long term storage

first timer here - i have about 1.5 lb harvested and slow-drying - my house is about 65%rh and 77 degF, it has been 75-90% and 85 degF
outside all week. seems pretty good to me - it is all trimmed well and on drying racks in a dark spare room with ceiling fan stirring the air. getting about 6-8 day dry time i think.

going to do the jar curing to reach 60% - then after a good front and we have some good dry high pressure weather with 40% rh in the afternoon i thought i'd get the house at 60% then vacuume seal a bunch of 1-oz portions. that should store for a year i think?
for short term stuff i plan to give for gifts in 2 mos or so or smoke in the next 6 months should i put them in my garage beer fridge or just in a pantry?
if i plan on making several bags of fluffy/smallish less-desireable buds with oil as the end game - any reason not to freeze them? of course will make sure to collect all detritus/keif
should i decarboxylize before freezing?
anything i freeze i dont plan to smoke - only make oil, i realize trichs get brittle and will break off, so will be meticulous in preserving the detritus

and please keep this informative, no ridiculing from the mom's basement set please

I store mine in quart pickle jars in the freezer. A year is about the time frame I'm using it up. But I only dry to 70%. After a year in the freezer they still are pliable and do not fall apart. A jar last a couple months once opened. They will maintain their pliability to the end as long as it stays 70%. Above 72% and it is too wet to smoke smoothly, makes a lot of tar.

It takes a long time to get the jars down to 70% after packing. House humidity is around 50-70%. Going on 2 and a half weeks and almost there at 72%.

Just a suggestion @surfgeo, but since you mentioned you were using a spare room, maybe you could keep using it for a dry/cure room. I made one last fall and it’s been working well for me. I put an a/c and dehumidifier in a room and keep the Rh between 55-60% and temps under 70, and that’s it. No jars, just hang the buds and in 10-14 days they are dry and you can dry trim if you didn’t finish trim them when they were wet. I just leave the buds hang, don’t even dry trim until I need them. My last crop was cut June 22-26 and what’s left is still hanging or on screens in there. I have my leftover outside weed from last fall in there too. It’s coming up on a year old and it tastes and smells fine. No big smell in the house either as long as you keep the temp under 70.

MustGro said:

Just a suggestion @surfgeo, but since you mentioned you were using a spare room, maybe you could keep using it for a dry/cure room. I made one last fall and it’s been working well for me. I put an a/c and dehumidifier in a room and keep the Rh between 55-60% and temps under 70, and that’s it. No jars, just hang the buds and in 10-14 days they are dry and you can dry trim if you didn’t finish trim them when they were wet. I just leave the buds hang, don’t even dry trim until I need them. My last crop was cut June 22-26 and what’s left is still hanging or on screens in there. I have my leftover outside weed from last fall in there too. It’s coming up on a year old and it tastes and smells fine. No big smell in the house either as long as you keep the temp under 70.

Click to expand...

wish i could do that but too many guests thru the year

Use what preppers use for long term food storage. Aluminized mylar bags, drop an oxygen absorber (food grage) into eack one before sealing with an impulse sealer.

This process doesn't vacuum before sealing but I try and gently compress the bags before sealing just to reduce the air in the bags.

The packaging process goes rapidly, it almost takes more time getting setup than the actual bagging and sealing. Measure out an amount that your happy with (I bag oz's) dump in bag...repeat, drop o2 absorbers in, seal, mark with sharpie..done.


I store my sealed bags in a cardboard box in a dark corner of the basement. It's like time stops until you tear the bags open. Way better than foodsaver.

Carefully vacuum sealed (not tight) or triple bagged in the freezer. Handle with care when frozen and don't freeze bone dry weed for long periods. Neglect all the horseshit like "all your trichomes will fall off or stick to the inside of the bag when you freeze weed" and other old wives tales.

Cvaults with boveda humidity packs work well for storing buds a couple of years, but cvaults are pricey.

Three Berries said:

I store mine in quart pickle jars in the freezer. A year is about the time frame I'm using it up. But I only dry to 70%. After a year in the freezer they still are pliable and do not fall apart. A jar last a couple months once opened. They will maintain their pliability to the end as long as it stays 70%. Above 72% and it is too wet to smoke smoothly, makes a lot of tar.

