Category: Strain Review

White Widow by UpNorth

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

...Then an hour or two passes while I smoke and experience the White Widow's effects...

It's been a little while now since I smoked most of a third-of-a-gram joint. The taste was sharp, not unpleasant. Acerbic. The head rush is notable. It's a pretty strong immediate effect to the head. The White Widow is racy to start out, so beware, fellow smokers.

It makes me wonder if the term "racy" actually does derive somehow from these landrace strains. I can think of other landrace strains that I would also describe as imparting racy effects on the smoker. Durban Poison is often a racy smoke. Although I have never smoked the Burmese sativa landrace as a standalone strain, I believe more and more that it's the Burmese sativa lineage in Sunset Sherbet/Gelato strains that gives me an unmistakable bite when I smoke Sherbs strains.

After the strong inquisitous head rush, the experience transitioned smoothly into a functional, task-oriented high. What did I need to do? Put food out for the birds, seed and suet. Clean the floors. I grabbed a bucket and a mop, ran some hot water, added some wood soap. Mopped. I was still feeling introspective. I was going back in my head to yesteryear. I would describe this effect as memory-racing. I was wandering around in my head.


Read the full post about White Widow by UpNorth here...

London Pound Mints by High Supply

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

Flavorful. Lots of different, fleeting, rotating flavor notes. Some fruit, vanilla, something floral, earth, chem, then black licorice at the end.

My wife returns. House talk. Leaves got picked up from the curb, the easement language is in the deed on the place we are trying to buy. Part of that driveway is on the neighbor's property but at least one prior deed mentions the existence of an easement. Fifty feet wide, for ingress and egress.

The chem-y, earthy flavor of the London Pound Mints lingers. Maybe that's just tar. The licorice flavor at the end of the joint was memorable, unique. Then the flavor parade before it. I've been trying a couple new strains a week, and this has been the most flavorful in awhile. It's 9:30 a.m. This is earlier in the day than I usually smoke. This strain is supposed to be an indica but I don't feel sleepy or stoned, yet.

This flower was grown by Cresco Labs. Then marketed under their High Supply label, which is a discount brand. I bought it at a Beyond/Hello in Sauget, Illinois. I have picked up a few High Supply canisters over the last year. Slurricrasher was the most recent. Before that, I bought a quarter of Kush Mints under the High Supply label. The Kush Mints was not memorable. It was fine. The High Supply Slurricrasher was good, not great. Not as good as the Slurricrasher I bought under the Cresco label. This London Pound Mints seems to be my favorite so far out of three High Supply buys...


For the full review click here. Never any ads. My own independent site. Forever in search of the highs of yesteryear...

Lemon Bean by Cresco

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That orange rubber taste, orange-flavored pencil eraser. It's an eighth of Lemon Bean from Cresco Labs, purchased in the area known as the Metro East, aka Illinois on the other side of the Mississippi River from St. Louis.

Frankly, I can't remember whether I bought this eighth at Ascend in Fairview Heights or from Beyond Hello in either of their lovely Sauget locations. The jar had some age on it when I opened it. I have been stockpiling, in part out of wariness and in part out of compulsion. More on that later. Let's talk about this flower.

Cresco's own site lists the lineage simply as Lemon Tree x OG Eddy. Seedfinder, my go-to site for lineage information, has one entry for Lemon Bean, from a grower called Dying Breed Seeds. Dying Breed lists a very similar lineage, except the Lemon Tree side of the lineage is identified as 365 Lemon Tree. I'm not sure what the "365" refers to.

More interesting is that Dying Breeds refers to Lemon Bean as being an indica. Cresco sells Lemon Bean in its red jars, which basically indicates the flower is sativa. On its own site Cresco identifies Lemon Bean as a sativa but does note that after a sativa onset, the effects transition toward "tingly relaxation." The line is so blurry between indica and sativa. Does anyone know anymore? Are these classifications really that useful? I digress.


The full Lemon Bean by Cresco is found here...

Butterscotch Bacio by High Noon Cult

~ johnbrandall ~ 2 Comments

This is a review of the cannabis strain called Butterscotch Bacio, as grown by High Noon Cult and sold at the R Greenleaf dispensary in Ruidoso, NM in early June 2024 (right before the fires)...

That was a strong writing riff this last hour. Pulling notes from memory. Like I used to do.

That Bacio can't be bad. It had a sweet creaminess that developed into a lemony citrus exhale. Piney. Maybe piney even more so than lemony. Piney citrus after a slightly doughy sweet cream.

It burned well out of that glass one-ee I bought at the same shop for $5. Sure, I have glass pieces. But I was en route to Tucson from St. Louis. I am careful about what I drive through Kansas with.

Tragedy befell the towns of Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs a couple of days after we left there, having spent just one night, at the Best Western Pine Springs in Ruidoso Downs. It's a cool, old hotel. It's not fancy but it's in a great spot and the price is right...

Check out the full review here...

Biskante by Alien Labs

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

This is a free-form strain review of a strain of cannabis called Biskante, offered as an eighth from Alien Labs and sold from the Tucson Trulieve at the intersection of Grant and Treat.

The Biskante has that orange rubber taste, if a pencil eraser had an orange flavoring. That's one of my favorite flavor notes when smoking cannabis. It seems to appear among certain sativas. I am thinking about Cresco's Lemon Bean and Rythm's L'Orange, for instance.

Biskante is delivering a functional high filled with rabbit holes, watch where you step. Be ready to compartmentalize. If you can do that, get ready to cash in and have an afternoon...


Read the full review here...

Jack Herer by Rythm

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1. Drop

That Jack Herer is strong. Taste was peppery, earthy. This was Rythm flower from Illinois, a short thin joint of it. Smoked a half or two-thirds of it. Sometimes I relight the stubs, the "roaches," but not usually. It feels like a waste but no more so than not completely clearing a bowl before dumping it out because I want to start fresh.

