The CannaReps team is feeling jazzed and renewed as we got to connect with over 250 cannabis lovers IN REAL LIFE in the past 2 months. Together, as a community we brought amazing bud and graded 47 of the country’s best flowers. We issued 10 awards for Best Cannabis Sommelier and Best Cannabis Collector so far. Like our joints, our momentum is rolling as we head to Edmonton to find winners to the region’s best cannabis professionals and flowers.
With the smoke cleared, the data from Vancouver and Toronto quality gradings have been analyzed and some surprising insights were found.
Vancouverites are more discerning than Torontonians
BC’s bud history may be the reason for Vancouverites to be more critical of cannabis flowers, or perhaps there were more cannabis experts in attendance compared to Toronto. Maybe it was because the mood was lighter in Toronto as it was on 420. Whatever the reason may be, we have found that the judges in Vancouver input harsher scores than judges in Toronto.
Calibration for grading is needed
• There was a wide range of cannabis experience on using the cannabis quality grading scale among the judges. The scores issued in Vancouver had a large standard deviation (spread) in scores. Ideally, we want the scores from the grading scales to be close among all judges so we created a calibration tutorial for the subsequent Collector’s Cup in Toronto. The calibration tutorial was indeed effective as the standard deviation at our next event was halved.
Beautiful trichome expression does not always lead to a high quality score
Interestingly, flowers that had high scores in Trichome expression were not correlated with high quality scores. In fact, our lowest graded flowers scored high in trichome expression, but low in other categories
Dry pull flavour, flavour, and smoothness are key factors
The most highly correlated grading categories were dry pull flavour, flavour, and smoothness. That means a flower can be ‘ugly’ with low bud integrity, poor trichome expression, and poor trim yet still score well in its overall grade.An unexpected, but delightful highlight from the Collector’s Cup is when the budtenders and retailers could show off their skills in the Blind ID challenge. Watching the competition unfold onstage was suspenseful and spotlighted skilled budtenders’ nose and eyes to name the cultivars. This competition proves that people are able to distinguish between the thousands of cultivars in the market and identify the LP and cultivar name. We believe that as more industry professionals catch on to this idea, many more budtenders will want to compete for the Best Cannabis Sommelier title. There is plenty of great cannabis out there – bring your A-game and your favourite flowers to Collector’s Cup! It’s FUN geeking out on weed with a hundred other people and to taste the best flowers in a single event. It’s WORTHWHILE to make community connections and win some prizes too! Join in on the weed party!