Malawi Style Cob Curing.

[antheis]

I just opened 3 cobs of ssh x nla to dry after a 30ish hours at 40c. they smell like a pack of dried mango slices. the kids caught a whiff of it and swore I was holding out on them (it's their fav snack).
the cobs are a lovely color amber and dark green with quite a bit moisture sweated out. they're drying now awaiting a reseal and cure.
it's funny, iwas about ready to cull this plant from the garden, but this fermentation method may make me reconsider.

 

[Tangwena]

I just opened 3 cobs of ssh x nla to dry after a 30ish hours at 40c. they smell like a pack of dried mango slices. the kids caught a whiff of it and swore I was holding out on them (it's their fav snack).
the cobs are a lovely color amber and dark green with quite a bit moisture sweated out. they're drying now awaiting a reseal and cure.
it's funny, iwas about ready to cull this plant from the garden, but this fermentation method may make me reconsider.

I would love to see some pictures my friend sounds like you aced the sweat from your description of the smell. Nice work.
Tangwena

 

[Claude Hopper]

Just get a decent vacuum sealer, sunbeam food saver is what I have got I use it to seal my fish fillets ect. I use a Yogurt Maker $60 from ebay but any heat sauce will do to sweat the sealed cobs.

The vacuum sealer blows me away. I guess I just thought they were for preventing freezer burn and hadn't considered their other uses.

I do have a great place for them, above my in-wall Tappan gas oven I have a large cupboard that stays 80 to 90 degrees. I've often used it to raise bread doughs.

In looking at many of the pictures I am reminded of the colors seen in the pressed Columbians and Central American buds of the 70's. Those blocks excluded most of the air.

I also keep thinking about the day I rolled into my yard and found visiting family in the drive. I pedaled around back, with a black garbage bag full of weed, and left the freshly stripped green buds behind the garage. By the time my company was gone that evening the buds had been steamed a beautiful combination of golds, bronze, green and brown. Upon drying and a proper jarring the buds had a really nice no-chlorophyll flavour.

Ha! Thanks to ( https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=4686168&postcount=339 ) old thread I have my comments from 2011:

This last batch went down kind of bad. I had packed the budded branches very tightly for the trip to the stash spot. I didn't want to look like I was carrying a bale on my bike. The weed ended up having to sit outside for a few hours before I could move it. All that sun hitting the plastic baqs sweated a lot of the terpines from the bud. The stuff I've tasted has been good but the fresh cannabis fragrance is gone.

Its still very good -- in fact its a taste I savor: The one I have just lit up has a black pepper undertone with a cedar-woodish body. I swear, this tastes a lot like the columbians I had in the late 70's.

The taste was partly due to the 50% Core's cut Amnesia Haze, but a lot was from the sweating. I don't think this was as complete a cure as your cob method but it was enough to make me want to replicate and better the process. I guarantee I'll be trying the full Tangwena cure later this summer!

 

[Tangwena]

The vacuum sealer blows me away. I guess I just thought they were for preventing freezer burn and hadn't considered their other uses.

I do have a great place for them, above my in-wall Tappan gas oven I have a large cupboard that stays 80 to 90 degrees. I've often used it to raise bread doughs.

In looking at many of the pictures I am reminded of the colors seen in the pressed Columbians and Central American buds of the 70's. Those blocks excluded most of the air.

I also keep thinking about the day I rolled into my yard and found visiting family in the drive. I pedaled around back, with a black garbage bag full of weed, and left the freshly stripped green buds behind the garage. By the time my company was gone that evening the buds had been steamed a beautiful combination of golds, bronze, green and brown. Upon drying and a proper jarring the buds had a really nice no-chlorophyll flavour.

Ha! Thanks to ( https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=4686168&postcount=339 ) old thread I have my comments from 2011:


The taste was partly due to the 50% Core's cut Amnesia Haze, but a lot was from the sweating. I don't think this was as complete a cure as your cob method but it was enough to make me want to replicate and better the process. I guarantee I'll be trying the full Tangwena cure later this summer!

