Ok, so I understand that if you want good buds, you gotta dry em out, then seal them in airtight jars for like a month or 2 or w/e, well, what if u dont cure em and smoke it that way?(just dry it out)
yeah you can smoke without curing, might be a bit harsh and probably won't taste as good, but it'll still get you stoned
I beg to differ if you dont cure it you lose flavor and potency. marijuana produces more chemical compounds after it has been pulled. AT this time it will not get you "high" so to speak. as it drys, heat causes the chemical compounds within the plant structure to change properties, causing it to become psychoactive. At this time the clorophill should be primarily dissipated. The clorophill bit is more of a guideline than anything, when the clophill is gone, the properties are definetly changing. the longer you take to remove moisture from cannabis, the better it will get..... I got the sweetest bud around, but if you dry it fast it's kinda harsh and nowhere near as tasty. Gotta use a jar . and like for the first week in a jar it hardly seems stony- then after awhile it kicks in. the potency seems to me, to double around this time. this is usually about two weeks from pulling it. ONly one day does it double- then it just gets gradually better. SO i would say ,at least two weeks before the properties begin to change but here - this says it better. Robert Clarke on the subject! from marijuana botany http://www.mellowgold.com/grow/mjbotany-removed/marijuanabotany4.html As floral clusters dry, and even after they are sealed and packaged, they continue to cure. Curing removes the unpleasant green taste and allows the resins and cannabinoids to finish ripening. Drying is merely the removal of water from the floral clusters so they will be dry enough to burn. Curing takes this process one step farther to produce tasty and psychoactive marijuana. If drying occurs too rapidly, the green taste will be sealed into the tissues and may remain there indefinitely. A floral cluster is not dead after harvest any more than an apple is. Certain metabolic activities take place for some time, much like the ripening and eventual spoiling of an apple after it is picked. During this period, cannabinoid acids decarboxylate into the psychoactive cannabinoids and terpenes isomerize to create new polyterpenes with tastes and aromas different from fresh floral clusters. It is suspected that cannabinoid biosynthesis may also continue for a short time after harvest. Taste and aroma also improve as chlorophylls and other pigments begin to break down. When floral clusters are dried slowly they are kept at a humidity very near that of the inside of the stomata. Alternatively, sealing and opening bags or jars or clusters is a procedure that keeps the humidity high within the container and allows the periodic venting of gases given off during curing. It also exposes the clusters to fresh air needed for proper curing. If the container is airtight and not vented, then rot from anaerobic bacteria and mold is often seen. Paper boxes breathe air but also retain moisture and are often used for curing Cannabis. Dry floral clusters are usually trimmed of outer leaves just prior to smoking. This is called manicuring. The leaves act as a wrapper to protect the delicate floral clusters. If manicured before drying, a significant increase in the rate of THC breakdown occurs.
hey tiedye, right on man. I did not mean to infer that all the other processes were not not need for the curing process as much as only wanting to focus on the chlorophyl component alone. It was my opinion that the chloro was the main component of "harhness" and I worded my opinion poorly. Sorry for that. I know of only one way of bypassing the slow decarboxylation process which is to use an extraction method of boiling fresh (but fully dried, even rapidly dried in oven or whatnot) bud and/or leaves in alcohol, adding sulfuric acid, separating the active ingredients by use of toluene and thus obtaining pure thc oil. Read this somewhere some time ago and will post the link if I can find it again.
