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Dec. 3: Concentrating on Concentrates - "Learn everything you need to know to turn your homegrown flower into professional-grade concentrates, all legally and at home!" Presented by Solventless Minnesota and Minnesota Cannabis College. 4 p.m. The Wilderness, 1010 W. Lake St., Minneapolis. More info and registration.

Dustin from Le Sueur shared this shot of frosty flowers from his home grow. 

Homegrowers, show off your plants! Share your best photo with us by clicking the button below or tag us on Instagram with #stribnuggets and we'll publish one each week in Nuggets. By submitting a photo you affirm that you own the rights to it and you are granting permission to the Star Tribune to publish it on its platforms.

It’s been more than three months since Minnesota legalized recreational marijuana, allowing those 21 or older to cultivate up to eight plants (with no more than four being mature and flowering at once) at their homes. That means many homegrowers who celebrated their newfound freedom by planting seeds or clones on or around Aug. 1 are beginning to harvest their plants. 

Minnesota Cannabis College offered a class Monday evening at the Wilderness coworking space in Minneapolis to teach new growers about an often-overlooked part of the cultivation process: drying and curing. Drying aims to reduce moisture levels within the flower to prevent mold and allow chlorophyll to break down with minimal degradation of the plant’s cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids. Curing is necessary to preserve the ideal amount of moisture along with the flower’s flavor, aroma and potency. Many cultivators regard drying and curing as one of the most important parts of the growing process that can make or break your final product.

Leading the discussion were Rice, from Boveda, and Matt Robidou, a self-described “trichome farmer,” University of Minnesota agroecology student and founder of Raiden Labs. 

Here are some tips from their talk. You can watch the whole thing here.

Decide how you want to hang your plants

Once your plants have been cut down, you’ll want to hang them upside down, ideally in a controlled environment. You have several options for how to hang plants. The one you choose will depend on your personal setup and needs. 

Dial in your environment

Whether you’re drying in your grow tent, a basement or a room or closet in your home, you’ll need to maintain a consistent environment for best results. Some targets to aim for include:

Recognize when the flowers are dry enough

The stems holding the flowers (i.e., not the thickest branches) should make an audible snapping sound when you bend them. Buds should be slightly spongy but not crispy to the touch, and leaves should be crunchy. The aroma of the flower may be diminished, but it should return after it is placed in containers.

Choose the right container for curing your dried flower

Containers should be airtight and watertight, like canning jars or 5-gallon buckets for large harvests. Store your container away from direct light and warm temperatures. You can add an inexpensive hygrometer (a small device that measures humidity) to keep an eye on conditions inside your container.

You may need to “burp” your container

“Burping” simply means opening and closing the container to allow for air exchange inside the container. An essential step to properly cure cannabis, burping lets any remaining chlorophyll, excess moisture or other undesirable compounds escape. Rice suggested rotating your container to avoid compression of the buds and burping daily until any grassy smells dissipate and the terpenes again dominate the aroma. However, if you dried your cannabis too quickly and allowed terpenes to evaporate, the grassy smell may not go away. You should also burp if humidity levels in the container are too high, to prevent mold.

The curing process may take a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It’s really up to your personal preference to decide when your cannabis is ready. You should sample your flower along the way to learn how it changes over time, Rice said. The same container used for curing can also be used for long-term storage. If you choose to use a humidity control pack, which Rice said is critical for maintaining the quality of your cured cannabis in long-term storage, add it to the container after the burping process is complete.

Founder & CEO, Boveda

It was my love for cigars, and a guy I went to college with, Tim Swail, his love for cigars that really brought us together. The cabinet maker was on the Joe Soucheray radio show. We had him make us a humidor. When he was done I invited him over to my house for cigars and dinner with some friends. That’s when he showed us this technology that was just a prototype that Dr. Saari and Bob Esse had put together for him for his humidors. Shortly thereafter, we ended up forming a corporation in July 1997.

How did the idea to expand into cannabis come about?

In the late 1990s, California went legal for medical marijuana. An individual approached us back in late 2006 from California who wanted to distribute our product. He formed a corporation and became a distributor for herbal medicine for that market. That was our first entry to the legalized protection of cannabis. But this individual had been in the illegal distribution side back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He approached us because they would take in cannabis, repackage it for distribution and they would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because by the time it goes out to market, the weight was always evaporating. So he saw an opportunity.

How many employees does Boveda have now?

We have 70 employees, roughly half in Minnesota and half outside. 

One of two customized "Marijuandack" chairs in Boveda's office in Minnetonka. The chairs were featured at the company's booth at the Legacy Cup cannabis festival in Minneapolis in September. - Matt DeLong, Star Tribune

Why is humidity so important for storing cannabis?

The number one thing is microbial growth — it can’t be too high. You’re familiar with trichomes, those bulbous little things that glisten on the plant? That’s where a majority of the cannabinoids reside. They get weak when it’s dry — they get brittle, they fall off. As moisture evaporates, you are changing the composition of the flower in terms of those cannabinoids, like the terpene profile and the THC profile. 

There are a lot of people who like your product, but there’s also a contingent of detractors who say Boveda packs “steal the terps” from their cannabis. What do you say to them?

There’s actually something else going on. We really sought to understand this. We come from a food science background. Ready-to-eat cereals, coffee, any of those things, if they’re stored in intermediate moisture, they stay fresher longer over time than when they’re dried down. When they’re dried down, they’re susceptible to the air. When the trichomes are exposed to air, the THC will convert to CBN. The same thing with flavonoids and terpenes. As that moisture evaporates, the terpenes evaporate too. So when cannabis is stored drier, you can smell more on the outset. In cannabis stored in an intermediate moisture [a relative humidity between 55% and 65%], you don’t smell it as much because those [terpenes] are being preserved inside the flower. You don’t smell it as much right away — until you grind it.

All Boveda does is one thing, and that’s control relative humidity with purified water vapor. We actually save the terpenes through that process — it’s holding it in the plant, which is where you want it until the time you’re ready to enjoy it.

Is the company engaged in advocacy for federal legalization?

We’re one of the founding members of the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp. We have a board seat. That is the leading organization in the country for federal legalization. They work in Washington on safe banking and a number other things for federal legalization of marijuana.

Where do you see Boveda going from here?

We believe that Boveda should be everywhere flower is present. That starts from the time cannabis flower is stored to the time it’s ground and consumed. We see ourselves being a part of everything. ASTM International [formerly American Society for Testing and Materials] is an international standards board. We were one of the very first cannabis standards put into place, by 400 technical people involved in the industry to create a standard around water activity [between 55% and 65% relative humidity]. They didn’t recommend our brand but they recommended maintaining this water activity with a saturated salt solution in a sachet form, like our product. You can’t go into any room, building or house that doesn’t have standards that were ushered through the ASTM International organization. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

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