In today’s California cannabis market, most dispensaries have a three-month shelf-life limit for flowers. That is three months from the packing date—not from harvest. The reason given is that customers don’t buy “out-of-date” weed.
Maybe the retailers are not storing the flowers under the proper conditions, or maybe the flower was bucked and trimmed or packed in a hot room. So, after three months in the store, the product has deteriorated to the point that it is no longer sellable. Perhaps the real reason is improper handling along the route of the supply chain. Maybe the retailer just wanted to move it off the shelf. Some buyers won’t even buy flowers more than four months after harvest.
Whatever! To my mind, cannabis flower isn’t really ready to smoke until four or five months post-harvest. And most of the OG growers I talk to in NorCal agree. Frenchy Cannoli would have agreed, too. We often talked excitedly about making hash from aged or vintage cannabis and how it had a different flavor and different effect.
Back in the Hippie days, we never got fresh green weed—even after it was dried and trimmed, it always took several months to get here from Mexico, Colombia or Thailand. By the time you bought your lid and smoked it, the pot had aged for many months. Granted, we had to separate the stems and seeds, but it was still great smoke to inspire or chill out, like the best Panama Red, Acapulco Gold, Santa Marta Gold or Thai sticks.
Fast forward to 2022 and we are drying our own cannabis flowers for two weeks to a month in our wooden timber frame barn. The barn is nestled under towering Doug fir trees which keep it in cool shadow all year long. The autumn air here in the Emerald Triangle tends to be dry, especially during drought years, and that helps maintain an ideal temperature and humidity inside the barn.
The normal two-to-four-week drying period is just the beginning of the sequence which leads to vintage cannabis. This all is a rather complex process, not yet fully understood.
Swami smoking. PHOTO David Robert Elliott
The Benefits of Well-Aged Cannabis
Fresh, dried flower will have definite spikes of pungent aromas, which can obscure the subtler layers underneath. The best small-batch craft cannabis is carefully slow-dried, aged slightly, and brought to a point of stabilization under proper climate control. The slow aging process broadens out the aroma profile, rounding off the spikes and allowing other subtler fragrances to appear. Under the proper conditions, this biologic stabilization process takes about four to five months from harvest and, in some cases, even longer.
For the next six months to a year, something mysterious and magical happens within the buds, such that the flower realizes the full breadth of its potential and reveals its true nature. The sacred herb has now become Vintage! Ready to bring its full benefits to those who consume her.
The flowers best suited to be aged
