3 Tips to Keep Your Weed Fresh
Cannabis is a delicate flower. Top shelf cannabis goes through a long and carefully managed process to preserve it as best as possible before it arrives to you. When you get your cannabis, the mission of keeping it fresh falls into your hands.
The packaging you received your cannabis in wasn’t meant to last an eternity. It’s only designed to keep your cannabis secure from the grower, dispensary, and house. Once you crack the seal, you need to have a backup plan.
Your cannabis can begin to go stale and degrade as soon as you open it. Transferring it to a container designed to prevent that from happening and carefully managing its environment will keep it fresh for longer.
How Long Does Cannabis Last?
Properly dried and cured cannabis doesn’t have a set-in-stone shelf life. Under optimal conditions, cannabis can last up to a year. Realistically, you can expect up to six months of fresh-tasting cannabis. This is plenty of time for occasional cannabis users.
If you like to try a wide variety of strains or if you don’t use cannabis very often, try to avoid keeping more than a three-month supply on hand. With proper storage, there’s virtually no chance it will go stale before you finish it up.
What Happens When Cannabis isn’t Stored Properly?
Cannabis isn’t a processed product. It’s a lot more like something you’d find in the produce section of the grocery store. Your cannabis has been dried and cured, but at the end of the day, it’s still a plant. It’s inherently fragile, and if you don’t protect it, it can spoil quickly.
Excessive Moisture Can Cause Rot
When your cannabis flowers were alive on the plant, they were full of water and nutrients. Before the flower reached you, it was dried and cured in a highly controlled environment. Growers finish the flower by encouraging the water to evaporate without damaging the flower itself. There’s no way to preserve the flower without removing the water. Moisture breeds bacteria and mold, causing the flower to rot.
Dry cannabis remains parched. All of its water is gone, and it will readily absorb every drop of water it can find. Your cannabis can draw water in through the air. Humidity and moisture will collect in your cannabis, slowly starting the process of decay. Small particles of mold may begin to form, and when they do, they’re almost impossible to detect.
The Terpenes Disappear
Terpenes are the aromatic compounds that give each strain of cannabis its unique flavor and aroma. These compounds are extremely sensitive. When cannabis flower is dried and cured, about half of its natural terpenes evaporate.
Improper storage methods make it easy for these terpenes to escape. You need to leave terpenes with no place to go and prevent them from attempting to escape the cannabis in the first place.
Cannabinoids Degrade and Convert
Have you ever found an old bag of cannabis in the pocket of last year’s winter coat? You were probably really disappointed when you attempted to smoke it. Cannabinoids degrade and convert over time. Light, heat, and air circulation can break them down.
Psychoactive THC naturally converts to non-psychoactive CBN -- a cannabinoid people often use to promote better sleep. At that point, your cannabis is a less effective version of melatonin. All of its other benefits are gone.
1. Choose the Right Storage Container
Choosing the right container is the most important aspect of cannabis storage. The container you use can make or break your stash. Most stash containers are designed to look cool but don’t do much in the way of actually preserving your cannabis.
Blocking Light
Cannabinoids respond to light. When cannabis flowers are still attached to the plant, cannabinoids can be produced and converted as needed. When they’ve been harvested, heat and light will convert cannabinoids to less beneficial forms and ultimately destroy them.
Any container you can see through will allow light to reach your cannabis. Clear stash containers, plastic bags, and salsa jars are poor storage solutions for your cannabis. You need a completely opaque stash container to offer your flower the best possible light protection.
Eliminating Static Charge
Plastic containers can create static charge as a result of friction and low amounts of energy. These tiny little zaps will fry the trichome crystals right off the exterior of your cannabis. When the trichomes are gone, so are many of the plant’s benefits.
While glittery or brightly colored stash tubes and jars are adorable, they’re cute at the expense of ruining your favorite strain. It doesn’t matter if the plastic is transparent or opaque. Stay away from plastic containers, even for temporary storage as a travel container.
