The Smoking Caterpillar

The Smoking Caterpillar

    Flower

    SmokingCaterpillar  November 22 2024 03:17:14 PM
    I like flower. Not flour. Flower. Not flowers, but flower. Oh, I know what I need to do. I need to establish a convention. OK, if I'm referring to cannabis flower, I'll use the proper noun form, Flower.

    As I was saying, I like Flower. I think that cannabis flower (which is literally the flower of the female cannabis plant) contains a wider set of chemicals than, say, distillate. That seems reasonable. After all, if you distil, you always end up with less in the collecting vessel than was in the original source. Therefore you probably have a smaller range of chemicals in the receiver than the source.

    Throw into the picture the 'concierge effect'. This is a (debatable) theory that states roughly that there are many cannabinoids, terpenes and other chemicals in the raw cannabis plant and these work together to give the familiar high.

    After starting cannabis consumption when I was nearly 70, I experimented with various ways to consume it. I have to admit I did go a little overboard in terms of trying things like wax, crumble, carts, flower, hash etc. etc. After the initial enthusiasm died down, I have really come to appreciate the taste of vaped Flower. That piney flavour has grown on me. Of course, I quite like retsina - the Greek white wine which is flavoured with pine resin. The two tastes (retsina and Flower) do have some similarities, I think. Having tried most forms of cannabis, I've come down to three that work for me. First, Flower. A good gentle session with a relatively slow uptake - very much my style. Carts are more aggressive in the uptake, as is resin in all its forms. I was quite keen on resin at one point, but nowadays, good Flower is my go-to session material.

    Now, here's the thing. I don't really get a noticeably different flavour from different strains. If I had to do a blind test of, say, 4 strains, I would fail miserably. Maybe because the string basic flavours from th terpenes swamp some of the subtle differences. Though it seems to me that bottom shelf weed has less flavour than top shelf. Whether it's Californian Flower or UK grown seems to make little difference. Small nugs vs large ones? No consistent difference, I guess. I did find that using humidity sachets to be very useful - I think especially so with Flower because the vaporisation process works best with weed at around 60% humidity. The moisture allows the Flower to steam a bit, carrying the cannabinoids and terpenes with it. Or so I assume. I have never tries vaping absolutely dry Flower, but I'm fairly sure that it would be a somewhat disappointing experience.