DIRTY WEED WORDS: COMMERCIAL VIABILITY Commercial viability may be the phrase that has changed in cannabis the most over the decades for the industry. During my chat with First Smoke of The Day, which dropped last week, the subject of commercial viability came up. Basically, I said once you got past the lovely people that got…
DIRTY WEED WORDS: COMMERCIAL VIABILITY
Commercial viability may be the phrase that has changed in cannabis the most over the decades for the industry.
During my chat with First Smoke of The Day, which dropped last week, the subject of commercial viability came up. Basically, I said once you got past the lovely people that got screwed by circumstances of licensing or location, there are a lot of people who got eaten up by the times because they wouldn’t change their ways. This received the most positive feedback of anything I said during the hour-and-a-half talk. While I’ve attempted to articulate the idea of people not being able to keep up with the game, it was never with the ethos of how many of the world’s best growers hit me up or tagged me on Instagram over the last week.
At its core, the attempt to define commercial viability in cannabis has proven a double-edged sword. On the one side, the meaning represents progress in the game. The bar for commercial viability has risen with the progress of the times across every market. This includes recreational and the still massive underground cannabis economy thought to dwarf California’s legal market at least 2 to 1, given the vast swaths of the state without legal access and people everywhere else wanting our weed. The pot has certainly increased in quality on both sides of the market.
On the other side, not all ships have risen with the tide due to various circumstances. Be it their own stubbornness to not change their ways as advancements in the game had been made, or never actually knowing what the bar was for commercial viability in the first place whenever they jumped ship from whatever industry expecting to carve a piece of the cannabis industry for themselves.
Let us not forget a mere 20 years ago, brick weed stuffed in a tire was commercially viable for American distributors. So imagine you’re a person operating under the protection of 215 in that era. Ninety-nine percent of the domestic marijuana supply is absolute garbage. It’s fair to say you’re a hot cookie at that moment.
But, as the years rolled on, the bar went up.
Commercial viability got to the point where it didn’t just mean you were talking about the quality or price of the product, but also accessibility and ease of transport. California has a firm grip on illicit domestic cannabis production as the feds’ annual plant eradication counts firmly show. But it’s not the same. In the past, the worst cannabis California has to offer used to get scooped up faster than Olive Garden breadsticks coming out of the oven.
Now we’ve reached the point where people don’t have to buy California’s worst product anymore. California cultivators aren’t competing with Mexican brick weed anymore. They’re competing with the Oklahomas and the Maines — hell, there are probably even some decent beaster packs from Canada still making it over the border.
A lot of the lost souls in California on the illicit side are those who couldn’t keep up with people growing decent weed in those places where people could drive to pick it up. The best weed in the world is still grown in NorCal, especially on the illicit side of the market. Not being able to grow commercially viable pot in the rec market is one thing, but if you are having trouble on the other side, maybe it’s time to do some soul-searching on your craft. Do those little things you see your neighbors doing that you didn’t want to because you convinced yourself you knew what you were doing.
The most important thing you can do to survive in this market is to grow the best cannabis possible. People that worry about pinching pennies first are destined to fail. At that point, the quality of the marijuana is the second most important thing to you, and you’ve already lost.
L.A.’s own Shant “Fidel Hydro” Damirdjian was already a local legend before Fidel’s Hash Holes took it international.
And while the “Hydro” may have been dropped in recent years as the Fidel’s brand took off, the third son to enter the game of one of Los Angeles’ favorite cannabis families continues to build his name. He’s now on the verge of opening a massive new facility expected to be competitive with the state’s finest later this summer.
A hash hole under construction. Courtesy of Fidel’s.
In the months leading up to writing this, we chatted with Damirdjian a lot. We even joined him for his return to Barcelona for Spannabis this past March where he originally got the inspiration for the hash hole. The Hash Holes and Donuts party that closed up Spannabis for many was probably the second biggest ancillary affair of the week after the European edition of Ego Clash.
But to understand how things have taken off, you have to start with Damirdjian returning to L.A. after moving to Beirut at age 12.
Coming Back to L.A.
“When I turned 18 I moved back to L.A. from Lebanon and when I moved back the first thing I did was start working at my brothers’ hydro shop,” Damirdjian told L.A. Weekly.
He was at the bottom of the food chain with no knowledge of growing cannabis. He was in the perfect place to learn, but it wasn’t always easy being in the family business.
“My brothers had two dispensaries. But within a month of me being here, the dispensaries got raided and the growers got raided,” Damirdjian said. “They lost everything and they had to sell the store. So when they sold the store, I stayed.”
