Drying/Curing Myth #2 - Burping

Myth: "In order to cure properly, buds must be placed in glass jars (or other closed container) and “burped” once a day."

This is not a myth for home growers because as every legacy grower knows, it will work.

However, burp bins have some serious drawbacks that should make commercial farmers think twice before using this type of workflow.

1. On a commercial farm, the prospect of constantly burping thousands of bins or jars can add up to hundreds of hours a year in labor. Omitting that step saves you money.
2. Burping is also somewhat detrimental to the curing process. In first month or so of curing, respiration is a critical aspect of the fermentation process. Respiration requires a steady supply of O2 in order to keep functioning, and it produces CO2 as a by product. In a closed container, the amount of oxygen in the container is limited, so you quickly run out of O2 and the chamber fills with CO2 which grinds the process to a halt until you replenish the O2 with the next burp. This limitation won't completely stop fermentation, but it will slow it down.
3. Most of the effectiveness of a burp bin workflow comes from that fact that home growers are not storing the product in a controlled environment. If not for the bin, the buds would be exposed to early winter moisture levels which are typically very low. In that case, the bin does provide some isolation from the weather, but still, every time you burp it brings the bin contents closer to equilibrium with the outside air. If that air happens to have 35% Relative Humidity... your buds will soon be so dry they crumble easily when touched or transported. In this way, the burp bin leaves your moisture content to the whims of nature.

The Walk-in Humidor

We can do well to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and take some lesson from our friends in the Cigar industry.

The walk-in humidor is a commercial solution that can meet the needs of curing in a far more efficient and controllable manner.

In this case, you stack the product on shelves where it is exposed to the room conditions, but make no mistake in thinking this is just any old storage room.

The humidor uses very precise humidity and temperature controls with set points that are chosen to maximize enzymatic fermentation, while also preventing evaporation of the aromatic terpenes.

Cannabis obviously can't be stacked like Cigars, but open sided mesh bins or bags perform the same function very easily. The bags in this image hold 2.5 kilos each and they are still small enough to allow moisture exchange all the way through.

Using a system like this allows you to maintain a precise relative humidity, and that humidity seeps into every pore of your flower product until within a couple days, the humidity in the room will be the same as the humidity in the center of the buds.

That humidity inside the buds is your Water Activity measurement.

To Summarize:

Keeping your buds in a room (or any other closed container) at 65% RH, for a week, would practically guarantee the moisture has enough time to equalize all the way to the center of the buds, which creates a water activity reading of 0.65 aw inside the flowers.

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To learn more about the exact numbers you would use for temperature and humidity in your drying and curing rooms, check out The Drying and Curing Master Class

And if you'd like a little peek into the course, you can take this free Self Assessment quiz.

You might just find out that there's a whole lot of information out there that you didn't know that you didn't know.

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More articles by Glen:

• Flushing Cannabis – Its All About Starch!
• Should You Defoliate Cannabis?
• How important are flavor and smell of the smoke to your enjoyment of cannabis?
• Are Tall Plants Killing Your Bottom Line?

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