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Old School Arizona
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Malawi-Style Cob Curing and Related Sweat-Type Packaging
Malawi-Style Cob Curing and Related Sweat-Type Packaging
I wrapped up my first Malawi-Style cob yesterday. I used some medium-sized buds from the Angola Red that I grew this year that came from a friend. It was La Mano Negra's strain that was sold by Luis Fritzman at the now defunct Brasilian Seed Company that he owned and operated.
Tangwena, the IC member who has a thread concerning cob-curing, mentions that he's not sure what actually takes place chemically/molecularly to weed cured this way, but somehow it gets more potent, better tasting, and smoother smoking. Those are some big claims, however flashes from my past indicate that there is a historial precedent in our hemisphere as well that somewhat confirms this claim: pressed weed from Colombia that fermented/sweated/changed during it travels as a sealed, cellophane bale or better yet as small, candybar-sized amounts of highly-pneumatic pressed, top-end smoke sealed in cellophane. Tangwena has been making cobs for over 30 years and only uses Sativa strains so I have a feeling that he can vouch for his claims being the level of smoker that he is. Still, why not give it a try I say and do a side-by-side in a month or two?
Before the mid-1970's, weed from Mexico was pressed ridiculously hard, whether by hand or by the use of hand-pumped automobile jacks, to form Kilo-sized bricks that were easy to handle and count. The individual flowers, stems, and seeds were all mashed together and often you had to seriously whack on a brick to separate a baggy amount for stuffing.
By the mid-late 1970's the press was getting lighter, at least from Mexico. It still made sense to press the herb to some degree so that it created a smaller package and was easier to smuggle. The bright idea that it made sense to clean the weed of all stems first before packaging for export began to take hold at this time, too. Finally, soon thereafter, Sinsemilla began its strong debut on even the commercial level and this more valuable herb could also even be cleaned of extra leaf before packaging if the exporter was selling to a more connoisseur crowd. The end product that we got in Arizona was quite beautiful in appearance from then on and began to match the already powerful smoking quality and head effects that we were used to in the finer imports.
Colombian commercial weed was pressed and wrapped in larger bales for the long air or boat smuggling route that it would take on its way to the US or Europe. If the relatively large bales were going by boat they would also be wrapped in cellophane well enough to make them waterproof. Commercial "Lumbo" was not always packed when fully dry because of various issues at the growing area. Sometimes it rained during the harvest/drying time and even if the herb was almost dry, the humidity, heat, and dampness was present in the bales. Depending upon how long the bales sat around before shipping as well as how long the trip took until the bales were opened at their destination, the weed might cook and sweat just like the Malawi-style corn husk cure did traditionally. In both cases the weed could also mold and I've opened a bale or two of Colombian in my time that stunk of mold even though the amount of actual white fungus on some of the weed was small. It tainted the whole bale and try as people did to disguise the smell or remove it, any veteran smoker could tell immediately that it had been spoiled.
Smoking that shit, ugh, you had to be desperate man or just new to the scene and ignorant of what weed should taste and smoke like.
Fine Colombian was never compressed too tightly but instead was a semi-press sort of pack, an in-between level. You could pull it apart easily and the fresh flower smell of whatever variety you had would fill a room nicely. It wasn't like the fresh home-grown or indoor RKS of today, but it was still highly-aromatic and captivating. Some loose bales of Santa Marta Gold and Punta Roja were fragrant beyond belief.
Later my best friend, a native of Cali, Colombia, introduced a highly-pressed sinsemilla that we called "Candybar" because of its appearance. Tight little rectangular-shaped chunks of Wacky Weed quality black Colombian, about the size of the famous "Chunky" candy bars, were formed by pressing it when the herb was almost dry, just like with Malawi cobs. Once it cooked and sweated for a week or two and was then opened, it had to be cut apart, like hash, in order to separate out small pieces for pipe or bong. It was so compressed that you couldn't crumble it off like you can with some lightly-pressed hashes from Morocco or Lebanon. It was more like a black Nepalese Temple Ball that came oddly enough from Colombia hahaha.....My friend Peter used a razor blade to cut tiny fragments off and roll pin joints, "New York Needles".
