Tag Archives: sweet

Dr. Norms Originals Cannabis Infused Sativa Vegan Cookie Review

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Dr Norms makes five flavors of their Original cookies, including the Sativa Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip flavor I tried. The other flavors are not vegan, and they do have one gluten-free cookie that is Indica, so if you want an Indica cookie that is vegan or a Sativa cookie that is gluten free, you will have to look elsewhere.

I prefer edibles that indicate the strain name (Sour Diesel, OG Kush, Romulan, etc.) but I appreciate when they are labeled Sativa, Indica or Hybrid as these cookies are. Also appreciate offering a cookie that is vegan and one that is gluten-free, though having each in both Indica and Sativa would be an improvement.

Most of the cookie flavors come in 100mg packages with 10mg of THC per cookie. Dr. Norms also makes a 20mg dose cookie and a Max cookie of 100mg – both of those should only be used by folks very experienced with edibles. They also make gummies, brownies and other edibles.

Packaging is easy to read and fairly easy to open, with a child proof mechanism similar to how many edibles bags work, using a thumb to grab one side while pulling open the other side. The closure is sturdy and easy to re-close. The cookies are loose inside, not individually packaged.

All of the ingredients are ones you have heard of, with no hard-to-pronounce chemicals, artificial colors or flavors. I also like how the package back comes with the reminder that with edibles you can always eat more but you can never eat less.

Taste

I appreciate that the bag claims you will taste the cookie and not the Cannabis and it is true, no strong cannabis flavor. Unfortunately, these are not great tasting cookies. The cookies look and smell fine, like a good quality crunchy cookie. There is a tiny bit of chew but it is mostly a crumbly butter cookie. They have a very nice peanut butter cookie taste with chocolate chips, sugar and butter the predominant flavors. I hardly was able to taste the cannabis, which for folks who don’t like that taste is a big positive. Even the aftertaste was butter cookie, not THC.

Effects

Within 30 minutes I started to feel the effects of a mild buzz. It remained on the mild side. It was hard for me to tell from the effects if this was an Indica or Sativa. I felt a little relaxed but not a lot. I did not feel the uplift, energy or focus I normally get from a Sativa edible. These seem to be a balanced mild hybrid with a slight cerebral high and a mild relaxing body high. I tried these several times in the afternoon and they did not give me a strong head high or any significant body effect, just a slight stoned feeling.

If you are sensitive to THC, if you are new to edibles or just prefer a mild effect, these could be a good product for you in terms of effects. Try half a cookie for a 5mg dose first to see how you are impacted. I prefer my effects to be more noticeable, to give me a decent strength either in the direction of energy and creativity or in the direction of relaxation or pain relief. I did not find any strong effects with these at my usual dose. These could be perfect for folks who get strong effects from a dose smaller than 10mg or who are looking for a mild buzz.

Not a great tasting edible but vegan, using real ingredients with a mild hybrid sativa effect.

Flavor: 2

Strength: 4

Website: https://www.drnorms.la/

Utopia California Cannabis-Infused Macaroons Review

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Utopia’s Cannabis-infused macaroons are tasty circles full of organic ingredients. They are raw, paleo-friendly, kosher friendly, gluten free, non-gmo and vegan. Only the salt is not organic, every other ingredient in these edibles is organic. They do contain tree nuts and peanuts, and are processed in a facility that processes both of those and soy products, for those with allergies.

They come in four flavors, Vanilla, Raspberry, Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter. All of them are made with a hybrid mix of strains, so they are neither Sativa or Indica.

They can be hard to find sometimes and a recent review of their website, indicating where their edibles are sold, did not match with what the dispensaries had, which could mean that they are sold out or they may not make all of the flavors anymore, hard to tell. They come in a package of 10, each with 10mg of THC, or for medical, a package of four cookies each with 50mg ( a very high dose and only for experienced medical patients).

Taste

The macaroon flavor is naturally pretty coconut focused with a finish of the labeled flavor – Vanilla, Raspberry, Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter. There is no artificial or strong cannabis oil taste.

The Peanut Butter flavor smells and tastes like a typical peanut butter macaroon – chewy yet a little dry. They start out mildly moist and they can go dry easily so it’s best to make sure you reseal the package tightly. The package says to store at room temperature, as refrigeration can dry them out, but I did keep them in the refrigerator after a few weeks to keep them fresh. I just don’t use them often enough to keep them out for too long. While you can get away with eating these cookies without liquid, some coffee, almond milk, or tea to go with them is a welcome addition.

