New Grower Why do my buds always taste horrible?

[teamfdn]

Hey everyone. I have grown and harvested my own autos several times now. They always taste like garbage though. My last harvest looked good enough to put on the top shelf, but still tastes like garbage. Here's the basics of my process...let me know if anything stands out.

DP auto white widow - happy frog soil - sea grow nutrients and mendocino calmag
I fed until day 60 and then plain water until day 75/harvest
I've been using the paper bag method for drying and normal wide mouth mason jars for curing
Just to reiterate, this has happened with every grow of mine.

I ended up making some really nice qwiso with it, and it's incredible, but I really wanted some actual widow nugs too. Any ideas folks?

 

[Trapper]

Only thing I can think of is chlorophyl build up during drying/curing.
or residual nute flavor....15 days of cleanse should be plenty.

What kind of water? i.e. boonies well water (with potential sulphur issues
or some other mineral abundance) or city water with a bunch o "-ines" and "-ides"

Did you burp the jars regularly?

I'm really sensitive to seafood and I can taste that on weed...

 

[MisterHarpy]

Maybe not drying enough. So stays wet with chlorophyll during cure

 

[briman]

Agreed with Trapper. You must backtrack to find the possible contaminate. What is your water source? Maybe try a flushing agent, like Fox Farms Sledgehammer or some flush additive like Grotek Final Flush. If you have a ton of salt buildup from overfeeding, it can cause bitterness, even with a 2 week cleanse. I would take a serious look at your flushing and double the amount of water being ran through it, then I would use the Sledgehammer or a like item first, if that doesn't work, I'd go with the Final Flush. Gotta find the answer, you have come all this way, to not enjoy the fruits of your labor!

 

[medi]

Any chance the "garbage" taste is close to hay? I wonder if maybe you're drying too fast. To narrow down your issue maybe you could tell us how long they stay in the paper bags for and at what temperature and relative humidity. Good even drying should take 4-5 days.

 

[teamfdn]

5-7 days for drying and I use distilled water.

 

[teamfdn]

I'm in high elevation, RH is extremely low. The room stays 70 degrees at all times.

 

[A John In Nj]

How long do you cure for?

 

[Roark]

Distilled water may not be pulling the nutes out of the sap. I would try either a final cleanse product or super weak nute solution. Itll help pull anything extra out. When th rh is way low here 16-35% I like to through a paper towel in there. Seems to help moderate the evaporation for me. But I bag for roughly 5-7 days on average then test in jars. Then go from there. Hope that helps.

 

[Reedroguez]

I would try drying the buds by hanging them something like this:

That would take a little longer to dry than the brown bag and might be beneficial to the smoke especially if you have a low RH. To me it sounds like something going wrong during drying.

I myself also find bud that's harvested sooner rather than later are more likely to have more of that hay flavor.