Tangwena's cob-cured herb looks just as dense and I'm hoping for a nice transformation from the cure. Most of my Angolan is jarred and a 90-day cure will be the first for comparison without the Malawi cure…..if I have any left after tasting it. It might just be the kind of smoke that you can’t get enough of.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.....
Malawi-Style Cob Curing and Related Sweat-Type Packaging
I wrapped up my first Malawi-Style cob yesterday. I used some medium-sized buds from the Angola Red that I grew this year that came from a friend. It was La Mano Negra's strain that was sold by Luis Fritzman at the now defunct Brasilian Seed Company that he owned and operated.
Tangwena, the IC member who has a thread concerning cob-curing, mentions that he's not sure what actually takes place chemically/molecularly to weed cured this way, but somehow it gets more potent, better tasting, and smoother smoking. Those are some big claims, however flashes from my past indicate that there is a historial precedent in our hemisphere as well that somewhat confirms this claim: pressed weed from Colombia that fermented/sweated/changed during it travels as a sealed, cellophane bale or better yet as small, candybar-sized amounts of highly-pneumatic pressed, top-end smoke sealed in cellophane. Tangwena has been making cobs for over 30 years and only uses Sativa strains so I have a feeling that he can vouch for his claims being the level of smoker that he is. Still, why not give it a try I say and do a side-by-side in a month or two?
Before the mid-1970's, weed from Mexico was pressed ridiculously hard, whether by hand or by the use of hand-pumped automobile jacks, to form Kilo-sized bricks that were easy to handle and count. The individual flowers, stems, and seeds were all mashed together and often you had to seriously whack on a brick to separate a baggy amount for stuffing.
By the mid-late 1970's the press was getting lighter, at least from Mexico. It still made sense to press the herb to some degree so that it created a smaller package and was easier to smuggle. The bright idea that it made sense to clean the weed of all stems first before packaging for export began to take hold at this time, too. Finally, soon thereafter, Sinsemilla began its strong debut on even the commercial level and this more valuable herb could also even be cleaned of extra leaf before packaging if the exporter was selling to a more connoisseur crowd. The end product that we got in Arizona was quite beautiful in appearance from then on and began to match the already powerful smoking quality and head effects that we were used to in the finer imports.
Colombian commercial weed was pressed and wrapped in larger bales for the long air or boat smuggling route that it would take on its way to the US or Europe. If the relatively large bales were going by boat they would also be wrapped in cellophane well enough to make them waterproof. Commercial "Lumbo" was not always packed when fully dry because of various issues at the growing area. Sometimes it rained during the harvest/drying time and even if the herb was almost dry, the humidity, heat, and dampness was present in the bales. Depending upon how long the bales sat around before shipping as well as how long the trip took until the bales were opened at their destination, the weed might cook and sweat just like the Malawi-style corn husk cure did traditionally. In both cases the weed could also mold and I've opened a bale or two of Colombian in my time that stunk of mold even though the amount of actual white fungus on some of the weed was small. It tainted the whole bale and try as people did to disguise the smell or remove it, any veteran smoker could tell immediately that it had been spoiled.
Smoking that shit, ugh, you had to be desperate man or just new to the scene and ignorant of what weed should taste and smoke like.
Fine Colombian was never compressed too tightly but instead was a semi-press sort of pack, an in-between level. You could pull it apart easily and the fresh flower smell of whatever variety you had would fill a room nicely. It wasn't like the fresh home-grown or indoor RKS of today, but it was still highly-aromatic and captivating. Some loose bales of Santa Marta Gold and Punta Roja were fragrant beyond belief.
