and curing operations are done in humidity / air flow controlled barns....

To store quality cigars one uses a SPANISH CEDAR lined room / humidor. Spanish cedar is used because it does not transfer it's odor to the tobacco like other woods do. It is the preferred wood for any storage of anything someone plans on smoking imo. It's how I prefer to store my bud as well. A cheap trick some people use is they'll buy a decent sized cooler and some cigar boxes. Line the cooler with cigar boxes (spanish cedar) and procure some kind of a humidifier for the cooler.... as mentioned earlier those Brovada packs work great..... but since we grow weed here we might also have some rockwool laying around, which also works great as a humidifier and is CHEAP AS FUCK.

The drying racks are great for the first steps, but assuming a guy can grab the buds off the rack before they get TOO dry, the most important part is what happens later in the jar.

I think if there's any question about how dry the bud is, it's better that bud gets bagged / jarred a little early than too late..... can always open the jar to let it dry some more, but you can't easily re-moisten that bud to promote a cure.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy blathering, but I think the tobacco guys got the shit down, and if we don't care to look into how they have been doing things we'll end up just learning the same lessons they did the hard way.

My humidors are at 65-70% RH, this is a curing humidity not drying. if you want to dry your bud you will probably want it a bit lower than that, and if you want it to not dry so quickly bale that shit together (make piles) before the larger buds dry out too much..... imo it's all about spreading the moisture.

anyway, good luck sirs.

THC
 
Fairly easy to cure small indoor grows, most all of us cure in jars. What are you guys doing to cure a large outdoor harvest?

I've always used the large contractor bags, 5lbs per bag. Burp um, roll um around each day. If to damp I just leave um open and every once in awhile roll um. Has worked real well for me. Used to always put um in a bin, but to move the bud around was kinda a pita. The contractor bags make it a lot easier.
 
Ah yes THC, pretty much on the same lines as I was getting at. Don't remember the name but a guy on a forum was pretty particular about drying. He suggested a slant barn like in Virgina or Cuba as the ideal tobacco environment.

Was hoping with a walk in humidor type setup, if you're able to control the environment, then you could also tweak it for low RH for the first couple days of drying, then bump it up in the later days to slow it down. But most importantly small bud or big bud, they should be able to be left in the room together until both are ready for the jars. Say if you set the room at 63%. Kind of like hang to dry and forget about it, while being consistent.

*****

Went through my bookmarks and found the thread with the slant barn and the guy talking about the biosynthesis.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=221090&page=4
 
Last edited:
I use sterilite type containers now and put whole branches in for the first part. Once mostly dry but not stem snapping dry we trim and take the buds off the stems.
The buds then go into a 5 gal bucket with a gamma air tight lid. It basically turns it into a 5 gallon ball jar ;) .I try to take everything out and put the buds from the top on the bottom and vice versa every 1-2 days until it's where I want it to be. Bare minimum I pop the tops off and burp them periodically.

I highly recommend food safe buckets and those gamma seal lids for larger amounts.

Take care

guerilla
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top