Buds not retaining smell! Help!

[kfuller802vt]

The real issue is how low you allow the outside of the bud to get. think of 2 different zones of your actual bud, the inner layer of bud and the outer. if you allow the outer layer of bud to get too dry it will in turn dry out the tricomes which contain the terpenes and smell. most of the forums have this issue completely wrong, it doesnt matter how long or how fast you dry per se, it depends on how even you are able to get the moisture to evaporate from the bud. our goal is to remove the moisuture from the inside of the bud while maintaining a level on the outside which prevents the drying of the trichomes on the outside of the bud.

How do we do this?
No matter whether you hang dry or cut the bud off the stem or hang the entire plant, if you allow the outer layer of bud to dry out below approx 45% rh, you will lose the smell and not be able to get it back. Genetics plat a part in the total amount of smell, so what we want to do is preserve the maximum amount of the terpenes that are contained in the bud. Generally any method that will allow a slow, even dry is best. There is a caveat though, the longer it takes you to reach the target rh% the higher your risk for mold. all of this is relative to whatever ambient humidity is in your drying area/space/tent. main problem that people have is they hang for too long allowing the outer layer of bud to dry up which in turn drys out the trichomes on the bud. but the inner layer of bud still retains moisture, so after they hang and jar, they get some smell back as the moisture equalizes back from the inner later to the outer layer. this will not bring back smell already lost.

how to achieve a even dry
no matter how you dry you must not allow the outside of the bud to dry too much before the inner. you have to dry your bud in phases, swearing the inner moisture to the outer, then rehanging the bud to redry the outside again.

say you have 1 bud
outer moisture-100
inner moisture -100
hang for 5 days
outer moisure-68%
inner layer - 88%
sweat in jar overnight
outer layer 78%
inner layer 78%
hang for 1 day
outer layer 65%
inner layer 75%
sweat in jar overnight
outer layer 70%
inner layer 70%
hang for 6-8 hours
outer layer 60%
inner layer 68%
final jar for cure
outer layer 65%
inner layer 65%

in that method we can achieve an even dry while maintaining the outer moisture layer of the bud, which retains smell.

there are variable that can take place. hang drying in high temps will cause loss of smell due to faster evaporation and drying. cold temps will slow the process of evaporation. thus the colder we can keep our drying are the better. as cold but not as cold as freezing.
my suggestion is to cut off main colas and then only cut off one or two fan leaves at the top and one of two fans at the bottom. i leave all other leaves and do a dry trim. if you do not have complete control of your drying area, wet trim is a bad idea. try to imagine the main points of where water evaporates out if the bud, the holes in the stems from cutting leaves is like going from a sink faucet, to a fire hydrant being opened, in order to control and slow the drying of the ouside of the bud as slowly as possible, it is best to leave all leaves intact for a dry trim. i personally have excellent results in smell when i switched to dry trimming and letting the buds dry with leaves on. part of the reason is the leaves curl around the bud and actually help to create a layer of protection against the flower being exposed to open air, thus helping the bud retain the outer layer of moisture while drying. think of it as a wicking effect of moisture leaving the bud

also once you dry trim the bud and remove the leaves is a critical time in making sure the outer layer doesnt dry too fast. once a bud has all its sugar leaf vessels cut into it can dry the outside of the bud within a matter of hours so make sure you are on point with timing

 

[kfuller802vt]

i have seen many people say “my method is best” or “this method is better” with no explanation of what actually happened or how they achieved it. but what all the stories have in common is that they did not allow the outer layer to dry past a point before they either jarred the pot, tied a plastic bag around a hanging plant, or put it in a paper bag. those are all methods of sweating the inner moisture out into the outer layer of the bud, any of these methods will work with any style of drying, but remember, once the outer layer goes below 45% rh, you cannot get the smell back no matter how long you cure.

for those with low humidity- personally after i harvest a plant i hang it in the same tent. i leave the pot and the cut mainstem in the tent, it acts as a humidifier for 5-7 days keeping my humidity up in a much more even dispersion than a humidifier. wherein a humidifier will send a stream of air up
( directly to my humidity controller’s humidity sensor and then straight out the carbon filter) the old airpot of cocopeat acts like a huge sponge that slowly releases moisture out evenly into the air for the perfect amount if time, 5-7 days.

 

[kfuller802vt]

personally guarantee this method will retain as much smell as there was on the plant. realistically we cannot save 100% of SMELL. after all is said and done, our goal is to #1 dry our cannabis to 60-65% in and out and #2 retain as much SMELL as possible. there has been a suggestion that genetics is your culprit in no smell, that is nonsense. if your plant smelt during flowering, there should/could have been smell if you had dryed it correctly. any questions can be directly asked to me within this thread. so many people have been missing the entire point of drying with bad information, i have tried and tested numerous methods over the course of the last year and a half, and it didnt matter how i achieved the end result, as long as i kept the outside of the bud moist, i retained the SMELL that a small bud stinks an entire room/apartment/house.

