The Terpenes of Cannabis Their Aromas and Effects

[Daub Marley]

If you want to get fancy with your drying chamber I would play around with different strains of bacteria to cure with. Every fermented product on store shelves has had its specific strain of bacteria carefully selected, and although curing is not fermenting in the traditional sense it does carry out the same basic process. Just a thought.

 

[Waldschrat]

Thanks for this awesome tread and a ton of new information to me.
Guess i will be busy reading next few days!

 

[mexcurandero420]

Use a desiccant to speed up drying . But then you won't have any 'curing' effect...

CaCl2

Keep on growing

 

[RulaTone]

Use a desiccant to speed up drying . But then you won't have any 'curing' effect...

i dont need to "speed up" drying, i need to dry totally flowers (0% or near humidity) without losing terpenes. Thats the goal.
Even if it takes one or two years i dont care, the important thing is to preserve VOC during drying, so that when the flowers are 0% humidity they can be sifted better.

 

[Only Ornamental]

i dont need to "speed up" drying, i need to dry totally flowers (0% or near humidity) without losing terpenes. Thats the goal.
Even if it takes one or two years i dont care, the important thing is to preserve VOC during drying, so that when the flowers are 0% humidity they can be sifted better.

That's what I'm saying: If you don't want to lose volatile constituents, the only thing that really helps is speed (and hight pressure but then you will experience troubles getting rid of the water). And if you head towards 0% (which BTW is not possible in a feasible sense) you have to use either a desiccant or a vacuum (and the latter is a bad choice).

EDIT: Forgot to mention that several terpenes such as myrcene are reactive and if you wait a year or two you will lose some due to chemical reactions even if you stock your stuff air tight. But in such a vessel, how would you remove water if not with a desiccant? The instant you start venting ('burping'), you lose volatiles... to longer the drying process takes, the more you lose.

 

[RulaTone]

That's what I'm saying: If you don't want to lose volatile constituents, the only thing that really helps is speed (and hight pressure but then you will experience troubles getting rid of the water). And if you head towards 0% (which BTW is not possible in a feasible sense) you have to use either a desiccant or a vacuum (and the latter is a bad choice).

EDIT: Forgot to mention that several terpenes such as myrcene are reactive and if you wait a year or two you will lose some due to chemical reactions even if you stock your stuff air tight. But in such a vessel, how would you remove water if not with a desiccant? The instant you start venting ('burping'), you lose volatiles... to longer the drying process takes, the more you lose.

Ok i agree with what you say, basically we can resume like this, correct me if im wrong.

We have two cases:

1 speed up drying (heat, pressure, dessiccant, vacuum)
2 do a very long and "gentle" drying in a dark and dry place.

In the first case you will end up with a drier product (closer to the imaginary 0%) but with less volatiles, that as a delicate molecule flies away easily, moreso if "pushed" by atmospheric agents.

In the second case it will be harder to get to the imaginary 0% dry though due to the low "stress" the delicate molecules of voc are kept more intact, for what is possible.

Sorry for the basic level of explanation..

i was wondering an advanced method to do a 2nd case cure (long and delicate) but with a substantial difference: alterating atmospheric condition in a manner that permits an even lower loss of vocs but leads to an ipothetic 0% moisture in flowers. Is this possible? I dont really know, but what my focus is on is: does exist an even ipotethic atmosphere in wich terpenes are not loss, If yes what does it consist?

The final goal is to have buds with a lower as possible moisture content, in order to sift them and extract the highest amount of resin with the highest amount of terpenes kept in it.
No matter how much time is needed, my only goal is quality.

Thanks for your contribute
RT

 

[Only Ornamental]

Ok i agree with what you say, basically we can resume like this, correct me if im wrong.

We have two cases:

1 speed up drying (heat, pressure, dessiccant, vacuum)
2 do a very long and "gentle" drying in a dark and dry place.

In the first case you will end up with a drier product (closer to the imaginary 0%) but with less volatiles, that as a delicate molecule flies away easily, moreso if "pushed" by atmospheric agents.

In the second case it will be harder to get to the imaginary 0% dry though due to the low "stress" the delicate molecules of voc are kept more intact, for what is possible.
...

That's unfortunately wrong ;( .

I guess I'll have to break it down to the basics:
Water and 'aromas' are both volatile constituents, one we want to get rid of, the others not.
A compound's 'ease' to vaporise depends on two factors, boiling point and vapour pressure. At sub-optimal temperature or pressure, it will take longer to evaporate. In other words, if we want to speed up the evaporation (removal) of a liquid, we can play with pressure, temperature, or time.