The flavors are basically coconut, sweeteners (agave syrup and coconut sugar) and some natural flavor, so not a lot of complexity but a solid basic taste.

Ingredients & Packaging

I like that most of the ingredients are organiz and are ones that I use in cooking myself, not a lot of extra chemicals or preservatives.

Packaging is mercifully easy to open, with a tear strip that exposes a resealable closure similar to many child-safe pouches. There are helpful graphics on the package to help users get the bag open.

Effects

The effects seem to run down the expected hybrid middle. You don’t get the focus, uplift and energy to run around and get a lot accomplished you’d get from Sativa, nor do you get a strong body relaxation you would get with an Indica. It’s a mildly stoned mixed feeling between a head and body high.

I didn’t find them especially strong, so if you are sensitive to the effects of edibles or just starting to try them, this type of more mild cannabis edible would be a good fit. I would need to boost them with a 2.5 mg dose of another edible or a transdermal gel to get the impact I get from stronger edibles at a 10mg dose. They are pretty easy to cut in half when they are fresh, so you can try half a dose first, which is always smart when trying a new edible.

I think Utopia makes some very good cannabis edibles. I wish they made Sativa/Indica type specific versions, and I would love it if they would share which strain or strains they use. It can be hard to find edibles that are organic as well as vegan, gluten free and non-gmo, so if those characteristics are important to you, these are a good choice.

Taste: 7

Strength: 5

Website: https://www.utopiacannabis.com/

Super CBD Blueberry Chill Pills Review

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Super CBD Blueberry Chill Pills were very highly recommended to me by my favorite budtender with the day-glo yellow hair. She warned me that they were very strong and to take a smaller dose than usual. Super CBD blueberry chill pills have more THC than CBD so they will give you a decent buzz.

However, the taste was so nasty and medicinal that I almost spit it out. I couldn’t find any blueberry flavor whatsoever, it was like sucking on a NYQUIL lozenge for 5 minutes. I wouldn’t recommend this product because of its taste alone. It’s discreet and compact. Yes, it’s strong, but it tastes repulsive.

After an hour and fifteen minutes I was able to feel a calm, full body buzz. It was strong and I was very happy that I listened to my budtender regarding a smaller dose.

As far as pain management, I felt significant relief for the bruises on my leg from falling down (not so eloquently) and complete relief of a wrist burn from making tea. I was feeling achy and sore. The pain disappeared for several hours.

The taste isn’t great, it is sort of like eating cannabis shatter or oil. The slight berry taste just doesn’t compete well with the strong cannabis oil taste.  They are meant primarily for medical use more than getting a buzz.

Chill pills come in medical and recreational versions. Both have 10mg of THC from a hybrid strain. The medical version has 10mg of CBD in each pill, the recreational/adult use version has 5mg of CBD. They are part of a line of chill pills from The Growing Kitchen .

I tried mine at the end of a day working in the garden, feel pretty sore and wanting to chill out. Within 90 minutes my muscle soreness was significantly reduced. I felt relaxed but very able to function. There was no couch-lock or heavy head effect, just a nice anti-stress and pain relief effect. Just the kind of chill out experience I was hoping for. After eating the effects were reduced and after about 3 hours I was feeling a little tired, likely a combination of just being tired plus the relaxing effects of the THC and CBD.

I was not put off by the less-than pleasant taste and if you are looking for a solid medicinal effect, this can be a great choice. As always, start with a low dose – these are potent!

Taste: 3

Strength: 8

Website: http://thegrowingkitchen.org/edibles/

Plus Products Cannabis Infused Gummies Review

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Plus Products makes several types of cannabis infused gummies. There are Sativa, Indica and Hybrid formula gummies that have 5mg of THC per gummy. They come in packages of twenty 5mg pieces.

plus-sativa-sour-watermelon-open.jpgI always prefer cannabis edibles that indicate Sativa, Indica, or a hybrid, so I like that Plus has products labeled Sativa and Indica. I like it even better when edibles provide the name of the strain used to make the THC oil, but unfortunately there is no indication of what strain is used for these gummies. The website does say “Each low-calorie gummy is made from scratch with natural, kosher ingredients and infused with carefully sourced top shelf flower.” but doesn’t give any indication which strain of flower.

Besides the Sativa Sour Watermelon flavor, the company uses a similar formula for their Blackberry & Lemon Indica gummies that have a 9:1 THC to CBD ratio, a Sour Blueberry Hybrid and their Pineapple & Coconut gummies with CBD and no THC.

