@CaptenKush Proper dry should be slow and takes a month to do correctly. Colder the better without freezing. Relative humidity should be 60% for the first two weeks. No matter the size of the flower, It will never over dry or dry too fast at 60%. Above 60% and you risk mold. You can store bud for months at 60% humidity and it would still be too ‘wet’ for me to smoke. After two weeks you can start to lower the humidity down to 55% for the 3rd week. After 3 weeks you can lower the humidity down to 50%. At one month the buds will be ready to seal long term. During the drying process water vapor and CO2 are off-gassed from the plant as microbes break down chlorophyll. Remove stems and as much leaf as possible before sealing bud in a container. Remove the leaf, remove the hay smell. While the bud is drying those first few weeks the outer waxy shell of the trichome head (called the cuticle) hardens or ‘cures’ to protect the oils inside. Oxygen free radicals in the air cause this oxidation. Trichomes are cured before the bud is ready to smoke. Long term storage and ‘ bud curing’ is a different process all together. Curing flower involves the break down of starches into carbohydrates and those carbohydrates then broken down into simple sugars. This doesn’t happen in a month. Patience is a virtue. This is why my smoke is so smooth and never harsh on the throat. When I started growing there were a few grow books but none of those guys really knew what they were doing back then on the processing side. This has been my SOP for over 20 years. It didn’t come in a dream though. Many ruined crops in the beginning. It took several years of trial and error. I shared it with the DGC 10 years ago and now I see it it has become the commercial industry standard. And most of those clowns still rush the process and do it half-ass.

Weeks 1-2 60F/60%RH

Week 3 60F/55%RH

Week 4 60F/50%RH

Day 28 seal in container.