How To Review and Judge Cannabis Strains

What makes a cannabis connoisseur? Is it someone who can discern “top
shelf” cannabis from “mids?” And if that’s the answer, what sets top-shelf
cannabis apart and makes it worthy of that elevated placement?

I’ve been both reviewing and judging cannabis competitions for years now,
and the experience got me thinking about how both approaches can help
regular cannabis consumers pick the ideal product for their needs. Yes,
taste is subjective, but it’s definitely possible to fairly assess the
quality of a cannabis product. It just takes a little extra effort, an
attention to detail and the right mindset.
[image: A clear yellow pink pipe filled with bud is about to be lit by a
hemp wick.]

PHOTO Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now
How Writing a Cannabis Strain Review Compares to Judging Cannabis

A review is all about introducing and “illustrating” the sensory experience
of a given product. Naturally, a good review will include some brass tacks
information about the potency, strain and style of product, but the
conceptual core is always the creation of a vicarious experience for the
reader.

To that end, when we talk about the cannabis experience we should strive to
include as much specific detail as possible. For example, don’t just say
that strain is “potent” or that its aroma is “strong,” because that leaves
so many unanswered questions: what specific impacts are potent? How does it
make you feel? What’s the “strong” smell of? Imagine trying to describe the
smell of pizza; you wouldn’t say the aroma of a freshly baked pizza is
“strong” — not if you were trying to convey what it actually smells like.
But if you said it smells like garlic and tomato sauce and oven caramelized
cheese and dough, now you’re illustrating the aroma.

Judging cannabis, on the other hand, goes beyond identifying
characteristics unique to a given sample. While reviewers will often simply
provide a kind of “pass/fail” assessment of whether or not a product is
worth purchasing, formal judging is all about synthesizing the many
different properties of a sample into a unified assessment.

So a judge should still be thinking about the same qualities and
characteristics as a reviewer, but with a more precise mind where the
qualitative value of those characteristics is concerned. In other words,
the observation and testing process for a review is the same as for
judging, just less formal and precise in its conclusions. We aren’t just
determining if something is good or bad, we’re concerned with just *how* good
or bad it is.
[image: Enjoying cannabis is pretty easy, but reviewing and judging it's
another matter, thankfully we have some tips to make it easier.]

PHOTO Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now
Establish Your Categories and Judging Process

Start by setting a few benchmarks for quality — we’ll keep it simple and
just consider appearance, smell, taste and effects, but you can add other
categories like phenotypical novelty (how unique it is) or how smooth or
harsh the smoke is. Now you can assess each of those categories
individually for the purposes of a thorough review or apply a numerical
value using a scale, such as 1-5, for formal judging. At the end of your
assessment, tally the score for each category to find your final score. In
our example scenario, there are four categories with a maximum possible
score of five for each one, meaning the highest possible score — the score
for a perfect sample — would be 20.

Let’s assess a hypothetical sample of an imaginary product: We’ve got an
eighth of Hypothetical Haze from Fictional Farms and we’ve been tasked with
reviewing and/or judging it. To do this, we’re going to examine each of the
four basic categories we selected.
Consider the Aroma

As soon as we crack the jar our eighth came in, a pungent cloud of pine and
citrus smacks us in the nostrils — and this is a good thing. Remember, even
if we don’t personally like pine and/or citrus (we do), we still give
recognition for the strength and clarity of those aroma components. A
review can be a bit more subjective, but even if you hate smoking weed that
smells like lemon-scented PineSol, remember that some of your readers might
love it.

A big part of the mindset for reviewing or judging is learning to judge
things for what they are, not what you wish they were.

We crack a bud open to more closely examine the aroma and find subtle
nuances in the terpene profile; hints of herbaceous mint, whispers of
grapefruit pith, subtle notes of earthy musk or berry sweetness. It might
come off as pretentious, but we’re trying to encapsulate a complex suite of
smells into a few sentences, so try to get as much detail as you can. If
you can smell a unifying flavor, then note it, something such as “This
particular strain invokes the aroma of a lemon spice cake.”

