Drying in a fridge

dank'd said:

in 94(kw ontario, 2nd highest cocaine usage next toronto) got a qp of weed which was the consistency of literal cake, like the most moist and crumbly and addictive smelling cake you could imagine. there was no difference between leaf and crystal, it seemed to be all crystal. the looming smell in the room was just out of this world and forget when you crumbled up a bud christ....

the smoke was i kid you not, like cream, it was not smoke, it was clouds of candy that tasted like divine spicy incensy orgasmic deliciousness, no matter how much you pulled, and all the way down to the golden roach, which itself smelled divine btw

my guy had it kept in the freezer because of the smell

Click to expand...

That sounds awesome mate

did he dry it in the freezer though? Or are you saying fridge dried stuff was so smelly he had to store it in the freezer? I’m abit confused sorry lol.

ive dried bubble hash in the freezer in the past but opted to fridge dry it after reading through athread and replicating their technique

magnetik said:

yep tried it and agree with others that humidity is wacked and is even more wacked when you use the fridge for other things. My bud didn't seem like it ever dried and turned a different hue eventually. Fridge seemed too cold too. What did work is a wine cooler with a small dehu stuffed inside it routed out to a inkbird. I've been testing by putting in branches off fresh cut plants and dries just fine. Will dry out if you leave them in there too long though and not end up jarring. Been playing around with different temps/humidity and currently averaging 55/55. Not sure how it compares to a long drawn out dry vs. small spikes to pull moisture out from the middle but seems to work fine after doing it a bit. Prob could do the same with a full size fridge if you need to dry more. fwiw nothing is in the cooler now and usually sits at a higher avg. humidity.

View attachment 5032730

Click to expand...

Nice data log mate that’s what I like to see.

it’s maybe worth noting at this point that I will definitely not be putting my harvest in a fridge with anything else. Just like I wouldn’t dry weed in a tent with plants growing. If I’m gonna do it I’ll be doing it properly. Also, Monitoring, humidity and air circulation equipment would get rid of the need to open the fridge too often, maybe on the first attempt just to make sure there were no visible signs of a problem, but eventually the fridge would stay closed for aslong as possible

Livingblacksoil said:

I'm on pins & needles.
Blue you my boy!
Updated pics of those gorgeous gals please sir. Guessing experiment will begin sometime in 2022? Can't wait.

Click to expand...

The girls are at day 49ish, one pheno looks like it will be ready abit later than the rest, one pheno looks like itl be ready abit sooner. This is my first run with this strain, first run with living soil (only previously used hydroponics), and also my first run with led lights. Let me tell you this has been a huge learning curve and not without mistakes.

firstly the leds, having only used hps and mh lighting for flowering in the past, the lower leaf temperature caused by the lack of infra red in the leds has seen me chasing my tail with the vpd. I’ve came to the conclusion (just through experimenting on this run) that the girls like it when the air temperature is higher.

With hps I would enter flower at 28-29c right up until the end of stretch, then I’d taper down to 26-28 until buds stopped swelling and then drop it down to 24-26 and sometimes down to low 20s for the last couple weeks. Now I’m finding they like it around 30c until after stretch and then taper down to around 27 as the buds stop swelling. I gave them a couple days at 24 and they didn’t like it, leafs dropped and theys stopped drinking (according to pot weight). So now I’ve realised this I feel in a better position for the next run.

this being my first run ever using soil and least of all a soil that I’m not supposed to feed, I kind of assumed that the 56l pot of ecolife brand living soil and the numerous top dressings I applied would get me to the end unscathed, unfortunately that wasn’t the case. About 2week ago I noticed the onset of phosphorous deficiency, I top dressed with bat guano and fed a phosfate solubilising microbe based tea, a week later the def had slowed down but I wasn’t out the woods yet, so every watering since then I’ve given them a guano tea at around the 1.4 ec mark. It’s helped the buds swell abit but I know things could have been much better. I know for next time to more heavily amend the soil.

my next run will be in the same tent but I’m now thinking I might run a bed with the same brand soil (albeit abit more heavily ammended) and the recycled soil from these 4 pots that I will also amend. I’m nipping away to Tenerife for new year so transplanting into a say 400l bed just before then should see me coming back to plants that have rooted in and not drank all the available water. Anyone wanna chime in about this that has experience with no till living soil beds, feel free. I need the help lol

here’s a pic of a bud on each plant and one shot of the full tent, as you can see they’re in the senescence stage and are starting to cannibalise the leaves.

thanks for showing an interest mate

Beautiful flowers my Boy!!

