Aromas, tastes and perceptions

[Ralph W. Llama]

While effects tend to be the most important factor when judging cannabis, aromas and tastes are a very close second, and one of the most intriguing parts about growing and breeding for me. I think it's related to the way our brains are wired for smell/taste and how we form such strong memories from them.

I first tasted cannabis in the mid 80's, with a broad mix of imported commercial ranging from moldy hay to some of the best flower and hash I ever experienced, good to excellent quality local homegrown and even some honey/hash oil before it was widely available. While this sounds like one of the heydays in theory, supply, connections and cash did not line up as well as they could have. There were lean times, for sure.

The smells and flavors then were a bit limited and mainly muted, except for the hash and some of the well-handled homegrown. That changed pretty quickly with indoor blowing up and fresh genes flooding out of Amsterdam. My first grow attempt was in '88 with commercial bagseed and it's been a fruity, dirty, funky, piney,skunky, meaty, peaty, citrusy ride ever since.

With a background in food and beverage, including professional brewing, I have worked to train my palate and have a decent ability to detect and tease apart smells and flavors. The magic of perception of incredible aromas and tastes is still one of my great joys. Check out the linked article for some recent science.

Over the years, I have tried to catalog and rate the plants that I grew and made seeds with, as a way to follow the lines and parents that were producing the best. It's nothing new, but hyposomniac recently asked about some of the plants I rated at the top of my flavor scale and this is an attempt to both start a conversation about overall aromas/tastes and share info about the plants that blew my socks off.

More to come.

 

[Switcher56]

Nothing much to contribute here as aromas and taste are a distant second, whereas the medicinal value is front and center. I presume it must have something to do with being a med user vice a rec user. But... Always interested in some good opinions

 

[flylowgethigh]

The terps are my biggest challenge as a newbie grower. I want aroma and taste to go with my buzz.

 

[Steviewunder]

Tastes and smell that exist after the flower is volatized is number one for me. I enjoy smoking and having a flavor that sticks around for a while even after burning it. Terpene/taste profiles range widely... from pine to chocolate, coffee, a road kill skunk to a moldy woody forest. Some may be offended by a smell while others are searching for that smell/taste again since the day they put that last joint out. I think based on peoples perception and past experience they can bring up memories or something relative in which leaves a person searching to find that specific taste again. I don't grow any special genetics, I grow from what bag seeds I've collected over the years which may contribute why I come across many of these "memory" terps in my grows. I think every consumer whether rec or med can remember that one bud that topped everything else they can no longer source.

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

Thank you all. I agree that med users might not be as connected to flavors/aromas, but these might be part of the overall effects. We're still learning.

Long hang time is definitely one of the factors that makes for the best flavors and aromas. I don't smoke, but when I can still taste the vape flavors the next day, it's probably got the magic.

It's also post-exhale exhales through the nose that keep changing and growing. I'd love to figure out which components produce this top level complex taste.

The differences between aromas and tastes are interesting too. Sometimes both line up almost exactly, in others, they are totally different. Most of my skunky plants have an earthy dirt or peat flavor. The fruitiest ones seem to be the ones that are most complex and consistent between aroma and taste, but some of the dirt flavors are really strong too. I had one plant that I described as "electric peat."

The main flavor and aroma lines that I have worked with are a Chemdog bagseed plant, a small selection of Elvis bagseed, a Mass Super Skunk bagseed, and a local Skunk#1 (or Afghani, unsure) population. In the last few years, I added some Ace Seeds picks like Orient Express, Zamaldelica, Zam X KaliChina, Panama X Malawi, Panama, Purple Satellite and OTH, although I have mainly these in their original form, with only a couple of outcrosses made and tested so far. More recently, I dove into some Seedsman JH and a bunch of Chimera releases, including SS X BB, PK X SS, HM X BB, and few others.

My eyes are way bigger than my tent, so it's a slow process of searching in small populations, but I must have been very lucky so far. Paying attention and documenting helped, so did receiving and picking some good genes. Effects have been kept in the forefront as well and there are some very complex packages here, with lots of creative, energetic and long-lasting kicks, next to muscle melt pain relief and sleep aids too.


A fuzzy Chelviskunk from 2018.

 

[bsgospel]

Subbed

 

[Steviewunder]

Ralph, I just started to switch to vaping and the taste is amazing compared to smoking . This has some real good info on different terpenes and pinpointing tastes you cant name or describe like the dirt and peat tastes... a very similar forum i was just reading the other day https://www.icmag.com/forum/marijua...terpenes-of-cannabis-their-aromas-and-effects the Chelvis looks great nice work!

 

[flylowgethigh]

If you get a chance to try a Volcano Hybrid, load the chamber full, let the chamber set on the base at 420*F for about 7.5 seconds, and with the whip ready, hit the fan and take a power hit. THE best way I have found yet to get a full blast of terps.

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

That's a great thread, Stevie. The flavor wheel is key and the list of terps is huge. I wonder how many have been found in cannabis.