View Image

Nice story my friend you will find in the vacuum bag sealed is similar, but different as the air does things not found when its not available. I f you get a sunbeam get the jar accessory that lets you suck the air out of mason jars.
Its freaky watching the colors change and the buds shrivel as with drying except it happens over 24 to 48hrs!

You will see the water that has been sweated out collect in the bottom of the jar as if it has been wrung out of the buds.
Also when you remove the buds for drying they dont smell, but as they dry which they do quite fast as the internal moisture has been removed, the smell of the terps and herb return.

It still needs aging but can be used immediately if you have to, after aging the high emerges clear and strong, as apposed to a more stony high when fresh.
If after semi drying them you cob the buds, you will have the strongest most terpy tasting cob possible. Its just a matter of playing around with temps and time to get the effects and taste you prefer.

You cant stuff it up, but it does take a "feel" for the product and after a bit of practice will make the best high and the best smoking dope you have ever had.

I am finding experienced growers have a natural feel for their product and some of the cobs I am seeing from members who have had a bit of practice would be very sought after even in Africa.

The main thing is the chewing of very small doses of strong cobs, which is catching on, its a totally different high more like a trip and lasts 8 to 10hrs on the right cob.
Normal doses for me range from 0.5g down to 0.1g on strong cobs. At that rate your average 1oz (28g) cob lasts forever!

Theres a lot to like in fermenting cannabis.
Tangwena

 

[(trk)]

 

[Tangwena]

Malawi/ Mulanji Gold sunshine in a stick

Malawi/ Mulanji Gold sunshine in a stick

Tripping today on the still young Mulanji gold cobs, I had to try them and they are AWESOME! Rampant energy trippy happy no paranoia just blissful ecstatic energy. One of these days I will grow this properly and I will have to look no further.
Also made some QWISO from a bud, liquid sunshine very crazy tripped out effects again no paranoia.

 

[led05]

Nice story my friend you will find in the vacuum bag sealed is similar, but different as the air does things not found when its not available. I f you get a sunbeam get the jar accessory that lets you suck the air out of mason jars.
Its freaky watching the colors change and the buds shrivel as with drying except it happens over 24 to 48hrs!

You will see the water that has been sweated out collect in the bottom of the jar as if it has been wrung out of the buds.
Also when you remove the buds for drying they dont smell, but as they dry which they do quite fast as the internal moisture has been removed, the smell of the terps and herb return.

It still needs aging but can be used immediately if you have to, after aging the high emerges clear and strong, as apposed to a more stony high when fresh.
If after semi drying them you cob the buds, you will have the strongest most terpy tasting cob possible. Its just a matter of playing around with temps and time to get the effects and taste you prefer.

You cant stuff it up, but it does take a "feel" for the product and after a bit of practice will make the best high and the best smoking dope you have ever had.

I am finding experienced growers have a natural feel for their product and some of the cobs I am seeing from members who have had a bit of practice would be very sought after even in Africa.

The main thing is the chewing of very small doses of strong cobs, which is catching on, its a totally different high more like a trip and lasts 8 to 10hrs on the right cob.
Normal doses for me range from 0.5g down to 0.1g on strong cobs. At that rate your average 1oz (28g) cob lasts forever!

Theres a lot to like in fermenting cannabis.
Tangwena

Tang, do you think it works as well in the Jars, appearance wise perhaps better but overall....?

IME it seems the pressure & compression of the cobs (parchment for me or whatever you choosing) adds to the overall effect, strength and definitely preserves better this way long term, simple surface area science type of thing... Just like when you compress/heat kief a bit, smells and effect are awesome, something else is going on and in the case of kief it's not fermentation but it gets stronger / tastes better, maybe just a mass thing.....

Lots of moving parts, all end better than a normal cure though, if you're growing NLD and into the trippy thing ;0 !!


There's also one HUGE benefit to the cob method that doesn't get mentioned much.... The harvest process is literally 1/10th as much time - hang whole plant.... let it dry a bit (day or two or three - humidity driven).... cut off Fan leaves and just rip it all off by hand, just like taking Thyme off the stalk, easy peasy...

