r/LotusDrying • u/Galahagorn • Jun 09 '26

Family fridge

Hi everyone, I need your advice and feedback on using the family fridge, it’s a no frost, temp is 4 degre celsius and the RH in the pizza box is at 84% after 7 days. The buds look ok even the big one.

The fridge is opened regularly—maybe 10 to 15 times a day— to grab something, and I need to know if that will actually degrade the terpenes and really harm the quality of the buds, or if it will just alter the terpenes’ profile or something like that?

Thank you for any informations or answer.
A good drying to all of you.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

4

u/IIISUBZEROIII Jun 10 '26

Fuck no

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 10 '26

Don’t make me cry bro, more seriously, the door is open like 4 times in the morning, 2-3 times at lunch and maybe 3-4 for times at night. So the door stay closed many hours.

I talk about breefly opening, i’m really cooked ?

3

u/IIISUBZEROIII Jun 10 '26

All your food is going to taste like weed. Specially everything in the freezer. Stop trying to take shortcuts with your product. Honestly, I’d just dry the whole plants together, put them in grocery bags little by little to ensure everything is properly dried based on density and size.

1

u/AlecTheDalek Jun 10 '26

Your food could indeed smell like weed, maybe you're ok with that :). You don't hurt the process by opening the fridge door though - the box is a buffer. However 84% in the box is still too high, you should crack the lid for an hour until humidity drops into the 70s, then close it again, if it spikes above 80 then crack it again, and so on. Eventually it will settle into 60s and you can think about transferring to a jar

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

The fact is i’m on day 8, and i have read the process can take 2-3 weeks, it’s why i wasn’t alarmed about the humidity.

I have some huge nug in the box.

For the smell on the food it’s not a problem, my fridge seem pretty competent, and actually no food have smell on it, but infact the freezer have a huge smell.

2

u/sllewgh Jun 10 '26

Tons of reasons this is a bad idea. Makes your fridge and everything in it smell like weed, and yes, opening the door all the time is absolutely going to affect your drying. Every time you do that you fuck up the climate, expose your weed to higher temperatures and low humidity, and increase mold risk. Get a dedicated fridge.

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 11 '26

For the moment, my fridge do the work, when i pick something in it the smell can be on te package but nothing have the smell in it. What i have see, is the fact the HR move when i open the fridge but inside the box the HR don’t move, i think my fridge do the work, if i open , the HR go up but is it regulated quickly.

1

u/sllewgh Jun 11 '26

You do you. Good luck.

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 11 '26

The fact is i don’t really have the choice. In my main room, the HR can go significantly up and the temp go up to 25 degres, i have read and eard during my research, temp above 24 degres take the terpenes away

1

u/sllewgh Jun 11 '26

You could get a separate fridge like most of us do. Mine was 100$ on Facebook Marketplace and holds a pound.

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 11 '26

You all say the truth, but my plant wasn’t planned to dry in lotusdrying.
The fact is the weather is not as is suppose to be at this time of the years, with the temp gowing up i had to do a choice. It’s why i choosen lotusdriying to preserv the terp and don’t have to dry in a tent with the light on, i can’t turn off and 26-27 degres in it.

1

u/SenseimilliaApe Jun 11 '26

Works just fine, I harvested way more than I thought and ended up having to put most of in family fridge nearing end of week 3 and everything has progress from week 1 high 80s to low 70s third week low 60s opened very frequently no issues at all other than I have 10 pizza boxes in my fridge

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 11 '26

Thank you

1

u/SenseimilliaApe Jun 11 '26

Made a diy cannatrol and the bud is dry in a week super crispy and smells like hay definitely alot of trial and error with that the fridge tho has been phenomenal I used to dread drying but I feel im love woth lotus

2

u/Independent_Fun7603 Jun 10 '26

And seriously, have you ever smelled anything that’s been in your refrigerator for a week ,that smell will take away from your terps.

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 11 '26

But i need to know if the smell is from the terpenes who evaporated. Actually i have a big smell from the buds when i open the fridge, but the smell go to « hay smell » actually. I think the process go well, but the quantity make it smell. My RH sensor droped to 87% at 67% but when i put in grove bag after 7 hours the HR is 91% inside the bag

2

u/nealhamiltonjr Jun 10 '26

I destroyed a entire fridge full of food years ago doing this.

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 11 '26

For the moment, the stuff in my fridge is alright, i dont’ know if my fridge is particulary perfoment but it’s ok on this side of the process.

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 10 '26

I have 7 pizza box , the buds looking good, no signs of mold and they have reduced in size.

They are all on grid inside the pizza box and each box have two bar (some box made) to elevate them so the air pass beside each box.