Keeping an Airtight Seal
If air can get in and out of the container, so can moisture and bacteria. Air will take away your terpenes while introducing environmental contaminants that will cause your cannabis to break down faster.
Your storage jar needs a perfectly airtight seal. Bonus points if it’s also childproof.
Use a Stori pod
Stori pods are made of FDA-approved food-grade aluminum. They don’t conduct static charges or allow any light to enter, and the childproof lids are secured very tightly. Stori pod is made specifically for storing cannabis. It never used to hold pickles or jelly. It isn’t intended to hold a sandwich in your lunchbox. It’s perfectly designed for its intended purpose.
2. Maintain Optimal Humidity
After your cannabis has been harvested, it undergoes a curing process. During this curing process, the cannabis is stored in a closed vessel at optimal humidity. The humidity level is maintained to preserve the terpenes and keep the flower from becoming crunchy.
You’ll encounter the same theory at the grocery store. Have you ever been in that little cold, humid case where they sell bouquets of flowers near the produce section? It’s designed to do the exact same thing that a cannabis curing setup will do.
While it’s essential to keep your cannabis from coming into contact with water and contaminants, you don’t want it to shrivel up and crunch like kale chips. The right balance is somewhere in the middle.
Stori + Boveda Makes a Cannabis Storage Humidor
Inside the lid of your Stori pod, you’ll see a couple plastic clips. They’re designed to hold a size 1 Boveda pack. Boveda packs are designed to turn any airtight, light-blocking storage container into a humidor. Humidors are special containers designed to maintain optimal humidity levels for plant and dry herb storage. They’re frequently used for fine cigars, and cannabis users are coming to realize that they’re equally valuable for protecting their stashes.
Boveda packs lay down a fragile shield of purified water over the surface of your cannabis flower. It’s just enough to prevent the terpenes from evaporating. The pack acts as a two-way humidity controller for the interior of the pod, preventing the cannabis from becoming too wet or too dry.
3. Don’t Let Your Cannabis Get Too Warm
Cannabinoids need heat to convert to their active forms. That’s why cannabis works when it’s ignited and smoked, but it needs to be decarboxylated (heat-treated) before it can be used to make edibles.
Prolonged exposure to low levels of heat will slowly decarboxylate your cannabis and eventually burn off its cannabinoids. After a few days of storage at an improper temperature, your cannabis loses its gusto.
Cannabis can’t be stored in a refrigerator or freezer. An intense cold will cause the trichomes to become brittle. They’ll snap off in tiny little pieces and significantly throttle your flower’s potency. Room temperature, or about 70F (20C) degrees, is the optimal storage temperature for your cannabis. Avoid putting your storage case in a place that might get warm.
Don’t put it near a heater or on a mantle. Don’t store it in a kitchen cabinet anywhere near the oven. Keep it far away from the windowsill. Never leave it in your car on a hot day.
Placing your storage case somewhere near the center of a room or anywhere in the coolest area of your home is sufficient. Keeping it in a room with great air conditioning never hurts. If you’re comfy in that room, so is your weed.
Stori Thought of Everything
Cannabis needs a little home. You don’t hide a fancy bottle of wine under your bed or put your scotch in a lockbox. High-quality cannabis is something special, and it needs some love and respect. That’s exactly what Stori is made for.
We designed a cannabis-specific storage case with child-resistant, pet-resistant lids that help you keep your cannabis fresh and organized. Every pod is equipped with color-coded lids that you can label with the name of your strain, the date you purchased it, the THC content, or anything else you’d want to know on sight.
The Stori app works in conjunction with your Stori case to keep you organized. You can rate and review the strains you’ve tried, leaving notes as you discover your preferences. We’ve got it all figured out. All you need to do is enjoy your fresh cannabis.
Sources:
How To Identify Mold in Cannabis Products | Bloom Arkansas
What is CBN (cannabinol), and what are the benefits of this cannabinoid? | Leafly
What Is Decarboxylation? Decarboxylation Weed Explained | Weedmaps
