Actual curing? Minimum six weeks or so (others' answers will undoubtedly vary), maximum being however long circumstances allow the product to remain untouched, lol. A year is not unheard of by any means; this may be overkill, IDK. I once heard someone say that the best thing a person could do to make their curing process go correctly would be to harvest enough initially that they could stay at least two grows ahead. IOW, you're currently smoking what you harvested two grows ago, while the two newer harvests... are safely put away, curing. There almost certainly is a useful maximum as far as curing goes. But I doubt the average bud ever sees that. A surprisingly large "sh!t-ton" of cannabis is sold when it is still green (curing is a biological process that, among other things, converts much of the plant material's chlorophyll to sugars - which is why one can generally tell at a glance that fresh-dried cannabis hasn't been cured) and completely uncured. I suppose that is just one of many reasons why it's better to grow one's own cannabis, rather than buy it from another person.
After the moisture level of the bud reaches the "sweet spot" for curing, "burping" isn't necessary. That really ought to be considered part of the initial drying process, because it's done when one has bud that appears to be dry enough, but actually still has a high level of moisture inside. When the buds are sealed up, the moisture level in the buds tends to equalize (meaning the inner parts become slightly less moist - but at the cost of causing the (formerly drier) outer portions of the buds to gain moisture. But it's better to start with the moisture levels a little higher than optimum, if the alternative is to possibly end up initially drying the cannabis to a moisture level which is too low for curing to take place.
Some people - mostly old farts by this point, I suppose - will not really have a sharply-defined drying and curing stage. Instead, their drying will be a slow process, and some curing will have taken place by the time the buds are placed into their permanent storage containers. The downside of this is that bud that is too moist for too long can mold/rot/whatever. Indoor vs. outdoor may play a part as well (as it often can in harvesting/trimming), because of scale. A person that harvests a few ounces at a time can afford to be somewhat anal in their methods, whereas someone who harvests 25-50 plants a time, which can potentially all have over a pound of bud (dry weight) each... might not be able to justify that level of effort, err, for each and every bud.
Humidity monitors help. If you have little or no experience at drying/curing cannabis, you can always get several small containers so that you can place relatively tiny amounts into each and vary conditions slightly from one to the next, keep track of things, and determine (by sampling afterwards, of course
) which set of conditions turned out to have been the best.
After the moisture level of the bud reaches the "sweet spot" for curing, "burping" isn't necessary. That really ought to be considered part of the initial drying process, because it's done when one has bud that appears to be dry enough, but actually still has a high level of moisture inside. When the buds are sealed up, the moisture level in the buds tends to equalize (meaning the inner parts become slightly less moist - but at the cost of causing the (formerly drier) outer portions of the buds to gain moisture. But it's better to start with the moisture levels a little higher than optimum, if the alternative is to possibly end up initially drying the cannabis to a moisture level which is too low for curing to take place.
Some people - mostly old farts by this point, I suppose - will not really have a sharply-defined drying and curing stage. Instead, their drying will be a slow process, and some curing will have taken place by the time the buds are placed into their permanent storage containers. The downside of this is that bud that is too moist for too long can mold/rot/whatever. Indoor vs. outdoor may play a part as well (as it often can in harvesting/trimming), because of scale. A person that harvests a few ounces at a time can afford to be somewhat anal in their methods, whereas someone who harvests 25-50 plants a time, which can potentially all have over a pound of bud (dry weight) each... might not be able to justify that level of effort, err, for each and every bud.
Humidity monitors help. If you have little or no experience at drying/curing cannabis, you can always get several small containers so that you can place relatively tiny amounts into each and vary conditions slightly from one to the next, keep track of things, and determine (by sampling afterwards, of course
) which set of conditions turned out to have been the best.
I regard 6 weeks as a sort of minimum where I'd give it away to a friend without apologizing a lot first. I'd still probably mention that it's not fully cured. But it keeps getting better over time and there's definitely a difference between 6 month bud and 10 month bud. I usually have a fair number of jars of bud around and don't have time to burp them. I do open them to check out the bud once in a while when I get a chance, but I don't systematically try to burp anything once they've stabilized around the right RH. The little digital hygrometers are indispensable if I want to be this lazy about keeping track of all the jars. Also the Boveda packs are very handy for this.
