Whats The Science behind "The Cure"

Imo, afaik ... the principal action/benefit of a good cure is to retain enough moisture for a mild fermentation to take place (reducing sugars, starches and other carriers of harshness) while not retaining enough moisture to promote outright molding or rotting. cn

good answer. basically letting the fruit ripen.

This may help your journey down the road into the science realm...just passing this from another post in another thread in this forum.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread....13#post3112013

Many people might have made the same mistakes as me. I always come out with neutral smelling bud that doesn't smoke smooth and harsh taste. I think my problem has been beginning the curing process to early so my buds have too high of RH after jarred for 12 hours and then i'll over dry them and try to cure like that. Realizing the low humidity i'll try and put an orange peel to get it in the "curing zone" RH which will indeed get the humidity back up.. but the results are same. SHIT

So basically I think my problem is curing the bud at the wrong moisture content. Either too high or too low humidity. Its hard without knowing from first hand experience what it should look and feel like.

If you buy a hydrometer which i think i'm going to do, you can get it just right by measuring the RH. Lol just saw the post above me with that very same link I read.. /\

The RH in your jars should be controlled by the bud, not by lemon peel... Youre inviting bud-mold there bro.

You can just hang them till they feel crispy on the outside but sorta spongey on the inside, then jar and burp daily for 2 weeks.

^^ You guys he says in his post he has a great curing process he wants to know What happens on a molecular level i believe. From what i understand as water leaves and the starches and sugars break down as well as other molecules that were inactive become active as well as things change into the terpenoids that give weed its smell and effect the high.

Just from what I've read

Yea I know thats why I said the end result was shit nonetheless.. so yea don't try it. I'm working on perfecting the art so bare with me :P

Originally Posted by Dr Lg

Yea I know thats why I said the end result was shit nonetheless.. so yea don't try it. I'm working on perfecting the art so bare with me :P

from your post it sounds like your far from "perfecting the art" lol

We do need to get someone with some good science in here though to answer this question properly. I can add a bit of what Ive been reading though. part of the idea with curing is you dont want to have too much chlorophil at the end or your weed will taste like "grass" and smoke harsh. A good cure should break down some of the chlorophyl. you should lose some of the green pigment during cure. starches also need to be converted to sugars, and like blazed monkey said, the plant proccesses that create terpenoids should be allowed to continue to add to the aroma. I dont agree with blazed monkey saying that this occurs as a result of the water evaporating from the bud. evapouration does not cause curing.
One way to think of it is that the plant isnt really dead yet, until you dry it out. When you first harvest the flowers, the enzymes are still active and chemical changes continue to occur until you dry the plant out. If you dont dry it out eventually itll just rot. once the bud is dry the cure is halted. so its a matter of finding the balance. Same goes with Meat, You age a steak to let the enzymes in the meat break itself down. You dont want to wait too long or youll get food poisoning, but if you do it right your steak will be more tender. Im not the scientist this thread needs though, so lets hope our hero comes swooping in with all our answers.

anyone got a PhD in molecular biology?