Damirdjian smokes a hash hole in Barcelona. Photo: Jimi Devine
His brothers Serge and Aram would recover and eventually help start Cookies Maywood and Gas No Brakes Fashion.
While Damirdjian may not have brought a lot of cannabis cultivation knowledge back from Beirut, retail operations were a different story. The whole time he was in Lebanon he was working at the family grocery store. By 18 he returned with the managerial skill set that wouldn’t be uncommon in an older teenager at a U.S. supermarket. Those skills translated directly to running a hydro shop even if he wasn’t exactly sure what he was selling out the gate.
By the time he jumped up to the management team, he had his head wrapped around it from talking to customers all day to better understand their needs or what they were doing successfully. The store was only 1,000 square feet at the time. He’d help build it to 18 employees and three locations.
“I did that for nine years. That was my footwork in this industry,” Damirdjian said. “I talked to growers day in and day out for nine years and then I mastered that craft. I grew weed in the midst of that. It just led me to be consistently known for the quality of flowers I have.”
Madmen OG and LA Confidential were among the first strains he worked with when he started cultivating in 2010. As his skills grew, he refined his best practices and taught them to others over the years at the shop, eventually taking the nickname Fidel Hydro as a play on it.
Damirdjian points to the first time he left the grow shop to focus on cultivation as one of the moments he knew he was heading in the right direction. Six months after leaving the hydro shop they asked him to come back for a percentage of the shop. He would put in two-and-a-half more years, but in the end, his vision was just too big for the shop.
Fidel’s
A trip back home to Beirut to visit family and friends in 2019 would turn the nickname into the building block for one of the most hyped brands in California at the moment.
“I had a childhood friend of mine who does branding packages for big hotels and restaurants. I was working with him. I wanted to start branding my flower. I want to be known for the flowers I grow,” Damirdjian said.
The pair were talking about his nickname Fidel Hydro. They tossed stuff around but were sure in the end that it had to be one word. It had to be simple. They dropped the hydro and the name stuck.
“My homie drew like 200 different logos by hand. He drew one on a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and it just stood out to me,” Damirdjian said. “It looked really timeless. Either now or 20 years from now, I’ll still feel the same about it.”
Damirdjian explained that the logo gave him the identity but there was plenty of work to be done. He started doing everything in-house from growing to buying printers so he could package it all up.
“I put all my energy in Fidel’s, everything, every ounce of my time, my finances, my physical being. I put it all in something that just kept growing and growing. It gave me the confidence I needed but it just hit me when I was in the hydro shop. I always knew Fidel’s was what it is supposed to be,” Damirdjian said in regards to that calling he believed was more significant than the shop.
Creating New Flavors
2019 was also the year Damirdjian started breeding. It was the next step after nearly a decade of perfecting his skills. But looking around the game can create doubt. He refused to let it build in himself. The heat would speak for itself. He loves it. He hopes his dedication to those various cultivation practices will help remind folks he’s not just the guy that scaled up the hash hole, as admittedly cool as it is to have the most primo rec preroll in the state.
One of the staples of the breeding is Runtz Mints. It’s an absolute heater.
Hash Holes – Barcelona to L.A.
How does one change the exotic-infused preroll game in California? The concept of a joint with hash in it was far from new in California. We basically started seeding distillate prerolls not long after Damirdjian started cultivating in the early 2010s. They were always boof, maybe even further stacking the chips against the idea of the hash hole.
Damirdjian returned to Barcelona in 2022. Photo: Jimi Devine
Sure, the idea of rolling some heat hash and flowers with friends was cool. But was it commercially viable? Regardless, Damirdjian would find his inspiration on a trip to Barcelona in 2018 with his brother for his first adventure to Spannabis.
At the time, his brother had launched Cookies Maywood a few months prior. Damirdjian started helping with some of Cookies’ first seed drops and in the process heard about Spannabis.
“I felt the need to be there,” Damirdjian emphasized. “I felt the need to go see what the culture is like over there. So I tagged along.”
Damirdjian working to get his seed line into Europe at Spannabis 2022. Photo: Jimi Devine
Damirdjian was a young man there to learn more about the game. There was plenty to take in. He got to help Cookies and 3rd Gen Family with the El Toro in Spain. He helped them package that up and got a first-person view of people entering the world of bulk seed sales with people in Europe. He always felt like the youngest person in the room and just remembered to keep his ears open and to try and learn as much as he could from the international hitters that converge on Barcelona.
