Cannabis Connoisseur Chronicles - Herb Review: Red Congo Haze

klye (73)in #marijuana • 8 years ago (edited)

( And now for a message from @KLYE about awesome Marijuana )

(Beautiful Picture of a Flowering Congo Haze female - kiwiland.com)

Red Congo Haze is an extremely powerful sativa dominant marijuana strain which comes from a crossing of the legendary Neville's Haze & Red Congolese which is also known as Reeferman's "John Sinclair". A good portion of this strains genetics are from Africa. The strain has competed in the world renowned Cannabis Cup and managed to place 4th place overall in 2007. I was fortunate to grab an eighth (3.5 grams) of this strain through my dispensary for $40 CAD. Having never tried any of the Haze type strains before I was extremely excited to test this strain out and also share with the folks of STEEM my review on this plant.

In my quest to smoke and review all the exotic top shelf Cannabis in the world having a run in with a 2nd generation land race strain is something you only get a chance to do so many times in your life, so without further wait lets get in to the review of Red Congo Haze!

The Nose

The many smells and flavours of cannabis are primarily caused by chemicals called terpenes which the plant create naturally as they grow. The terpene profile the plant creates differ from strain to strain and that is why different pots smell different.

Over the years (perhaps because my massive nose) I've gotten pretty good at distinguishing and being able to explain the terpene profile of a particular flower to buddies.. But when I opened the bag of Red Congo Haze and took a massive whiff nearly every bell and whistle went off in my brain.. By the gods is this SPICY! Not soon after taking a second whiff and a third of this nostril filling spiciness did I notice the fragrant undertones of sweetness, anise seed, berries and a dash of pepper. Was completely blown away by the sheer intricacy of the smell produced by these flowers.

The Visuals

Over the years I've learned that you cannot always tell the potency of cannabis flowers simply by looking at them.. However some exceptions to this rule apply and when you're dealing with sativa flowers the structure and density simply isn't going to be the same as a indica dominant strain.

Sativa buds are far more "fluffy" and generally less dense than indica buds and as you can see the actual structure of the buds is less uniform.

The Smoke

To test the potency of this flower I chose my standard method of half gram joint. Not only does rolling a half gram joint generally give a standard on how the herb smokes and tastes it also very likely is to get you buzzed off your ass if you've gotten some kind buds.

Carefully weighed out half a gram on a diamond and herb scale and tossed it into the grinder.

With a few flick of the wrists I'd turned the flowers in an easily roll-able consistency.

Then rolled a joint out of it.. Not the prettiest joint I've ever rolled but as they say.. That'll do

Fired up the joint and on inhale was absolutely delighted and welcomed by a spicy and sweet full bodied smoke that was incredibly sweet in fragrance and filled the air around me. On the exhale it became apparent I'd "bitten off more than I can chew" on the inhale and proceeded to cough my ass off for a good 10 seconds.

Wow this smoke is delicious! It is, however, extremely thick and pungent and even the smallest hoot of the joint had my lungs screaming to cough. The spicy sweet flavour though!

The Effects

Understand why they call it Haze now. About half way through the joint I'd melted into a soft cerebral buzz and my body had seemingly floated from it's normal sore and stiff nature onto a cloud. While not what I'm classically used to from a sativa dominant plant the mind fog and de-stress factor on this plant are something incredible. It does almost have a touch of floating on cloud feeling but without the couchlock of the indica strains. While the initial 20-30 minutes after smoking the joint (which I managed to smoke 2/3rds of) was difficult to focus on any task once the initial mind haze left the body relaxation remained and I was able to function easily. Very impressed by the effects overall of this plant. Perhaps not the best strain to smoke if you've something important to do right away but as an after work or break strain this is truly some wonderful herb.