Did you say you were looking to do 20oz dry?

However. Alot more controlled than just placing a nug ina fridge haha. Nice work.

Looking good. You can draw out drying to over 2 months if dialed in right. fwiw after using a similar setup for over a year.. I've NEVER had to empty the dehu.

DrOgkush said:

Did you say you were looking to do 20oz dry?

However. Alot more controlled than just placing a nug ina fridge haha. Nice work.

Click to expand...

the plan was to have something big enough to fit 20oz of dry material in before it’s dry if that makes sense, I reckon that works out at about 65ish oz wet.

I think this harvest will be abit shy of 20oz

I’m gonna remove all stems from the buds and big leaves as I can’t see how I will benefit from leaving them on. Usually I’d hang whole plants, mainly so they could use the excess material to regulate and slow down the moisture loss, making the process last longer. With this bit of kit though I don’t think that will be necessary as I now have a lot more control (Infact total control) of how fast the water leaves the plant.

magnetik said:

Looking good. You can draw out drying to over 2 months if dialed in right. fwiw after using a similar setup for over a year.. I've NEVER had to empty the dehu.

Click to expand...

Never empty the dehumy? Because you use the drain hose?

Blue brother said:

Never empty the dehumy? Because you use the drain hose?

Click to expand...

no drain hose either..just enough humidity to remove but not enough to build up in the container. Everytime I check it.. it's bone dry. Even when packed with flower there isn't too much humidity to remove in the small space I found.

magnetik said:

no drain hose either..just enough humidity to remove but not enough to build up in the container. Everytime I check it.. it's bone dry. Even when packed with flower there isn't too much humidity to remove in the small space I found.

Click to expand...

Oh well there’s some food for thought. I assumed I’d extract about 1l of water ish maybe abit more over the full process. Can I ask what you set your parameters at? And what length of time have you had best results with ? I’ve seen a guy doing this on U.K420, he’s actually the guy I copied this build off. He starts with 45rh at 15c and then tapers it to 60rh ay12c. I can keep my temp pretty stable at 9c but that’s about as far as it will go, if this works how I want it I’m gonna build a thermoelectric fridge with enough peltiers to get the temp down to about 6c if possible.

Blue brother said:

Oh well there’s some food for thought. I assumed I’d extract about 1l of water ish maybe abit more over the full process. Can I ask what you set your parameters at? And what length of time have you had best results with ? I’ve seen a guy doing this on U.K420, he’s actually the guy I copied this build off. He starts with 45rh at 15c and then tapers it to 60rh ay12c. I can keep my temp pretty stable at 9c but that’s about as far as it will go, if this works how I want it I’m gonna build a thermoelectric fridge with enough peltiers to get the temp down to about 6c if possible.

Click to expand...

it really depends on what I'm using the cooler for.. generally I hang whole plant to dry and if I miss the humidity window.. I throw them on the tray instead of jarring. (some people paper bag it) Mainly using it to eliminate having to burp jars. When I get to the dryness I like.. then I jar up for longer storage. Currently using 55RH/55F when I throw them in. I go a little less than a month before throwing them in jars. If you are drying fully in the cooler.. humidity will be different so my method will be different. 45 tapering to 60 sounds safe though.

magnetik said:

it really depends on what I'm using the cooler for.. generally I hang whole plant to dry and if I miss the humidity window.. I throw them on the tray instead of jarring. (some people paper bag it) Mainly using it to eliminate having to burp jars. When I get to the dryness I like.. then I jar up for longer storage. Currently using 55RH/55F when I throw them in. I go a little less than a month before throwing them in jars. If you are drying fully in the cooler.. humidity will be different so my method will be different. 45 tapering to 60 sounds safe though.

Click to expand...

Ah right I’ve gotcha now, so your plants are almost dry when they go in, that explains the lack of water hahahha, yeah I think I will have a fair bit of run off from the dehuey.

Blue brother said:

Anyone tried this?

I’m going to try it, been reading about it over the past few months and I feel confident it will work, it’s actually pretty well documented practise over at thc farmer and on 420 mag.

