Increase Potency during curing?

[n3mp0]

I know this is a very basic question, but it's my first grow and I'd like to prevent this next time and it seems like everyone's opinion's different. So, I came to you guys!

I air dried my bud for about a 2 weeks. (I smoked it and the taste was horrible. Kinda taste like chemicals.) Then put them in a jar for two weeks and burped once everyday for 10 minutes. I smoked it again on day 14 and the taste was a lot better, (smelled still like hay), but I wasn't high.

Am I screwed? Some forums seem to recommend burping more often. Like every 1hr for 10 minutes and continue to do it for months to get the THC levels higher.

Agree? Disagree?

 

[labexperiment]

Recently had the same issue with hay smell and no high. This may be related to genetics, but I do not know for sure.

The chemical taste is due to a lack of flushing time before harvest.

Burping more or less in a day will not affect the THC portion of the cannabis, burping helps to regulate the RH in the jars by allowing fresh air to circulate, this also helps with reducing the chance of moulds. Although I do not know the science behind this next statement it seems to be generally accepted knowledge, the longer cannabis cures the better the taste up to a point where it just will not taste any better. A general consensus on this time frame seems to be around 8 months to a year. Again this is just from general reading and no serious research into why cannabis seems to become more tasty with time.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

All the weed I grow is potent right after it is dry, no curing at all. Curing doesn't seem to change anything but the smell and flavor.

I've learned that hay smell is caused mainly by not flushing well. Stop using nutes for at least a week. Then water with just water. You can do a quick flush too. Use florakleen and keep pouring water through until the run off has about the same ppm as the plane water your put in. Then let it grow in that medium for a week or two.

I found that any sugar, even brown sugar helps the flavor if you feed it sugar while you are flushing.

Unfortunately, if your weed isn't getting you high, then no curing will make it get you high.

 

[Brick Top]

Cannabis produces phyto cannabinoids in a carboxylic acid form that are not orally active at least at the CB-1 receptor sites, because they don’t readily pass the blood brain barrier in their polar form. To enable them to pass the blood brain barrier, they must first be decarboxylated, to remove the COOH carboxyl group of atoms, which exits in the form of H20 and CO2.

Decarboxylation occurs naturally with time and temperature, both functions of drying. That period of time can be shortened considerably, by adding heat but that can speed up the degradation of THC transforming it into unwanted CBN. Be it by very long curing or by adding heat you don't want more than 70% decarboxylation to occur before the herb is smoked. More than that and a considerable amount of THC will be lost to unwanted CBN. But heat is of course involved in the smoking/burning or vaporizing of cannabis so that is why even freshly harvested cannabis will be potent. The heat of burning or vaporizing removes/separates the carboxyl group.

If someone cures long enough decarboxylation will occur naturally but it is a very long very slow process so unless someone cures for a very long time the most they will get from curing, when it comes to THCA changing to THC, is partial decarboxylation. The rest occurs when smoked or vaporized.

 

[HeartWW]

Brick Top for President !

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Bricktop, that is interesting. I guess then when you make edibles, it is the cooking/heat that does that process, so the edibles get you high.

 

[Brick Top]

Bricktop, that is interesting. I guess then when you make edibles, it is the cooking/heat that does that process, so the edibles get you high.

Correct. Eat an ounce of freshly harvested weed and all you'll get is a lot of roughage and a stomach ache but bake it into brownies and you'll get high. Same principal is involved with extractions etc. The heat involved in making them causes decarboxylation to occur.

 

[Conradino23]

Ok, let me chime in. Long curing done right definitely raises potency, but you need at least 6-9 months to tell the difference. That's when weed peaks from my experience. Ah and I never flushed in my life, but the taste is always decent at least, but that depends always on genetics!!!

 

[Brick Top]

Ok, let me chime in. Long curing done right definitely raises potency, but you need at least 6-9 months to tell the difference. That's when weed peaks from my experience. Ah and I never flushed in my life, but the taste is always decent at least, but that depends always on genetics!!!

That is both true and not true depending on if you are referring "potency" alone, as in the effects felt when smoked, or potency as in an increase in the percentage of THC. When harvested there is not a great deal of THC but instead mostly THCA which either over a long period of time by heating it or by smoking it, becomes THC, but no additional THCA or THC is created during a cure, there is no increase, only a transformation from being one chemical element into being another chemical element. The toal combined percentage will remain the same unless conditions are such that THC is allowed to degrade into CBN and then the overall percentage of THCA/THC would decrease.

Once the plant is harvested it is dead and there can be no increase in amounts of psychoactive elements since all production of the needed chemical elements has stopped. There can only be transformation of whatever amount of elements are already in the trichomes. The heat of smoking or vaporizing will fully decarboxylate even freshly harvested herb's THCA into THC.

Where some claim the increase in potency actually can be found is in the changes that take place in terpenes and phenols and how they then interact with the THCA/THC/CBD (and THCV if the strain grown has THCV) compared to how they interact with THCA/THC/CBD (and THCV) when freshly harvested herb is smoked or short cured herb is smoked ... and also likely the influence of other lesser known and less understood members of the various cannabinoids cannabis produces that we hardly if ever read or hear anything about and how they transform over long periods of time and in doing so altering the effect they have on a high or a stone or combination of both which could factor into an increase in the overall effect.



While it might sound like I was disagreeing with you I actually wasn't. It was more a case of saying what and why and not that it doesn't happen.

I think when I first experienced the difference a long cure makes was way back when Nevils Haze was new. I thought I had smoked all I had but some period of time over a year later I found one more jar of it and it was more potent than what had received roughly a three to four month cure that at the time I believed to be a long curing period.

So yes, a very long cure will make a difference but the difference is not found in what many believe to be the reason behind it.

 

[Conradino23]

Yeah, I was referring to subjective potency as THC content obviously cannot be raised after plant is chopped. You've explained it very well, so there's nothing else for me to do but pass the