Weed can be expensive, especially if you’re an avid user. Whether you partake medicinally or recreationally, storing properly is important in order to maintain the terpene and cannabinoid profiles.
Cannabis Storage Best Practices
The best way to store your cannabis flower is in a dark-colored airtight container in a cool, dark place. It’s not enough to store your herb and forget it. A variety of environmental factors can cause your herb to lose potency, flavor and aroma. Sunlight, air, moisture, mold, and microorganisms can alter the chemical composition of your weed.
One of the most important factors in cannabis storage is humidity level. Too much humidity in your nug jar can make it easy for mold and mildew to grow within your flower. Inhaling mold can make you sick. Too little humidity and your cannabis dries out and loses potency. The tiny resinous hairs on your flower (trichomes) contain all the medicinal cannabinoids and aromatic terpene oils you need to have a great experience. These trichomes can dry out and leave you with a harsh tasting flower that can alter your overall experience.
The Perfect Humidity Level For Storing Cannabis
After extensive testing, Boveda (a manufacturer of humidity control products across various industries), created a 2-way humidity control pack that regulates the humidity in storage containers to always be at 62% relative humidity (RH), the sweet spot of optimal cannabis trichome preservation. Relative humidity indicates how moist the air is in a given area. The pack is made of a semi-permeable membrane that contains a mixture of carefully sourced natural salts and pure water vapor. The pack is “2-way” because moisture is both released and absorbed to maintain the appropriaate relative humidity. No matter how many times you open your cannabis flower jar, the 2-way pack will respond to the humidity inside and absorb or release moisture to maintain that ideal percentage.
62% RH was tested against cannabis stored without the humidity pack to find out how it affected cannabis quality. The testing found that the cannabis flower stored with the humidity pack retained 15% more trichomes than the cannabis flower stored without the pack. This means that a humidity control system preserves those naturally-occurring compounds found in cannabis that get you higher and provide significant relief for a variety of symptoms including pain, inflammation, depression, seizures, migraines, and more.
Does Humidity Control Work With Cigar Storage?
Premium cigars need appropriate storage to mature properly and develop the subtle complexities in flavor. Tannins in cigars help protect the tobacco from microorganisms. Tannins are also responsible for that dry and puckery feeling you get when you take a draw from a cigar or sip on a glass of red wine. Similar to cannabis flower, cigars need an RH between 60-65% RH. Storing your cigars in a lower RH makes them a bit firmer and easier to light and draw from. The sweet spot for cigar storage is 65% RH.
Source: cannador.com
