It takes a month to dry them to a brown state (that is called color curing), then another 4-6 weeks in the kiln for the fermenting stage. A lot of manufactures ferment them naturally outside by continuing to leave them hang or put them in bundles with moist towels around them. That could take a year or more to age properly. For someone like myself, putting it in the kiln at 120F and 70% for a month is supposed to be the same as aging them for a whole year. Right now we are looking at being at full rolling stage at the end of October, with a few testing rolls/smokes in between starting in September.
We are harvesting them by individual leaves called "Priming" as opposed to stalk harvesting. We starting from bottom and going up each week until harvest is completely done. (A total of a 3-4 weeks process) Which means, to make the perfect/right blend we need to have a balance of each level of the plant from bottom to top. So we can't start rolling our true blends until all levels are dried and fermented.
