In the outlaw days of California cannabis, Nat Pennington used to store his weed in pickle barrels buried in the ground. Back then, Pennington needed a way to stockpile his crop in a way that would make it last until next year’s harvest. And, with the active threat of federal law enforcement, he also needed to keep it hidden in places that couldn’t be traced back to him. Eventually, Pennington, who is now CEO of Humboldt Seed Company, would work his way up to storage in septic tanks. While Pennington’s techniques to keep his weed fresh in the early 2000s seem novel today, they were operating on the same principles as all methods of good cannabis storage: keep it dark and cool.
“The pickle barrel was a relatively inexpensive way to waterproof seal large objects or large amounts of a product, namely, in this case, big bags of cannabis,” Pennington says. “We could dig a hole and bury it and that’s a big hole, I mean, a pickle barrel is like 50 gallons… People use [pickle barrels] for rainwater catchment, cisterns of sorts, water tanks, things like that, but in Humboldt, indoor grows even started using them for their reservoirs to mix nutrients and do hydroponics and stuff.”
Like any flower that’s been picked, cannabis flowers begin to evolve and change—in both appearance and chemical composition—the moment they are harvested. Getting moisture out of the buds and keeping all the aromatic and flavorful elements in is the alchemy of great growers. The purpose of amazing weed is to smoke it, not store it, but the dream of having an epically large headstash remains. If aged properly, cannabis can reach the two-year mark and still smoke great.
Harry Resin, a world-renowned cannabis breeder and writer with figurative roots in Amsterdam, remembers growers in the early 2000s carrying tiny Phillips clothes irons to seal storage bags of buds. Designed to block out moisture and air to make dog food last, those in the Dutch scene repurposed the bags to keep their indoor flowers fresh.
“Everyone carried a little mini iron because the technique is, effectively, every time you shut [the bag], you iron it closed,” Resin says. “And you would seal it to the corner and really get the air out. They were unbelievable bags. You could store a kilo in there. It stayed for a very long time.”
Dried and cured cannabis is packaged for extended storage in many types of containers, including turkey bags, mylar bags, glass jars, and plastic bins. Often air-tight and stored in vaults, closets, garages, barns, fridges, or freezers, the aim is to provide a place that’s stable in terms of temperature and light in order to preserve the pot in the best way possible.
Think Outside the Jar
Esteemed cannabis journalist David Downs emphasizes that when it comes to the best storage for weed, “what’s happening outside the storage container is really relevant.”
“California is not only the best place to grow weed, it’s the best place to smoke weed,” he says. “In general, the temperature and the humidity isn’t pummeling your pot the way that it is in Colorado, where it’s really dry, and [the surroundings] will pull all the moisture out. In Florida or Hawaii, if you leave the weed out, it’ll rehydrate and get spongy.”
Downs’s book with leading cannabis horticulture authority Ed Rosenthal, Marijuana Harvest: Maximizing Quality and Yield in Your Cannabis Garden, presents research conducted by the federal government’s longtime cannabis grower, the University of Mississippi. The study shows that cannabis loses most of its THC in the first year. By year four, almost half of the THC has converted to CBN.
“I just got back from Thailand and it’s really hot and really humid there,” Downs says over a phone call in late August. “It is a tough environment for weed to exist in. After you dried it and cured it, the odds are kind of just stacked against you in the ambient environment.”
To keep his weed fresh during his trip to Thailand, Downs says he only shopped in stores with air conditioning that had the flowers sealed and stored out of direct sunlight. After purchasing cannabis in Thailand, he would place it within a Grove bag and put it in his hotel refrigerator. Any circumstance where weed smells loud in its container means its terpenes are evaporating into the air.
“Whenever I go into a retail store, and I smell terps, I know that I’m smelling my money gassing off into the room, and I’m not happy about that,” Downs says. “I never want to smell terps in my storage area. I want to smell that stuff going into my lungs and my nose, not into my room.”
Forever Young
Rosenthal’s recently been keeping his prized stash of cryogenically cured cannabis in his refrigerator.
