How to spot good weed?
Imagine coming home after a long day and being greeted by a marijuana flower with an exquisite aroma and dazzling appearance. But how can you be sure it’s truly top-quality? Recognizing the quality of marijuana might seem complicated, but with a few practical tips, you can quickly and easily identify the best flowers without any hassle.
Why is it Vital to Recognize Marijuana Quality?
When it comes to marijuana, quality is everything. From the taste and aroma, to the effects it produces, the quality of marijuana can make a big difference in the user’s experience. Knowing how to recognize the quality of marijuana is essential to enjoy a superior product, knowing the quality indicators will allow you to make informed decisions and make the most of the properties of this special plant.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the key aspects to consider when identifying high-quality marijuana. From appearance and aroma to texture and effects, you’ll learn to recognize the details that separate the good from the exceptional. Get ready to discover how to select only the best and ensure your marijuana experience is always satisfying.
4 Key Points to Keep in Mind
To make the subject as practical and easy to understand as possible, today we show you how to know if marijuana is of good quality with 4 simple checkpoints that anyone can easily perform.
- Appearance, the First Indicator of Quality: High quality marijuana usually has a shiny appearance, with trichomes visible to the naked eye, and vivid colors.
- Aroma, a Distinctive Seal: The aromatic profile of marijuana is a strong indicator of its quality. Get to know terpenes, which odors to look for and which to avoid.
- Texture and Moisture to the Touch: The importance of texture and the right amount of moisture in the buds.
- Effects, the Ultimate Test: The effects marijuana produces should be the ultimate test of its quality.
There’s no better marijuana than what you grow yourself, as you’ve been closely involved in its growth and development, and you know exactly what it’s been fed, what genetics it has, whether it has suffered from pests, and if the buds have been harvested and cured properly. However, this ideal situation isn’t always possible due to lack of time, space, motivation, or experience. If you find yourself with buds grown by someone else, it’s wise to conduct a few simple checks to determine the quality of the marijuana.
There are several ways to detect if a marijuana is of good or bad quality. And you should do this exercise every time, not to prove that you are an expert, but also, and more importantly, not to get garbage. In this article we are going to give you some keys to know how to recognize the quality of marijuana, if you follow these simple guidelines you will be able to distinguish more easily a good bud from a bad one.
What should a good quality marijuana smell like?
Good marijuana, like good wines, has a distinctive range of aromas, mainly originating from terpenes. Some smells, such as fruity, piney or sweet, are indicators of good quality. Similarly, a well cultivated cannabis usually exhibits a very penetrating and intense aroma.
Others, such as the smell of dry grass, humidity or neutral, usually indicate the opposite, a marijuana of poor quality, as usually premature harvests, or those that have been mistreated, acquire this smell.
Think that if the buds have been harvested prematurely, have not been cleaned or dried well, they will not have the same quality and potency as others that have completed their maturation. In addition, it may not be healthy because you may be consuming fertilizer residues.
In summary, these are the most important points to detect when evaluating the aroma of a Cannabis flower:
- Pleasant aromas: Notes of fruit, herbs, citrus or berries indicate good quality.
- Sweetness: Sweet smells are characteristic of well cultivated marijuana.
- Intensity: A high quality flower has a very penetrating and intense aroma.
- Avoid unpleasant odors: Dry, damp or neutral weed odors indicate low quality, premature or poorly dried crops, potentially with fertilizer residues.
What does a good quality bud look like?
Good quality buds usually retain their original shape, this denotes that they have been properly manicured and their resin has not been lost along the way. Under no circumstances should they be crushed or put in a plastic bag for a long time, as the trichomes will be lost or degraded along the way.
If a bag of marijuana is full of tiny buds and sticky residue, it is not a good sign. Look for big buds, or at least medium-sized ones, that are well manicured, without too much leaf and stem debris. Look also at the sheen, as all good marijuana should be covered in resin glands. These look like small crystals that, under direct light, will give the buds a special sparkle, highlighting the green of the plant along with various shades, usually reddish, orange or purplish. If the dominant colour is brown, discard it.
In the following picture you can see a good weed on the left and a bad weed on the right.
What should a good marijuana flower feel like?
A high quality marijuana bud should be heavy, indicating that there is a lot of resin packed inside. If you squeeze it a little with your fingers it should be very sticky, a bit spongy and hard once you squeeze it harder, all due to the amount of resin it accumulates.
If the marijuana flower feels very spongy it may not have much resin. It is also possible that it feels damp and brittle, in which case it is worse and you may have a fungus. In the latter case it should be thrown away.
What is the effect of good Cannabis?
This is often the litmus test for any cannabis. When tasting good marijuana, the high should not only be a pleasant one, but also one that sparks creativity and inspiration. Quite the opposite of the dazed feeling typical of bad weed.
Good marijuana tends to produce laughter, empathy, altered perceptions, increased sensitivity and creativity, if it is very relaxing it tends to produce relaxation, stress release and will lead to deep sleep. Bad marijuana tends to produce grogginess, confusion, stupor or paranoia.
Having said all this, keep in mind that these suggestions apply to most cannabis, but there are exceptions. So don’t take this as a list of golden rules, but rather as a basic guideline. You may come across marijuana that, despite being bad, smells, looks and tastes good, and more than one will fall for it. However, if the effect is not good, the quality of the marijuana is ultimately not good.
Bonus track for the pro’s
If you want to get to the bottom of the matter, it is possible to make a very professional check of the cannabis flower, for this you just need to have an accessory, a microscope magnifying glass.
This way you can observe the trichomes of the bud with absolute precision, revealing the quality and quantity of the resin in a very revealing way. Take a look at this example:
The flower on the left is full of trichomes, they are clear, large, crystalline and whole. On the other hand, in the image on the right, we can see fewer trichomes, flattened, smaller, with a burnt and broken appearance. There is a big difference and it is obvious.
If you are interested in looking at the quality of marijuana in detail, you can buy a magnifying glass at the following link:
In short
A cannabis enthusiast looking for high quality flowers doesn’t have a hard time. Just by following these tips and paying attention to our senses, even novices can easily separate the good buds from the bad.
Then, within decent qualities, the personal taste of the consumer plays a big part. There are hundreds of strains cultivated by thousands of growers. The goal is to find the right strain for everyone. It’s simply about finding the right product that works with your personal chemistry from a brand or grower that you like and can therefore enjoy time and time again.
So remember, compare against the four indicators we have given you: smell, look, feel and effect. This way you will find the quality weed strain that best suits your personal taste.
Smoking poor quality marijuana can lead to different outcomes, the most common of which are consuming something that is not marijuana or is mixed, being exposed to harmful residues or compounds, or the material not having the cannabinoids we think it has.
In this article we give you the 4 keys to know that a marijuana is of good quality: smell, look, feel and taste. In addition, we also give you a bonus track for the pro’s.
A good quality bud is distinguished by its density, bright trichomes, vibrant colours, intense aroma and sticky texture. In contrast, a low-quality bud is spongy, has sparse trichomes, dull colours, smells of dried herbs or dampness, and a dry, brittle texture.
What happens if I smoke poor quality marijuana?
How do you know if marijuana is of good quality?
What differentiates a good bud from a bad one?
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Founder of Experiencia Natural, creative and entrepreneur, designer, master in grower and marketing. For a normalization of all plants and substances, giving priority to patients and users.