 

[Tangwena]

Tang, do you think it works as well in the Jars, appearance wise perhaps better but overall....?

IME it seems the pressure & compression of the cobs (parchment for me or whatever you choosing) adds to the overall effect, strength and definitely preserves better this way long term, simple surface area science type of thing... Just like when you compress/heat kief a bit, smells and effect are awesome, something else is going on and in the case of kief it's not fermentation but it gets stronger / tastes better, maybe just a mass thing.....

Lots of moving parts, all end better than a normal cure though, if you're growing NLD and into the trippy thing ;0 !!


There's also one HUGE benefit to the cob method that doesn't get mentioned much.... The harvest process is literally 1/10th as much time - hang whole plant.... let it dry a bit (day or two or three - humidity driven).... cut off Fan leaves and just rip it all off by hand, just like taking Thyme off the stalk, easy peasy...

Personally I like both loose cured and compressed (cob)
I find the highs different but both are good.
There are so many variations possible in this method its possible to get different highs from the same buds just by varying the drying times on the harvested buds, the sweating times on the cobs or loose buds and lastly the aging before final drying of the wet cobs or buds after sweating.
Everything from nice smelling fast paced clear headed high, to a deep narcotic trance like high that smells nothing like the original flowers.
Obviously it just depends on which you prefer and certain cures will suite some flowers better than others.
I dont know much about hashish but I was told by an old Lebanese guy that it should be cured as well. But I didn't ask him how so I never found out. He just said green resin was for peasants.
These buds were vacuum cured in a mason jar using the food saver jar attachment that lets you vacuum mason jars.
They were green going in just 48hrs drying and from memory 24hrs in the jar at 40c.

 

[99%]

Please forgive if the following technique has been suggested previously in this thread.....

How to vac seal sandwich baggies without a vacuum sealer

Put the cob in resealable plastic bag, Seal the bag but leave the middle 10% of the bag opening unsealed. Fill a bowl with hot water, the bowl needs to be big enough so the bag can be dipped into it. Slowly dip the plastic bag into the hot water, you may need to use something to push and hold down the bag in the water. Submerge the bag to just below the seal (don't let any water get into the bag!) and hold it there while you re-seal the bag opening, make sure the two seals are fully sealed shut. Then pull the bag out of the water and it will be vacuumed sealed, probably not as good as real vacuum sealer mind you, but when I did it the bag was shrink-wrapped really tight around the cobs.

The water helps displace all the air out of the bag (while the bag in the water) and it's much easier to press an inch opening in the middle of the bag's seal than it is to seal the whole opening when it's in the hot water as the level of the water is very close to the horizontal seal on the bag. This is why the bag is almost fully sealed before going in the water.

I just did this and it works well...quick and easy. Do a search on Youtube, there's several how to videos there to see.

Here's one ... youtube.com/watch?v=Z5N9dOvrpHA

By the way Tang, you can add me to the growing list of cobbers........I'm trying it with several 3~5 gram cobs, I used large rolling papers instead of corn leaves and laid them in a baggie under my modem for warmth. Big thanks Tangwena

 

[99%]

For non-Aussies, the word "cobber" means a good friend and is similar to the US's "buddy" and it used to be almost as common as "mate" in Australia in the 50's and 60's. I don't live in Oz anymore, but I think it's rare to hear nowadays.

Now it's got a new meaning!

 

[99%]

Here's how I would describe Tangwena's method as simply as I could...would this be correct?

Semi dry 2 ~ 5 days,
Roll into cobs,
Sweat the cobs inside a sealed (but not vacuum sealed) bag with heat for 1/2 ~ 3 days,
Semi dry for 1/2 day,
Vac seal for 30 days with or without heat.
Air dry then enjoy and or re-vac seal for long term storage.

 

[99%]

and since this is a huge thread, it's much faster to just only read Tangwena's post (though, that's still a hella lot of posts!)...you can do this by clicking on Tangwena's name on the left hand side of the page beside any of his posts. This will bring up a drop down menu, click on "Filter Posts by Tangwena"..then you will see every post from only Tangwena and it will take days, not weeks to read through this thread.

