I used to go to a dispensary in L.A. that had a wide selection and it was all in glass jars. They would always open the jar and let me smell it before I bought it and I still don’t understand why because it never seemed to indicate anything about the weed except what it would smell like… and that’s not really a big factor when buying weed for most people, is it?
Hey FlyingSquid! So, like, there are different types of mj aromas, which are solely dependent on the terpenes present in the plant. That’s a documented thing. There’s a over a hundred terpene types that can result in citrus, diesel, skunky, or woodsy smells, for example. However, as it’s been pointed out already, plants have been cross-bred so much over the years that individually named strains don’t always have their “known” unique characteristics these days. And that includes smell/aroma.
So yeah, it doesn’t really matter anymore. I wouldn’t put much stock in how flower smells, because it’s largely inconsequential save for personal preference. I prefer citrus-y flower cuz it smells better to me. There’s one strain I used to buy regularly from my dealer that had a really strong but pleasant grapefruit smell (and taste, just a little), it was awesome.
Also, wrt indica vs sativa… there’s never been any scientific data that can back the claim that they provide different kinds of high, like energizing versus relaxing. It’s just not true. Like the meme says, weed is weed.
Yeah, ‘weed is weed’ always applied to me too. Very occasionally I’d get a strain that I felt hit harder than others, but meh. I just get what’s cheapest now. That works fine.
Naaah, I bought my first bag of weed when I was 11 years old. The dude who sold it to me said, “smell this shit bro, it dank as fuck! It’s the shit that killed Elvis. You can tell by the smell!”
It’s been legal in my state for awhile now, I haven’t smoked in years, and any time anyone has pulled out their weed to show me what they picked up they still pop the jar or bag open and say some variation of, “Bro, smell dis shit. Good shit ain’t it?”
I’ve smoked weed that smelled awesome and barely gave me a buzz, but the smell check is just a part of the stoner culture.
I trafficked hundreds of pounds of cannabis at a time for a decade while it is illegal, the origin of this is for sure a mold test. A huge percentage of weed has spores on it and it was a requirement on purchasing large amounts to do sniff tests for mold. Small time dealers and weed people picked it up and are aping oenophiles but it is really important you learn how to identify mold on weed by smell, I still smell it in dispensaries and those are the bags I pass on.
edit to say it’s not to say there aren’t people who can learn a lot about weed with a trained nose, but these types of strains and rigidity with genetics didn’t come until long after we’ve been sniffing bags. The only thing most people can smell without training is mold though, I highly recommend you do this, no one wants moldy weed.
They did that during the medical years in my state too (AZ), but after legalization I started seeing the samples go away and start being replaced with labels on the product that not only tell you the name of the strain, but also THC and CBD percentages (sometimes CBN & CBG too), harvest date, and even terpene profile as well.
But even then, I’m finding that price tends to be more of an indicator of quality than the raw numbers. I’ve had $70 dabs with 65% THC hit harder than the $20 stuff that contains 80%+. The growing and manufacturing process can make a seemingly lesser product hit harder than one with numbers that look good.
I wish there was something like a Scoville scale for weed: measuring potency simply by having a panel of people test the product and put a number to how high it makes them feel, just like how chili pepper spiciness is measured.
I have heard that there’s some fudging the numbers going on in the legal weed industry in Canada, e.g. growers only testing with labs that produce “favourable” results.
First, the whole “Indica - Sativa” thing is a joke, the amount of genetics and number of factors that go into weed makes this distinction totally meaningless
Second for a lot of weed users the taste is important (and smell is taste for all intents and purposes), and it also allows people to directly assess the type of weed and it’s quality just as well if not better than staring at the weed in a bag.
Like others, it comes down to mold, and what I would call the “skunk factor”. IMO that’s the worst part of smoking this stuff. If I could get something legitimately marketed as “low sulfur” I would probably change careers if that’s what it took to keep it on shelves. Otherwise, it’s edibles for me.
Maybe more seasoned users know how a given flower works on your brain based on odor, but that’s not me.
