Harvest & Curing Drying in a brown bag

[WildBill]

My big grocery paper bags came in yesterday!
My GG#4 in 15 gal pot will be ready very soon. I want to use a Canna brush for trim.
After chopping, will I be good to just remove the big fan leaves and just put one layer of colas in each bag and do my final trim with the canna brush and then jar or Grove bag?
Currently running around 77*F and 50% humidity in the tent and 74*F and 50% in the room. I'll put the bags on a little clothes drying rack behind the tent. Any estimates on how long it will take and does this sound like a good way to get it done?

Here's a couple natural light pics of the girl.

 

[blue]

My big grocery paper bags came in yesterday!
My GG#4 in 15 gal pot will be ready very soon. I want to use a Canna brush for trim.
After chopping, will I be good to just remove the big fan leaves and just put one layer of colas in each bag and do my final trim with the canna brush and then jar or Grove bag?
Currently running around 77*F and 50% humidity in the tent and 74*F and 50% in the room. I'll put the bags on a little clothes drying rack behind the tent. Any estimates on how long it will take and does this sound like a good way to get it done?

Here's a couple natural light pics of the girl.

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Hey Bill ... I was advised (when this method was posted a good long time ago) to chop the colas into golf ball sized nugs.

I think the rule is 1 day for every 10% RH + 1 day. So in your case 6 days. But i'd check em every day or every other day yo make sure!

 

[WildBill]

Hey Bill ... I was advised (when this method was posted a good long time ago) to chop the colas into golf ball sized nugs.

I think the rule is 1 day for every 10% RH + 1 day. So in your case 6 days. But i'd check em every day or every other day yo make sure!

I don't think that will too difficult to do, but won't that just shorten the dry? I wanna make sure I have the longest dry possible.
Not saying there's anything wrong with what you said, I just have to work it out in my OCD brain! LOL!

 

[blue]

I don't think that will too difficult to do, but won't that just shorten the dry? I wanna make sure I have the longest dry possible.
Not saying there's anything wrong with what you said, I just have to work it out in my OCD brain! LOL!

It was TaNg that advised me on it. I'm not sure exactly what the full reasoning is, maybe to ensure they dry uniformly .. perhaps incase of mold. It's always worked for me, but even without bags, i'd just use a cardboard box or a drying net.

I think 6 days is long enough to wait!

^_^

 

[Kyote]

My big grocery paper bags came in yesterday!
My GG#4 in 15 gal pot will be ready very soon. I want to use a Canna brush for trim.
After chopping, will I be good to just remove the big fan leaves and just put one layer of colas in each bag and do my final trim with the canna brush and then jar or Grove bag?
Currently running around 77*F and 50% humidity in the tent and 74*F and 50% in the room. I'll put the bags on a little clothes drying rack behind the tent. Any estimates on how long it will take and does this sound like a good way to get it done?

Here's a couple natural light pics of the girl.

View attachment 1243192
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Hey Bill my only experience with the bags is doing 3 of them as I ran out of hanging room. I wet trimmed a bag of buds and also put buds not removed from the stems in bags, then dry trimmed. My temps and RH were close to yours, and I left both in bags for 6 days. I had to do a lot of burping as those larger nugs could have gone 7, maybe even 8 days. I gave each bag a light shake everyday, but didn't open them to check for the first 5 days. I will definitely use this method again this winter.

 

[Waira]

- bag drying is a great way to go, conditionally IMO.... The general rule for a good slow dry is around 70F and 50%RH, over a week or so. There's wiggle room on this up to a point of course! The idea is to allow those "death throes" chemistry changes to take place in the buds, part of the curing process really, and some level of moisture is critical for that to happen properly...
Dry too fast and you end up with harsher, "green" tasting buds, or worse if it was hot, major loss of aroma! No fixing that either,... Too slow and cool, and it invites potential disaster will mold....
A little cooler T's are even better but lower RH% in kind is important, since lower T means lower evaporation rates... low T and high RH%, (poor air movement too) = mold! ...this is where bagging may bite your ass especially initially when the water content is plenty high enough to keep mold active for a time... That said, one of the best dried plants I had was done under mid-high 60'sF and about 40%RH, over a week.
Higher T's, more and more over 70F will see increasing loss of terpenes; many are rather volatile at such temp's... it will also increase evaporation rates naturally...
Paper bags (closed) offer a nice buffering effect for RH% (even T's a little bit), very helpful if the ambient RH% is too low. Inside the bag, some RH% gets trapped and slows down the water loss rate, and also helps even out the moisture balance between inside/outside areas of the bud... It also contains the smell some! Keep the layering to a minimum though for best effect, 2-3"....
My basic MO: fully trim the buds, put them on a mesh rack for several days, then finish the dry in pb's before going to the jar/cure stage... I tend to separate the larger stuff from the smaller at that point as well since they are at different moisture content levels typically.

 

[WildBill]

Hey Bill my only experience with the bags is doing 3 of them as I ran out of hanging room. I wet trimmed a bag of buds and also put buds not removed from the stems in bags, then dry trimmed. My temps and RH were close to yours, and I left both in bags for 6 days. I had to do a lot of burping as those larger nugs could have gone 7, maybe even 8 days. I gave each bag a light shake everyday, but didn't open them to check for the first 5 days. I will definitely use this method again this winter.

Good practical experience! Thanks!

 

[WildBill]

The brown paper bag with cause a rapid dry and you will lose a lot of your terpenes, low and slow is the way to go with drying. Brown paper bags are great for sweating cannabis after it is dry but I would not recommend doing the whole dry in bags. If you have ever noticed your buds re-hydrate after you buck them off the branches when they look dry this is because the inner moisture of the stems and buds has not been pulled out. Paper bags are best for this step on a small scale and will help pull out that inner moisture and get buds to the perfect moisture levels before going into a container for curing.

This part of your post has been really bothering me. I'm surprised no one has said anything on this very knowledgeable forum.
The highlighted is just not possible in my mind. Why would bud lose MORE terps in a brown bag VS drying on a rack given the exact same temperature and Rh?

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

I usually have too big a crop to use the bags even though I like them. I needed to dry my buds down a little more after machine trimming this last plant. I used the moisture meter and trimmed at 11-12%. I put them in the Grove bags and the RH went up to about 69% so I put them into a paper bag with a small Hygrometer until it read 58% then back into the grove bags with a meter. They read 62% overnight so I took the meters out and sealed the bags. My next plant will line dry to 10 - 11 on the meter.

 

[WITC]

Mine are in my second tent at 70 and 60 rh. Mine are going on 8 days. I put them in 1 ounce grove bags last night they were reading 65% today so put them back in bags again for a few hours. I’m really liking the bag dry. All though this is my first time ever drying anything.