 

[Tangwena]

Here's how I would describe Tangwena's method as simply as I could...would this be correct?

Semi dry 2 ~ 5 days,
Roll into cobs,
Sweat the cobs inside a sealed (but not vacuum sealed) bag with heat for 1/2 ~ 3 days,
Semi dry for 1/2 day,
Vac seal for 30 days with or without heat.
Air dry then enjoy and or re-vac seal for long term storage.

Great to see you are trying the cure, but you really need at least 28g to get a good result.
But the joint size you have should still cure and you will get to see a different type of cure.
Above cure was my old method, still works a treat, but there have been other developments since so many people are now trying this cure, and there are several cobbers I know who are varying the recipe slightly and getting unique curing styles as a result.
On my first post I have edited it to include one of the newer methods I have used.
There are some very experienced growers getting into this cure now and in true evolutionary style they are each doing it their own way.
It still uses heat, sweating ect but the timing and duration are each unique to that individual.
Soon there will be some very powerfully cured well grown cobs around, which will be unique to that person and his style and very sought after.
There are going to be some master curers as well as master growers in the not to distant future, just like vineyards each producing a distinctive wine.
Tangwena

 

[ThaiBliss]

Great to see you are trying the cure, but you really need at least 28g to get a good result.
But the joint size you have should still cure and you will get to see a different type of cure.
Above cure was my old method, still works a treat, but there have been other developments since so many people are now trying this cure, and there are several cobbers I know who are varying the recipe slightly and getting unique curing styles as a result.
On my first post I have edited it to include one of the newer methods I have used.
There are some very experienced growers getting into this cure now and in true evolutionary style they are each doing it their own way.
It still uses heat, sweating ect but the timing and duration are each unique to that individual.
Soon there will be some very powerfully cured well grown cobs around, which will be unique to that person and his style and very sought after.
There are going to be some master curers as well as master growers in the not to distant future, just like vineyards each producing a distinctive wine.
Tangwena

Excellent post!

There is a thread named "African Strains" in which the author of a recent post is relating stories of the history of Durban Poison. It appears that Durban Poison was once Durban Pencils due to what may have been cobs the size of pencils. The name might have had nothing to do with a strain, and more to do with a curing method. LOL!

 

[Tangwena]

Hi TB I agree a cure unique to the Zulus in the Durban area, thanks to the internet a lot of less than accurate info gets more of an airing than it deserves.
In Africa it was /still maybe like that in rural areas. Old traditions unique to the area used by one tribe only.
Malawi is an example the cobs were copied by everyone who tried one and thought they liked it.

Because dagga was illegal it was very secretive and not widely known. I know I never asked questions because you were in such a hurry to leave, not wanting to get caught with cobs on you.

The white South African government at the time was very strict you could not even get playboy magazine the censorship was so bad.
Malawi was ok you could always bribe your way out.

Some Zamaldelica cobs I was just checking coming up on 3 months cure. They smell like Lemon hashish its unreal the smell when you open the vac pack. They are still moist and need a slow dry before sealing up for storage/aging.

 

[McKush]

Always vacseal if possible at all stages.
If you make cobs, vacseal them as soon as they are wrapped to prevent mold.
I always vacseal during the sweat. In my case a warm water bath.
Remove from vacseal to dry, and then revacseal for storage and further curing.
I treat cobs similarly to my mmj in that 02 degrades it

 

[led05]

Always vacseal if possible at all stages.
If you make cobs, vacseal them as soon as they are wrapped to prevent mold.
I always vacseal during the sweat. In my case a warm water bath.
Remove from vacseal to dry, and then revacseal for storage and further curing.
I treat cobs similarly to my mmj in that 02 degrades it

spot on post right here !

 

[beefalo bill]

Does anyone know of a video with tricks to wrapping up a cob nice and tight?

 

[canna.ballistic]

... very very cool thread ... read the first half during the week, and will finish reading the rest over the next week, and then I will re-read it all again and make notes for future reference.