I used to go to a dispensary in L.A. that had a wide selection and it was all in glass jars. They would always open the jar and let me smell it before I bought it and I still don’t understand why because it never seemed to indicate anything about the weed except what it would smell like… and that’s not really a big factor when buying weed for most people, is it?
Hey FlyingSquid! So, like, there are different types of mj aromas, which are solely dependent on the terpenes present in the plant. That’s a documented thing. There’s a over a hundred terpene types that can result in citrus, diesel, skunky, or woodsy smells, for example. However, as it’s been pointed out already, plants have been cross-bred so much over the years that individually named strains don’t always have their “known” unique characteristics these days. And that includes smell/aroma.
So yeah, it doesn’t really matter anymore. I wouldn’t put much stock in how flower smells, because it’s largely inconsequential save for personal preference. I prefer citrus-y flower cuz it smells better to me. There’s one strain I used to buy regularly from my dealer that had a really strong but pleasant grapefruit smell (and taste, just a little), it was awesome.
Also, wrt indica vs sativa… there’s never been any scientific data that can back the claim that they provide different kinds of high, like energizing versus relaxing. It’s just not true. Like the meme says, weed is weed.
Yeah, ‘weed is weed’ always applied to me too. Very occasionally I’d get a strain that I felt hit harder than others, but meh. I just get what’s cheapest now. That works fine.
It is a mold test, it is to prove it was stored properly and doesn’t smell like an old basement.
That makes sense. It would have been nice if they had explained that at some point.
Naaah, I bought my first bag of weed when I was 11 years old. The dude who sold it to me said, “smell this shit bro, it dank as fuck! It’s the shit that killed Elvis. You can tell by the smell!”
It’s been legal in my state for awhile now, I haven’t smoked in years, and any time anyone has pulled out their weed to show me what they picked up they still pop the jar or bag open and say some variation of, “Bro, smell dis shit. Good shit ain’t it?”
I’ve smoked weed that smelled awesome and barely gave me a buzz, but the smell check is just a part of the stoner culture.
I trafficked hundreds of pounds of cannabis at a time for a decade while it is illegal, the origin of this is for sure a mold test. A huge percentage of weed has spores on it and it was a requirement on purchasing large amounts to do sniff tests for mold. Small time dealers and weed people picked it up and are aping oenophiles but it is really important you learn how to identify mold on weed by smell, I still smell it in dispensaries and those are the bags I pass on.
edit to say it’s not to say there aren’t people who can learn a lot about weed with a trained nose, but these types of strains and rigidity with genetics didn’t come until long after we’ve been sniffing bags. The only thing most people can smell without training is mold though, I highly recommend you do this, no one wants moldy weed.
They did that during the medical years in my state too (AZ), but after legalization I started seeing the samples go away and start being replaced with labels on the product that not only tell you the name of the strain, but also THC and CBD percentages (sometimes CBN & CBG too), harvest date, and even terpene profile as well.
But even then, I’m finding that price tends to be more of an indicator of quality than the raw numbers. I’ve had $70 dabs with 65% THC hit harder than the $20 stuff that contains 80%+. The growing and manufacturing process can make a seemingly lesser product hit harder than one with numbers that look good.
I wish there was something like a Scoville scale for weed: measuring potency simply by having a panel of people test the product and put a number to how high it makes them feel, just like how chili pepper spiciness is measured.
I have heard that there’s some fudging the numbers going on in the legal weed industry in Canada, e.g. growers only testing with labs that produce “favourable” results.
First, the whole “Indica - Sativa” thing is a joke, the amount of genetics and number of factors that go into weed makes this distinction totally meaningless
Second for a lot of weed users the taste is important (and smell is taste for all intents and purposes), and it also allows people to directly assess the type of weed and it’s quality just as well if not better than staring at the weed in a bag.
Like others, it comes down to mold, and what I would call the “skunk factor”. IMO that’s the worst part of smoking this stuff. If I could get something legitimately marketed as “low sulfur” I would probably change careers if that’s what it took to keep it on shelves. Otherwise, it’s edibles for me.
Maybe more seasoned users know how a given flower works on your brain based on odor, but that’s not me.