 

[kfuller802vt]

as far as fast dry goes. never tried it, i do t have co2, nature gave us the root system inside the medium to use for something, i use it as a humidor to evenly dry my weed hanging for no cost. im sure a lab could do it better, but for what its worth, my method produces a bud that has the potent smells i chased for years with commercial and /or dispensary cannabis in my state. i had to grow it myself and dry it myself in order to find what i was looking for

 

[Jakkolantern]

If your bud is too dry while curing you are not getting the full effect from your 2 week cure. If it's too wet while curing that's even worse because it will rot.

 

[Jakkolantern]

Thats for sure my buds smelled like alfalfa or a grass clump u would pull out from underneath a lawnmower for about a month till they were totally dried in the jars

It's funny I noticed the grower that says their stay smelly the whole time dont cut up their stuff before its dry. Its cutting it up wet that covers up the weed smell with the grass smell. Go ahead next time and cut up a fresh wet bud. It will smell good until you expose the grassy wet smell inside. And it will continue to smell like grass until properly cured. The growers that dry on the stem dont expose the grass smell to the air. With a proper cure those lucky growers will never have to know what the inside of wet weed smells like. (Fresh grass clippings)

 

[Jakkolantern]

i have seen plenty of commercial bud that smelled pretty dank. How do they get it dank smelling w/o all the cure time? I know most commercial guys don't hold on to bud for more than a week, so how do they do it?

Not true commercial stuff gets at least a 2 week cure. The trick is not the cure anyways but the drying process. Dont dry too fast or too slow. Slow will give a moldy smell and fast will not cure properly causing harsh stuff.

 

[HughJass]

I've never jard it and it's tasty and buzzing asf everytime. I believe people who say they're stuff needs to be cured they just use it as an excuse to justify they're wrongly dryd cannabis which smells like hay because the chlorophyll has absorbed on to the plant because people believe not to have a fan blowing lightly on the buds but I believe by having it blowing over the plants lightly so they moving a little bit so it evaporates the chlorophyll from the plant instead of it absorbing into the plant where they are just hanging with no air being blown through them

A better idea would be to dry in a tent, use an exhaust fan, keep passive air flap open at the bottom of the tent. That way you still have fresh air passing over buds and you suck excess moisture and gasses out.

 

[Anthem]

The real issue is how low you allow the outside of the bud to get. think of 2 different zones of your actual bud, the inner layer of bud and the outer. if you allow the outer layer of bud to get too dry it will in turn dry out the tricomes which contain the terpenes and smell. most of the forums have this issue completely wrong, it doesnt matter how long or how fast you dry per se, it depends on how even you are able to get the moisture to evaporate from the bud. our goal is to remove the moisuture from the inside of the bud while maintaining a level on the outside which prevents the drying of the trichomes on the outside of the bud.

How do we do this?
No matter whether you hang dry or cut the bud off the stem or hang the entire plant, if you allow the outer layer of bud to dry out below approx 45% rh, you will lose the smell and not be able to get it back. Genetics plat a part in the total amount of smell, so what we want to do is preserve the maximum amount of the terpenes that are contained in the bud. Generally any method that will allow a slow, even dry is best. There is a caveat though, the longer it takes you to reach the target rh% the higher your risk for mold. all of this is relative to whatever ambient humidity is in your drying area/space/tent. main problem that people have is they hang for too long allowing the outer layer of bud to dry up which in turn drys out the trichomes on the bud. but the inner layer of bud still retains moisture, so after they hang and jar, they get some smell back as the moisture equalizes back from the inner later to the outer layer. this will not bring back smell already lost.

how to achieve a even dry
no matter how you dry you must not allow the outside of the bud to dry too much before the inner. you have to dry your bud in phases, swearing the inner moisture to the outer, then rehanging the bud to redry the outside again.

say you have 1 bud
outer moisture-100
inner moisture -100
hang for 5 days
outer moisure-68%
inner layer - 88%
sweat in jar overnight
outer layer 78%
inner layer 78%
hang for 1 day
outer layer 65%
inner layer 75%
sweat in jar overnight
outer layer 70%
inner layer 70%
hang for 6-8 hours
outer layer 60%
inner layer 68%
final jar for cure
outer layer 65%
inner layer 65%

in that method we can achieve an even dry while maintaining the outer moisture layer of the bud, which retains smell.

there are variable that can take place. hang drying in high temps will cause loss of smell due to faster evaporation and drying. cold temps will slow the process of evaporation. thus the colder we can keep our drying are the better. as cold but not as cold as freezing.
my suggestion is to cut off main colas and then only cut off one or two fan leaves at the top and one of two fans at the bottom. i leave all other leaves and do a dry trim. if you do not have complete control of your drying area, wet trim is a bad idea. try to imagine the main points of where water evaporates out if the bud, the holes in the stems from cutting leaves is like going from a sink faucet, to a fire hydrant being opened, in order to control and slow the drying of the ouside of the bud as slowly as possible, it is best to leave all leaves intact for a dry trim. i personally have excellent results in smell when i switched to dry trimming and letting the buds dry with leaves on. part of the reason is the leaves curl around the bud and actually help to create a layer of protection against the flower being exposed to open air, thus helping the bud retain the outer layer of moisture while drying. think of it as a wicking effect of moisture leaving the bud

also once you dry trim the bud and remove the leaves is a critical time in making sure the outer layer doesnt dry too fast. once a bud has all its sugar leaf vessels cut into it can dry the outside of the bud within a matter of hours so make sure you are on point with timing

You are making things way to complicated. Hang the stems in a dark place with air movement around them but not at them. Leave them alone for at least 5 days. Check once a day, if the STEMS SNAP not fold the buds are ready to be put into a jar and cured.

