We spent 30+ hours researching CBD flower on reddit.com communities so you don’t have to. Here’s what you need to know…
Getting a Pulse on CBD Flower
We’ve been writing CBD reviews here at CBDtop10 for a few years now, focused mainly on our top 10 lists for CBD oils and edibles. CBD flower, in large part, had been a fringe product category until quite recently. We have been keeping an eye on things, but the demand for reviews was low…until now. With craft growers entering the scene, artisan hemp has replaced industrial hemp and created a surge in interest in premium, smokable CBD flower. So much so, we recently published an FAQ – answers to your most frequently asked CBD flower questions – and we just launched our first CBD Flower Top 10 list. Check it out!
Beyond the obvious questions around CBD flower, with this surge in interest, we wanted to really get a pulse on the market. What are the best strains? Which brands ship the highest quality flower? What’s the consensus on the best way to smoke CBD flower? After 30+ hours and counting, we summarize the information you need to know.
Reddit Resources
After you get a pulse on the market, you’re going to want to keep it. Reddit has some amazing communities already built up around CBD flower. After reading through this post, it’s worth your time to bookmark some of the subreddits where the conversation around CBD flower is happening. These threads give you great insight into new strains coming out, new brands on the scene and endless discussion about personal experiences with CBD flower.
HempFlowers: /r/HempFlowers
CBDHempBuds: /r/CBDHempBuds
CBDflower: /r/CBDflower
Reddit Recommended: The Hemp Sheet
This resource is, hands down, the single biggest CBD flower discovery we made during our research. It’s called The Hemp Sheet. Created by Reddit user /r/cook_, a moderator of CBDHempBuds, The Hemp Sheet is seeking to do for CBD flower what we’re trying to do for CBD products generally – cut through the fog of endless product and brand decisions so that consumers can make educated choices. The Hemp Sheet lists known quality vendors (as vetted by the CBDHempBuds community), ongoing promotions for each brand, lab report availability, pricing, packaging details and so much more.
But, /r/cook_ didn’t stop there. Via thehempsheet.co website, he has set up a Discord channel so that anyone interested in CBD flower can chat about it in real time. Go check it out and chat up other enthusiasts.
Reddit Flower Recs
The whole point of this article was to summarize what we found, so let’s get to it. We asked, Reddit answered. You will see our initial list below, but we then went on to create our own CBDtop10 Flower List after trying 40+ strains.
What are the best strains being sold today?
As more CBD flower growers pop up, we’re seeing sentiment shift from the commodity, standard strains (Lifter, Elektra, Baox, etc) to the more specialty and proprietary strains (various incarnations of “kush” and “haze”), along with the marijuana to CBD crossover strains (Remedy, ACDC). Part of this is driven by growers needing to stake their claim with proprietary genetics that fuel sales to their brand specifically and ride the coat tails of recreational pot. The other part is fueled by the cannabis market’s constant iteration to achieve new and unique strains and effects. Lifter and Elektra are stalwarts for a reason and you shouldn’t look past a quality brand producing a common strain. But, we’ve seen the most rave reviews for strains that are grower-specific or making the crossover – at least in name – from marijuana to hemp.
Ok, which strains, specifically, then? The reviews for Secret Nature’s Frosted Kush and Papaya Nights are on a different level. Revel Valley seems to be impressing everyone with their P10 strain. Hometown Hero took 2nd place at the High Times Hemp Cup for their Zero G strain. Also, don’t forget to check out ACDC and Remedy strains from any quality grower. We detail the full list of recommended brands and strains below.
Yes, yes, these “proprietary strains” are just breeding offshoots of common strains – we get it. Also, yes, we know that ACDC and Remedy names are being repurposed from marijuana strains. Feel free to air your grievances on reddit. This is just a subjective summary.
What are the best brands and strains from each brand, according to reddit users?
