Know Your Herbs

One of the most important stages of cultivating cannabis is drying and curing your plants. It’s where growers lock in those volatile terpenes and make sure the potency and quality are where they need to be.

There are a couple of different ways to go about drying and curing cannabis plants. For the most part, according to multiple head cultivators, people hang their plants along clotheslines to dry. It seems to have the best effects; however, for some home growers (and a few commercial growers), drying racks prove to be a better option.

The choice between hang drying or laying your plants on drying racks is all about personal preference, space availability, and budget.

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What are drying racks?

Drying racks are tools that help drain the water out of your cannabis buds. They can be anything from shelving units to wire lines.

Hanging plants across lines requires a lot of space, so the primary advantage of drying racks is that they help you save space when you don’t have that extra room for drying. Another benefit, besides maximizing your space, is that they help you dry buds that won’t hang. While hang-drying, branches may break and buds may fall to the floor. They may be unable to hang afterward, and drying racks give those branches and flowers somewhere to dry. These buds usually don’t make it into jars and bags, but they may be used to make pre-rolls.

Still, with these benefits, the truth is that the majority of cultivators are hang-drying their plants. It creates an even drying process that won’t dry your cannabis too quickly. Drying cannabis too fast will result in a harsh smoking experience. Laying nugs across the racks may cause your plants to flatten on one side.

Mike Doten, Chief Operations Officer of Fig Farms, said, “When you hang dry, [cannabis plants] are floating completely suspended in the air, and [they] have 360 degrees of air around [them]. On a rack system, [cannabis plants] would be laying down, and part of the flower is contacting a surface. So when you lift [cannabis plants] off of the rack later, [they’re] going to have a mark on [them], almost like grill marks from a barbecue, even if it’s a completely flat surface.”

Why are drying racks important?

Point blank: if you want high-quality cannabis, the drying (and curing) stages of cultivation are the most important. Without nailing them, you could waste months of work, and lose a whole lot of money due to having unsalable and unsmokable buds.

Here’s why you should always properly dry your cannabis:

• Mold prevention and cannabinoid and terpene preservation: The primary benefit of properly drying your cannabis is mold prevention. Mold is a fungal growth that forms and spreads on damp and decaying organic matter and is generally caused by excess moisture, hence the importance of an even dry when in the final stages of cultivation. Mold is unhealthy to consume — it could have poor effects on lung health, and it just gets you sick all around. It also degrades cannabis compounds, like the cannabinoids and terpenes that work synergistically in the entourage effect to produce the complete experiences we feel after smoking joints and taking dabs.
• Maximized potency and flavor: Obviously, if you avoid mold — and your trichomes properly develop — the potential of the compounds inside of them will be maximized. This leads to a better aroma when you sniff the plants and a better flavor when you smoke them.
• Cannabis shelf life: Lastly, properly drying your cannabis can help improve its storage. It is believed that when properly dried, cured, and stored in a dark, cool environment), the quality of buds can be preserved for up to two years. Improper storage can degrade your cannabis’ quality within weeks or even days.

How to use a drying rack for weed

When we talk about cannabis drying racks, most of the time, they are mesh racks that hang in the air. That said, the steps to using them are pretty simple:

• Step 1: Harvest and wet-trim your plants. Obviously, the first step to using a drying rack for weed is to actually have weed to put on the drying rack. Grow your plants, chop them down, and wet trim the leaves and excess plant matter from the flowers so they dry better.
• Step 2: Set the proper temperature and humidity. Once plants are chopped and trimmed, you’re almost ready to lay them out. But first, make sure the environment you’re laying them in is conducive to producing the best drying results. This comes down to your temperature and humidity. Of their methods, Flight Path co-founder Peter Hovsepian said, “I prefer hanging the whole plant for about 10 days in 60°F temperature and 60% humidity so that the buds dry slowly and naturally. That way, you get the best results when it comes to looks, taste, and smell.” Generally speaking, the optimal temperature and humidity are believed to be somewhere between 60 – 70°F and 55 and 65% humidity.

• Step 3: Lay the buds across drying racks. Once satisfied with your temperature and humidity levels, carefully lay your buds across the drying racks, shelves, trays, etc. Provide adequate space around them to encourage airflow. Do not stack plants on top of each other.
• Step 4: Flip buds throughout the process to encourage an even dry. The biggest takeaway from grower conversations is that they prefer hang drying to rack drying because you get an even airflow around the plants as the moisture levels your cannabis. Also, they prefer hang drying because rack drying may cause your buds to become misshapen on one side. Thus, it is encouraged to flip or rotate your plants during the drying process if you’re using drying racks.

