Well,Here is the green after a week in the hole.A sad sight for sure.But don't cry in your beer just yet.We will have this mess cleaned up soon enough.
I laid out some dishtowels and put some paper towels on top.I pulled all the plant material out of the cooler ( no need to drain the water beforehand )and let them drip for a few seconds, then placed them on the towels to dry off some prior to going into dehydration.
I am using a new method this time, trying the dehydrate function on my oven.It will run on a convection setting, forcing air around the buds and keeping the heat even at all times.I can adjust the temp from 100 to 140 deg. F.I'll start it off at 100.
I just placed all the buds onto the racks in the oven ( Note the stems are still attached.This makes drying easier for my method .)and let her rip.After a few hours I turned the temp. up to 120F ad it seems to help out alot.After about 4 hours I pulled all the bud out of the oven and then placed it in a paper bag to sweat it out some and evenly distribute whatever moisture was left evenly over the entire batch.The buds are sticky , and aside from being dark from the water cure process, look great.
Here is a shot of the bud fresh out of the water:
And now completely dry:
I removed all the lumber and the final dry weight for that plant was 32 grams. ( 1 and 1/8 Oz.)Not amazing but not too shabby for a plant a hair over 2 ft. in height after a water cure.The total weight loss for the cure is as follows: 263g including stems went into the water.I was left with 32g of bud + 10g of stems ( yes I weighed them! ) for a total of 42g.The total net from this water cure was 15.9%. This is of course very close to the 15% yield figure for water curing.Right on.
Now the smoke report:
The strain I am using here is Nirvana's Master Kush FYI.
Weight loss: I wound up getting slightly more than I thought I would. Basically,water curing instead of air curing will cost you an extra 10% of your harvest.No good for commercial growers except as a last resort for problem buds or an early harvest.
Potency: As with my first test-cure on the one mini-bud ,
water cured green is much stronger than air cured.I do not know the exact % increase I gained but it is very noticeable.
Smell: I did not lose as much of the smell on this batch as I did the mini-bud.I think it is just due to the size of these buds.It has the earthy skunk smell as quoted by Nirvana but it has been muted some by the curing.I can't smell it unless I put my nose in the bag.I would say I lost 50% of the smell.
Flavor: The taste was mostly removed from the green, not as bad as the mini-bud but still very noticeable.The smoke is smooth, but tastes like mids.
Burning Properties: I did not notice any unusual burning properties.Burned nice and even.Mostly white ash, but still not as white as the pic in Videoman40's how-to.
Bag appeal: Once again, Aside from being dark the bud looked great.Still covered in crystals.It looks dank.
Final Analysis: Overall I am only partially pleased with this experience.The higher potency is great , the smell is so-so, the flavor is so-so.I personally would not try to sell this to anyone due to the diminished smell/taste.I am definately not doing this again until I find a better way to submerge the green , and will probably not do it again unless I was totally out of green and wanted some while the bulk of my harvest cured in jars.For those fortunate to get enough at harvest time to be able to play around like this water curing is a viable option.
The only advice I can give based on this experience is to just air cure your green except in an emergency, or for cooking purposes.I think the loss of smell+taste+weight will break too many hearts out there so I cannot endorse the water cure process.
Thanks for following me on this little journey.Peace
