Growing weed doesn’t end with harvesting. Every grower knows that. While the growing phase takes the most time and effort, harvesting ushers you into another delicate procedure— drying, and later curing. It is through drying and curing that the weed gets its distinct taste and aroma.
Essential to retaining the terpenes, flavonoids, and cannabinoids, drying and curing must be done in ideal conditions. One of the requirements needed for proper drying is darkness— the dry room has to be dark to stop photosynthesis, which degrades your weed.
When your weed is exposed to light in the drying room, the light degrades the THC, making your buds less potent.
If you’re new to drying and curing, you should check this complete guide to drying and curing cannabis. It should set you on course to getting the best out of your buds after harvesting.
Table of Contents
How Dark Should a Drying Room Be?
Keep your drying room pitch dark if you can. No light should infiltrate the drying room because the plant will still want to stay green (even after being cut) and continue photosynthesis. This will degrade cannabinoids— especially THC. Darkness also helps reduce chlorophyll, making your weed smooth when you smoke.
Also, keep the temperature at 20°Celcious and humidity between 45%-60%. These conditions dry your buds slowly without losing terpenes and cannabinoids to evaporation and also keep your buds safe from bugs.
Why A Drying Room, In the First Place?
Cannabis, like most herbs lose potency when exposed to
harsh environmental factors. Worse, you can lose your yield to mold infestation if you dry your weed in wrong conditions. A dry room helps you to keep ideal conditions for drying weed.
When you understand the requirements for properly drying weed, you will easily tweak the room conditions for maximum benefits.
The aim of having a drying room is to slowly dry the harvested flowers for a given period (usually between 10 to 14 days). Slow drying is best as the buds don’t lose their rich components to evaporation. However, drying shouldn’t be too slow as you risk getting mold and bugs with a slight change in humidity and temperature levels.
Drying weed in sunlight is not recommended as it lowers the quality of weed and makes it harsh when you smoke. Oven, hot air fans, and microwaves also destroy your buds, thus not an option when you need quality buds.
Conditions for A Perfect Dry Room
Proper drying isn’t only about getting rid of the moisture; it’s also about potentiating the buds. When your dry room is in perfect condition, your weed’s taste, aroma, and potency will improve. Here are the ideal conditions for a dry room;
Temperature
You should maintain a temperature of around 20 degrees Celsius in the first three days of the drying process to make the buds lose water and avoid mold. After three days, you should lower the temperatures to about 17-18 degrees Celsius to slow down the process and prevent the cannabinoids and terpenes from evaporating.
Humidity
Air Circulation
There should be enough air circulation in the room. Circulating the air in the drying room helps in maintaining a consistent environment for your buds. When you choose to use a fan, please do not point it directly to the buds as this will make them dry too fast, resulting in harsh smokes.
Darkness
The drying room should be relatively dark to avoid the degradation of THC by light. As the weed plants are left to die on the vine and hang up in the dry room, keeping the room dark will drain the chlorophyll from the buds, leaving behind terpene-rich aromatic flowers.
Sanitation
The drying room is like a kitchen and should thus be sanitary to avoid contamination. Since the buds are the core of the weed plant and are consumed by various methods, they should be treated with great care. Keeping the dry room clean also prevents pests from invading it. Pests such as spider mites are known to cause significant damage to buds.
Proper Equipment
The drying process is only as efficient as the equipment used. Therefore, the right industrial tools for the job can go a long way in the drying process. You can invest in drying racks and tray racks, depending on the space available in the drying room.
In Conclusion
The drying process plays a considerable role in enhancing the quality of your buds. Keep the drying room conditions in check and invest in the right equipment for the drying and curing phase if you want to get the best potency from your buds. Most importantly, keep the dry room as dark as you can to stop photosynthesis and THC degradation.
