I am sharing some thoughts concerning my experience judging and rating cannabis products. Being a judge I have to examine appearance, smell, taste and experience. Before comparing those criteria I kind of assumed that what I liked would score high and what I didn’t would score low. I have actually discovered something else that stands out. That being quality product will be quality product whether I like it or not.
When I was reviewing my Ganjier journal that contains a list of entires I have examined and judged I noticed that my average score was around 86/100. For a while I thought I was judging too favorably because 80+ seemed high to be achieving so often. After a while though I realized that was because of my selections. Not that all products on the market were so great.
Somewhere around 2018-2019 my product selection choice quality began to decline. Through multiple sources I noticed this trend. At that point I began to explore out of state sources where the results were similar. It was hit or miss. I decided to start growing then.
Growing alone wasn’t the solution. Before I was reaping harvest I’d still need goods. After going through multiple vendors on Tree House I finally found one that was solid (shout out I am Legend). Eventually my harvests started to pay off and I weaned off my out of state purchases too or dwindled them down tremendously.
I moved to California in 2024 so everything changed. I had the ability to go in a store and buy weed now. As I got immersed I discovered options outside of the store so it was on and popping.
In that journey I ran into the same quality inconsistencies at first. I was traveling great distances to cop the last and greatest. Rather that be traditional market or recreational market. I was still very much unsatisfied.
Sometimes I’d get absolutely wonderful products, but other times complete misses. I made a resolution to cut back on the purchases and make the ones that happened count. I became more selective in what I would consider trying. I cut certain sources out completely.
From my journal I can see the results of those decisions. In my early judging days I can see that there were several entries with ratings in the 70s. What I can tell from the data is that I became more informed with my selections as time went on. Not only that my skill at judging increased too.
Having particular categories and criteria to assess opened my mind to what I was experiencing. I could express the experience better. I became more informed to what I was after then began to make selections based on that. Knowing myself, my selections have been relatively true to me. I focus on quality more than anything. The genetics, the grower, the environment, the medium. The more of those details I can acquire then the easier the decision to try has become. The work included in making the decision to try has paid off because I have tried very few duds recently. Compared to the past, that’s a tremendous improvement because I have wasted a lot of lung capacity and money.
The shining star example is this cultivar NTF that I started growing in 2020. When I applied the Systematic Assessment Protocol to that flower I was blown away with the score I gave and what I thought. The reality was that the score matched what I thought. Although the cultivar is not my favorite experience, it is still very good at its expression. In hindsight that’s probably why I kept growing it. I’ve always liked to get stoned but I used to like smoking just as much. This stuff smokes and gets you stoned but my flavor preference had not developed to this point previously.
The flavor is not of my preference. I’ve dry herb vaped it, smoked it in a joint, and consumed it as rosin. The other distinguishing qualities are spectacular though. It’s a gorgeous flower, has an attractive earthy smell, gets you a good stone, but the flavor matches the smell too much for me. When it is all said and done though, it gets me ripped in a way effective and meaningful for me so the score is high and justified even if I don’t prefer the flavor.
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