Vapour pressure increases non-linear with increasing temperature and reaches atmospheric pressure at it's boiling point. This means, reducing the pressure also lowers a compounds boiling point. Under atmospheric pressure (1'000 mbar), water needs 100°C to boil whereas under reduced pressure of 70 mbar (slight vacuum) it boils at 40°C. Reducing pressure strongly (high vacuum, well below 0.1 mbar) makes water sublimate ('evaporate') even in the frozen state at below -40°C. This is called lyophilisation of freeze-drying. This takes some time but is still fast and has other advantages for example useful in pharmaceutical production. The water vapour pressure at room temperature is rather low and hence, it does not readily evaporate when 'standing around'.
In case of monoterpenes, their vapour pressure is rather high at room temperature but they usually boil at over 200°C (some are even solid at RT). Reducing temperature will not reduce their vapour pressure strong enough to avoid evaporation and when speeding up evaporation of water by heating, they will still evaporate faster (at high enough temps, water vapour itself will facilitate their evaporation too).
The third party in the current case are small, non-terpenoid aromatic molecules such as esters (similar to organic solvents) which have a high vapour pressure at ambient temperature and a low boiling point (roughly 30-80°C). They will evaporate no matter what and they do so a lot faster than water. Obviously, the longer you wait the more you lose.

The task at hand is to find a way how we can remove water without removing other volatiles.
If we reduce temperature, monoterpenes and many other volatiles will still evaporate whereas water will freeze. We would have to reduce pressure too which makes the volatiles evaporate even faster.
If we increase temperature, water will evaporate but so will all the other volatiles, most of all the small molecules...
If we do nothing, it will take time for the water to evaporate but it won't take as much time for all the other volatiles to do the same.
No matter what we do, there is seemingly no chance to win the battle. As the aromas are enclosed in trichomes, they are somewhat protected and hence the best option is a fast drying which we achieve with a dry environment and roughly room temperature; though, this is still not perfect.

Well, there's only seemingly no way... the one thing that does the trick: We use a closed system wherein nothing can escape. In such a container, the volatiles will evaporate a little bit, saturating the atmosphere, but the bunch of it stays in the plant matter. Obviously, the same happens with water until we add a desiccant. Desiccants attract and bind water (the right ones will only bind water and nothing else), selectively removing it from the system without losing the goodies.

In short: Take your buds, put them in a jar, add a desiccant, close it tightly and wait until the stuff is dry.
If you open the jar, you exchange the atmosphere in it and hence lose a part of the volatiles; the volatiles being less in amount than the water and having a higher vapour pressure (also higher % in gas phase), you will first lose them and not the water.

You do not need 0% humidity . Notably, humidity here refers to water content of the plant matter and not air humidity. 10% residual water in the plant is usually very dry and good enough. This can be at 10% relative humidity (air humidity) or 70% rH. Though, it's best to be at a lower rH (below 40%) to work with your material; it also avoids that the water content in the plant rises again (as there is an equilibrium between that and rH).

Hope you do understand the matter now a little better (and did not fry too many brain cells).

 

[Chevy cHaze]

superb explanation only ornamental. Spot on.
thanks

 

[RulaTone]

I read you with great interest OO, no frying brain cells until now!

I will add scientific studies that i am starting to investigate, in wich is taken in account those kind of variabiles and problems you mention to reach what is the goal i suggested earlier.

I am finding interesting reads but i need time to elaborate them and give you a sufficient answer.
at now i am not yet convinced that what i want to do is impossible, we will see
Many thanks for the moment, see you later
RT

 

[RulaTone]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1541-4337.12006/pdf

found this article in full, loads of interesting info if you like to read it and discuss.
Page 5: Instead, as shown by Geier (2006), essential
oils should be treated with inert gas such as argon, cautiously
flushed through to displace remaining air, to prevent the formation
of peroxides efficiently.

the article he cites is this:
Wabner D, Geier K, Hauck D. 2006. For a deeper understanding of tea tree
oil: fresh is best – why we should only use fresh oil at any concentration. Int
J Aromather 16:109–15.

Can you read it in full? i cannot but i really like to

 

[RulaTone]

You do not need 0% humidity . Notably, humidity here refers to water content of the plant matter and not air humidity. 10% residual water in the plant is usually very dry and good enough. This can be at 10% relative humidity (air humidity) or 70% rH. Though, it's best to be at a lower rH (below 40%) to work with your material; it also avoids that the water content in the plant rises again (as there is an equilibrium between that and rH).

you miss my point.
I know i dont need 0% humidity.
I am using hipotethical numbers to let you understand what is the "direction" of the process
I know i cannot have 0% moisture in flowers, what i mean is:
can i use a method that while dring the flowers to the maximum needed to sift them, does not push out the volatiles like it will do in normal atmosphere? it seems it exists a way to do this but we need deeper investigation.
Hope now my writings makes more sense, sorry for my basic level.