During the seed drop, a number of noteworthy characters from the European game come through to see a number of Americans. The American delegation had fire hash. The Spanish culture at the time was more influenced by the California flower market and there were a ton of California-grown flowers.
As Damirdjian watched most Europeans sprinkle their crumbly water hash into joints, he decided to work up some of the American rosin and drop it in the center. Not long after, he would run into Lorenzo from Terps Army in Barcelona and Amsterdam. Lorenzo was doing the same thing.
“I hadn’t met him yet. We met in person over there as this culture was being instilled at that particular time,” Damirdjian said. “I got to give it to my boy Lorenzo. He kept the habit up. He calls them the Terps Donuts.”
Final quality control before packaging. Photo courtesy of Fidel’s
He flew back to America and started rolling more joints loaded with hash. People on Instagram would ask what it was and inquire about the hole in the middle. He would politely emphasize what they were looking at wasn’t a donut, it was a hash hole.
“The word hash hole didn’t even exist. I just didn’t want to call it a donut because I wanted it to be different,” Damirdjian said. “I could call it that. But just to me, it’s the hash in the middle.”
He was also a firm believer that hash holes just sounded cooler than donuts. Some of the early hash hole advertising has joked donuts are for cops.
“Once you started explaining to people what it is, now people call it that. I love it. It’s creating its own culture,” Damirdjian said. “It just wasn’t out there like that. It went from being a smoking habit when I came back from Barcelona to what it is now.”
Damirdjian believes we all have ideas we never really follow through on. But what if he did this? What if he took this thing he started posting as a habit and took it to scale? What if he started hand rolling joints and not packing a cone? All the while using elite flower and hash.
He believed people would mess with it. So far he’s been proven very right. But at first, it was tough to convince people it was feasible to hand roll.
“It didn’t click with people,” Damirdjian said. “And I wanted to sell them for $100.”
Out the gate, Damirdjian’s right-hand man Dabber Dan was the most supportive of the idea. He saw the vision. Dan was amongst the early members of the team when Damirdjian started solidifying it in 2018. Head roller Gio and his cultivation lead Kevin were also onboard early.
Courtesy of Fidel’s
Damirdjian even has his parents helping out. He has so many printers now he’s run out of space and put a printer in their house. He’ll order 50,000 containers and have them label the jars and do QC.
Now there is a flurry of imitation hash holes hitting the market.
“Everyone is doing it their way, you know, and it’s not really about who was first, who did it best, I guess,” Damirdjian said. “To me, it’s about who’s paving the way for the category because that’s what it is. It’s a category now.”
Fidel’s Grown
Damirdjian expects the number of staff to surge to 60 by year’s end as his cultivation operation comes fully online. He’s thankful he didn’t take any of the cultivation deals that came his way over the years as he waited for his moment to enter the legal market on his own terms.
Separately, it’s wild to see someone in his age bracket bootstrap an Adelanto facility solo. It’s the land of corporate dawgs but there is certainly cheap square footage and power for those with the resources.
“There’s no one else, that’s solely me, and I intend on giving out percentages to my team members that are down with me right now. But it’s just me. I just haven’t sold out. I haven’t sold any of it. And people have given me tempting offers. I’ve been guilt-tripped by people that are worth half a billion dollars for not making deals,” Damirdjian laughed.
He always trusted the voice inside and knew where he was heading. That was all he needed. His next vision is a storefront to put all the flower in but right now there is work to be done getting it to the market.
As the flower comes online he also looks forward to further building out his distribution network. He’s already in every Cookies and Stizzy store. The flower is expected to be in high demand when it drops later this summer. One thing that points to this fact is that the value of his products hasn’t changed with the times as many have seen price dips.
“Something has changed. There’s always an adjustment,” Damirdjian said. “That’s what you gotta do. You gotta adjust. I think different, you know? I’m trying to be at the forefront of it.”
Damirdjian’s hash holes are available all over California. Keep an eye out for the flower line later this year.
Over the last two years, L.A. Weekly has had a front-row seat to the rise of Zalympix.
For the uninitiated, the Zalympix is the biggest contest in the world when it comes to recreational boutique pot. The few and far between that can actually hold up with the quality of the streets. It’s hosted by Greenwolf, one of L.A.’s most famous places to buy great pot. L.A. Weekly recently took part in the process to whittle down the 109 entries to 27, for this year’s California edition.
We caught up with Greenwolf’s founders Brian and Adam to get their take on the Zalympix rocket now going national with East Coast and Michigan editions currently taking place. We started our chat by asking the pair what it had been like watching their event grow to three time zones since kicking things off in early 2021.
