How to Dry Weed Perfectly – Easy Guide to Hang Drying Cannabis

So your plants finally have the perfect amount of amber trichomes and now you’re ready to chop. But you don’t know how to dry weed? Congratulations, you made it this far, but your works not done yet. You can’t just smoke the buds off these plants and the next steps are drying, trimming and curing. There are hundreds of different ways you can dry your buds but for the purpose of this video, I’m going to show you how to dry weed and cannabis and the easiest way is to hang it upside down.

Freshly cut buds will have about 75% water weight and you want to bring this down to about 10-15%. This will allow chlorophyll in your buds to break down and remove the majority of the hay and grassy scent apparent in fresh cut buds. The whole process can take anywhere from 3 to 14 days, depending on size of buds, amount of foliage and stems and the environment. Properly dried buds will improve the smoke quality and preserve the terpene and THC content.

The first thing you need to do is pick a DARK location in your house that’s close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 55% humidity. Just find the room that’s closest to this combo using a thermometer/hygrometer. The room needs to be dark because sunlight contains UV light which will degrade THC. It’s also worth noting, that these plants will be DANK during the first couple of days of drying, so if that’s an issue, you may want to dry in a carbon filtered grow tent. These numbers don’t have to exact, but it’s important they don’t fluctuate and as long as you’re not more than 10 degrees off, I’d say you’re safe. If you’re more than 10 degrees, you may need to control the variables using a heater, AC unit, humidifier or dehumidifier:

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High humidity may lead to mold and bud rot, where low humidity may result in your bud drying too fast. Bud that dries too fast will trap chlorophyll in the center of the buds and that doesn’t taste good. Now, were finally ready to chop, I chop right before I was supposed to feed the plants so that as much moisture evaporates naturally.

Some people like to leave their plants in complete darkness for up to 2 days before they chop, but I just chop right in the morning, right before light is about to start in the tent. Now, get your gloves and put them on because its gonna get real sticky.

Drying begins the day that you chop and if you could chop and flip the whole plant in one piece, DO IT. However, most of the time my plants will collapse once I remove the supports, so then, I have to chop by the branch.

While I’m chopping, I inspect and remove all the large fan leaves and that will slightly speed up the process of drying. I also remove any dying or yellowing leaves that are obvious before I hang because this will reduce the risk of bud rot and mold. You’ll notice you could kind of lift the bud to peek into where the dead leaves start and I like to pull the whole leaf off using tweezers.

Once all these leaves are off, you’re ready to hang. I like to hang using soft twist ties because they’re easy to use and for branches, you don’t even need to tie them. I reuse the ones I used for low stress training and loop it around branch onto the hanging line. As I’m hanging the buds, I am spacing them out and making sure none of them are touching or too close. If I’m drying in a small room, I like to add a small fan and put it on its lowest setting. I never aim the fan directly at the plants and usually aim it at a wall on an angle. This will help prevent isolated cases of high humidity which happens when buds aren’t spaced out evenly.

Once all the buds are hung, closely monitor the temperature and humidity to make sure nothing gets thrown off. For the first 2 days you will notice the same pungent bud like scent that came from your grow tent while the buds were ready to harvest. This is where the majority of the moisture evaporates and on day 3-5 you’ll notice more of the hay and grass like scent.

You may think that the plants have lost their aroma, but this is where the chlorophyll is just breaking down and with that, the grassiness is evaporating. The smell will be less obvious in the days that follow and soon you’ll be ready to trim. During days 5 and on, I use my sense of touch to know when the buds are dry. Find a stem that’s as thick as a toothpick and use both hands to see if the stem cracks. If it bends, theres still moisture in the buds and you want it to kind of snap. Another great method is weight based drying but it requires a hanging scale. By measuring the wet weight, I wait until around 70% of the water weight evaporates to start snapping. Ive been tracking these weights and 72% seems to be my sweet spot.

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The buds will seem dry to the touch, but the inside still contains moisture which we’ll balance out in curing.