Over the past few months, we have taken a journey in this blog series around how to select the best cannabis strain for you. This includes identifying the type of high you are seeking, the potential medical benefits you need and the taste profile of your dreams. We started this series because we knew it was high time to rethink the process behind consumer weed selections. We know that there is so much more to weed than meets the eye, or the nose, or the THC percentage.
In this series, we dove into topics like:
- Is THC All That Matters?
- Taste, Smell, & Terpenes
- Visual Appearance, Trim Job & Cure
- The “Entourage Effect”
Being able to look at the cannabis shopping experience through a variety of lenses will help you enjoy your smoking experiences more. This is because, when you consider more than just THC levels or what is the most popular strain, you can start to make educated selections on new strains and flavor profiles.
Is THC All That Matters?
Some people will walk into a dispensary and purchase cannabis based on the THC alone. The higher the THC percentage, the better the high, right? Wrong. It’s not likely that someone would go into a liquor store and ask for the alcohol with the highest proof, regardless of taste. In the same line of thinking, there is definitely more to marijuana than THC. From flavor and smell and type of high to the other present cannabinoids, it’s limiting to only look at THC as the determining factor to cannabis selection. Along with THC, there are terpene, CBD and CBN to consider when shopping, and how the combination of those things really can make a difference in the experience and the high.
Taste, Smell and Terpenes
Why purchase something that doesn’t taste good to you? When shopping for marijuana, it is important to consider the flavor profile you are looking for in a particular smoking experience. In order to do this, it is best to understand how the flavors present in marijuana through the seed breeding process. With a little bit of research, you can review the terpenes at play in the strains and lead yourself to the taste you want. Terpenes bring the flavor. From Limonene to Myrcene and a plethora of other terpenes, this is what creates unique tastes and aromas.
Visual Appearance, Trim Job and Cure
One thing that many shoppers or novice growers don’t understand is that the quality of marijuana and, in turn, the quality of your high is not just sourced from the seed itself, but also how it is grown. Marijuana needs to be properly manicured and processed before it’s used, and the way in which it was trimmed–by hand or by machine–can really affect the potency and effectiveness. In addition, any curing and drying process must be done well in order to ripen flavor and potency. And finally, while you don’t judge a book by its cover, you can use physical appearance to determine if a marijuana is of high quality. High quality buds are said to “stand out in a sea of green”, meaning that they will display all the colors that are truly possible in terms of cannabis.
The Entourage Effect
The Entourage Effect is a phenomenon that is widely debated in the cannabis world. It refers to the way that a smoking experience is affected by what is in it. That is to say, depending on the levels of each cannabinoid, those ingredients will affect each other in a way that is unique only to them, creating a marijuana thumbprint. It is the idea that using marijuana as a full plant produces a different effect than the individual cannabinoids or terpenes would in isolation. There is a lot of research exploring the Entourage Effect, but still a long way to go. But the idea is that understanding the Entourage Effect more can help marijuana breeders cultivate cannabis to meet specific medical needs.
If you are curious about choosing the best marijuana strain for you, be sure to read each installment in this series and start brushing up on all the many powerful cannabinoids and processes that we use to make Smokey Okie’s marijuana high quality. It’s our goal to share all that we know and continue to learn about cannabis growing with our community. Check out this blog series, and other great pieces, on the Smokey Okie’s blog.