weed (and tending to my own my cannabis crops), I began appearing at my local pub with a ‘long day at the office’ look. Yes, I sampled (and smell like) five different kinds of marijuana today, but I also penned thousands of words describing the smells, tastes and effects of what I smoked. Just like any professional critic, I take my craft seriously–I reached back into my writer’s bag of tricks to my days of being a young, ranting music reviewer and applied many of those techniques to the art of reviewing marijuana strains.
Instead of reviewing marijuana objectively, I completely and wholeheartedly admit to getting medicated and writing subjective reviews. Marijuana strains from the White family are my personal favorites, so I’m bound to be influenced by my adoration of White Russian, White Widow and Jean Guy. However, I love stellar soaring sativas, especially in the morning, while afternoons often bring fruity flavored hybrids and of course the well-loved Kush strains.
Can cannabis ever be reviewed objectively when there are so many variables involved in producing truly great finished bud? The same strain grown by two different people will ultimately have similar, but notably different, results. Besides using totally different methods–soil or hydro, chemical nutrients or organic plant food, etc.–there’s a personal growing style that influences the way the plant grows in these different systems. In short, no two buds are truly alike.
The breeder’s seeds play a significant role too, but how much? There are plenty of well-known strains available that when grown from seed produce at least two different phenotypes–groups of observable characteristics, like smell, taste and effects. Some breeders inform buyers that either of these phenotypes can appear in their grow, while others don’t. Subtle differences will create different impressions of a strain.
So when we write about pot, are we judging the strain or the grower–or both? It seems to me that the best method to examine marijuana strain is subjectively–and this doesn’t mean writing, “It’s super DANK” or, “This strain is FIRE, bro” a hundred and fifty times.
I toked them all and this is what I thought about them!
There’s not a published article, going all the way back to my beginnings as a music geek for Exclaim Magazine, that hasn’t been written while I’ve been under the influence of some wicked weed. That’s because without cannabis I’m unable to sit comfortably in a chair and write these words. Medical marijuana allows me to function. Inhaling responsibly, I’ve obtained a Humber School for Writers diploma and a journalism diploma from St. Clair College, penned articles for Toronto alt-weekly NOW Magazine as well as Cannabis Culture magazine and I’ve made several appearances on Newstalk1010, an influential news radio station in Toronto.
Marijuana manages my fibromyalgia, scoliosis and a rare brain tumor behind my left ear better than any prescription medication on the market. I can function like a normal human with medical cannabis, whereas seizure and opiate medications render me blah. In 1997 I joined a then-fledgling organization called the Toronto Compassion Centre. It helped people to obtain high quality cannabis to treat their illnesses. When Toronto Police raided the feisty organization in 2002, I came out of the cannabis closet and began my personal quest to overgrow the government.
As the coach of a group of activists known as the Toronto Hash Mob, I’ve led and organized almost a decade’s worth of marijuana smoke outs. We risk arrest every April 20th by publicly puffing down with friends. Now we have grown into a sizeable crowd of thousands of tokers. Our celebratory cannabis cannon (about a quarter pound in one super-sized joint) has led to my photo being splashed in newspapers all the way around the world. I’ve appeared in print and on television numerous times in my legal medical marijuana garden. It’s fair to say that cannabis has given me a quality of life I could not have had without it.
However, it hasn’t been all ganja gravy. I’ve been charged for a cannabis-related offence on five separate occasions, did two weeks in Canada’s most notorious prison The Don Jail and I’ve spent five of the last seven years on bail. Yet even in these bleak moments there’s some cannabis clarity–like when a justice proclaimed during a bail hearing, “That must be the largest balcony in the city”, after learning I had placed 32 plants outside to see how they would grow 420 feet above the city of Toronto.
My so-called “confession video” (don’t ever make one of these) shows me explaining to an inquiring detective, who claimed to have busted plenty of grows before but had never seen anyone label their pots, the difference between indicas, sativas and hybrids. The labels allowed me to keep track of the different strains that I confessed to growing for myself to determine which ones worked (and which ones didn’t work) at treating my illness.
Turning my worst moment into my best took four years of monthly court sessions and a thirteen-day trial. Our four months of preparation, wherein lawyer Paul Lewin and I interviewed people across Canada about their inability to access the federal government’s medical marijuana program, resulted in the largest victory against prohibition ever achieved. Together (myself, 22 witnesses and our lawyer Paul), we struck down Canada’s marijuana laws for personal possession and growing.
I am currently the only Canadian who has a court order allowing me to possess and grow cannabis. In the last year and a half, I’ve grown multiple marijuana strains by a slew of reputable seed breeders and it’s been a remarkable experience.
Many of the strains in this toker’s guide were grown by myself or other medical marijuana users. Plenty were picked up at various medical marijuana centers from across the country and others from known quality dealers. Obtaining or growing strains wasn’t a real challenge, but writing about and photographing 150 different buds turned out to be tough!
I hope that this guide will help other marijuana users to learn about the smells, tastes and effects of the most popular and effective strains of pot that are available today. I also hope that this guide will teach marijuana users how to identify the quality and genetic nature of the cannabis that they are purchasing or growing. After all, no one likes to smoke bad shit.
How Can You Tell If You Have Stellar Weed?
If your buds are crushed and crammed into a small baggy, then they’re not going to be great. Plastics degrade cannabis. Static cling in the baggy can pull precious trichomes off the buds and on to the plastic walls of your baggies. A sticky bag is terrible news for a smoker, because by the time you get at the bud, all that ganja goodness has gone to waste. To avoid this, keep your buds in a small glass jar that seals in the pot’s freshness.
Marijuana doesn’t naturally come compressed in bricks, nor is it crumbly or broken up in pieces. Buds should be attractive to the point of being pornographic to potheads. Your first thoughts when encountering stellar weed should be, “I can’t wait to roll you up and toke you all night long.”
Great ganja is gorgeous because its trichomes sparkle. The red, green and sometimes purple hues are majestic and the leafy material has been properly manicured. Properly cured buds are dense, firm and, most importantly, easy to grind. Once ground, all that remains is a sweet, sticky, and resinous mound of
