Drying speed irrelevant to taste, "harshness" and potency [discussion]

Originally Posted by dvs1038

Nice man they r lookin good, but looks like one of ur plants has a couple buds that r fox tailing on u there. Its where u get a bunch of lil points growin out instead of the bud growin to one point. Not sure what causes it.

well noticed. im not sure ither but im going to do some research umm

Originally Posted by dvs1038

Nice man they r lookin good, but looks like one of ur plants has a couple buds that r fox tailing on u there. Its where u get a bunch of lil points growin out instead of the bud growin to one point. Not sure what causes it.

Thanks, yeah there's definitely a lot of foxtailing going on. I think it's to do with the average lights-on temperature in the tent (28C) + the pictures I regularly took during the dark cycle which probably interrupted normal growth.

Guess I'll leave some aside to cure for a couple months and decide whether it was worth the wait.

Originally Posted by Kronicle420

Cured bud smokes so much better then stuff thats been forced dried. Theres a massive taste difference too, ive tried both and its not in the mind at all, cured but is smooth and tastes great!

As for cured weed being more potent i dont think it is at all. Stuf thats been hung dry for 5-7 days will give me a numbe feeling in my limbs if i smoke enough of it, wheras the cured stuff just gets me totally stoned!

Personal opinion, cure the weed youll enjoy it more and get a better taste from it.

Always interesting to hear someone speak from experience. Do you notice a distinct difference in the psychoactive effects from cured weed compared to anything but? I've never experienced a different "type" of high, it's always been a cerebral/head buzz and I cannot stop talking

If u get a green colored light bulb just a regular incandescent one for ur room when u wanna work in there during ur dark periods it will not disrupt their dark times. And usually I only get a different type of high depending on whether its indica or sativa, the cerebral heady high ur talkin about comes more from sativas, and u get more of a body sleepy high from indicas. That is why I prefer to cook with indicas.

Well obv drying time will effect smell/taste, either because its been flash dried and still has the green smell since it not long of the plant, or quick drying has been said to damage certain parts of the plant that produce its smell etc.

When it comes to quality best thing i saw was a clip on youtube , about those labs that test the weed in cali , they had before and after tests with non cured bud and cured bud , and on there wee computer graph the cured stuff seamed to be kicking the arse out the non cured stuff.

From personal experience, I've quick dried and cured bud from the same plant to find this out.

The quick dried herb got me high, tasted and smelled grassy and didn't hold up to storage without turning into powdery shake after a week.

The mason jar cured bud got me high for longer, tasted and smelled like weed is supposed to and held up to months and months of storage without turning into shake.

As for curing, I still recall back in my 20s when I bought a bag of "homegrown" (what we called the weaker stuff years ago). It was OK stuff, but not as good as some of the better stuff we were getting. I wrapped the weed up tight and stuck it in a jar and hid it in a hollowed out stump (hiding from other people). I forgot about it until about 3 months later, when we hit a dry spell. Took it out and it was as potent as anything else we could find before the dry spell.

I think you are just saying that you have a very unsophisticated pallet... If you can't taste differences in pot nor notice different levels of harshness then awesome for you. You can buy cheap bud all day long and have nothing to worry about. My wife can't taste the difference between wines types/grades or coffee types which makes shopping for those things very affordable. But there are people who notice drastic differences between bud, coffee, wine, chocolate, tobacco...

Where do these differences come from? Well both the plants genetics, how it was grown, and the cure process. What happens during a cure? The material breaks down for the most part. This breakdown changes phenols, sugars,... Water content changes, chlorophyll breaks down... You don't happen to smoke tobacco do you? Even smoked green uncured tobacco? Nothing at all like what you buy in the store.

Potency changes as well to a degree. THCA breaks down to THC over time (not just in the presence of heat) which means you can boost the levels of psychoactive THC in raw bud by letting it age - of course if you are going to smoke the bud this doesn't have a huge impact as most all THC will decarb with the flame. At the same time THC can degrade as well so if you let it go too long you'll be degrading total THC content. This same process also impacts the other cannabinoids.

Might be easier to think about wine. Take two bottles of the same vintage and they taste the same. Age one more than the other and they taste different due to the slow controlled oxidization. Let the bottle sit open for a week and it's vinegar because you let it oxidize too much too fast.