When curing Tobacco, there are many methods used to impart different flavors. There’s flue curing, air curing, flame curing, sun curing, etc. The color, flavor, sugar content, and nicotine content can all be controlled with great variety by this method.
Likewise, when curing tea, there is of course plain dried green tea, but there are also teas with various degrees of toasting, fermented teas, flavor infused teas, oven roasted teas, and more. Sometimes pressed into a brick and fermented throughout for years. The curing process has as much impact on the flavor as the grow does.
In the cannabis industry, I only ever see one type of curing practiced for smokeable flower, air curing in a dark space. It seems like there might be a lot of options for interested product types exploring other methods. Interesting colors and flavors could be created. Perhaps curing involving some kind of acid brine (dry or wet) could even result in d8 conversion in vivo, producing never before seen flower cannabinoid profiles.
This article touches on the topic a little, claiming that other types of curing were common back in the 60s when most weed was imported from Latin America. It calls for some experiments, but as far as I know nobody ever followed up.
Flue curing and sun curing increase sugar, I assume because the temperature allows activation of some enzyme that breaks down the starches into simple sugars. I’m not a tobacco expert though (I don’t smoke it personally).
I mean we are after the heads here not the leaf, in all ur other examples u are directly using the leaf. Most of us dont even intend to smoke the leaf when its being dried, just extracted and discarded.
Also were comparing leaves to buds, but i like where ur heads at. Ive always wondered what 3a molsieve dried bud would be like.
Molsieve dried hash is great!
Freeze drying is something peoplr have tried but everyone that does seems to not like the smoke, i think the bud should be dried to 80% completion in the freeze dryer and left to dry in a cool well ventilated room for the last 20% then cure/burp for atleast 2 weeks
So just stick the bud in with some beads? I’ve never heard of sieve cured hash!
Right before extraction, I put my mostly dried material in a vac chamber with some silica and pull a slight vac. After a couple of hours the bud is bone dry. Very different desired outcome, but kind of the same.
I’ve cured buds in RO water before. It sucks the green out of the material, leaving black nugs, and you lose significantly more weight, but the potency is better. Terps, not great…
I met a guy from south Africa about fifteen years ago and I remember asking him about Durban poison and the ‘buried’ and ‘black’ weed I’d heard about.
He basically said it was an improvement over the questionable quality of the material they were dealing with, but not as good as basic weed here at the time.
I imagine it can be transformative though. From tea to kombucha.
Wet trim thru T4
Placed in dry 6 level dry nets
3 days in a 78*f and 58% rh dark room (flower room)
Into turkey bags and burp bags daily (45mins) until rh is stable at 63-65% rh.
Then into glass jars, burping daily until rh is stable at 55.
Then they are ready for clients
The question is what if that was applied to actual good quality bud. If it was made from crap of course it wasn’t going to be as good as US grown. But perhaps it might actually be desireable with good feed. I really enjoy Pu’er tea which is made from a method we might consider nasty for marijuana, and it does indeed strip a lot of the original flavors, but it has its own good flavor and health benefits.