Later my best friend, a native of Cali, Colombia, introduced a highly-pressed sinsemilla that we called "Candybar" because of its appearance. Tight little rectangular-shaped chunks of Wacky Weed quality black Colombian, about the size of the famous "Chunky" candy bars, were formed by pressing it when the herb was almost dry, just like with Malawi cobs. Once it cooked and sweated for a week or two and was then opened, it had to be cut apart, like hash, in order to separate out small pieces for pipe or bong. It was so compressed that you couldn't crumble it off like you can with some lightly-pressed hashes from Morocco or Lebanon. It was more like a black Nepalese Temple Ball that came oddly enough from Colombia hahaha.....My friend Peter used a razor blade to cut tiny fragments off and roll pin joints, "New York Needles".
Tangwena's cob-cured herb looks just as dense and I'm hoping for a nice transformation from the cure. Most of my Angolan is jarred and a 90-day cure will be the first for comparison without the Malawi cure…..if I have any left after tasting it. It might just be the kind of smoke that you can’t get enough of.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.....
Had a US Mail letter from a member that reached me with a big footprint on it. 20% of the seeds were crushed.
Always wondered if it was an accident or intentional.
I did get some beans in the mail from UK once that were packaged so sloppy in the stealth dept. that I had to call the company and ball them out. They had their Seed Company sticker label Big-Time on the envelope, made me sign for it even when I had specifically said that I wanted it sent without signature required. You could shake the letter and hear seeds as well. Shit....
Over the years I've had a few brushes with customs agents, mostly at airports. Once in Miami, coming in from Jamaica, I had cleared the customs counter and was walking out the door. Suddenly I hear a loud, "Wait !!"
I turned around, a suitcase in each hand, and the agent who had thoroughly checked my luggage said, "Lift up your pants and let me see your socks."
I set down my bags, lifted up my pant legs, nothing hidden there and no bulging socks, so he just shook his head. He knew that I was up to something, but I didn't bring in illegal materials on a commercial plane flight......I left that up to my friend's small Cessna hahaha.......
Funny though, on one flight from JA, a nervous Jamaican man, after we landed in Miami, stood up to get his single soft suitcase from above the seats in the luggage compartment. As he nervously opened the flip-up door to the compartment, I caught a big hit of weed wafting out from the bags. He pulled his out and stood in line with all the passengers who were slowly filing out of the plane like cattle. I was 10 feet behind him and it smelled like someone had opened a big bag of cannabis.
Man, he was one of these guys I've heard about who just do a Kamikaze run, hoping that he will not have to open his bag and have it searched at the customs table. But still......just the enormous smell alone might easily reach the customs man at the counter. If there were trained dogs anywhere in that terminal hahaha they would have come running....
Always wondered if it was an accident or intentional.
I did get some beans in the mail from UK once that were packaged so sloppy in the stealth dept. that I had to call the company and ball them out. They had their Seed Company sticker label Big-Time on the envelope, made me sign for it even when I had specifically said that I wanted it sent without signature required. You could shake the letter and hear seeds as well. Shit....
Over the years I've had a few brushes with customs agents, mostly at airports. Once in Miami, coming in from Jamaica, I had cleared the customs counter and was walking out the door. Suddenly I hear a loud, "Wait !!"
I turned around, a suitcase in each hand, and the agent who had thoroughly checked my luggage said, "Lift up your pants and let me see your socks."
I set down my bags, lifted up my pant legs, nothing hidden there and no bulging socks, so he just shook his head. He knew that I was up to something, but I didn't bring in illegal materials on a commercial plane flight......I left that up to my friend's small Cessna hahaha.......
Funny though, on one flight from JA, a nervous Jamaican man, after we landed in Miami, stood up to get his single soft suitcase from above the seats in the luggage compartment. As he nervously opened the flip-up door to the compartment, I caught a big hit of weed wafting out from the bags. He pulled his out and stood in line with all the passengers who were slowly filing out of the plane like cattle. I was 10 feet behind him and it smelled like someone had opened a big bag of cannabis.