“It’s awesome. I mean, it’s really cool. I just feel like down to everyone involved, the cup runneth over with benefits for everyone. And it’s just really cool to see,” Brian told L.A. Weekly. He very much appreciates how taken seriously the Zalympix are in different places. Especially in Michigan, there is a lot of fire out there they hope to highlight through the competition.
“It’s just humbling to talk to some of these, you know, top-tier people in the space and have them say this competition is the pinnacle. This is the one that really stands out amongst the others these days,” Adam added.
From the outsider’s perspective, it all seemed pretty rapid for sure. Basically, as soon as the first boxes went out in 2021, people were believers. The quality of entries made it easy, as the top-shelf entries in the box mirrored the quality Greenwolf’s shelves has been famous for.
We asked the pair when they knew they were really on to something with the event as a whole. Adam and Brian debated when they first got the vibes about Zalympix possibly taking off the way it has. While the initial gut feelings are debatable, when 4,000 people showed up last year to celebrate, they knew things were looking up for the future.
This was also the first time they were ever worried. They’re not party guys per se. They wanted to ensure everything checking in that number of people went smoothly. Adam was standing out front himself grabbing VIPs and handing them wristbands.
That evening saw Zalympix go from 700 people at the inaugural awards show to 4,000. The Zalympix between the two events featured a digital awards show due to a COVID spike in L.A. But the jump in attendance raises the obvious speculation of just how big the event can go? The likely answer is pretty huge. It’s not unreasonable to think 20,000 people will be attending in the not-too-distant future. One lesson from last time is, they plan to have more delivery
Right now they are looking to lock down where they will host the Zalympix growing footprint for the upcoming awards show. Some of the possibilities they are tossing around right now could see them hosting up to 6,000 people. One thing they’re sure about is, they want to start the party a lot earlier, so vendors have more time before the 10 p.m. curfew on legal sales.
While expectations are high for the next California edition, many in the cannabis community are excited to see Zalympix branching out from California. The two had initially pondered the idea, but when their Michigan partners at Exotic Matter hit them up, it was on. Everyone believes bringing the Zalympix to Michigan will benefit the state’s best cultivators.
Adam said it’s been great working with their Michigan partners. They’re getting ready to celebrate the winners of Michigan’s second edition on April 14.
“We know they’ve had a long medical time frame there. When we got there last year, we just were shocked at how amazing the quality of the product was out there,” Adam said.
We asked the pair how the flower in places like Michigan and the East Coast stacks up with the competition back home in Los Angeles?
“I’d say, there’s a lot of good stuff in a lot of places. A lot of people are doing things out there. Especially in Michigan, they’ve always been,” Brian said. “I think it’s the second closest in terms of like, Cali quality. There are real breeders out there. They’re really doing their thing out there and they have been, so for me, it shows.”
As for the differences between the trio of Zalympix contests now happening around the country, the main thing is scale. Michigan is the smallest of the three — they have to keep things a bit more low-key and were not able to have vending at the event. Nevertheless, the vibes carried the show. Many called it one of the best events Michigan’s legal market has seen, noting it’s one of the few times all of the state’s hitters have been inside the same room. They’re hoping to push the bar further next year and be the first event in Detroit to do compliant sales.
Detroit has been a trouble spot for Michigan’s cannabis industry, and with things opening up, it looks like the time is ripe to bring things a bit closer to the population center. Back in the day, events occurred well outside of the city.
“It’s similar to being in an Adelanto or a San Bernardino. You know, they weren’t here,” Adam explained. ”They were quite the drive from like the city, and so we knew our whole goal was, as with the L.A. Zalympix to keep it in LA, in Michigan, do it in Detroit, not be an hour and a half away from town. And then same with New York, we looked at doing other spots, but you know, we just think it’s imperative to be in Manhattan.”
New York is looking dope. It’s a little different for the Greenwolf team not being there, but they’re thrilled with the lineup for the festivities on April 19. A big contingent of California’s best cannabis minds is heading east to NYC for the holiday anyway, so the timing worked out perfectly for the Greenwolf team. They’re expecting somewhere between 2,500-3,000 people for the show. Brian noted they’re going pretty hard for the next couple of weeks.
What’s the difference between the contest entries? It varies. Last year there was so much Runtz in the Michigan Zalympix, it was no Runtz allowed this year. Brian found that interesting.
“I’d say there is a lot of Z everywhere but also like more on the East Coast you see more candy, gassy stuff. I definitely know OG over there, and some OG over here (in the entries). But you know a lot surprised me. There were a lot of Exotic Genetix entries and I noticed there were some different breeders with different gear,” Brian said about the entries.