“The colder something is, the less change there is in its formulation,” Rosenthal says. “Light and heat, especially UV, modify both THC and the terpenes.”
He explains that the cold conditions of the refrigerator mean that bacteria, which degrade cannabis flowers, are less active.
Moisture within a container is also an enemy of retaining the quality and potency of pot. Rosenthal says that buds with the right moisture content, 10 to 11%, can be placed in a vacuum-sealed bag and stored in the freezer for long-term preservation.
Rock the Cure
Wet, freshly trimmed flowers won’t burn; that’s why cannabis is dried and also often cured in a secondary drying phase. Tamara Kislak of That Good Good Farm in Mendocino County says the cure is the most important part of cannabis storage.
“Cannabis is a perishable item. It’s a living organism like any other produce, and so it has its peak and it has other variations,” Kislak says. “If it’s not cured out, you’re left with a whole bunch of enzymes. You’ve got a bunch of chlorophyll, you’ve got all of this living activity in it.”
She says well-cured bud means, “you’ve worked out a lot of the off-gassing, the enzymes have broken down to the point where they’re more stable, and you’ve retained the terpenes and the oils and the flavor that you want.”
After the cannabis flowers have been cured, Kislak says, “you go, cool, dark, as little oxygen exchange as you can.”
It’s Not Old, It’s Vintage
Cannabis is typically cured in a range of a few weeks to a month, but many outdoor growers in California’s famed Emerald Triangle prefer a “long cure” and store flowers on their stems for a year or longer before trimming the weed to smoke. Longtime cultivators and cannabis experts Nikki Lastreto and Swami Chaitanya say they don’t even smoke their fall harvest until March or April of the following year.
“Swami and I have always been big fans of what we call vintage cannabis,” Lastreto says. “Which means that you let it cure, and you let it cure for over a year from harvest, and that’s when it really kind of starts hitting its peak, and to do that, you really have to store it perfectly.”
Thinking back to the 1960s, Chaitanya—who instructs students on “storage integrity” as part of the Ganjier program—remembers the days of getting cannabis from places like Mexico, Thailand, and Colombia.
“It was always at least six, seven months old by the time it got to you, transported from a dealer to a smaller dealer to your eighth,” he says. “Now everything is indoor, and it’s harvested three months after sprouting. That weed probably needs to be smoked pretty soon after harvest, but it’s just not powered up. We’re talking about biologically grown, sungrown, long-season, one-harvest cannabis. It’s all been grown the old-fashioned way, and that stuff I don’t even smoke it until March or April.”
Tina Gordon, the force behind Moon Made Farms in Southern Humboldt, says she will release flowers she’s stored on the stems from the previous year’s harvest the following September.
“And it’s killer,” Gordon says. “I’m a fan of long curing and long storage, and in that storage, the curing process continues. In order to honor the plant, I think that what’s up is a stable environment where that plant will find its full expression in the dried form. It means preserving the terpene and cannabinoid profile in such a way that it’s going to most benefit whoever smokes it.”
Gordon keeps many of her flowers still on the stem with a “farmer’s cut” that retains the sugar leaves to protect the buds. Moon Made has also released cannabis in this form on the commercial market as a “queen cola.”
“What I’m going for is a peak smoking experience, in terms of flavor, in terms of effect, and so I prefer to release flower when it’s at its peak for being smoked,” Gordon says.
Mario, the cultivator behind Cosmic Forces Farm in Mendocino, keeps his cannabis hung on the line in a cool, dark room until it’s ready to be trimmed and bagged for sale.
“I just cut it, hang it, I don’t deleaf it, and I just leave it hanging until it’s time to trim it,” he says. “I’ll leave it hanging for like six, seven months sometimes.”
Keeping cannabis on its stems means it lasts longer, as the stem helps to regulate moisture. If possible, home growers looking to extend the life of their harvest should keep cannabis untrimmed and on its stem until the point when it will be smoked.
Still, with all this talk of preserving pot, remember, the ultimate purpose of cannabis is to enjoy it.
“Weed is a perishable item,” Kislak says. “You should just smoke it.”
Photo courtesy of Terpshotz