Anecdotally, the following brands and strains seem to pop up consistently on “top” lists:
Top 10 CBD Flower Mentions:
Eight Horses: C5, Abacus, CBDawg
Secret Nature: Papaya Nights, Frosted Kush, Sweet Cake
Goat Ridge: Hawaiian Haze, Sour Space Candy, Elektra
Shade Tree: Sweet Leaf, Kentucky Wine
Southern Charm: Medicine Woman, Cherry Creme, Bubba Kush
Tokn: Lifter, Electra
Starseed Botanicals: Ganesha Kush, Cosmic Cherry, Sour Space Candy Private Reserve
Berkshire CBD: Bubba Kush, Cherry Wine, Remedy
Five Leaf Wellness: Sienna Haze, Purple Reign, Bubba Kush
Apical Greens: Heavy Lifter, Sour Space Cowboy, Suver Haze
Honorable Mentions:
Cascadia Blooms: Sour Space Candy (save 20% with code ‘CBDtop10’)
Beleafer: La Creme
Revel Valley: P10
Greene Rush: Kush A1
Wisconsin Hemp: T2
Field of Hemp: Grumpy Grandpa
Mystic Roots: Cherry Picker
Tweedle Farms: Special Sauce
Controversial Brand on Reddit, seemingly quality product:
Black Tie: Blueberry Pie, Candyland, Mothership
High Times Hemp Cup Winners:
Some of the winners aren’t being talked about much but might be worth a “discovery” buy.
What’s the best way to consume CBD flower?
General Consensus: A vaporizer. Flower purists will argue that a joint or a hand pipe are the only true way to smoke. But, based on what we read and experienced, if you want to save your lungs a fair bit of pain and taste all of the terpene goodness that CBD flower has to offer, you should invest in a quality vaporizer. Users point out that vaporizers conserve your flower better than combustion, as the product isn’t actively burning up between puffs. We hope this saves your lungs and your wallet a little pain.
As we’ve been turning a lot of CBD flower into ash recently, building out our top 10 CBD flower list, we have to agree with the community. While there is a nostalgia to a hand pipe, only the first few hits are truly enjoyable and then the “taste” devolves into various degrees of a hemp campfire. A joint or blunt lets you enjoy the taste longer, but you’re generally smoking all in one sitting and this method is less friendly for indoor use. Both forms of combustion are harsh on the lungs. Vaporizers, on the other hand, have the benefit of taking hits at your leisure, over an extended period of time, while maintaining the taste throughout and with a theoretical reduction of the lung abuse. Trust us, your throat and lungs will agree.
Alright, well, which vaporizer, then?
Another reddit rabbit hole to traverse. Well, it depends on what you’re optimizing for – portability, price, big plumes, etc. Like a brand or a strain, the answers vary widely and everyone has a favorite, for different reasons. That said, across the potential categories, only a few are consistently mentioned as the top dogs. The winner? The Crafty+ and the Mighty from Storz and Bickel. The Crafty+ is a smaller version of the Mighty, but on par with vape performance. We debated long and hard between the Crafty+ and the Ghost MV1. The Ghost was highly regarded by The Vape Critic and formed a cult following amongst CBD flower users. But alas, Ghost shut their doors recently when they were unable to continue funding the business, which made our decision easy. Runners up? All of the Arizer vaporizers are highly regarded and came up consistently across top 10 vaporizer lists. And, of course, the most ubiquitous and user friendly vaporizer on the market is the Pax 3. You can’t go wrong with any of these vapes, according to reddit users.
It’s not just about pocketable vapes. If you get very serious about flower, you might opt for the benefits of a desktop vape. Or, if you want to skip all the fancy machinery, go with a vape that only needs a butane lighter.
Still can’t decide? Go with the Crafty+ if your budget allows. You won’t be disappointed. In fact, you can save 15% right now on the Crafty+ on vapor.com! Visit this link and enter the code CBDSAVES15 and you will earn a discount!
What are CBD flower enthusiasts talking about most?
While the vast number of posts focus on CBD flower consumption, the top, most commented posts aren’t about consuming CBD flower at all. The legality of hemp flower, the regulation of hemp and the politics of hemp and marijuana dominate the all-time discussion points on reddit. Put simply, CBD flower users are an impassioned community supporting the various decriminalization and legalization efforts surrounding hemp and marijuana. Go support their efforts and make your voice be heard!
What’s next in CBD Flower?
No one is really asking, but we can’t help but wonder when some of the aforementioned companies are going to start making strain-specific oils and edibles. We’d love to see how oil created from full spectrum flower mirrors (or doesn’t) the smokable strains. Why? To be quite forward, the effects from CBD flower are markedly different from most of the CBD oils we’ve tried. Even other “full spectrum” oils have different effects from the flower we’ve tried thus far. This is likely a result of the unique blend of terpenes. It would be amazing to see some of the terpene contents of smokable CBD mirrored in oil form for comparison. Here’s hoping that the reddit community is fast at work on this!