One thing that’s interesting about Zalympix’s expansion is watching its perceived value from place to place. Obviously, it’s huge here in California. But it seems like a lot of the time it’s reaffirmed many people’s takes on names like Blueprint, Deo, Zushi, and Wizard Trees. In New York, there is this different kind of quest for brands trying to catch lightning in a bottle out the gate with a win.
And boy are they. Sixty-seven brands came out in an attempt to qualify for the finals in NYC. They were narrowed down to 20. The qualifying idea in New York inspired the team to bring it back to California. The Greenwolf team selected 25 tastemakers to pick out the finalists.
“I think there’s going to be some very surprised winners in there. Some brands that you know, people may not have ever heard of, including ourselves,” Adam said.
Tickets for the New York Zalympix are still available.
Many argue that November is one of the best months to buy pot given the deals and steals of Black Friday and Green Wednesday, but don’t sleep on the quality available and prices when purchasing your weed in December.
One of the main feathers in the hype for December is the fact it’s just a little bit further out from the Croptober harvest. In the first half of November, you might still be waiting for the girls that finished late to cure up to perfection. That’s not a problem in December, in fact, the whole month much of the year’s harvest will be in the golden zone for quality.
And we’ll be the first to note there are a lot of variables on how long that golden zone lasts. The best hope is the pot never leaves an awesome environment before it ends up in the hands of a consumer, but that’s few and far between. That’s why the date is so important.
The accountability of shelf time says a lot in the current market. Dispensaries don’t want flowers that don’t move. They want you to get the heat, apart from a charlatan or three trying to make a quick buck. But even then, that harvest date can transcend shady retail practices that make you think you’re getting a deal when, in reality, the consumer is doing them a favor by taking it off their hands for anything.
This has led to the best cultivators in the world living by their packaging dates — that’s the moment the clock really starts ticking. Especially given in how many cases the weed was already finished for a bit before it made it to bags or jars.
One brand that’s based a lot of its business model around the heat and keeping to a short shelf life is California Artisanal Medicine.
“We put our harvest date and our package date, because after 90 days from the package date, your product is aging and will not hold all the attributes we look for in top-shelf cannabis,” CAM founder Anna Willey told L.A. Weekly.
Willey went on to note the biggest things impacted are the smell, how the buds break up and moisture content.
As for the biggest factors Willey sees outside not hitting the gold standards in temperature and humidity?
“The way it was dried and the evenness of your environment in the dry room,” Willey answered. “Also the health of the plant at the end of the cycle and the trim time.”
While Willey is an indoor cultivator, this all rings true for the outdoor that dropped a couple of months ago.
Another point proving the quality of cannabis in December is the Emerald Cup’s old format before the move to Los Angeles for the award show. Back in the day, we knew who the world champs were a couple of weeks into December. It was all wild and fresh heat. The new extended format creates a bit more hype over many months but adds the additional factor of which weed actually holds up through that time until it gets into the hands of the judges.
California’s quarterly cannabis tax revenue dipped $95 million from Q4 2021 compared to Q4 2022.
On Wednesday, The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) reported cannabis revenue today for the fourth quarter of 2022 totaling $221.6 million; these numbers are always adjusted when the next quarter comes out. So we’ll have the final number in a few months, but regardless, the $108 million in excise tax collected and $113.6 million in sales tax revenue from cannabis businesses will be a monster dip from 2021.
When the final numbers for the last quarter of 2021 were released in 2022, the number climbed from $308 million to $316.59 million. That figure includes $160.64 million in excise tax, $39.99 million in cultivation tax, and $115.96 million in sales tax.
The $95 million in lost taxes represents a 30% dip in cannabis revenue for Q4 2022 compared to the same quarter a year prior. This revenue loss also is up from the $82 million loss in comparison of Q3 2021 to Q3 2022.
The quarter-to-quarter dip wasn’t as bad, but still pretty brutal. The numbers for Q3 2022 were revised to $251.3 million. This represents a $30 million dip in Q4. The revenue dip from Q4 2021 compared to Q3 2021 was $25 million. The dip in revenue this year was roughly 20% larger than in 2022.
Some would be quick to point to a halt in the cultivation tax for the loss, but lawmakers only expected to lose $150 million on that over three years. Sure they lowballed it, but there have to be other places the tax dip is coming from too.
We asked Kyle Greenhalgh of Heritage Mendocino if he felt like the dip in taxes was from brands going under.