In 2018, Plus did make three limited edition flavors – Rose & Vanilla with a 2:1 THC to CBD ratio, a Rainbow Sorbet, both labeled as Hybrid with no strain indication and a Cranberry Shortbread Sativa.

Packaging is a Big Fail

There is a lot not to like about how this product is packaged. Shame on their product packaging designer for thinking that white text on a pale pink background for the Sativa product is legible. In low light, for folks with impaired vision or for those that are color blind, this packaging is very difficult to read. Not only is it difficult to read, it has a complicated child safety mechanism. When you can’t figure out the packaging and the instructions are nearly impossible to read, this is a product that starts out being very frustrating before it is even open, which does not create a good start to the experience.

As you tear off the top of the package, you have to be careful of the ziploc-type slider mechanism hidden inside the part you tear off. It is very hard to see whether you are tearing off the whole zipper mechanism or just the top of the bag. Once the top is off and if you have managed not to destroy the “zipper”, it is very unclear what happens next. If it didn’t require a flood light to read the text on the package, than it might be easier to figure out, but it isn’t. You are supposed to align the slider with a tiny notch in the closure and then push down on the slider. Unfortunately they don’t give you any hint which part of the slider is supposed to be aligned with the notch, so you have to keep trying the slider in different positions to try to make it work. By this point even a reasonable person would be ready to take a knife and destroy the packaging in frustration or just dump the whole thing in the garbage.

Once you have found the magic coordinates to make the slider work, it creates an opening about 75% of the width of the tin inside, making it difficult to get the tin inside out of the packaging. If you try to make the opening wider, the slider pulls off of the mechanism, ruining the child proof packaging. Trying to force the slider back onto the mechanism is difficult and then once you do, the opening mechanism doesn’t work. Only by prying open the bag can you access the tin with the gummies inside.

This product officially wins my award for the worst packaging of any edible I have tried. The manufacturer who produces this packaging and Plus Products should both re-examine this terrible design. Why create a frustrating customer experience that makes a person never want to buy their product again – not a good recipe for profit and sustainability. My only crime was wanting to try your gummies, I didn’t expect a packaging  obstacle course.

Taste

The gummies are very soft tiny little squares, about one quarter inch square. No wonder they say they are low calorie, they are so tiny they can’t hold a lot of calories. They are not sticky and look to be covered in a sugar coating.

The flavor – in this case the Sour Watermelon – was very subtle. I barely tasted any sour watermelon taste, it was more like a generic citric acid fruit taste plus a THC taste. A look at the ingredients may have the answer why.

The first ingredient is Beef Gelatin, which makes me go “yuck”. I’m not a vegan but I do try to avoid animal products, especially those from boiled cow hoofs. The other ingredients are sugar, salt, citric acid, tartaric acid, natural flavors and colors. Not exactly an ingredient list to get my taste buds excited. There was a definite THC aftertaste once the taste of salty acid and beef hooves fades.

Strength

I usually prefer a Sativa edible to give me some uplift, energy and focus to get things done or enjoy creative pursuits. I first tried one of the 5mg pieces and felt nothing for hours. I then tried two pieces to bring me to my normal does of 10mg. I found them slow to start and while they are slightly uplifting, I got very little energy from them. That was about the extent of the effect.

It was not at all what I usually expect to get out of 10mg of THC from a Sativa strain. I felt slightly stoned but I did not feel uplifted or creative or energetic. After a couple of hours even the slight effects were gone.

This is closest I have come, when taking my usual 10mg dose of THC in edibles, to feeling like I took nothing at all. Except for a slight initial effect, the effects were otherwise non-existent. I have tried some mild edibles but this may be the most mild.

PLus gummies rainbow

I did find that they are a good strength to boost the effects when I’ve had 10mg of another edible and I want a stronger effect. About two hours after taking 10mg of another edible, if I want a stronger effecting I find that adding one of the 5mg Plus pieces gave a nice little boost.

Claims

The company website includes the claim “Our products act faster and taste better because our research and manufacturing teams have spent the time to develop industry leading patent pending processes.” They give no explanation as to what those processes are or how much faster they claim to work. Without any supporting information, these come off as marketing claims that sound false, even if they are true.

