Budwashing, SweetSue's Way

SweetSue;3426740 said:

Scorpio420;3426660 said:

What do u mean "get washed" Sue

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BUDWASHING: a SweetSue primer

Oh Good! An opportunity to go into teacher mode.

Well Scorpio, much in the way we wash our produce before we eat the fresh fruit or vegetables Doc Bud went on a mission to teach us to wash our branches of buds and let them hang to dry before we ingested this delicious bounty of our cultivation efforts. Anytime you come across Doc on site you'll notice a link to the Budwashing process in his signature.

Those of us who wash our buds can't even let ourselves smoke bud offered unless we're certain the bud we'll be smoking was also washed. I've heard stories of gifted bud passed on to someone else rather than risk smoking God only knows what. You ever stop to think how many skin cells you've dropped on your plants, or how much dust collects while they grow? We have, and we choose to wash all that and the foliar residues off.

You start with three buckets or basins, depending on the size of the branches. This girl was good sized, with lengthy stacks of buds along her branches, so she got the five gallon buckets.

The one on the left is a food-grade bucket with a cup of lemon juice and a cup of baking soda mixed in. This is the wash that gets all the gunk off your buds. This comes in real handy if you had something special like gnats. If you have powdery mildew you want a fourth bucket with hydrogen peroxide and water, and you start with that bucket.

I'm a little old school. I fill this bucket with the hottest water I can get out of the faucet. You can fill all the buckets with tepid water and get the same results. My woman's brain says "that can't possibly be the case, fill it with hot."

The second bucket is as cold as I can get, and the third is tepid.

The idea is to gently dip and swirl for between 15-30 seconds in each bucket, being careful to avoid the bottom and sides of the bucket to limit the number of crushed trichomes. With a branch this small that's an easy chore.

Branches this size require a bit more care.

Then they get hung to drip dry. I'll be processing mine into oil today, so they'll get cut off as soon as I finish breakfast. No reason to leave them any longer. I'll be boiling off the water anyway. Look at that, I've already begun streamlining the process.

Doc recommends a week hanging in a controlled environment before you jar.

I find craft pipe cleaners to be the easiest tool for hanging the branches. They mold to the branch and grip without any fear of slippage.

When I'm done with them I straighten them out and put them back in the bag all ready to go next harvest. I've been using the same ones now for well over a year. Duggan turned me into to these. Thank you Duggan.

I have some smaller basins I use with a smaller plant. You saw me use them with the DDA I harvested the other day.

Some growers don't bother with the big buckets, or only use a two-step process. I feel more comfortable with the whole process, as laid out by Doc.

We find the wash brings out the flavors in some inexplicable but undeniable way. It also helps the drying process progress in a more uniform manner. We find our cure goes smoother and the final product is improved enough that we never look back.

Thank you for asking Scorpio. It's a good idea to revisit the issue every now and then.

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