 

[JWM2]

You are making things way to complicated. Hang the stems in a dark place with air movement around them but not at them. Leave them alone for at least 5 days. Check once a day, if the STEMS SNAP not fold the buds are ready to be put into a jar and cured.

I actually like to jar them a little before they snap. Then I can release the extra moisture at a controllable pace. But that’s me personally.

 

[Anthem]

I actually like to jar them a little before they snap. Then I can release the extra moisture at a controllable pace. But that’s me personally.

I would just worry about the chances of mold, curing in this manner. It happens

 

[MIMedGrower]

I actually like to jar them a little before they snap. Then I can release the extra moisture at a controllable pace. But that’s me personally.

I do this too. Sometimes opening jars 3 times a day at first. Even have taken buds back out and lay on a screen to dry a little more. But all for control of the moisture like you say.

 

[Moshmen]

I actually like to jar them a little before they snap. Then I can release the extra moisture at a controllable pace. But that’s me personally.

+1 I do the same can always leave a jar open or even dump it out if needed to achieve desired content

 

[Grapefruitroop]

Are you guys sure that its not the genetic that plays the mayor role in the smell department?
I agree that good cure can enhance the profile as much as a bad curing can lower and flatten it but thers a limit imposed by the genetic i think...
I found many no smelling- hay/grass/tea in my randoms pheno hunting...
I also remember when i was working on the hills around Nor-Cal i saw some horrors and tortures as far as proper drying and of course no cure at all.....i saw weed been truly treated like hay, slammed around in dusty quads, hangd near stinky fireplaces, abandonded in moist sheds and even dryd under the oaks in the woods ,like the good ol days and the weed was pretty much always killer as far as stink because those guys were working with selected Clones....
I remember few pounds of a SkywalkerOg lefted ina hot shed all the summer long at an average of 18% humidity 90 degrees..the stuff was ruined, super dry, difficult to smoke but the freaking deep OG smell was there!!!!!That piney ,gluey chem smell!!!
Of course im not deniyn that the Kosher way to dry and cure will totally pay back as far as terpens and potency but at the point to ERASE the smell....i didn see any of that.....wich makes me think that genetic plays a very important role...
Pheno hunting Pheno hunting Pheno hunting

 

[JWM2]

Genetics are the ceiling. It’s up to the grower to get the strain to those heights. At least IMO.

 

[Glassdub]

Are you guys sure that its not the genetic that plays the mayor role in the smell department?
I agree that good cure can enhance the profile as much as a bad curing can lower and flatten it but thers a limit imposed by the genetic i think...
I found many no smelling- hay/grass/tea in my randoms pheno hunting...
I also remember when i was working on the hills around Nor-Cal i saw some horrors and tortures as far as proper drying and of course no cure at all.....i saw weed been truly treated like hay, slammed around in dusty quads, hangd near stinky fireplaces, abandonded in moist sheds and even dryd under the oaks in the woods ,like the good ol days and the weed was pretty much always killer as far as stink because those guys were working with selected Clones....
I remember few pounds of a SkywalkerOg lefted ina hot shed all the summer long at an average of 18% humidity 90 degrees..the stuff was ruined, super dry, difficult to smoke but the freaking deep OG smell was there!!!!!That piney ,gluey chem smell!!!
Of course im not deniyn that the Kosher way to dry and cure will totally pay back as far as terpens and potency but at the point to ERASE the smell....i didn see any of that.....wich makes me think that genetic plays a very important role...
Pheno hunting Pheno hunting Pheno hunting

Shit in the 70s half the weed was moldy, I came to expect it, the guy I used to buy from in high school used to mist with water & veg oil to add weight, people are so pampered this century.

 

[AngryPossum]

Does mold hinder the good aroma when drying? Some of my buds smell nice some no aroma at all. I'm wondering if I have mold on the ones that don't have any aroma.

 

[Glassdub]

Does mold hinder the good aroma when drying? Some of my buds smell nice some no aroma at all. I'm wondering if I have mold on the ones that don't have any aroma.

My rotten ones smell pretty much the same, but they are huge kolas that have parts that are clean that I plan to trim for tincture.

 

[Ponky]

Does mold hinder the good aroma when drying? Some of my buds smell nice some no aroma at all. I'm wondering if I have mold on the ones that don't have any aroma.

Mold makes it smell like mold. Makes it gross.