The 6 best cannabis drying racks

The expert growers and brand executives I spoke with — like Kenji Fujishima from Insane, Mike Doten from Fig Farms, Peter Hovsepian from Flight Path, and Josh Schmidt from Natura — all prefer to use hang drying methods over drying racks.

Still, for home growers who don’t have that much space, drying racks can still be very helpful. When choosing them, focus on the size, breathable fabrics that will allow proper air circulation, and weight limits that can support the flower you’ll be drying. “If I had to use drying racks, I’d go with the mesh material because mesh is more flexible than metal. The buds won’t flatten as much due to the stretchy, elastic material,” said Hovsepian.

Everyone I spoke to suggested only using racks for buds that break and fall from the hang. That said, it’s tough to make drying rack suggestions to home growers based on how your favorite brands dry cannabis. Thus, most of the following suggestions are based on online reviews:

DriFlower Hang-Harvesting Racks

Though they hang plants to dry, Adam Mears, owner of Oregon’s Eastwood Gardens, shot me a link to DriFlower’s patented HangHarvesting system when I asked about the best drying systems that he is familiar with. If you’re running a commercial operation, then you’ll likely have a dry room and space for a rack like this.

GrowSun Herb Drying Rack

With over 3,000 ratings on Amazon — 76% of them being 5-stars — the GrowSun Herb Drying Rack seems to be a favorite amongst many home growers. It comes in various sizes, is made of non-toxic mesh materials, and can be packed into a small carrying bag when you’re done with it.

Casolly Herb Drying Rack

The Casolly Herb Drying Rack has very affordable pricing and different sizes that can accommodate however much cannabis you need to dry. It is made of nylon mesh, with steel supports that provide sturdiness in the build.

Plus, as you’d expect, it folds into a small package for storing. Out of its 902 reviews, 76% of them are 5-stars.

iPower Hanging Herb Drying Rack

The iPower Hanging Herb Drying Rack is highly regarded for its breathable mesh material, simple design, and ability to be folded and stored without hassle. It, too, comes in a wide variety of sizes and prices, many of which are great for home growers with limited space. It has nearly a thousand reviews, with 75% of them being 5-stars.

Desy and Feeci Herb Drying Rack

With 72% of its whopping 2,100-plus reviews being 5-stars, it’s obvious that home growers love the Desy and Feeci Herb Drying Rack. It has a breathable mesh fabric that encourages air circulation, but it also may dry your buds a bit faster than expected.

The S-hook system makes hanging it anywhere you choose pretty convenient, and like many herb drying racks, the size ranges from two layers to eight layers.

Youshenger Cannabis Drying Rack

Another one of the higher-rated cannabis drying racks is the YOUSHENGER Herb Drying Rack. Like the others, it is a layered mesh rack that ranges from two layers to eight layers in size, at very affordable pricing.

Bottom line

In the end, the choice between these cannabis drying racks will come down to how much space you have, how much money you’re willing to spend, and your overall preference for materials.

Truthfully, many of them have the exact same function and have little differentiation in quality. Just make sure to clean or replace them after each use because the layers will be super sticky from the drying process.

The post The 6 best cannabis drying racks appeared first on Weedmaps News.

Source: wm

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Have you ever wondered why the high from smoking cannabis is so different from the high when consuming edibles? As someone who smokes weed all day, every day, I have.

While quality edibles are a discreet way to use cannabis, an edible high can be unpredictable, especially for new consumers. Smokables are harder on the lungs and less discreet but provide a predictable, strain-specific high that typically gives the smoker more control over their experience and is preferred by most cannabis consumers.

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Personally, smoking makes me feel happy, productive, and able to live my life free from anti-anxiety meds. Edibles — especially those containing distillate — tend to have a heavy, THC-forward effect that makes it hard for me to be productive when I’m alone. In public, I often feel uncomfortable or riddled with anxiety, neither of which happens when I smoke.

Why is that?

Why a smoke high is different from an edible high

According to a 2022 study from Headset, smokable products like flower and pre-rolls accounted for roughly 53% of nationwide market sales, followed by vape pens at 22%, and edibles at 12%. This study also showed that flower sales have been steadily declining, with edible sales increasing year-over-year.

In the hopes of merging the disparate worlds of edible products and smokable highs, smoke researchers with the biotech company Real Isolates have discovered how to do just that with their brand new extraction method and resulting extract, Smokenol.

Smokenol, which earlier this week received a patent for a novel method used to extract cannabinoids and other compounds from cannabis smoke, uses a convection oven, a pump, and a specially designed filter to capture the chemical fingerprint of cannabinoids, terpenes, and other chemical compounds of strain-specific smokables like flower or concentrates after combustion.