It takes a long time to get the jars down to 70% after packing. House humidity is around 50-70%. Going on 2 and a half weeks and almost there at 72%.

Click to expand...

thanks i am going the jar route since i have a bunch - i put ~1oz in each wide mouth qt jar. 18 jars. this is where i get confused and never really see a full explanation in one place, just pieces here and there, so here is my plan, please correct if i am off:

so with a hygrometer in the jars (i will have one in 4 jars and assume the rest are the same as long as they stay consistent with each other) - i burp them 3-4 times a day for 3 days (or was it 2?), then once a day for a few weeks. i figured 10-15 minutes in a well ventilated room. my house is 66% at 75 degF: i assume if the hygrometer reads 66% with ambient air, once i seal the jar the weed will breathe off/transpire moisture and that reading will go up, although it takes all day. i read that 1% rise/hour means its really wet. but if i go 2-4 weeks at some point the rh will be at 70% and thats when i can toss in the freezer.

or for other jars i want to give as gifts, i can keep going until i get to 62%, then toss in a Boveda 62% pack, seal and i am good.

I also think i need to make sure i am doing all of this at 75degF, to keep the relativeness in the relative humidity.

now we just had a front pass thru. our temps are low of 63 and high of 88 for a full week, with rh going from 80-90% in the am to 40% around 4pm. so say it will be 75 degF at about noon, if the rh at that time is 60% - then its lower than inside where it is 66% at 75 deg, then i should probably do the burping outdoors, i will get much drier air in the jar.

thoughts?.







its going to be

I stuff my jars too. around 3oz per jar. What you don't want to do is get it too dry prior to jarring. Mine were a bit were at 82% so I nuked them for 30 seconds or so to heat up the water in them. Unfortunately the humidity is 70% in the house. So they jars are stuck at 76% or so. Might just chuck them in the freezer and worry about the too high humidity when I open them for use.

I've never had a mold problem but being exposed to the air is a good way to get it. I would not be watching by the hour. I just put the lid on and see what it is the next day. You want it to go up a bit otherwise it's borderline dry.

I’m usually in 1L mason jars that then stay in my relatively cool basement from there. Although last year my outdoor harvest worked out amazingly for me and resorted to shoving some buds and heat sealed buds in silver mylar food storage bags. I have had some in for almost a year and just opened a bag or 2 recently with no mold/issues. I didn’t put any boveda pack in their either, were a little dry but that was from Freeze Drying them I think. Also didn’t let the buds regain too much room humidity before bagging them with worry of them molding while in storage.

ok so its 45% rh outside and 80 deg, s'posed to get to 38% at 87 deg at 3pm. window is open to let all that air in the room, then i'll close the window drop the temp back down to 75 and i think the rh will be about 50-55%, then the lids go and i'll check the readings on all 4 hygrometers and track in excel along with ambient rh and T as well. just because i am not sure how the drop in outside rh will reflect after going through the a/c

Well can't get the humidity down in the house under 70% with the rain fall season here. Open jars are up to 79%. Lowest humidity is in the Veg tent when the lights are on. So into a black grow pot and set in the tent overnight.

maybe i'm just outdated and too old school, but i was always in the thought that freezing bud would cause the trichomes to fall off ... is this not what the ice does in making bubble hash? ... just a old dummy trying to rationalize freezing bud

xXOnyxXx said:

maybe i'm just outdated and too old school, but i was always in the thought that freezing bud would cause the trichomes to fall off ... is this not what the ice does in making bubble hash? ... just a old dummy trying to rationalize freezing bud

Click to expand...

Its better to just use the fridge. No risk of freezer burn.

waterproof808 said:

Its better to just use the fridge. No risk of freezer burn.

Click to expand...

I opened a jar from last November this week and it smelled like I just jarred it it. It was 65% after it sat a day and got up to room temp before opening. I use a deep freeze and not a refrigerator as they are much more constant in temp. No auto defrost too as that just cause heat cycles.