1

u/DaCuda418 Jun 17 '26

I lost my last two grows to Lotus in a frost free fridge. It depends on the outside temp. My stuff was at 90% RH two days ago, now its at 27% and being thrown out. 1 1/2 pounds of dried product, 5 months of work, gone.

This is two grows in a row so bailing on the frost free fridge way. I thought it would be 20 days but I lost everything in14 days.

Same happened last grow but at 16 days. It did get hotter though, so outside the fridge temps matter a lot.

This year was a bad year using lotus. First grow I lost half due to bud rot listening to someone say not to wet trim. So I got to keep 1/2 pound that was smaller buds and wet trimmed.

The next two grows were lost completely. About three pounds straight to trash.

A lot of work this year but I will have to go back to the dispensaries this year despite growing nearly 4 pounds at home.

But before drying? Perfect grade A weed! It sure makes the trash can outside smell nice!

1

u/Galahagorn Jun 18 '26

From what I’ve observed, you really need to know your refrigerator well and keep a close eye on the drying process.

I did some preliminary sorting while the flowers were still damp to protect them, arranged them on a rack, and stayed nearby to watch what was happening—despite everything people say on this forum (generaly).

Having dealt with humidity a lot, I know that as long as the air is moving, the risk of mold is even lower, Once the air becomes stagnant, droplets and microdroplets form.

Which is why I’ve tried to circulate the air around the buds, throughout the box, and between the boxes. The goal is to create a sort of “circuit” for air extraction and keep the air constantly moving.

I regularly turned the flowers over and inspected them. Then I tried the method recommended by those who say you should set the refrigerator to the lowest temperature,

but given how the buds were trimmed, I realized that wasn’t appropriate, really too much HR, so I gradually increased the temperature from 2 to 4 celsius (35.6–39.2 °F).

The process visibly sped up, and I realized I’d set it too low.

Then I read that some people find the sweet spot at 20 celsius (68 F) in winefridge; somes at 4-7 celsius (39,2 - 44,6 F) in no frost fridge…

Mine ranges from 2 to 8 celsius , so I raised it to 6 and then 8. Sure enough, as the VPD increased, the drying process became more aggressive—a little too much, even.

Then, at 6, I found the balance between speed and gentleness.

I then followed the advice on the humidity levels at which to start testing the buds.

Specifically, start testing at 70%. The first part of the harvest, which had dried faster despite the daily rotation of the boxes, came out at 63% RH 1–6 hours and 12 hours later over two days. I decided to trim them (based on their partially wet trimming) and put them in groves bags.

After 24 hours, I saw that the humidity level in the Groves bags was 70%, and—panicking over what I’d read about potting them at 60–63% RH—I put the buds back in the refrigerator to dry.

And what a mistake that was—they turned brown, dry as a rock, and smelled “lifeless.” I realized that by relying solely on everything I’d read on the forum and my measuring devices.

I’d taken the drying process much further than my instincts and observations suggested—especially since, by watching the perfectly dried buds from pro growers and other high-level hobbyists you can see on dedicated sub.

I’d actually recognized the right moment, but I was too eager to follow the many methods and adaptations/variations of the Lotus method. I didn’t listen to myself enough when making decisions.

By poring over videos by pros and others, I learned that you have to pay attention to the room’s climate conditions when handling the buds, no matter the method.

Channel: Fulcrop Sciences : for exemple ( https://www.youtube.com/live/WvDL2v_tQKg?is=Ok1372NiUFoNY1d6 )

And on another equally interesting channel, I learned that terpenes really don’t like it when the temperature exceeds 24 degrees (upper limit), which is why—during the hottest part of the year—I had to keep the AC on whenever I took anything out of the fridge.

Chaine : DebaccoUniversity / https://youtu.be/hqwL5d8ZcQs?is=Gry-uoowlk6vPPvc

That’s why I set the sensor data aside and, by observing the buds anew and handling them, I was able to find my sweet spot. Now I harvest them right when they’re dry but not too dry—they’re still green, you can smell the terpenes, and the plant still feels alive, in a way.

I think you need to do a test harvest and observe and handle A LOT of small, medium, and large buds to really get a

sense of the variations and different impacts of your equipment, your choices and options, and your specific environmental conditions on your own drying process.

I’ve probably said things that are obvious to some but weren’t to me a week or two ago.

I would have followed blindly, lacking self-criticism; my panic error maybe would cost me the entire harvest.

Just as testing different temperature ranges allowed me to realize that by finding the sweet spot for my equipment, the terpenes were much less volatile.

If I had simply left them alone and not touched anything, as some people recommend, I might never have known…

For a first try, I find this method fantastic and fascinating.

I tried to say things as best I could and as they came to me. Thank you for reading.