As a Cannabis breeder, regarding terpenes,if a Cannabis lab quantifies it, I have zero interest in it. The short generic list of aroma therapy terpenes talked about in Cannabis have little connection to the plant, and are reported by weight not flavor activity. We’ve proven they have no entourage effect (outside of b-caryophylene). We know they taste bad (bitter,chemical,burnt nostril), and we know the only reason anyone associates them with Cannabis is because of a rep from GW pharma, a company that grows Skunk #1, who’s name alone indicates the elevated presence of thiols, not aromatherapy terpenes, is characteristic of high quality Cannabis. What we dont know is why people still buy into the essential oil narrative after smoking distillate with terps added.
I have never once seen a recreated lemon flavor, for example, that tasted anything like lemons. d-limonene is bitter by itself. On the contrary, every intense lemon strain I’ve bred, aside from having little to no limonene content, had distinct flavors that fall into 2 categories: sweet, and sour. there’s a misconception that Cannabis flavor arises solely from secondary metabolism , when in fact the taste aspect of flavor, flavor being the combination of smell and taste, arises from primary sugars and acids in the plant. Every plant uses citric acid. citrus trees oroduce more citric acid than,say fig trees. you dont need a lab to tell you this,you only need a tongue. Citrus varieties of Cannabis are the same. they have produced elevated levels organic acids. Sour strains not only smell sour, they taste sour, and will leave your mouth raw when smoked in abundance, the same exact scenario as eating too many sour candies. Go and smell some sour candy. Most has no smell. The smell aspect of cannabis has not only been completely overstated but misattributed to terpenes with such high detection threshholds that you literally cannot smell them if the Cannabis is grown organically with all the stress factors in place to create the more characteristic carboxylic and amino acid derivatives. People associate thiols with offensive smells but most of the interesting fruit and citrus flavors are also thiols, which are much more energy efficient for the plant to create. In fact most Cannabis plants are loaded with thiols, that are bound to their precursor never to be released. My question is… when you see extractors dewaxing or winterizing concentrate… what are they doing with all those thiol precursors? Most are one enzyme or oxidation state away from creating distinct strain profiles, which register low at the marketing (safety? lol) lab but very highly with biometrics (noses).
Distillate doesnt get me high. Vaporizing herb gets me extremely high. They are both distilation. why does one work, and the other doesnt? Where I live people lump the “weed” taste in with the distillate “taste”. In this regard I have to assume the only difference is the quality of input material. The source for retail distillate must be so low in primary sugars and acids that nothing but cannabinoid makes it through the vapor stream. And this industry, traditionally following the bogus narratives of hydroponic production met with foreign non cannabis volatiles, is merely protecting its own poor production methodologies when they support the essential oil aroma therapy narrative, as they knew all along that weed couldnt get any better than distillate and essential oils mixed together and refuse to accept any different. Most of the producers I’ve met fall into the " I grow the greatest weed" category while growing the lowest quality herb. And whats changing all that? The addition of sugars and acids to hydroponic programs. Feeding silica so carbonate creates more flavor compounds via c02 rather than entering the trichome to neutralize carboxylic acids. feeding sulfur bearing aminos which thiols will derive from. Feeding enzymes and proper cofactors to make it all happen. Patented post-harvest/extraction biotrans tek, which separates non active glycosides into their flavor active volatile and sugar component, and creates antioxidant in the form of thiols, to be steadily released in storage (not while the plant is growing, which seems to be where every grower and breeder has went wrong the past 20 years, breeding for photos and showing homies the grow instead of impressing end customers I guess?
Friday the 13th sale on some amazing Hawaiian haze, to help out a farmer friend
Super delicious Terps
