How come weed loses its aroma while drying?

Perhaps I am not drying correctly, but when the weed is freshly cut and hung to dry, it seems to lose most of its characteristic aroma, and takes on a wet hay sort of a smell instead. The pot smell doesn't seem to return until a after a week or two of curing. Any reason this happens? or does this mean I'm doing something wrong?

Chlorophyll air.

Because it is a plant.

Could be drying too fast.i dry in the low 70s temp & about 45-50 humidity.as long as its not dry in 3 days your should be fine.

This is absolutely normal! Its the process, as long as the smell comes back when it drys all the way!

The smell will return once it goes through its curing phase. Not unless it tries way too fast then your smell will be like hay.

Oh no! I think I've been drying too fast! It IS dry in about 3-4 days. Shouldn't it really take more like 7 days? The ambient humidity in the room now that it's winter and the heat is on, ranges from about 40-55 and the temp is mid to low 60's (basement). I do have a fan blowing and I ran out of space in the room so the fan was blowing directly on the buds on a low setting (like a gentle breeze). But I should probably angle the fan away so it just circulates air in the room indirectly. Or ditch the fan altogether. I also made some drying boxes by threading string through cardboard boxes and hanging buds inside the box. Only downside is there is no airflow in the boxes, but that might slow down the drying process too. I stopped using them because they just took up too much space in my living quarters but I could get them out of storage.

The weed aroma has been going away and not really returning fellas. I think I've blown it I thought the error was in the curing phase or perhaps because I didn't do a final flush before harvest the last couple of times (hydro), but now from your comments I really think it's from the drying.

EDIT: In most of the posts I've read people claim they dry for 3 days, but I also read some tutorials that say if it's dried too quickly, it will smell like hay or pine needles which is what is happening to me. Now I'm just confused

if you dont let your plant flower long enough or you harvested to soon..... this also effect your smell

colonuggs said:

if you dont let your plant flower long enough or you harvested to soon..... this also effect your smell

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thats right! leaves your bud tasting like hay

Redoctober said:

Oh no! I think I've been drying too fast! It IS dry in about 3-4 days. Shouldn't it really take more like 7 days? The ambient humidity in the room now that it's winter and the heat is on, ranges from about 40-55 and the temp is mid to low 60's (basement). I do have a fan blowing and I ran out of space in the room so the fan was blowing directly on the buds on a low setting (like a gentle breeze). But I should probably angle the fan away so it just circulates air in the room indirectly. Or ditch the fan altogether. I also made some drying boxes by threading string through cardboard boxes and hanging buds inside the box. Only downside is there is no airflow in the boxes, but that might slow down the drying process too. I stopped using them because they just took up too much space in my living quarters but I could get them out of storage.

The weed aroma has been going away and not really returning fellas. I think I've blown it I thought the error was in the curing phase or perhaps because I didn't do a final flush before harvest the last couple of times (hydro), but now from your comments I really think it's from the drying.

EDIT: In most of the posts I've read people claim they dry for 3 days, but I also read some tutorials that say if it's dried too quickly, it will smell like hay or pine needles which is what is happening to me. Now I'm just confused

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the most important is that you start drying when buds are mature alrdy. ofc it will be less harsh with more days to dry but 3 days is ok imo. the rest is fixed while cureing anyways . a Tip is to hangdry the whole plant with leaves and all and trim after its dry so that it dryes up slower . also its less time consuming and easyer to trim a dry plant. best regards

As said above make sure you let your plants get nice and mature and don't have the fan blowing on the plants ,that will dry em out to quick.What i do is hang them in a closet on cloths hangers and have the fan on the floor of the closet just on low just to circulate the air .I also peek in now and then ,which lets out built up humidity.Also one thing that has been advised to growers to do for a long time which is actually bad advice is to wait until the buds are "stem snap" dry before jarring.I and alot of others are of the oppinion this is too dry.I wait until the buds feel dry on the outside but the stems don't quite snap ,usually 3 or 4 days .Then i jar em and burp the jar for 15 mins twice a day for a week ,rotating the jar each burp so different sides of the bud are exposed to the inner jar air.Then after that once a day for a week ,then once every other day for a week and then just once a week.I seem to keep my smell pretty nice this way.

