THE IMPORTANCE OF CURING CANNABIS
The importance of properly curing cannabis cannot be overstated , especially for craft growers . Daniel Hayden explains why curing takes your marijuana from being like cheap boxed wine to a vintage bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon .
by Dr . Daniel Hayden
It was 1999 , and as I entered Dr . Richard Mandshart ’ s lab to ask him to be on my graduate advisory committee , I was met with a man holding a spoon surrounded by 250 half-cut papayas . He greeted me and explained , “ I have to grade every one of these today for taste , texture , and sweetness .” It was an incredible sight to behold . Thus began my education in plant biology right there , as he explained that shoppers would not choose papaya with a ringspot on its skin , and those would be left to rot . In fact , every piece of produce in the supermarket was specifically designed to show consistency in color and size . This was viewed as a positive sales attribute . Those that matched this and lasted the longest from farm to shelf to the fridge were the winners of our agricultural revolution . Flavor , it seems , ranked much further down on the consumer ’ s list . Getting products on the biggest and busiest sales shelves ( or supermarket aisles ) is the priority for producers and cultivators ( despite numerous studies citing intermediaries connecting creators and customers to each other have an outsized influence on markets , seemingly to be engaged in collusion to ensure they collect the largest profits ). Responding directly to the demand for products deemed more enticing to the senses , by both consumers and retailers , the cultivators and producers turn to the longstanding traditions of curing , aging , and ripening . The near-universal demand for attractive produce extends to other cultivated products as well , including cannabis . The practice of hanging and dry-curing cannabis originally came from the fact that for most of human history , we have hung and dried all spices upside down in a cool , humid place . The goal of this is to allow the plants to specifically express their essential oils from the stems to the leaves , which creates the majority of the spice . Cannabis doesn ’ t express essential oils in the same way . Still , the concept of curing is critical , and our ancestors learned this early on , without having to know anything about the science of trichomes . They quickly learned that cannabis piled in the field , once dried , makes a quicksieved and desirable hash . Cannabis is grown long in season until amber trichomes set and then is cut and stored for a long cure . Techniques used today like bagging and burping are historical . For my Ph . D . I studied the concept of senescence , which is often accused of apoptosis ( cell death ). Senescence is a molecular genetic program that is initiated when an organ such as a leaf starts to die ( often because it consumes more energy than it produces ). This process results in the remobilization of nutrients to the plant ’ s neediest parts , storage organs , and flowers . A cannabis flower ( inflorescence ) is among these needy parts — a combination of a sugar leaf and a calyx at cultivar-specific ratios . On these leaves and calyxes of the inflorescence are trichomes . These organs are the true fruits . If seeds were to develop inside the calyx , this would become a more needy fruit , but until this process begins , the trichomes remain neediest .
84 Maximum Yield