Stick test
Bend the stem
Use the small stem that holds the flower, not the cola itself
Still wet
If the stem folds, the flower needs more drying time
Ready snap
If the stem breaks cleanly, moisture is low enough to consider jars
Gentle check
Do not crush the flower to guess. The stem tells you more
Burn test
Thin roll
Make a slim joint from a sample and light it
Stays lit
If it holds a coal between puffs, drying is far enough along for storage
Keeps dying
Constant relights mean the sample is still too wet
Why it matters
Wet flower is inconvenient and has not finished converting as much of its cannabinoid acid
Sweat and mold
Jar fog
Condensation on a box or jar means the flowers are still sweating and need more air
Open them
Take them out or leave the container open until they pass the dryness tests again
No wet plastic
Sealed bags of moist flower are a mold trap
Moldy smoke
Flower with powdery mildew or other mold is not for smoking. Water hash can wash glands free of some surface growth
What rot smells like
Spore start
Mold wants moisture, oxygen, roughly 50 to 70 F (10 to 21 C), and an acidic surface
Aerobic first
In a warm sealed pack, bacteria can work before mold shows
Ammonia stage
Once oxygen is gone, anaerobic bacteria turn the flower brown and crumbly with a sharp ammonia smell
Brick brown
That brown, fermented look is a wet pack gone wrong, not a style goal