This was an interesting harvest. Everything was going great and the buds/trichomes were still piling on, when suddenly almost overnight plant "C" shifted to about 20% amber trichomes. So I harvested it, and because the other plant wasn't ready yet I decided to try water curing the first one for 7 days. Then at the end of the 7 days, I figured I'd hack down plant "D" and dry them both on the racks in the tent at the same time before moving into jars.
The water curing was a huge success! After the first day, the water was cloudy with a slight green tinge. Second day was about the same. Then the water was just a little cloudy each change, no green tinge. Compare it to the diary I just opened around water re-curing some cannabis I bought from the government store, where the water is diarrhea brown :O On day 7 of my water cure, the water was perfectly clear so I decided to hack down plant "D" and get them both drying on racks in the tent together.
While water-curing plant "C", I had its trim sitting in a bowl in the freezer. When I hacked down plant "D", I put its trim in the same bowl. After my typical wet-trimming, I hung up Plant "C"'s water-cured buds on the top rack, plant "D"'s buds on the 2nd rack for an old fashioned cure, and random trim from both plants spread out on the bottom 2 racks.
The water-cured buds dried within about 24 hours and went into a jar with a 58% humidipack. The buds are SUPER dense and potent! Nice clean high, doesn't kill my throat. The downside is that the taste is really weak and not that great. But everything has pros and cons. Almost no trichome loss in the bucket during the water curing as well -- I was really worried about that!
The other buds dried in about 36 hours and went into a jar with a 58% humidipack, where I burped it many times a day for a week. The smell and flavour are much more potent than the water-cured bud and it's a little harsher on my throat, but otherwise I'm not sure there's a detectable difference.
However, you can SEE there's a sharp visual difference between the water-cured buds and the jar-cured :) Of course the jar-cured will mature more with time as well.
Once the trim was completely dry, I put it in a bag in the deep freezer and dropped it to about -20. I didn't need to use a grinder this way -- I could just mash it all up in the bag with extreme ease! Sifted it through the kief screen, and pressed down 17 grams of lazy-man's hash!
After processing the trim through the kief screen, I decarbed in the oven at 200F for 1 hour (this converts THC-A into THC or something to that effect -- if you don't do this, the edibles won't get you very high). I put the trim into a big mason jar and back into the freezer along with my bottle of Everclear. Once they dropped somewhere down around -20, I poured in the Everclear, put the lid on, and shook as hard as I could, as often as I could, for 5 minutes or so. I noticed that as I shook it around, the contents inside would alternate between solid and liquid which was kinda cool :) Shake it one way and it freezes, shake it the other way and it thaws... or something to that effect, anyway. I was able to use a double-coffee-filter to extract about 2 cups of dragon tincture!
I threw everything in the coffee filter out -- next time I'm going to do a better job of it as there's a little pile of trichomes that forms at the bottom of the filter which I could put to use. Once I get that down next harvest, I'll have around 99% efficiency milking every last drop out of my harvests!
White chocolate is so yummy, as are candy canes... I wanted to combine the two to make some edibles. Looking around for candy cane crush, I decided to check out Amazon. They had the same candy cane crush I was looking at from popular stores, for only a couple dollars more, so I figured sure why not have it delivered. I was planning to get some white Baker's chocolate, but on checkout of the candy cane crush I got a deal for adding on white chocolate Lindt bars for $1.25 a piece LOL! So I bought 10 of those.
When the Amazon package arrived, I slowly boiled down 1/2 cup of my dragon tincture in a pot, then used a double-boiler setup to melt down 4 of the Lindt bars in the same pot. Once it was mixed well with the hash oil, I set it aside to cool for about 3 minutes before stirring in 1/8 cup of candy cane crush (plus I ended up adding maybe like a tablespoon more), pouring into a pan lined with parchment paper, and putting in the freezer for 30 minutes.
So now I have a nice big chunk of white chocolate candy cane crunch stuff where a piece the size of my thumb gets me super high for like 8+ hours; 17 grams of lazy-man's hash; and 88 grams of bud :) And still enough dragon tincture left over to make 3 more rounds of edibles -- not sure what I'll make next!
From now on I'm going to water cure a large portion of all my buds -- not just the ones I grow myself, but ones I buy from the Gummint too!