How to Store Your Stash
How to store your stash of cannabis is wildly important, especially here in the Arizona desert. Maybe you’re thinking, “Shoot man, I smoke it as fast as I buy it.” I feel you there my friend, but I don’t care if you smoke a gram or an ounce a week, you’re still storing your stash somewhere from the time you take it home to that devastating moment when you’re breaking down the last nug of some primo flower. Cannabis is an investment, in your health, well-being, pain management, relaxation, and one you share with the people you care about most. Just as any other connoisseur seeks proper storage of their cigars in a humidor or their wine stored at just the right temperature, so should we for our cannabis. Temperature, humidity, light, and oxygen can all degrade the quality of your cannabis over time. So let’s talk about how to best these flower foes and keep your stash fresh and safe.
Pitch the Plastic
I think that in this day and age in the cannabis world we’d be a little stunned if a budtender handed us our flower in a sandwich baggie, a lot has changed since the black market days. But is your sealed dispensary bag any better? Yes and no. It’s a product built with the intention of storing your bud, but it still leaves your nugs susceptible to getting crushed. When your nug gets worked over in the bag it’s in, you’re shedding tasty little trichomes from your buds to the bottom of the bag. On top of that, if you don’t get your bag sealed all the way after each open, you risk exposing your stash to oxygen, which can dry out and degrade the quality of your cannabis. Then you’ve got the plastic upgrade: plastic containers. These are great, the seal is more reliable even though it’s not necessarily guaranteed to be airtight and the hard exterior of the plastic containers ensure your cannabis can’t be crushed. Extra points for any dispensaries using opaque or non-see through plastic containers which help protect your weed from light. The issue with plastic is that it breathes. Heat or cold can expand or contract the molecules in the plastic and over time, storing your stash in plastic may even affect the taste of your cannabis. Beyond that, you can find research released by various departments of health of the potential long-term dangers of storing consumable goods in plastic containers. These containers are a great delivery method for your favorite dispensary to get the buds to you and for you to get the buds home. Once you get home, you should move those buds into proper storage. Most importantly, save your plastic containers and recycle them accordingly.
Glorious Glass
Why do you think grandma always stored all her delicious homemade jellies, jams, pickles, or fruits in glass mason jars? I’ll tell you why, because grandma knows her shit. Mason jars provide that air-tight seal ensuring that your stash has minimal exposure to oxygen. Most importantly, glass will not only keep the smell of some dank bud completely contained, but it is impassible, meaning no outside contaminants such as oxygen or other molecules that could affect your buds freshness or flavor can get in. Now, the folly of the mason jar is that the clear glass doesn’t protect your buds from harmful UV light. Enter the Re:stash jar, floating down from the heavens with a hallelujah chorus singing its praises. I love these things, I store all my flower in them. Always. Re:stash gives us a simple solution to this UV issue with their various koozies. The Re:stash jar is a seriously upgraded classic mason jar, with airtight storage, a child-resistant lid, all wrapped in a stylish koozie which not only protects your stash from UV light degradation but also absorbs impact. If you drop your jar off of a counter or worse, a 10 ft ladder (if you’re rolling up on top of a ladder), you don’t have to worry about buds full of broken glass. I drop these things all the time on tile, concrete, carpet, doesn’t matter the surface. Over the years of using Re:stash jars, I’ve never had a single one break. I really like to hold onto good bud. My headstash of all my favorites, some of which I’ve been saving for months, is just as fresh as the day I brought it home. How you ask? A combination of a proper storage container and a proper storage environment.
Environmental Enemies
Remember those enemies of your stash we touched on earlier, temperature, humidity, light, and oxygen? These elements of your storage environment can aid in drastically maintaining or degrading the quality of your cannabis. The ideal temperature of your storage environment should not exceed about 70℉ which can be hard to achieve during a hot, Phoenix summer. Storing in the refrigerator or freezer is not the solution here unfortunately. Due to the fluctuations in temperature and humidity in the refrigeration process it can stress your nugs and make for brittle trichomes. Humidity is the key factor to keeping your bud from drying out. Using tools such as a hydrastone or a humidity pack like the ones made by Boveda in conjunction with a glass storage container can significantly expand the shelf life of your bud. If your bud is too humid, it invites mold and mildew. Using these products intended to regulate the humidity is a safe bet for keeping that humidity at just the right level. Do be conscious about how long your humidity regulator is exposed to oxygen when dipping into your stash. Prolonged exposure to oxygen can quickly drain the humidifying properties of these products. Light, this is a big one, if you only take away one tidbit from this writing, let it be this. Light is the absolute enemy of your bud. Both light and high temperatures begin to decarboxylate the THC which turn it to CBN. CBN is a fantastic compound of cannabis responsible for pain relief, appetite stimulation, sleep aid, as well as it’s anti-inflammatory properties and more. However similar to CBD it has little to no psychoactive properties, so If you bring home that space weed, you know the one where you take that first hit and you feel your feet lift off the ground a little bit, make sure to store it properly to keep all of the THC intact. Lastly, as we talked about before, you want to limit oxygen exposure. Make an effort to open your stash, take what you need and close it up. Don’t let your friend keep the jar open the whole time she’s trying to roll the blunt, seal it back up!
My fellow desert cannabis lovers, keep your bud safe. Even if you buy it Monday and you got it all smoked come Friday, the environment and container it’s stored has the potential to significantly affect your buds. Keep them fresh, dank, and safe in glass. If you just have an oldschool mason jar, buy some cool tape and wrap the outside or put a sock around it, something to keep that light out. Happy smoking my friends.
*In the interest of transparency and full-disclosure I am associated with Re:stash but was not compensated in any way for using them as a reference in this article. I would never recommend a product to you all that I don’t believe in and use myself. I choose to use Re:stash for my cannabis storage simply because it is a well thought out, all-in-one solution for proper cannabis storage. If interested in more information or custom/wholesale orders contact jeff@mason-re.com.
Click here to read more from Jeff Willems.