 

[ghostmade]

maybe build a chamber that you can pull it with some type of non flammable gas then recirculate the air in that chamber to a separate chamber with the silica balls (becuz you can reuse the over and over).you'll just need the separate chamber with the right size volume. A one to one ratio should work bro.i get what you are trying to do.and it is very interesting idea.0lease post beer experiments if you decide to go through with them. I will be interestedto hear what you have to post

 

[RulaTone]

really interesting your design idea GM, really appreciated and thanks for encouragement
at the moment i need to investigate if there is already something similar, maybe built for similar purposes for some industry.
If not it will be really hard to test such ideas
thinking is free but experimenting unfortunately is not!

see ya
RT

 

[Only Ornamental]

you miss my point.
I know i dont need 0% humidity.
I am using hipotethical numbers to let you understand what is the "direction" of the process
I know i cannot have 0% moisture in flowers, what i mean is:
can i use a method that while dring the flowers to the maximum needed to sift them, does not push out the volatiles like it will do in normal atmosphere? it seems it exists a way to do this but we need deeper investigation.
Hope now my writings makes more sense, sorry for my basic level.

I guess we're talking about the same thing. I just wanted to be sure that you know that you don't need to have 0% .
Again, I repeat for the third or fourth time: Use a desiccant in a hermetically closed container. The smaller the free space (i.e. air), the better. You may, if you wanted to, replace the air with nitrogen or argon but as the process won't take long and can be done in the fridge too, there's no need to do so.
Also, you can just add the desiccant in a bag and don't need two separate containers. As ghostmade pointed out, use enough of it or recycle. Many bulk products indicate how much water the desiccant can hold and you know that ~70-80% of your plants fresh weight is water.
And no, we don't need more or deeper investigations, they've been done over and over again.

Besides; flushing essential oil with inert gas is an old hat but only works if you have it in pure form. You can not bubble it through trichomes, just around them and fill the jar with inert gas (and/or stock it cold) to greatly reduce oxidation during long term storage.
As you're going to make hash, just do so quickly after drying, press the powder to remove all air and bubbles and then freeze the brick. It's exactly what people do when making and stocking hash. I don't see the problem here...

 

[RulaTone]

I tell you where is my problem:
if i take flowers and let em stand upright down to dry when is harvest time, in my enviroment i usually can bring them after 20 days and they are dry for storage and smoking.

When i want to make drysift i need a really longer standing in the dry chamber, usually months. (even SamS talked once about his method for 99%drysift and he asserted to dry for up to six months)
Since its hard to control atmosphere for months in a regular drying box, i was wondering a system that permits a prolonged exposure to air (or gas) for a better drying (hence a better extraction)
but without loosing the most desired volatiles, that as you pointed out are really susceptible to air, light and temp.
Just that, i dont want to reinvent the wheel, just talk of something wich is somehow not yet developed.

Obviusly i know that essential oils are different than the actual mixture you have in an enclosed thricome, what i know is that if a gas is inert for the terpenes and inhibits its degradation by oxidation it will be helpful in a drying chamber for a smoker that wants the maximum content of terpenes in the thricomes of his flowers..
as if terpenes dont oxidize in pure form how can they do protected by a lipid membrane?

 

[Only Ornamental]

You can not dry the stuff under inert gas and if you need months to get it dry, then you should work on the environmental conditions. It's not about magic but simple physics. Bring the relative humidity down and you speed up drying.
There's actually one point that might explain why it takes months to be able to dry sift: old trichomes contain less highly volatile compounds which are liquid and sticky and a part of the monoterpenes is also polymerised. Hence the glands become hard, dry, and sand-like. In this case you have no other possibility than using dry ice (frozen CO2) to freeze your buds and make them manageable ('siftable') without losing anything.

 

[ghostmade]

Ive also read that's some terpenes are water soluble,so aint you losing terps via the evaporation of moisture?that's why people(including me)love fresh frozen bho or that"living plant extract"(in which they prettymuch pack the tube as the remove the stems and fans)(although some people leave all of it for more weight/and a better oral medicine or "rso".)see i believe there is a cut off point of effort vs. Outcome.you know?but with that being said.im likeing your idea though regarding preservation of the thc and or the different terps.did you know that some terpenes in a concentrated enough forms is deadly to humans and can strip paint?so maby allowing some terps to boil off,helps with the quality of the high and allows a smoother smokeing experience.idk this is just the sh@t rolling out of my head.lolOO break it down for me brother.we also need sam,greywolf,and the bubbleman (if you can find him)lol to pop in on this specific discussion.

 

[ghostmade]

oh and sorry to the 0 P, for contributing in the derailment of the thread

 

[mexcurandero420]

Just for info

Keep on growing

 

[Seaf0ur]

oh and sorry to the 0 P, for contributing in the derailment of the thread

This thread hadn't quite taken the intended direction anyways and the evolution of it is quite interesting. No apologies are necessary at all. I was intending on a basic guideline for breeding and terpene testing... A recipe sheet of sorts. Not that you could accurately predict exactly what qualities would be passed from both parents in a cross, but trying to see if flavor could be predicted to some degree based off parental terpene testing. My focus was odor and flavor... Which still seems to be the focus.