While industrial hemp trim might have its uses for extraction, it has no place in hemp CBD pre-rolls. Many hemp CBD pre-rolls on the market use this subpar material in their pre-rolls which results in a pretty gnarly experience. When we started out, we spoke to a lot of people who tried hemp pre-rolls in the past and then just threw it out after a few puffs. In our testing, we tried a couple of brands and followed in suit – tossing after 3 drags. These hemp pre-rolls were disappointing and generally just kind of gross. We didn’t enjoy the smoke at all and afterwards it felt like our lungs hurt. It made muse shocked at what people were putting into the world.
Much like our light THC pre-rolls, we make sure to use whole hemp flower. If you’re unfamiliar, whole flower is the same as what you’d get if you bought ‘top shelf flower.’ People might refer to them as buds, nugs, or flower, but they’re all the same. This part of the plant is called the cola. The cola is the clustered buds towards the top of the plant which is traditionally the smoked part.
Photo credit: https://www.marijuana-seeds.nl/blog/marijuana-plant-anatomy
We never use the leaves, stems, or subpar materials in our products. Often those subpar materials are referred to as trim. Alive & Kicking hemp CBD pre-rolls is a trim free product.
If you’re curious what your pre-rolls are filled with, here’s a couple of ways to figure it out:
How does it sound? Listen to how it sounds when you smoke. Do you hear snaps, crackles and pops? That could be twigs, stems, and leaves from the trim. If you hear a lot of noise when you smoke, then you could have a pre-roll filled with trim. If you get a loud pop, that could even be a seed exploding.
How does it taste? Is there a bitter, almost burnt rubberband flavor? That’s likely seeds sneaking through. When a grower doesn’t remove the males before the plant pollinates, it might seed out the rest of the crop. Once a crop is seeded out, it’s incredibly difficult to remove all the seeds out of the plant. Some pre-roll manufacturers don’t care about seeds at all and throw everything into the pre-roll.
How does it look? If you break open a pre-roll, what does it look like inside? Does it look like ground flower or does it look like blended twigs and stems? The difference is clearly visible when you open one up.
How does it smoke? Is it dry and harsh? Does it burn funny? Those could be signs that it was filled with old dry shake. Many pre-rolls are filled with a lower grade of flower – shake. That’s all the parts that fall off the bigger buds as they’re handled. Shake isn’t always terrible, but it can be lower in percentages, tends to dry out easily, and often is made up of untrimmed leaves.
One thing that’s important to our brand is that we always use whole flower hemp.
We strive to find whole flower that’s high in CBD, free of seeds and excess leaves, and has an unique terpene profile. Hemp flower acts much differently than cannabis flower. While they’re both cannabis sativa, the moisture content, terpene profile, resin content, and many other elements can be very different. We love creating pre-rolls from both flower types and work hard every day to ensure we increase the quality whether that’s through buying better hemp flower, figuring out how to include humidity packs to maintain freshness, or perfecting the grind so it doesn’t damage the plant.