“I think in general, people got broke in California and weren’t spending as much in the stores as they used to,” Greenhalgh told L.A. Weekly, “I know we still see the same amount of door swings, but a quarter of the spending of what it used to be. People were buying their needs, not their wants. So I think a bunch of dispensaries went to a value-driven model, but I see spending and higher quality bouncing back.”
Greenhalgh watched the shop’s average spend go from $100 to $20 really fast. He thinks people had to choose from buying gas at the gas station, or cannabis, and gas to get to work won that battle.
“This in turn made it very hard for most big corporations and brands to make a profit, and the exit started to happen. I’m seeing a lot of success and movement now for more of the smaller and craft brands though,” Greenhalgh noted.
“Overall, the dip in licensed cannabis tax revenues appears to be driven mostly by a small reduction of sales tax compared to the big hits to excise tax and the removal of the cultivation tax last year,” Katz told L.A. Weekly.
He notes the tax dip spread across the supply chain and unfortunately did not provide the level of direct relief for which cultivators had hoped for.
“Big picture I’d say that reduced sales are still primarily due to the high taxes levied on licensed products,” Katz argued. “As inflation has forced people to spend more and more on even the most basic of necessities, it becomes harder and harder for them to justify spending two or three times as much for licensed cannabis products. At the same time, there’s a significant amount of unregulated and untaxed cannabis retail throughout the state, offering product that looks ‘legal’ but costs a fraction of the price.”
Katz closed by noting, as long as the taxes remain high, most consumers who have less money in their pockets will be incentivized by their bottom lines to shop outside of the licensed market.
With annual surpluses coming to an end in 2022, the state will look to figure out how to replace that $95 Million.
It’s that time of year when we ask our favorite cannabis brands and people what they’re most excited to grow this year.
The early stress tests are done for the season and folks are getting ready to put their new winning phenos into full blast. While this happens all the time indoors, the work outdoor cultivators do in March and April will help set the standard for the quality they’ll be chopping down when Croptober hits.
Here is what people told us when we asked them what they are hyped on. Here is what they told us:
Fidels
Fidel in the garden. Courtesy of Fidels.
Runtz x Jealousy, multiple banger phenos hunted, now being scaled up to the masses. The cool thing about this project is that it’s not bread by me, it’s bread by Julio aka @nineweeksharvest. Julio and I had a Genuine conversation. He’s an amazing breeder and pure soul! He blessed me with Runtz X Jealousy.
We hunted over 60 beans and had many selections that look, smell and smoke phenomenal. I’m excited to share these selections with the masses and have them scaled up properly.
Masonic
Oh man, Karma Genetics, The great gardener, Barbara bud hybrids, and some of the stuff I’ve chucked along the way. I already went down a lot of the landrace rabbit hole.
Rez from DNA Genetics
I’m hyped about the ’93 Octane crosses. Super heavy gas. I’m looking for that borderline rancid, super offensive-pungent, baby Shit level funk.
Capulator
Diamond Lungs Co-Op grow. 70 pheno hunters, 888 beans. Also, Vintage Sunset Cheese, Gas and Cheese, and Caps Frozen Oranges. I’m on a hot one right now.
Ryan from Doja Pak
So basically, Duke of Erb and I started with a strawberry diesel from Res Dog, pollinated it with a Northern Lights male selected a male and pollinated an OG18 Pheno that we hunted from DNA. That cross was named 18 Coffins.
We worked the line through the generations and hit the Gelato 33 from the Bakery with pollen from an F318 coffins male. That cross was called Strawberry Gelato. The female keeper was put into production and then the male we collected pollen and dusted the original Zkittlez. This cross was named Strawberry Zkillato. Planta grows this cut currently.
The SZ Male pollinated a LCG/Runtz and then we selected multiple keepers; Planta runs 1 and Dave from Preferred Gardens runs another. We again selected a male and hit our whole lineup. Those are the crosses I’m selling and selecting now.
Anna from CAM
Things I’m running that are new. Grape Gas, Lemon Cherry Gelato x Permanent Marker, Animal cookies x Z, Devil driver (Melonade x sundae driver ), Pure Kush and Rozay.
Erin from Royal Key Organics
Gelapop, Velvet, Candy Walls hash, new seeds and new potential from Equilibrium Genetics.
Drew from Green Dawg
Green weed 2023! D1 is my biggest recent push. I’m not disclosing genetics officially, but it’s the closest thing I’ve had to a real Sour Diesel/Dubb flavor profile in a decade. It’s an anti-candy. We hunted her from seed. Everything else was hay except her. I think she’s special and is going to do numbers this year.