In what I think is a hilarious mistake, the “Press and Investor” website press page shows what looks like the manufacturing floor, with people in robes working on pans of product and boxes in a bleak warehouse. Unfortunately most of them are not wearing face masks and at least half of them have their hair nets on wrong, not covering all of their hair. A food inspector would likely shut the place down or give a warning at a minimum.

With the frustrating packaging, the lack of great taste and the very mild effects, this is a cannabis edible I cannot recommend without reservation. While it is okay as a booster edible, there are much better choices out there both for gummies and other edibles.

Gummies we do like include Valhalla & Highly Edible cannabis infused gummies.

Flavor: 3

Strength: 3

Website: https://www.plusproducts.com/

Cheeba Chews Cannabis Edible Review

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Cheeba Chews come a variety of formulations, including Sativa, Indica, Hybrid and CBD. For a long time they have been referred to as the “Tootsie Roll” of edibles, as their chocolate taffy chews resemble that well known treat. Now besides chocolate they have a strawberry flavor.

Cheeba Fruit Chews Sativa

I took one of the 10mg servings of Cheeba Chews Strawberry flavor a little afternoon on a mostly empty stomach with some green tea to give it a caffeine boost. The taste is somewhere between a salt water taffy strawberry flavor and a Jolly Rancher super-charged strawberry flavor. I let it dissolve in my mouth under my tongue. The chew melted slowly and was smooth. I did notice a little bit of an artificial/chalky aftertaste when it was gone, but nothing too medicine tasting.

Cheeba Chew Sativa

The effects began about 20 minutes after ingestion, very mild at first. Ninety minutes later, they never got as strong as I expected. My effects were definitely on the mild side and needed some kind of boost to be what I wanted. After over 2 hours with only mild effect, I added one 5mg edible of the Kush Nuts to boost the effect and that worked well.

These are a great choice for folks who want a more mild effect than other edibles at the 10mg level. Cheeba Chews contain skim milk, whey, butter, or all three, so they are not suitable for vegans.

Taste: 4

Strength: 4

Website: Cheeba Chews

Mountain High Cannabis Caramel Apple Sucker Review

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The Caramel Apple flavored sucker is just one of many flavors of infused hard candy made by Mountain High Suckers. They are labeled as THC + CBD enriched and contain 8.29 mg THC and 1.53mg of CBD. Mountain High Suckers is a well-established and trusted brand of infused hard candy edibles, made in Colorado since 2009.

As regular More Than Buds readers will know, I prefer it when edibles are labeled as Indica or Sativa, so we know which kinds of effects to expect. The Caramel Apple sucker, like many of their suckers, are not labeled. Mountain High now has a sucker that is not only labeled with a type (Indica or Sativa) but is strain-specific, made with Blue Dream. They also make sugar free suckers, which is a great addition to their offerings.

Mountain High Suckers Carmel Apple picture of the green lollipop with caramel coating

Mountain High Suckers Carmel Apple lollipop with caramel coating

The Caramel Apple flavor is true to its name, with an almost Jolly Racher-esque apple flavor, complemented by a delicious caramel. By mistake I had kept this one past the expiration date and it was as good as if it were fresh. I always recommend taking edibles before their expiration date, this was just a test for our lab. A nice bonus is that it doesn’t need refrigeration. When eating it, the sucker lasted as long as lollipops not infused with cannabis and had a background taste of THC that remained, with the caramel, as part of the aftertaste.

The effects were felt within an hour, a primarily relaxing body high. At first that lead me to guess that it was made with Indica or a hybrid Indica-dominant strain. Fortunately it was taken in the late afternoon when that relaxing body effect is desired. If I had taken it in the morning I would have felt relaxed but also slightly lethargic and lazy. I experienced some of the Sativa head effects of focus and creativity, so this is likely a hybrid strain

My usual dose of THC in an edible is 10 – 15 mg, and this sucker contains an 8.29mg dose, so the effect was understandably more mild. The effect lasted the usual expected length, about 4 hours of the strongest effect then 2 hours of a more mild effect before it faded out. As expected, eating dinner half way through the effect zone reduced the impact, but it did rebound more than expected after about 45 minutes. The CBD dose was so small that it felt similar to taking a single low dose aspirin, a tiny bit of overall pain relief but nothing significant.

If you are not concerned with the Sativa/Indica labeling of your edibles and are looking for a hybrid impact to both your head and your body, this is a great tasting choice. It lasts a long time without refrigeration, includes a small CBD dose for pain and has good staying power.

Strength: 6

Taste: 7

Website: MountainHighSuckers.com