We almost never give a perfect score to any category, but this Hypothetical
Haze is excellent — with a clear but complex smell — so we give it a 4.25.
[image: One of the Flower Girls takes a dry hit from a joint to test the
dry flavor of the bud.]

PHOTO Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now
Determine the Taste

Taste is interesting, because the overwhelming majority of what we taste
when we taste anything, not just cannabis, is informed by what we smell.
The olfactory sense is dominant where taste is concerned, with the tongue
providing only basic feedback on if something is sweet, hot, sour, bitter
or “umami,” with all other flavor nuance coming from our sense of smell.
That said, the process of heating or otherwise activating a cannabis
product often changes the terpene profile. In the best cases, it “opens up”
aroma notes and gives them fuller or more complex expression. In the bad
cases, it erases, undermines or otherwise adulterates what was a pleasant
aroma. In any event, the process is similar, only this time we’re pulling
out flavor notes and cross-referencing them with the terpene profile we
smelled earlier.

We smoke a joint of the Hypothetical Haze and find the flavor a bit muted
compared to the aroma, which means a lower score for this category than
that one — let’s say 2.5 for taste.
[image: Enjoying cannabis is pretty easy, but reviewing and judging it's
another matter, thankfully we have some tips to make it easier.]

PHOTO Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now
Now, Look at Appearance

What makes a cannabis flower attractive? One way to judge is by how closely
it cleaves to the appearance of a “typical” expression of the same strain
— this is basically how they judge dog shows. There’s a rough ideal for
each physical trait of a dog and the closer a show dog fits that mold, the
higher its score. Cannabis judging is usually a bit more nuanced because
the phenotypical expressions of the plant are more diverse and rapidly
changing than dogs.

To that end, don’t be afraid to just focus on a few key characteristics,
like color, bud structure and trichome distribution, density and clarity.
Particularly in the case of a review, letting the reader know that the bud
— in the case of our hypothetical sample — has a light, lime-green
coloration with dense trichome coating but loose, wispy bud structure will
provide enough information for them to make their own conclusion if it’s
good or bad.

Our imaginary sample has a bright, lime green coloration punctuated by
pronounced orange hairs and coated with sparkling trichomes. However, the
structure is loose and the cure is a bit dry, so our score for this
category is right around the middle at 3.25.
[image: A clean sits atop a survey that will be filled out by the Flower
Girls smoking society.]

PHOTO Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now
Note the Effects

Finally, we must consider the effects of a given strain — perhaps the most
difficult aspect of judging cannabis. For one thing, unlike flavor, smell
and appearance, the physiological impacts of a cannabis product vary wildly
from one individual to the next, informed by everything from the genetics
of the consumer to the set and setting of the experience.

As with aroma, saying the effect is strong doesn’t communicate much, so try
pinning down a feeling or sensation. Maybe the strain has stimulating or
anxiolytic properties? Our example strain seems to have given me a deep
sense of physical relaxation that borders on “couch lock” but isn’t putting
me to sleep, largely because of its stimulating psychological effects,
which lend themselves nicely to contemplation and study.

The effects are balanced and pronounced, so we score a 3.75 for this
category.
A Few Final Tips

Our total score for this sample comes out to 13.75, which equals a “grade”
of 68.75 percent of the possible 20 total points — not even a C- for this
one. So maybe the Hypothetical Haze isn’t top shelf, but we now know enough
about it to express what *is *good about it for the purposes of a review.

It’s always more fun to share cannabis with others, and reviewing or
judging is no different. Some of these observations are best made during
some quiet alone time, but it’s always a good idea to cross check your
findings against what other people perceive. Maybe you can’t place the
citrusy aroma of a sample, but when your roommate smells it, they
immediately exclaim “tangerine!” Always get second and third opinions, and
also remember to revisit a sample after your initial review to see if you
missed anything.

And if you’re the type of person who’s sensitive to getting “too high,”
remember that you don’t need to drown in the ocean to know that it’s deep:
Use the smallest amount possible to feel the extent of the effects without
overwhelming your senses. That said, don’t be afraid to dive deep into a
sensory experience, after all, this is for science.

*TELL US,* what characteristics set top-shelf cannabis apart from the rest?

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