Man, he was one of these guys I've heard about who just do a Kamikaze run, hoping that he will not have to open his bag and have it searched at the customs table. But still......just the enormous smell alone might easily reach the customs man at the counter. If there were trained dogs anywhere in that terminal hahaha they would have come running....
Ha! I thought everyone knew that.lol
I remember reading Tangwena's thread on this method, and was intrigued then. Definitely watching for some pics to come,,,,,please???
Those are some Perty Ladies, all long legged, sun shining in Her hair,,,, pardon Me,, I need a moment... oh, and a hit or two, if I may.
Twisted
Those are some Perty Ladies, all long legged, sun shining in Her hair,,,, pardon Me,, I need a moment... oh, and a hit or two, if I may.
Twisted
I had a similiar experience as a kid. I slowly lost sight, could think clearly, but couldn't see a thing. It passed and I was on my way. I was from a large family, unless you died you didn't see the doctor.
Tangwena's cob-cured herb looks just as dense and I'm hoping for a nice transformation from the cure. Most of my Angolan is jarred and a 90-day cure will be the first for comparison without the Malawi cure…..if I have any left after tasting it. It might just be the kind of smoke that you can’t get enough of.
Post 882 by Madjag
It smells like Serious sweet fruit and is nice and dry. Not sticky so we'll see won't we?
I'm happy because I wasn't sure exactly what level of moistness it should be to start with. But hey, it's an experiment and thanks for the inspiration Tang Man.
I've broken off a tiny piece for now and will keep the rest of the cob cured in a bottle for 3 months before hitting it again.
First smoke report next week - a side by side report with the same, but regularly harvested Angola Red for comparison. I have several ounces as a control sample for later comparisons as well.
mmmm.....
I'm happy because I wasn't sure exactly what level of moistness it should be to start with. But hey, it's an experiment and thanks for the inspiration Tang Man.
I've broken off a tiny piece for now and will keep the rest of the cob cured in a bottle for 3 months before hitting it again.
First smoke report next week - a side by side report with the same, but regularly harvested Angola Red for comparison. I have several ounces as a control sample for later comparisons as well.
mmmm.....
Medicine Highway
What did I and at least 15 close friends have in common during the 70’s and 80’s? NVMOS - No Visible Means Of Support. Maybe it was just the times, but a lot of people made good money and yet didn’t have jobs. It was actually quite typical to see long-haired hippies buy some acreage and build a custom home on it out in the woods. True, many were, as Joni Mitchell said, “Refugees from wealthy families”, or what we now call Trust-Funders or “Trustafarians” should they also have the requisite stringy dreadlocks so prevalent among kids who have inherited a shitload of money. Still, there were plenty of us who had no other answer except that is was our involvement with drugs that paid our way. I'm sure many of you can relate...
The Princes of Peyote were the conduit for most of the medicine that reached the international hippie world of the late 1960’s and all through the 1970’s. I wrote about these merry fellows in an earlier article that chronicled their rise as the white-guy connection with the Native American Church members who were the primary peyote importers. These Navajo men had legal US government permits to import 250,000 - 500,000 buttons per load from northern Mexico and crossed at the same border check-point in Texas every time. The Princes were each receiving 100-150,000 buttons on average per load when the Navajos made a delivery. They in turn depended upon a loose network of dealers that would buy 5,000 – 20,000 buttons at a time and distribute them through their personal circles. Imagine 500,000 peyote buttons making their way every year to the stomachs, minds, and hearts of Americans from Iowa to New York and San Diego to Tacoma. Canada got its fair share because of close “friends of the peyotero family” and I know of French, Swiss, and UK connections that served their own markets, too. Even my good Colombian companion Gerardo, AKA Peter, shared buttons with the New York cartel, well, at least those who were more experimental by nature and willing to take the leap. Medicine slowly made its way around the globe and left a trail of inner-space astronauts who had journeyed to the moon and far beyond.
