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How to determine residual humidity of my buds while drying?

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How to determine residual humidity of my buds while drying?

fittyfu 25 Replies 12,014 Views
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fittyfu

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#1
I wonder how to determine the residual humidity of my buds after harvest, while drying.
I read that the residual humidity is at about 10% to 15 % when the stems not bend, but break.
I feel very unhappy about such imprecise methods - is there no better and more reliable way to measure residual humidity?
 
#2
Hey Fitt,

I store buds in glass desiccators. I found them on eBay.

I use this device in the glass bowls.


But I think you’re referring to the snapping of a twig telling you time to move to the second stage of drying, correct. Humidity probes are made for measuring moisture in lumber. Seems much ado about nothing. It’s all pretty imprecise anyway but gets you in a ball park. So you purchase an accurate and precise moisture meter and stick it in a branch. It reads out a number. Great. It rains over night filling the atmosphere with humidity. You measure again and well gee wiz the number went up. Sometimes knowing more isn’t helpful.

This is a wood moisture meter

 
#4
JKash,

I worked on tobacco farms in Connecticut for several summers. Shade tobacco was huge in the Connecticut river valley. Very humid and hot. The tobacco was grown under nylon netting. You can imagine being under that netting in the heat of the summer. The leaves, as long as your arm, were used solely for cigar wrapping. The curing in those Connecticut tobacco barns was amazing to watch. when dry the leaves were a perfect tobacco leaf but now a golden brown. From the farm the dried leaves went to Hartford where the leaves were gently packed into crates and shipped to Puerto Rico for wrapping.
 
#5

Zill said:
I store buds in glass desiccators. I found them on eBay.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's the only approach I can image to work properly right now - by measuring the room humidity, putting your weed into a jar together with some temperature and humidity sensor, and measure the change in humidity and temp.

It's no problem to create a simple circuit around a small MCU and cheap sensors to get these values on a small Display and over Bluetooth or WiFi
onto your phone, computer or smart home server - or save it to sd-card.

But I'm not familiar with the physics to calculate the weed's residual humidity from the measured change of air humidity and temperature - if this is possible at all within acceptable precision.
 
Last edited:
#6
No other ways known to get the residual humidity?

JKash said:
This is also why tobacco companies keep their drying and curing process top secret
Click to expand...

So we need to wait for a whistleblower from tobacco industry ;)
 
#7
JKash said:
This is also why tobacco companies keep their drying and curing process top secret
Click to expand...
fittyfu said:
Yes, that's the only approach I can image to work properly right now - by measuring the room humidity, putting your weed into a jar together with some temperature and humidity sensor, and measure the change in humidity and temp.

It's no problem to create a simple circuit around a small MCU and cheap sensors to get these values on a small Display and over Bluetooth or WiFi
onto your phone, computer or smart home server - or save it to sd-card.

But I'm not familiar with the physics to calculate the weeds residual humidity from the measured change of air humidity and temperature - if this is possible at all within acceptable precision.
Click to expand...
what why??
geezus it’s like riding a bike.. soon you won’t need your training wheels after some experience..
 
#9
Cheese and crackers Fitt. Don’t you get enough information dumped on you.
 
#10
Let him go. We might make money off something he invents. The again…
 
#11
All this nonsense.

You need to purchase yourself a moisture content meter.

I believe mine is a high tech one you use for wood to test the moisture in the wood for mold. It has 2 metal prongs that you will stab into the actual bud it will read your moisture from 5 to 20%.

Usually about 5 to 10% is right on point when you want to start trimming and smoking.
 
#12
There is an art to drying and curing, you don't need a special bud moisture meter. Just use a humidity meter in your jars until they are stable where you want. 🤷‍♂️ don't always need a gadget for everything
 
#13
Somebody is asking how you test the moisture content in the cannabis. It's easier to answer a question than it is to say some bullshit to bullshit.
 
#15
fittyfu said:
I wonder how to determine the residual humidity of my buds after harvest, while drying.
I read that the residual humidity is at about 10% to 15 % when the stems not bend, but break.
I feel very unhappy about such imprecise methods - is there no better and more reliable way to measure residual humidity?
Click to expand...
We take a sample of a few buds and put them and a hygrometer in a sealed jar. They need to stay in the jar for a few hours. It's important to consider that buds don't dry evenly. The inside dries slower. So, the humidity in the sample buds jar needs time to stabilize.
 
#16
fittyfu said:
I wonder how to determine the residual humidity of my buds after harvest, while drying.
I read that the residual humidity is at about 10% to 15 % when the stems not bend, but break.
I feel very unhappy about such imprecise methods - is there no better and more reliable way to measure residual humidity?
Click to expand...
This is what I use. For the price it works well and have had no issues at all. I like actual data also.
 
#17

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#18
Zill said:
Let him go. We might make money off something he invents. The again…
Click to expand...
😎 we will see ...

cannafarmer420 said:
There is an art to drying and curing, you don't need a special bud moisture meter. Just use a humidity meter in your jars until they are stable where you want. 🤷‍♂️ don't always need a gadget for everything
Click to expand...
Well, for me and my "situation" it would be quite helpful ...

quirk said:
My go to is the Aqua Lab 3.
Click to expand...
That looks really professional AND expensive - a quick search not even recovered a price for the device

Dub_City405 said:
All this nonsense.

You need to purchase yourself a moisture content meter.

I believe mine is a high tech one you use for wood to test the moisture in the wood for mold. It has 2 metal prongs that you will stab into the actual bud it will read your moisture from 5 to 20%.

Usually about 5 to 10% is right on point when you want to start trimming and smoking.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm doing right now:

Small jars, with a cheap (and quite not so precise) hygrometer

Jar small detail
Small jars


For the bigger jar I used a MCU (esp32 with wifi and bluetooth ) and a BME280 (temp and humidity sensor), which is much more accurate:

Big jar
Web view


Sensor data:

Temperature: -40°C ~ 85°C
Humidity: 0 - 100%
Pressure: 300...1100 hPa
Accuracy: +/- 3% (humidity)

With this setup it's possible to permanently monitor the sensor values and for example get an alert when the humidity exceeds the preset values (58% - 65%) or get a reminder to open the jars.
It's also possible to add an microSD card to store long term sensor results or transfer the Results to your smart home server using MQTT ( home assistant, ioBroker, ...) - with that data you could compare the impact of different procedures in the process of curing.

Am I the only idiot thinking that way ?

All the same 🙃
Next steps
  • add small display to show actual values without mobile, tablet or notebook
  • add microSD card to store long term data locally
  • add webpage for graphical evaluation of long term data
  • add local alarm - optical (RGB-LED) and/or acoustical (buzzer) (configurable in web-interface)
 
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