SNOW MONTANA BY COOKIES
By: The Cannabis Connoisseur
Tags: Life, Alcohol, Marijuana, Cannabis, 2020

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Most, if not all, books about business do a case study on McDonald’s. Diving deep into those case studies, you can learn that McDonald’s invested countless amounts of time, money, and energy in optimizing efficiency as well as ensuring consistency to the level of quality they set.

While I think we can see some forms of optimized efficiency in the Cannabis Industry, once a Cannabis Company goes big with multiple grows, consistent quality is non-existent. A growing list of Cannabis Companies once touted as the best that now cannot deliver on the consistent quality of many strains they made famous. I would put Cookies, Connected, and regretfully Jungle Boys on this list.

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So why does this happen? I believe there are a few different reasons. Quality control is much easier to apply to a smaller grow. As grows get larger and out of control, this can lead to poorly maintained lower potency plants or even males sneaking in. I see more and more folks on IG talking about finding seeds daily, and I recently found seeds in some Jungle Boys. (FACEPALM)

Another variable is the limited number of experienced, expert Cultivators that can take a seed to full-blown Zaza. I believe this is why we such a wide variation between grows. If you go back far enough on my blog, you can read about my first experience with Connected’s flowers, which many claim are the best of the best. However, I had a horrible experience and panned the flowers for not being appropriately flushed and not burning clean.

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As I learned more over time, the best Connected Cannabis comes out of the Oakland grow, while the original flowers I purchased were from the SacTown grow. I have since gone back and tried Connected multiple times from the Oakland grow and had a much better experience. But when you are paying $70 plus tax, I would hope that consistent quality would be there.

All of this leads to the challenge I face. How can I ensure that I am sharing accurate information with my readers when there is so much inconsistency in the experience and quality of the end product. Worse than that put yourselves, in the shoes of someone new to the Cannabis industry. After reading an influencer’s review or falling prey to marketing, they head into a Cookies to try a Gary Payton or Snow Montana grown from one of the grows, putting out low quality. The newcomer will have an awful first impression and a mediocre experience at best.

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Furthermore, why do I care more about my credibility than all these fucking businesses? ZEROFUX my ass. Wait a second, wasn’t I supposed to do a review? I will put my soapbox away and get into this review, but I will not go into the amount of detail as I usually would. Instead, I’d like to do things a little differently and compare Snow Montana by Cookies to the most recently reviewed stains on my blog. I feel this will help put things in perspective and deliver a home a point.

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On a recent trip to Cookies San Diego, I picked up the Cookies branded Snow Montana. Cookies San Diego opened in the last year and is just starting to have a very well rounded menu with some very impressive third party brands such as Dubz Garden, Backpack Boyz, Broke Boyz, CBX, and Wonderbrett, to name a few.

Snow Montana by Cookies has been on my list of strains to try for a long time. My boy @feartheterpss, one of my favorite reviewers, put me on right when it dropped. He got some of the first drop. If I recall correctly, he compared the flavor profile to a delicious sweet bubble gum. The kid, who is over on the East Coast, always has the craziest fire that has got me all jelly.

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I hold off on opening all flowers that I want to review. I always have sealed products in my videos so that anyone watching can see all products showcased are legit. I feel that I offer people a platform to compare what they are getting to confirm legitimacy. I am not going to lie. I will often prioritize what I shoot based on what I want to smoke. I put Snow Montana in the front of the queue.

There is a moment of anticipation, excitement, and mystery while I am shooting the video of the packaging. Shortly after a few takes of a few shots, I get the moment, the big reveal. This is when it goes really good or really bad. Lately, I have been increasing my Zaza standards, and since have been having better experiences. But you can’t win them all.

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When opening the Snow Montana, I was greeted with a hayish aroma with delicate candy notes if you dig deep enough, but who wants to dig deep into hay to find something that dominates a good number of other strains by most other growers. I am finding these awful hay notes complemented by notes of piss when piss isn’t even in the strain name more often with Cookies strains as of late.

Just as bad as the nose was the dense and hard buds. As a writer, I know that dense and hard mean the same thing, but it needed to be said twice with these flowers. The density prevented the buds from leading to an enjoyable smoking experience. The flowering tops did not even grind up as they should have.

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The flavor profile was nothing better. It reminded me of the B-grade you saw in dispensaries ten years ago or the product you see today from people in other states just learning to grow. Nonetheless, if you dig deep enough, you can see some traits that would make this an excellent strain in the right cultivator’s hands.

Speaking of cultivators, this leads me to the label on the cannabis products packaging. I have always included the label in my videos but have never discussed it. You must always look at your labels prior to purchase. First, you want to make sure your flowers are fresh. When thinking about freshness, you also want to factor in packaging. Pro-tip, straight up pass on anything in a plastic container.

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Second, you want to take note of the grow; where the flowers came from. Some labels will say grown by while others will just have the grower’s name. If you look at the label of Snow Montana in this video, you can see Southwest Caregivers Inc grew this batch. I have found the best grower for Cookies to be Mad Cow Genetics and Sky Pack Farms, but even they are still leaps and bounds from, say, #33 Scottie Pippen by the Backpack Boyz.

If you don’t know about the different growers or if they even have multiple grows, ask your budtender. A good budtender will steer you in the right direction of a quality grow of a particular brand.

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Finally, let’s compare Snow Montana by Cookies grown by Southwest Caregivers to some recently reviewed strains on my blog.

This review was not me trying to throw shade but instead, make sense of an experience many people similar to myself are having as well note the evolution of the Cannabis Industry. Also, I feel that you are doing customers dirty when selling two completely different products as the same thing. That and the boofies logo really showcase my image design skills well. DM me on Instagram if you need a logo designed/remixed or would like a like promotion video made.