One of the Princes’ good friends, Greg, had a relative in the SF Bay area who was quite the chemist. His specialty was to extract from peyote some of the purest mescaline sulphate crystals that you’ve ever seen. All he needed was fresh peyote buttons, lots and lots of buttons. I had the great fortune to get some of his finished product and experiment with it 2 or 3 times in the mid-70’s. The crystals were ¾” to 1” long, transparent, and literally thin as a needle. When dumped out onto a plate they resembled the long needles of the game “Pick-Up Sticks”: pour them out and gaze in wonder at the intricate stacking and weaving that the crystalline needles would form. Nothing else on the market looked like them. Cocaine in all of its forms from Bolivian flake to Colombian crystals had entirely different crystal shapes and the street “Mesc” or “Chocolate Mesc” you could buy from your local dealer was merely LSD or Psilocybin in disguise.
True mescaline sulphate crystals cost anywhere from $10 -$25 on the street per individual trip because of the amount of peyote necessary to make a single dose, the chemicals involved, and the Chemist’s time. That hit of $3 Mesc you bought on the Hill in Boulder was just a gimmick. The Chemist once sent us several grams as a gift and explained the difficulty of maintaining a secure source for peyote as well as the risk of purchasing large quantities of high-purity chemicals. And if you didn’t have the Navajo connection in one way or another, you were out of the game.
Greg and his young pal Mark were a tight team so once they got started supplying the Chemist with buttons; they always drove together for safety and companionship. A typical load would be 60,000 buttons packed into the plain-Jane camper shell stuck on the back of Greg’s aging Toyota pick-up truck from the early 70’s. If you opened the camper shell door there wasn’t enough space left to add even a 6-pack of shitty beer. It was filled to the top; all the way forward, with burlap bags of fresh peyote, the same bags that the Navajos had delivered to their close friend and supplier, the Prince who lived in northern Arizona.
On one particular load, which Greg mentioned later had all of the earmarks foreshadowing a bad time for travel, the two of them were headed across a deserted section of a Nevada two-lane highway well after Midnite when Greg, the driver, bleary-eyed and tired from driving high with no breaks or pit stops so far, glimpsed the headlights of an oncoming vehicle suddenly turn directly at him. The driver of the oncoming truck, as it turned out to be, fell asleep just at that moment and crossed the centerline, smashing head-on with the boys’ truck. Mark had been sound asleep and woke up flying through the air. When the dust settled both Greg and Mark had been thrown out of their tiny Toyota truck, no seatbelts I assume, and were crawling around in the desert, trying to figure out what had happened, yet both of them were unharmed except for minor cuts and bruises.
The other truck’s driver was dead and bloody, still at the wheel of his big Ford truck, and both vehicles were thoroughly demolished. Scattered across the highway were chrome bumpers, radiator parts, lots of glass, bent metal, and thousands and thousands of peyote buttons.
Mark later told me that they realized that their only hope was to clean up the peyote and hide it out in the desert before anyone came along and though they didn’t think they would get this done in time and would probably get caught, they had no choice but to try. Any vehicle approaching the massive accident site that night would certainly stop to help and the Nevada Highway Patrol wouldn’t show up long after that. So quickly as they could, in an altered state of mind to be sure, the guys gathered every last button and bag and stashed them 200 meters out in that desert. They kept expecting to get busted but no other vehicle came along on that lonely stretch of highway for many hours until just around sunrise. They even had time to brush out their footprints and tracks made from dozens of back and forth hikes out to their stash spot in the desert.
Peyote is called Medicine by some Navajos and for a good reason. It protects. It heals. And in some cases it makes oneself invisible.