I stumbled across a slightly similar method many years ago (well before the internet, and well before I had ever heard of curing and sweating), when some freshly harvested weed was drying too quickly during very hot dry conditions. I put the buds into a plastic bag (puffed up with lots of air !!) to try and slow down the drying, and the next day found the bag was all moist (i.e. it was sweating). I panicked, took it out and dried it a bit more, and then put it back into the plastic bag ... same thing, it sweated again, and so I took it out and dried it again. And repeated a third time.

At that stage I was concerned I had stuffed up the buds, but after rolling a joint I found it was the most tasty, smooth and euphoric weed I had ever smoked... as did many friends. I experimented a couple of times over the next few years (without really knowing what I was doing), and found it was a fine line. From memory, if the sweat was too short, it would end up like hay ... and if the sweat was too long, it would end up moldy (because I had the bag fluffed up with air) ... but if I got it right, it was a place called heaven.

This thread with the vac bags absolutely nails it, and overcomes the shortcomings of my dodgy method.

I have just cobbed some of Ace's NepJam which I harvested a week ago. I am experimenting with four methods:
1. Normal jar curing.
2. Cob in vac bag to be sweated for a fortnight under warm conditions.
3. Cob in vac bag to be sweated for a week under cool conditions.
4. Buds dried to 70% moisture, and then placed directly into vac bag, with 95% of the air taken out.

Method 1 is obviously my base run to compare all the others against. Methods 3 and 4 are to see if I can replicate the tasty, smooth, euphoric weed I used to get with my dodgy sweat method. Method 2 is to push the potency a bit, and see the difference ... because NepJam is not a strong weed (compared to say Malawi or Golden Tiger), I don't see any need to push it too hard with the cob sweat.

Thanks Tangwena for enthusiastically and patiently bringing this information to everyone.

I believe it is a game changer ... and as others have indicated, probably explains the potency and appearance of some of the Thai sticks and Mexican / Columbian imports from the 70s and 80s.

 

[brown_thumb]

Anxiously awaiting your results. I'll be harvesting in the next 2-4 weeks so I need all the info I can get.

Don't you dare forget or get lazy and let us down.

... very very cool thread ... read the first half during the week, and will finish reading the rest over the next week, and then I will re-read it all again and make notes for future reference.

I stumbled across a slightly similar method many years ago (well before the internet, and well before I had ever heard of curing and sweating), when some freshly harvested weed was drying too quickly during very hot dry conditions. I put the buds into a plastic bag (puffed up with lots of air !!) to try and slow down the drying, and the next day found the bag was all moist (i.e. it was sweating). I panicked, took it out and dried it a bit more, and then put it back into the plastic bag ... same thing, it sweated again, and so I took it out and dried it again. And repeated a third time.

At that stage I was concerned I had stuffed up the buds, but after rolling a joint I found it was the most tasty, smooth and euphoric weed I had ever smoked... as did many friends. I experimented a couple of times over the next few years (without really knowing what I was doing), and found it was a fine line. From memory, if the sweat was too short, it would end up like hay ... and if the sweat was too long, it would end up moldy (because I had the bag fluffed up with air) ... but if I got it right, it was a place called heaven.

This thread with the vac bags absolutely nails it, and overcomes the shortcomings of my dodgy method.

I have just cobbed some of Ace's NepJam which I harvested a week ago. I am experimenting with four methods:
1. Normal jar curing.
2. Cob in vac bag to be sweated for a fortnight under warm conditions.
3. Cob in vac bag to be sweated for a week under cool conditions.
4. Buds dried to 70% moisture, and then placed directly into vac bag, with 95% of the air taken out.

Method 1 is obviously my base run to compare all the others against. Methods 3 and 4 are to see if I can replicate the tasty, smooth, euphoric weed I used to get with my dodgy sweat method. Method 2 is to push the potency a bit, and see the difference ... because NepJam is not a strong weed (compared to say Malawi or Golden Tiger), I don't see any need to push it too hard with the cob sweat.

Thanks Tangwena for enthusiastically and patiently bringing this information to everyone.

I believe it is a game changer ... and as others have indicated, probably explains the potency and appearance of some of the Thai sticks and Mexican / Columbian imports from the 70s and 80s.