I understand the science behind it and have seen it work, and I also understand why so many less knowledgeable people dismiss it as a recipe for disaster. So I don’t really need convincing either way, I know it should work aslong as I don’t fuck up.

I just wanna know if anyone who’s done it has any pointers or wanna share any problems they ran into while using this technique.

how did you deal with the smell?
What size fridge did you use for how much bud?
what kind of fridge? I’m torn between buying a double wide wine cooler or using a spare frost free fridge I have in storage.
I’m looking to dry what would normally weigh 20oz fry

thanks in advance to anyone willing to share

Click to expand...

Yes because a fridge doesn't have mold and moisture inside it.smh.and things dry well in the cold..nottt...don't do it.its why a bunch of dabs I'm VA have mold on them because of ideas like this

Garrett Man said:

Yes because a fridge doesn't have mold and moisture inside it.smh.and things dry well in the cold..nottt...don't do it.its why a bunch of dabs I'm VA have mold on them because of ideas like this

Click to expand...

In VA*

Garrett Man said:

Yes because a fridge doesn't have mold and moisture inside it.smh.and things dry well in the cold..nottt...don't do it.its why a bunch of dabs I'm VA have mold on them because of ideas like this

Click to expand...

sorry I don’t understand the point ur making? Are you saying fridges have mold and moisture in them? And are you being sarcastic when you say things dry well in the cold? What do you mean by well? Have you seen the bit of the thread where someone who said cold was bad for drying and that bud would go moldy tried it and got dry mold free bud?

drying in the cold is not stupid practise, stupid people doing it wrong can get bad results though. Vpd and dew point are key. Just cause 100 people tried it and got bad results doesn’t mean that the 1 person who’s doing it right is lying. The process relies on parameters being extremely well controlled which is another reason why so many people fail.

Ask yourself this, how is it any different to drying in a environmentally controlled sealed room? The only thing that’s up for debate here is whether colder temperatures stop or slow the volatilisation of terps. Things like humidity, relative humidity, dew point,vpd are all controllable with gadgets. The main reason people dry in a fridge is cos they’re allready set up to be a cold place

Seems like it should work, get it a try .

Is that a wine fridge? I am pretty sure those don't chill as cold as a fridge and use a different refrigerant so the wine doesn't get too cold. Also I'm not sure if this is correct, but because of less of a temperature change at the evap coil, they dehumidify less. Some wine units need humidifiers to help keep the corks from drying out so maybe they do take moisture away , just not as much as a fridge

Looking forward to your results thanks for sharing

Nizza said:

Is that a wine fridge? I am pretty sure those don't chill as cold as a fridge and use a different refrigerant so the wine doesn't get too cold. Also I'm not sure if this is correct, but because of less of a temperature change at the evap coil, they dehumidify less. Some wine units need humidifiers to help keep the corks from drying out so maybe they do take moisture away , just not as much as a fridge

Looking forward to your results thanks for sharing

Click to expand...

Yes this is a thermoelectric wine fridge, they use a pettier rather than a compressor. You’re correct it doesn’t cool as far down as a standard fridge, I can’t get mine colder than 9c. It’s only supposed to go down to 12 but I’ve put mine in a very cold place to start with so got it down to 9c. You’re also right about them not stripping as much moisture out the air as a compressor fridge. My units been retrofitted with a thermoelectric (dehumidifier) as a compressor one would be much harder to control.

It’s worth noting that anything compressor based in my opinion should have both a humidifier and dehumidifier (whether it just be the action of compressor cycling or an additional one) keep shit stable while the compressor cycles. I’ve seen over on 420mag people negate this by storing the weed in a container of some sorts, some opting for paper bags that are systematically burped, others for jars with filter lids to allow gas exchange these are usually rolled daily.

For me to ditch the tried and true 16c, 60rh, ac infinity controller, fancy dehumidifier and inkbirds then my new method needs to be as hands off as that. So I’m not really gonna be the guy rolling jars and burping bags.

this thing I’ve copied off a guy on another site, is pretty much a cannatrol cool cure without the bells and whistles. I can’t take credit for it, but it’s spurred me on to designing my own. Been toying with some interesting ideas over the last couple weeks regarding peltiers and chest freezers. I love fuckin with shit, controlling parameters, drilling holes, getting my tools out, wrong in the head if you ask my family n friends but I love fuckin around with shit haha