I try to dry for as long as possible...just not long enough for it to get moldy. Also in a cold room... My last harvest took 10-13 days to dry, and even then it lost much of its original aroma. The cure is bringing it back though...

By "as long as possible" I mean without it getting bone dry. The buds feel rather gooey the first week in the jar...

Nobodies mentioned strain.

Some strains are just not so stinky whilst others hold their smell very well. I can personally testify to Lemon Skunk being stinky all through dry. Whilst you need to hold your nose close to appreciate a cured Violator kush.

it is dry here and my last batch dried out in less than 4 days.
it was double blueberry and is very stinky, gonna go hit some now

Okay I feel a little better. Perhaps I didn't totally screw this up after all. Maybe the smell will return a bit over the course of the cure. I just need to be patient.

I have done the method where you hang the whole plant and trim after it was dry, and my personal experience was that it was much more difficult to trim it when dry. But that's just me.

I don't believe I'm harvesting too early. I check the trichomes with a loop, and the buds on the plant before harvest are quite fragrant. What drives me nuts is that a few harvests ago, I had an absolutely amazing result. The best, most potent smelling chemdog I've ever seen. I have been cloning the same strain, so that hasn't changed. I am trying to determine what factors were different from that grow to my current one so see what I did right back then and what I'm doing wrong now.

The immediate differences that come to mind are:

1. Used General Hydroponics nutes back then and have since switched to House and Garden(which I really like)
2. Switched from LED lights back then to HPS in flower now
3. Back then I dried in a slightly more humid closet with vegging plants which may have caused it to take a bit longer. But also it was in the presence of a lot of light which is a no no. Despite that, the bud turned out awesome.
4. Back then I flushed with RO water for a week before harvest. This time I didn't do a flush at all

I've never lost smell by hang drying whole plants. Smell the same as before I chop her down. Jar them up for 3-4 weeks makes them stronger. Mine usually hang for 10-14 days before jars, but one time I wasn't home for 3 weeks and they hung for 21 days drying. Still ended up with same taste/potency after 3 weeks in jars.
Early harvesting is the biggest problem no matter how you dry/cure it wont be good. Calyx need to be FULLY swollen!

When you open the jar> the smell smacks you in the face and fills the room.

I don't mind a little extra work trimming when it always turns out the same every time and i get to smoked some of the plant while i trim.(ofc. I never have leftovers from last harvest )

You don't have to trim all the sugar leaves. (I've noticed less of the trichomes end up inside the jar stuck to the glass if they have something to protect them like sugar leaves) My sugar leaves are covered in trichs anyways and don't hurt flavor/potency at all.

Sometimes i just take the tips off sugar leaves.

er0senin said:

the most important is that you start drying when buds are mature alrdy. ofc it will be less harsh with more days to dry but 3 days is ok imo. the rest is fixed while cureing anyways . a Tip is to hangdry the whole plant with leaves and all and trim after its dry so that it dryes up slower . also its less time consuming and easyer to trim a dry plant. best regards

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whether bud is easier to trim dry or wet is a pretty decent debate in the growing community. Personally i think it is much easier and faster to do a wet/been drying for a day or two trim than it is to trim when the bud is completely dry. When the bud is dry, the sugar leaves just fall right off, which is nice but can also knock off a lot of trichromes, when its wet you can get a pretty close trim without knocking off any trichromes, or at least as many as you would if the bud were dry.

cdub5 said:

whether bud is easier to trim dry or wet is a pretty decent debate in the growing community. Personally i think it is much easier and faster to do a wet/been drying for a day or two trim than it is to trim when the bud is completely dry. When the bud is dry, the sugar leaves just fall right off, which is nice but can also knock off a lot of trichromes, when its wet you can get a pretty close trim without knocking off any trichromes, or at least as many as you would if the bud were dry.

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well no matter when you trim we can all agree it should be done with care. trimming wet u can just mush all trichomes on the scissors insted . ive tried both ways and got about same results i just prefer doing it afterwards since it was less time consuming for the same resulut. but every man to there own