“Edible highs have historically felt different from flower highs for three reasons,” said Andy Westerkamp, creator of Smokenol and co-founder of Real Isolates. “The first two reasons are absorption and metabolism. When you smoke, it’s absorbed through the lungs and it kicks in quickly. With edibles, it’s absorbed in the stomach and the liver and in your small intestine, which metabolizes THC to 11-hydroxy, making it more potent and more psychoactive, which can cause some of those experiences that people don’t love.”

He continued, “But there’s a third reason that no one ever talks about, and that’s what we study, which is that if most people prefer the effects of smoking and we’re using extremely high temperatures when we smoke, we’re actually transforming everything in the plant material or concentrate that we’re smoking. All of that happens before you inhale, so what you’re inhaling has been completely transformed from its original chemical makeup by high temperatures.”

Extracting cannabis smoke for more predictable edibles

Each cannabinoid can transform into about 18 to 20 other cannabinoids when it comes into contact with heat. Thus, the chemical fingerprint of OG Kush in flower form is entirely different from the chemical fingerprint of the smoke that gets you high. Even with “strain-specific edibles” in their current form, many of which are created by adding terpenes back into the mix to try and recreate the terpene profile of the strain, or using a live resin or rosin extract in the edible, the high you get from consuming them bears little to no resemblance to the high you would get from smoking the strain.

Smoke extracts pull the chemical makeup differently from the smoke, offering brands the option of creating strain-specific products from their best-selling smokables for the first time ever. But how does this new extraction method work? It’s quite simple.

“I use vacuum ovens and vacuum pumps, which are standard pieces of equipment that I would say every single cannabis lab has,” explained Westerkamp. “We use the ovens as a giant smoking device. So we fill ovens with smokeable material, whether it’s biomass or flower or concentrates, and crank the temperatures up.”

He continued, “We create smoke and the smoke passes through a filter that we’ve designed. That’s our special invention. It selectively captures cannabinoids and terpenes out of the smoke because there are 2000 or more compounds in the cannabis smoke, and not all of them are awesome for you. The stuff that we want, like cannabinoids and terpenes, is captured by the filter, and then the rest of the stuff in the smoke flows out through an exhaust pipe. What’s left in the filter is the extract, which can then go directly into edible, topical, or vape products.”

Westekamp believes his technology will transform the current extraction landscape due to the affordability of the setup and the creation of a whole new category of cannabis products. These products could appeal specifically to people who, for whatever reason — be it respiratory, wanting to remain discreet, or otherwise — can’t smoke but miss the high you get from smoking flower. Like Willie Nelson, for example.

Instead of creating the extracts themselves, Smokenol’s model centers around selling the extraction setup — convection oven, pump, and filter — to brands and manufacturers who are then free to create product versions of whatever smokable they want with the equipment.

“A manufacturer could spend six figures or you know, a million or more bucks, to set up a traditional extraction lab,” said Westerkamp. “With Smokenol, all you’re talking about is a vacuum oven, vacuum pump, and filter. We provide the filters. Most manufacturers already have the ovens because most cannabis labs do, but if they don’t, they’ll need to purchase an oven and a pump as well. Then they’re off to the races.”

How to get an edible high that more closely resembles a smoke high

While this is all very exciting, it’ll still be a while before Smokenol products hit dispensaries. Until then, consumers wanting a more nuanced edible high should look for the following traits when perusing edibles at the dispensary or online.

• Go full-spectrum. First, purchase edibles that are made with full-spectrum live rosin, live resin, or ice water hash. While this doesn’t ensure strain-specific effects (though many are branded this way), it is more likely to provide a more nuanced, full-spectrum high that may offset the overpowering effects of THC. While we all love THC, too much of a good thing can lead to a paranoid tailspin. Balancing THC with other cannabinoids and terpenes can provide an overall more healing, holistic, and fun high. Which brings me to my next tip…
• Look for added terpenes. Added terpenes can help to enhance your experience. Many edible manufacturers have been adding terpenes back into the edibles mix to mirror the effects of a sativa or indica strain, both of which are incorrect markers of effect but are used to indicate whether something is potentially uplifting or relaxing. Again, this does not create a strain-specific experience but can add nuance to your edible high.
• Go low and slow. Last but not least — and this is especially true for new or novice consumers — always stick to lower doses when it comes to edibles. We’re talking 5 mg THC or less to start. You can always consume more, but you can never consume less if you feel a panic coming on. And once that gets going, it’s difficult to come out of it without passing out or letting several hours go by. Ask anyone who’s been the victim of an edible-induced freakout. Less is always more and more likely to mimic the high you’d get from a few puffs of a joint.

The post Your edible high may soon feel like a smoke high thanks to this biotech breakthrough appeared first on Weedmaps News.

Source: wm

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