Sour Wavez
Surefire and I have something special coming up, haven’t named it… RS11 x sherbanger F1 male. Besides that, some stuff I bred: Gelloz (gelatti x OZX), Betrayal (Zkittelz x OZX), Real Ricky Bobby (Xeno x OZX), Chess not checkers (Pink Z x OZX), Sidepiece (Pure Kush x OZX).
Besides that I’m growing Sherbanger (Boston roots), Sour diesel (karma bx2), I have four different OGs, Permanent marker via Doja pak, Zazul (Archive), Detroit runtz (Tiki) and from Mendoja the Larry Z and Cherry pie x OZK .
Kevin Jodrey
I’m hyped about the older cultivar revival Purple city coming out with ssh kali mist hybrids.
Cypher going to weave the red Lebanese x puck into his work. On the east coast you have the piff haze crew going hard in that direction.
You got Sjoerd Brooks lighting up in lake county and has the haze valley nursery coming online. Equatorials modified for our area but still retaining the traits that made them legendary. No one young ever got to smoke them and Brooks is a bad motherfucker.
It’s not so much a specific plant as a feel. Herb from an era where the quality of the effect was what drove the sale more so than the amount of hype. You see the work being woven into a lot as well.
The stores are losing so much ground to the trap because they live and die off of the distribution model. That model is a safe bet. Purple color only. Over 26% only. That leaves about 30 plants that every nursery in the state sells and forces every grower to compete with each other for shelf space. Customers are bored.
I’m flying to Jamaica tomorrow to document Charles Scott’s operation for a company I’m helping to build in Massachusetts. A lifetime of equatorials being sifted for what will work best in today’s world. I’m stoked because the crop is outdoors full sun organic and at 18′ latitude, so we can see what they look like in their natural environment.
Those selections will be sifted indoors and released in a market where that kind of effect is desired and needed.
Fieldz from Zkittlez
Braindropz, gelonoidz, wapanga, NYZ., zyrup. All of our own gear of coarse.
Champelli
Stuff that is smoking and is killer. I have a few OG back crosses. I’m excited about bringing back that real gas for body smoke mostly green weed, but I also have a few different candy Z crosses that are neither overly zee or overly candy leaning basically their own thing New flavors I like it when stuff comes out and it’s not leaning too heavy on one thing or relying on one Terp it’s always Pass when they get together become friends and decide to have a new expression of flavor. That’s the most exciting part creating something you could actually call newish.
The Village – Symbiotic Genetics
We are really excited about the Gassy Taffy line collab with Grow Low Key. There is a Grease Bucket x Gassy Taffy pheno that is extremely promising, very gassy. We are calling it Benzina, which is gas in Italian. Also the Amarelo x Gassy Taffy I’m really excited about and that’s going to be called Ego Death. Also the Candied Bananas which is Z2 x Banana Punch, Z2 is Zkittles bag seed.
Mike from Fig Farms
The flowers I’m most excited about right now are in-house crosses that recently graduated to production. The next two that will be released are crosses to Figment pollen, both are outstanding.
The first cross, Kush Mint Cookies x Figment #5, has an overwhelming Original Cookies terp presence that really pulls at the olfactory memory. The second cross, Blue Face x Figment #7, has an undeniable exotic Fig Farms look with a complex gas profile that we can’t wait to share. You are going to continue to see a lot of Fig crosses coming from us in 2023. The pollen and the winning female plants that we’ve been collecting and testing are like colors on a painter’s palette. Our palette’s range is deep, and we are using our palette to create the next generation of classics.
The Weed, Sex, and Chocolate Guide is back to help you with your quest to enhance the Valentine’s Day festivities.
Weed is one of the greatest Valentine’s Day gifts of all, regardless of your plumbing. You can buy it for the person you started dating last week or last decade and you never have to worry about it being too over the top. Not the lube, but the other stuff.
We’ve always used this list to highlight the chocolate of the moment. We’re also trying to include plenty of new faces this year, but you’ll certainly recognize a couple of OGs that just have it down. Nevertheless, we’re sure this lineup of cocoa in all its glory produced all over California will fill the air with, at the very least, a love of weed chocolate.
The Weed
Alien Labs – Super Silver Haze x Xeno
The pheno of SSH x Xeno that we tried was probably the haziest American thing we’ve ever had the chance to sample. It tastes more like something from Europe than Sacramento. I think the thing that shocked us the most was just how overpowering the Haze terps were over the complexity of Xeno. A lot of people would argue hazes are some of the best sex weeds with the exception of this dominatrix I knew from San Francisco who said Blue Moonshine. But I think she just wanted a heavy indica to make it easier to tie people up.
