While everyone else was brawling over toilet paper and bottled water, stoners like myself were stockpiling phat nugs in preparation for an extended, quarantined smoke session the likes of which has never been seen before. It feels like ages ago when I returned from my early-lockdown pickup with a colossal sack of the freshest, dankest herb known to humanity. I stashed it away in a sizable glass jar — the best way to keep weed fresh, I believed — and have been enjoying a moderately stoned quarantine ever since.
I admit, though, that something has been troubling me: Besides my stash disappointingly, but inevitably shrinking with each carefree refill of my treasured pipe, the weed itself has transformed from sticky and aromatic to arid and stale. It would be an exaggeration for me to claim that the actual high has diminished along with the look, smell and feel of my once-gorgeous nugs — if it has, I may just be too damn stoned to notice. But as weed dehydrates, it certainly has the potential to become less potent, and I do notice more foul-tasting ash zooming through my pipe, straight to the back of my throat, as my nugs become increasingly parched.
This problem is apparently a result of my uninspired storage situation. Now, I am doing one thing right. “I recommend storing your cannabis in some sort of jar,” says online weed authority Deeva Dee. “There are mason jars, medicine bottles — anything airtight.” But as Dee goes on to explain, where you put that jar matters a lot, too: “Make sure you don’t place your jar in sunlight or under extreme temperatures, or else heat and moisture will build up inside.”
Some moisture is a good thing, but too much can result in moldy weed, which as you can imagine, is even worse than shriveled weed.
But if you really want your weed to hold up for a long time, you can do better than just stashing it in a glass jar in a dark spot. As homegrower Loki explains, “The seal at the top of those jars never really seals.” Instead, he recommends putting your weed directly in mylar bags, which are made of metalized polyester and commonly used for long-term food storage, or putting your weed-filled, allegedly airtight jar in one for double sealage. Then, before closing it up, he suggests tossing in a 62-percent humidity Integra pack, which helps maintain the taste, aroma and texture of your kush by preventing it from going too dry or too moist.
If you want to preserve your stash for an especially extended period of time, Loki recommends storing it in the vegetable drawer of your fridge, which he says is “usually around the right temperature and humidity.” In fact, a 2019 Italian study found that, compared to weed stored at room temperature, THC deterioration was significantly lessened in weed stashed in the fridge.
The last and most important piece of storage advice, however, is avoiding dipping into your stash regularly, which continually exposes it to moisture and temperature changes that can result in severe degradation. “You don’t want your storage to be the same thing you go into every day,” Loki emphasizes. Instead, if you decided to store a good chunk of weed in the fridge, maybe pull out enough to last you a week each time, so you only have to dive back in once a week, leaving your weed to chill out the rest of the time.
And if all of that sounds like too much work, hey, dry weed is still weed. Or as Dee says,
“We don’t discriminate here. As long as it’s smokeable, it’s good for me.”
Ian Lecklitner
Ian Lecklitner is a staff writer at MEL Magazine. He mostly writes about everyone's favorite things: Sex, drugs and food.