There's some so-so science in there too, but I can't really blame anyone at this point. With silly laws, we still can't adequately study the plant. Due to this limit, the overall melange of cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, esters, thiols, alcohols and other compounds that are important for aromas, flavors and effects are not fully understood.

 

[Switcher56]

Ralph, I just started to switch to vaping and the taste is amazing compared to smoking . This has some real good info on different terpenes and pinpointing tastes you cant name or describe like the dirt and peat tastes... a very similar forum i was just reading the other day https://www.icmag.com/forum/marijuan...as-and-effects the Chelvis looks great nice work!

Thanks for the link I've been looking high and wide for something like that. Good old copy and paste and saved into perpetuity

 

[...CR500AF...]

Steviewunder Thank you for info nice...

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

Here’s an article about cannabinoids and other components, and a cool pic about esters.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4883103/

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

To be honest, I don't know for sure that the Mass Super Skunk bagseed was actually MSS. It was conjecture based on the source and smell. The bagseed produced purple flowers that kept the skunky smell and had a pure dirt flavor, hence the name Purple Polecat.

A different peaty dirt flavor showed up the Chelvis line before this addition, both of which I'd like to explore and maybe combine for a Dirt Merchant strain. Sometimes I think of names and then breed towards them. (DM is not my name, but it's got a cool history and I've never seen it used.)

Regardless of what she was, here is one of her granddaughters, with liberal amounts of Chelvis (75%) mixed in. I rated its mom as a 9 in flavor and it's one of my testers to compare against some recently purchased professional seeds.

The smells are typical of the best high end chelvis line, with a complex mix of earth, funk and fruit that lingers and develops. She's got a couple more weeks, but close to ready.

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

Moving along and almost done with the Purple Polecat cross.

I dove into that linked research paper about cannabis esters and it’s clear we have a lot to learn. If I am reading correctly, they discovered several new esters in just one plant sample.

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

Flavonoids are integral to our experiences with cannabis. Shouldn’t we be testing for them?

https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/what-are-marijuana-flavonoids

 

[chilliwilli]

Cool thread

Smell and taste is a very big part of the experience for me, more after i started vaping. With a good vaporizer you can get every nuance of the smell and taste. A loud herb in the sublimator gives me the shivers right after hitting it the first few times what imo comes from the terps.

I think if u use cannabis for mood and motivation the terpenes are a major part of the enourage effect. I have noticed that strong after trying a drop of sweet orange oil in my bong water and getting a nice motivating buzz from the herbs i tried. I smoke most of the time activating stuff so i didn't try that with a good couch lock herb.

 

[star crash]

Smell and taste is crucial

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

Medical users might want to pay closer attention to flavors and smells. From the flavonoid article, "In cannabis, cannaflavin A is pharmacologically active, with studies showing that it has anti-inflammatory properties that might be stronger than those found in Aspirin. Cannaflavin B and C are also being studied for their potential medical benefits. Other highly active flavonoids found in cannabis include Orientin, Quercetin, Silymarin, and Kaempferol, all with anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, antioxidant, and anti-cancer potential­–we’ll see where future studies take us."

Cannaflavin is unique to cannabis.

 

[Peg]

With silly laws, we still can't adequately study the plant. Due to this limit, the overall melange of cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, esters, thiols, alcohols and other compounds that are important for aromas, flavors and effects are not fully understood.

Can't wait til they discover thc. Since chemistry is illegal or whatever.


None of this is mysterious. Just not monetizable. Cannabis comes in 2 varieties: Aromatic and aliphatic. We know how molecules n shit work. Tellme how to buy a boat talking about it.

 

[Ralph W. Llama]

Moving along ... here's a cool article on phytocannabinoids, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/phytocannabinoid. More than 100 have been ID so far. "Enzymatic conversion of cannabigerolic and cannabidivaric acid produces a wide variety of C21 terpenophenolics,[SUP]6[/SUP] including (−)-trans-Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-THC), cannabigerol (CBG), cannabichromene (CBC), cannabicyclol (CBL), cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinodiol (CBND), and cannabinol (CBN), and their C19 homologs Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-tetrahydrocannabivarin (Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-THCV), cannabivarin (CBV), and cannabidivarin (CBDV). More than 100 phytocannabinoids across 11 chemical classes have been isolated and identified to date.[SUP]7[/SUP] In the growing Cannabis sativa plant, most of these cannabinoids are initially formed as carboxylic acids (eg, Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-THCA, CBDA, CBCA, and Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-THCVA) that are decarboxylated to their corresponding neutral forms as a consequence of drying, heating, combustion, or aging (Fig. 2.2). There are also different isomers of phytocannabinoids resulting from variations or isomerization in the position of the double bond in the alicyclic carbon ring (eg, (−)-trans-Δ[SUP]8[/SUP]-THC). It is important to note that CBN is not formed biosynthetically, but is an oxidative degradant of Δ[SUP]9[/SUP]-THC.[SUP]2"[/SUP]