Symbiotic Genetics Rosin
Courtesy of Kalya Extracts
Symbiotic Genetics is one of the most stored seed companies of the decade. In addition to its genetics taking top honors at Chalice, its work has dotted podiums all over the world for years. I even saw some Mimosa grown in Africa that would be competitive. As luck would have it, the amazing flavors are now available in hash made by some of the world’s best extractors. Keep an eye out for their work with Royal Key Organics and Kalya.
The Chocolate
Fig Farms – High Flyin Chocolates
Courtesy of Fig Farms
The first-ever Emerald Cup indoor flower champions are diving into the world of edibles with a new chocolate offering. Made from the same quality material that’s taken home a podium spot in every contest it has ever entered, you’ll certainly be able to feel the difference. But the actual flavor of the Cookies and Cream rosin-infused chocolates is spot on, too, with no weedy flavor to it at all.
Oui’d Confections
Courtesy of Ouid
Is another rosin chocolate starting to make waves, Ouid is owned and operated by Michelin and James Beard Award-winning chefs Matthew Kim and Matt Rowbotham. The pair strived to bring their high-end cooking experience to the world of cannabis edibles. They argue that they are putting out restaurant-quality confections and it would be hard to say otherwise. Ouid Confections is available all over Los Angeles.
Cosmic Cookie Dough
Courtesy of Cosmic
We covered the tale of Cosmic Cookie Dough last year, and they remain one of the easiest ways to please vegan edible lovers. If you want to show your vegan lover you care, bake some up for the holiday or just bring two spoons and raw dog it. There are no eggs, so you don’t have to worry about food poisoning.
Punch Edibles
Courtesy of Punch Edibles
Punch always has a Valentine’s day offering, but this year, the new half cookie bar is definitely our pick. Punch is a company that was made famous during the medical era for its potency but had to fall back on quality alone once the value buying aspect of cannabis edibles was lost to the 100mg THC cap that came with Prop 64. This year the company celebrates a decade of getting Southern California lit with its exceptional edibles.
Native Humboldt
Courtesy of Native Humboldt
Want to get your V-day chocolate from a women-owned farm in the heart of The Emerald Triangle? Look no further than Native Humboldt. The bars are filled with the quality and love of the game it takes to be a survivor up north these days. With so many farms devastated over the past few years up north, it’s important to support the farmers up there when you get the chance, but we’re not telling you to buy it out of sympathy. It’s great chocolate.
Jelly Wizard Magic Morsels
Courtesy of Jelly Wizard
We have been a wizard gang since the moment they entered the recreational market. We were literally standing at the booth smoking a blunt with them when they made their first legal sale at Kushstock a couple of years ago. While the gummies helped put them on the map along with some killer hash and flower, do not sleep on Jelly Wizard’s chocolate offering. You can truly taste the hype in The Magic Morsels.
The Sex
Flora + Bast Aphrodisia Intimate Arousal Oil
Courtesy of Fiona + Bast
The dual purpose oil is designed for both topical and edible adventures in the bedroom. Now is the $77 price tag steep for 1,700mg CBD and 1,000mg CBG? Maybe that’s just the cost of great cannabinoid-laced sex these days. Flora + Blast note when applied topically it makes you slippery and stimulates the libido. If you eat it, the CBD makes your Valentine’s Day hookup less regrettable. The oil also comes in a Sex System they call “the kit” (not my quotations) because why not, right? That set features a QR code to download the book “Becoming Cliterate” by author and sex educator, Laurie Mintz, Lelo’s sonic massager Sona II Cruse and the Aphrodisia Oil for $149.
Lavinia Oh.Hi Lubricant
Courtesy of Lavinia
In one of this year’s list’s most heartwarming tales, here is Lavinia’s backstory that I couldn’t possibly word better:
“The brand was founded in 2021 by Katie Enright, a former celibate studying to be a nun. In a quest to help herself and others obtain easy, powerful, multiple orgasms, Enright began by studying cannabis and sex, and created her first product for herself, then for friends, then friends of friends. After an earth-shattering orgasm, Lavinia’s first product, oh.hi, was born.”
The company claims the THC and CBD-infused lube increases blood flow for heightened sensation when applied vaginally or for Valentine’s Day butt stuff. Oh.hi is latex friendly, glycerin-free, glycol-free, paraben-free, hypoallergenic, unscented, unflavored, and 100% vegan. It’ll take about 15 minutes to work, not the slippery part, the weed part. Oh.hi is available at dispensaries all over California.