hey b1 i wasn't trippin on you at all........... I was just on a roll this morning & have been immersed in M.J.botany a lot recently. your right as well, when the clorophill is gone, the chemicals have changed. go to overgrow.com and try a faqs search on "BHO", pretty simple really. get a tube with caps for each end, most people use glass, but i have pvc and it's fine. 1 1/2 inch pvc with female slip to male thread couplings. get two caps. one drill a tiny hole for the butane nozzle- tight enough to depress the nozzle by inserting it. the other cap drill a bunch of bigger holes- like 6 or 7 , 3/8 inch holes. stick a coffee filter in this end. pack the tube with good weed ,bud trim, or whatever you want to use. put the butane end cap on first though. when you are finished packing fill the bottom cap 1/2 way and screw it on tight . GO OUTSIDE AND just shoot butane through the extractor it comes out the filter- have a glass pan to catch it in. Then you will need to use hot water now- ONLY PRE-HEATED WATER, stay outside with the mixture. and set the BHO pan into a bigger pan of hot water. this causes the butane to boil up out of the mixture- keep stirring and heating water until the bubbles are out of it. dont let it smoke though- your water is too hot if it does. takes about five minutes to extract the bho- and about an hour to get the butane removed {depending on how much you make} I have had quite a few old school people say "I haven't seen oil like that since the 70's" I have also had a few who smoked my buds this year, mention that "so this is what it's like to get stoned again, none of the crap around here does it for me." L.O.L and i thought it was just me. ha ha ha
hey tie: believe it or not but late fall last year is when I put just such an extractor together myself. Used larger diameter pvc though (3") and found the following limiting circumstance to this method: CAN'T FIND THE DAMN BUTANE IN ANY DECENT QUANTITY. 7.8 fl oz cans @ 7 or 8 bucks apiece made it near impractical as soon as you want to process any quantity secondary material. Like I had a 5G buckett fairly tightly packed and it would consume a fortune in butane to extract it this way. So, cooking it in alcohol is the much cheaper route. now, if there were a way in which you could get in in the same volume as you get propane, you know the 4gallon/20lb tanks, that costs $12 around here and that would make that butane method much more attractive. You know of any butane bulk container sources? I did a google search once and only found them available in great britain. I think that there's no better way to get a top quality 'stone' out of your material. I think that consuming it this way (inhaling evaporated oils) also is the least irritating to our airways and avoids exposure to all those chemicals formed by burning of material to create smoke. I've devised a handy little apparatus for consuming product this way and will be happy to share details if interested. Posted it with pics once but forget now where. but the gist of this is that this is as pure and as high a high as you're gonna get. just filling your lungs full once or twice sends you reeling for 4 hrs straight before you realize you're preparing for a landing. And smooth all the way. now I am going to extract 1/3 of my sugar shack using the alcohol cook etc. and will be able to compare extracts from low quality chaff to high quality bud. Just finished first dry on th SS and will be putting it in jars and will report the weight in this post http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1100931#post1100931 b1
the recipe you speak of can be found in "cannabis alchemy".I don't remember the author. or at least it's one resonably similar utilizing alcohol and the reflux method.
Any compressed gas with a sub-zero boiling point will work for superfluid extraction. At least those in the butane/propane family.
I'm a bit confused as to weeds potency increasing with time. I always thought the fresher the weed the more potent. When smoking fresh weed you get that instant stone and after time that decreases so you still get stoned but it takes longer to come on. I always thought that super fresh weed was that powerful it is almost like a different drug. I have read many reprts from top growers recently contradicting this. All I know is after a week or two of drying after harvest if a smoke a spliff of my weed my head melts and watching other peoples reaction is more than entertaining. Obviously if it is not dried fully it won't smoke properly affecting your high but as to it doubling in strength I would never dismiss any idea but I have not found this.
I dunno about double, but it definitely does increase by a noticable margin. At 2 weeks air cured, it's pretty close to as good as it will get. After that it becomes a trade-off between THC production vs cannabinol (deteriorated THC). The reason that the potency increases is because the plant contains a large percentage of cannibanoids even at harvest. Cannabinoids convert to THC when activated with certain acids in the plant. Curing helps to activate and release (and produce) those acids and convert remaining cannabinoids into THC. I'm not exactly sure what activates the acids, but in my understanding, the acids are activated by heat and light. Unfortunately, so is the deterioration of THC. The best explanation I've seen is to compare the bud from a pot plant (the fruit) to the fruit of another plant. After you pick an apple or a bannana, it continues to ripen and change. Just like you normally pick a fruit and leave it ripen for a while, the same thing is true for buds.
You are right in that marijuana becomes more psychoactive as it is cured more. This has to do with cannabinols. Cannabinols are the byproduct of deteriorated THC. THC by itself is a very clean, cerebral high. The cannabinols create the psychoactive and sluggish body buzz. When you cure the bud, you are creating more THC (cerebral), and at the same time, some of the THC is breaking down into cannabinols (psychoactive). You may have noticed that even though you get high when you smoke fresh weed, the buzz doesn't last. And as you pointed out, it's a different high.
Thanks nicklebag will make sure i cure properly. Generally when I harvest I probably will have run out of weed a few weeks earlier hence have no tolerance sure thats why I get so stoned. When I first learned to grow weed the person that taught me used to only dry it for three days then seal it in a bag to keep the weight up for selling. I've only learned about proper curing recently. I used to just hang it for 5 to 7 days that would be it.