Jack Herer is a sativa derived from a mix of classic strains including Northern Lights, Skunk, and Haze. These classics themselves are derived from a cornucopia of landrace strains spanning the globe from Afghanistan to Mexico, from Colombia to Hawaii. If there is a field guide to marijuana strains, I'd like to get a copy.

I've heard Jack Herer called a wake and bake strain. All good but I rarely smoke before noon—not usually until the five o'clock hour. In this old mid-Missouri farmhouse I'm in, I hear scratching, maybe a rat behind the wall. Looking out the kitchen door I see a five-lined skink, typified by that electric blue tail. My solar shower is out there in the sun getting hot. Wow, this Jack...


Full post on Jack Herer...

Reflected OG Wreck

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

I am glad to be awake and reading poems but it is very, very late. 00:22. Midnight twenty-three. Humidifier pumping. Popping and steaming and wheezing. That is another train, perfect timing.

Midnight twenty-four. At least I am awake and reading poems, putting pen to paper. I smoked a joint of OG Wreck earlier. I've had drinks tonight, nothing drastic or out of the norm. Slow-rolling for sure. I did not think I'd be awake this long.

I took a nap; how long was I asleep? I did not want to wake up. I was really out of it. But at the same time I had a voice saying, Get up, John! I did not take too long a nap but I still managed to have an intense unconscious experience. That's ideal. Maybe that's how, why I'm still awake,

Of all the strains I've got and of all the ones I've recently had, which do not have Chemdawg and/or OG Kush as part of their lineage? I'm guessing not many. This is eye-opening. I want to come up with a list, a menu of weed strains to to try showcasing the widest possible array of genetics. It can be done.

For instance, Blue Dream, comprised of Super Silver Haze and Blueberry. Super Silver Haze is all landrace, as is Blueberry. Lemon Skunk doesn't have any Chemdawg or OG Kush in its lineage.


Full post and a nascent list of strains without either Chemdawg or OG Kush...

NF-1 by UpNorth Humboldt

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

Writing now, a year and a half after that first NF-1 purchase, here's the deal

That first eighth of NF-1 cost me $68 at the Beyond/Hello on Mississipi Avenue in Sauget, IL. Considering how much prices came down when Missouri legalized recreational cannabis, I feel sheepish about paying $68 for an eighth of anything. Here's how it happened. I was out at Farm reading a copy of Riverfront Times I was about to use to start a fire. But I happened to see a cannabis column reviewing several sativa strains that had been entered into the Cannabis Cup in 2022 in Illinois. UpNorth's Durban Poison earned a glowing review.

I got really excited about buying the Durban Poison, which I did. I also bought the other UpNorth Humboldt strain on offer at that time, which was NF-1. The Durban was $50. The NF-1 was $68. Weed wasn't legal yet in Missouri. I had mostly been buying gummies in Illinois but I was starting to buy single grams here and there from Beyond/Hello. I splurged. The Durban Poison was phenomenal. It was some of the best-tasting weed I've ever smoked. The NF-1 was overshadowed by the Durban and I was bummed I had paid more for it.

But the NF-1 hung around. The Durban was tasty and potent but sometimes it was too potent. Too racy. Too head-rush, too biting. I bought another batch of the Durban months later; it wasn't nearly as tasty. Six months later, or maybe it was nine months, the NF-1 dropped to $25 an eighth in Illinois and I couldn't believe it. The Durban also sells for $25 an eighth, sometimes. I have since bought NF-1 twice more. One of the blurbs above was written on that second batch. The third batch I have in its original, sealed glass jar unopened but sealed further in glass mason jar. I'll get around to smoking it some day.


The full post is available here...

Gas Station Sushi: Dream

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

It was a dream, so it didn’t add up, naturally. I’ll say. I’m high. I just smoked some of Cresco’s Gas Station Sushi. It had cedar notes, which is unusual; I can’t remember remarking on cedar notes in any other strain.

What I smoked I smoked as a cigarette. It burned fast but it smoked just alright. It didn’t hit that hard. The draw was tight. I don’t know if that’s because I put too much bud in the roll or if the grass itself was flawed in some way. If I recall correctly, this Gas Station Sushi had a package date strikingly close to its date of harvest. Maybe it wasn’t fully cured.

Whatever the case might be, it’s now an hour after I smoked that joint and I am still high. This stuff is a little trippy. I’ve never seen a clear breakdown of the lineage on Gas Station Sushi. I have read that it is a Kush Mints cross. Which is curious because Gas Station Sushi is a sativa. It’s marketed as a sativa and it is widely considered one of the best and raciest sativas sold from dispensaries in Illinois.

The full post is available here…

Rollins by Cresco

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

I've been returning to sativas lately, approaching them in the daytime and asking them to help me in my writing process. I don't expect or attempt to write new material when I'm high. Rather, I am expecting that the cannabis effects will help me in my editing process. The high version of my mind is like having another person read what I've written, another pair of eyes as it were.

This sativa, Rollins from Cresco, seems to have delivered on that score. Going through an old notebook, I've resurrected a few old poems, making tweaks, adding the finished result back to my submittable roster. By now I've had so many poems rejected, some of them dozens of times, that I have no reason to refrain from submitting any single poem.

The bite on the Rollins wasn't bad. And I'm saying that as I pen this from the table in my parents' dining room, with them here. Which is all to say: if grass was going to get me paranoid, this would've been the time for that to happen. My dad doesn't think much of me smoking. I posted an installment of my Weed Chronicles to another one of my blogs, which he read, asking me, "Do you have to do that every day?"


The full review of Cresco's Rollins strain is available here...