Greg and Mark had quite the time talking with the Nevada Highway Patrol that morning and then headed to the nearest town where their truck had been towed. They didn’t want to wait too long so they rented a truck and headed back out to the site of the accident the next evening after a good night’s rest in town. At the crash site they quickly loaded up the burlap bags of buttons and headed on toward Berkeley in the San Francisco bay area. They delivered that load to the Chemist who went right back to work making the world a little better thanks to his creative alchemy. The happy few across the globe who shared in his magic mescaline sulphate crystals would find whatever they were looking for because that’s the other part of Peyote’s magic. You get what you are looking for. No more, no less.
As a footnote to this story, Mark came home and bought a new, used truck with cash. And yes, he didn’t have a job and was a NVMOS candidate for sure. But who was really looking when 1,000s of hippies did their thing back then? Cops just looked at hippies and created their own picture of what they did and who they were so all in all, everything was equal and money came and went. Unless you spent big bucks on expensive toys and flashed friendly Franklins all over town gaining perhaps unwanted attention and reputation, you could get away with it for years and years. Maybe forever. I know some of you are prime examples!
Mark always kept back 1,000 buttons or so out of his cut of the profit for sharing with friends. One friend, Stickman, was driven by Mark to Sky Harbor in Phoenix to catch a plane to his home in Chicago. Mark stayed with him until it was almost flight time and then watched his buddy pass through the metal detector while his bags went through the x-ray machine via the conveyor belt. As Mark watched, the Airport Authority guard pulled his bag aside for examination, opened his friend’s bag, and pulled out a large Zip-Lock bag of peyote with maybe 200 dried buttons packed tightly inside. The guard held the bag in the air, examining it front and back, then said, “What’s this?” Stickman later told Mark that he had answered, “It’s cactus seed.” The guard, nodding, seemed to agree and put it back in his bag. Stick winked at Mark as he scurried on to catch his flight.
Ah, the life.
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Nice job as usual Madjag. I got a contact high just reading it.
Being close to Jerome back in the day, we would on occasion get a load of fresh buttons come our way. 25 cents a button if I remember right. Was always connected with a story of how they show up and then gone... "Who was that masked man?".
I drank many a tea for that 24 hr ride, often sucking on a sliver like a chew of tabacky.
Was into Supai Canyyon for a week and our camp neighbors kept a pot of buttons simmering the whole time. Just a cup full and you were on your way.
In the early 70's I had a friend that knew people from the verde valley that were growing some nice homegrown. She also had some kind of connection to them that we saw some of the mescaline crystals you talked about. If you dabbed your finger to it it still tasted very much like the buttons. The stuff I saw was slightly off color of clear. It wasn't around very long and we never saw it again. Unfortunately I heard that loose lips sunk the ship. Growing and selling out the back door...
Being close to Jerome back in the day, we would on occasion get a load of fresh buttons come our way. 25 cents a button if I remember right. Was always connected with a story of how they show up and then gone... "Who was that masked man?".
I drank many a tea for that 24 hr ride, often sucking on a sliver like a chew of tabacky.
Was into Supai Canyyon for a week and our camp neighbors kept a pot of buttons simmering the whole time. Just a cup full and you were on your way.
In the early 70's I had a friend that knew people from the verde valley that were growing some nice homegrown. She also had some kind of connection to them that we saw some of the mescaline crystals you talked about. If you dabbed your finger to it it still tasted very much like the buttons. The stuff I saw was slightly off color of clear. It wasn't around very long and we never saw it again. Unfortunately I heard that loose lips sunk the ship. Growing and selling out the back door...
I remember seeing that image back in the in 1950's early in the morning before the station fired up the programing for the day. I guess it was used by the station's engineers to fine tune the vacuum tubes. My dad had a remote back in the day even though there were only three stations. It was a voice activated remote too. He'd tell one of us kids to change the station and it would happen.
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Funny,we had the same remote.
We had that Draw-On-The-Screen clear mylar or something that you affixed to the black&white TV screen using only static electricity and then you sat right in front of that neutrino machine and drew on the screen with crayons.
Nothing like extra radiation for a growing young body!
Nothing like extra radiation for a growing young body!
