How To Store Bulk Hemp Flower

It’s a problem that plagues a good many hemp flower enthusiasts: you find a great deal on bulk hemp flower— too good to pass up. Your eyes grow a bit bigger while you look at its trichome macros. You reach for your wallet and before you know it you get a confirmation email for a whole pound of hemp flower.

Three days later your package arrives safe and sound on your doorstep. Those first few moments after opening it are glorious; a whole vacuum-sealed block of bud bigger than your head and it’s just for you. But now it’s a week later. You’ve cut into that pound and used maybe 18 of your 454 grams. What do you do with the rest of it?

In this post, we’ll talk about,

How to best store your bulk hemp flower
What environmental factors hurt potency
How long your flower can last with proper care

Note: If you’re a retailer in the market to buy wholesale or bulk hemp flower, please use this contact form.

Storing Bulk Hemp Flower: The Short Term

Like any other perishable good, you’ll want to keep your bulk CBD hemp flower in a dark, cool place. But that’s just the bare minimum. Consider using curing techniques to extend the shelf life of your bud for up to two years.

These techniques will help you address the four big factors that can lead to the degradation of your bud.

Those four things are:

Excessive heat
High humidity
Oxygen
Light

Keep Your Bulk Hemp Flower Dry— Finding That Humidity Sweet Spot

During the cure, you’ll want to ensure a relative humidity (RH) level between 60% and 65%. If it’s much higher than that, your bulk hemp flower may become damp and clump together making it a playground for bacteria and any residual mold spores.

If your RH is much lower than 60%, your bulk hemp flower can grow brittle and the trichome heads could break off, decreasing the potency of your buds.

Luckily there are two-way humidity packs that make maintaining your RH in the low 60s a breeze. Recommended brands include Boveda and Integra. Depending on the amount of bud you’re curing, an eight-gram two-way humidity pack will ensure your bulk hemp flower stays in the humidity sweet spot.

Keep a Cool Head— Don’t Let Your Bulk Hemp Flower Get Too Hot

While heat (and even combustion) can be your friend while consuming hemp flower, it’s not going to do you any favors during your cure. Keep your bulk hemp flower below 70F (21C.) Any higher and you risk making your bud a breeding ground for microorganisms.

Excessive heat can also make your hemp flower lose potency over time by speeding up the decarboxylation process. While decarboxylation may be a good thing when making CBD edibles, it’s bad news for your flower’s long-term potency prospects.

Keep it Locked Up— Don’t Let Your Bulk Hemp Flower Breath

Too much oxygen (airflow) can hasten the degradation of your hemp flower’s cannabinoids. You’ll want to use airtight, inert containers to cure and store your buds. Mason and Ball brand glass jars are classics because they are inexpensive and easy to use.

If you share a living space with children, consider using airtight containers with child-proof lids.

Keep it Dark— Protect Your Bulk Hemp Flower Out of the Light

Of the four factors listed above, if you want to maintain your flower’s potency you must keep it away from light. Exposing your bud to UV light can quickly destroy its cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids.

If you use clear glass jars to keep your cure airtight, store them somewhere out of direct sunlight. And, if you want to get fancy, you can store your bulk hemp flower in dark- or amber-colored glass jars to add another layer of UV protection.

Storing Bulk Hemp Flower: Long Term

Prepare your flower

If you’ve bought your bulk hemp flower from Sunset Lake, you don’t really have to worry about this step. We remove all fan leaves, trim, and slow-cure all of our buds in an environmentally-controlled warehouse to ensure quality and proper moisture levels.

If you’re curing your own home-grown hemp flower, this step is important. Before you cure, your hemp flower needs to hang upside down in a relatively dry and dark space with proper airflow for not less than seven days, at which point it’s time to remove all the excess plant material with a light trim. During this initial hang, you’ll notice your buds lose a lot of their volume— this is excess water evaporating away.

Divide Your Bulk Hemp Flower into Jars

Assuming that you’ve gathered a few clean glass jars, it’s time to fill them up with your bud. Fill your jars up until they are ¾ of the way full— it’s important to leave some room.

After you fill your jar, shake it around a bit. Your hemp flower should move around freely. If the buds stick together, they need to dry out a bit more. Leave the top unscrewed and let it sit open for another 12 hours before retrying this step.

Store it

Once your buds are dried to the point that they don’t clump together in the jar, it’s time to seal them up. Secure your jar’s airtight top and store it in a dark place, cool place.

If you have a two-way humidity pack, now is the time to use it. Depending on the relative humidity, this two-way pack can pull moisture out of the environment or put it back in— a great way to keep your bulk hemp flower at the ideal level.

Burping Bulk Hemp Flower

For the first couple of weeks during a *new* cure, you’ll want to open your jars once or twice a day for a few minutes each and let excess moisture evaporate off.

Take this time to visually examine for mold and smell the buds. Anything that looks fuzzy— either white or brown— should be removed from your jar immediately. If your buds smell like ammonia, it may indicate the presence of bacteria and mean that your buds are still a bit too moist.

This step isn’t as crucial if you’ve bought your bulk hemp flower from Sunset Lake. Our initial slow-curing process ensures that your buds are evenly dried.

Enjoy it (For Up to Two Years)

If you’ve followed all the above steps, you can extend the shelf life of your bulk hemp flower up to two years. Be sure to regularly check up on your bud, if not to look at how awesome the flower looks, to check for any signs of mold or discoloration.

Happy Curing!