While my sweet tooth usually gets the best of me on dispensary day, I tried something a little different this time in selecting a quarter ounce of Evan’s Creek Carbon Fiber at Oregrown in Portland.
This flower is not that big of a stretch familiarity-wise for me because Cannarado Genetic’s breeding here is just outright exceptional in crossing Grape Pie and Cookies N Cream with the legendary Biscotti.
Grape? Sign me up. Cookies N Cream? You had me at “Cookies.” Biscotti then? I’m starting to get aroused…
This particular batch was pushin’ three months from Harvest, which is about as long as I personally like to push it, and honestly, I think the buds could have been a little moister, but that wasn’t to say they were bad; just, you know, there’s a difference between two months and three months and so on.
The really small ones that had broken off earlier, as well as the tips of the large nugs, were pretty dry, I’d say, but once you broke into the meat of most of the decent-sized nugs, things stuck together a bit better, and were a bit more moistly interlocked than the ever so slightly crispier tips/tinies.
I’ve probably gone on about this too long. As you’ll find out later on in this review, this shit smoked smooth, and so that’s how I know it wasn’t too dry/ruined. It’s only if that stuff scratches up my throat when I throw in the towel and call a dud a dud.
This ain’t it.
Ultimately there was just too much delicious-sounding genetics that went into Carbon Fiber to resist.
I’m a bit ashamed to say, it kind of took me by surprise when researching its lineage, I’d assumed that because of its super modern name, I’d have never heard of the parent strains, but to my surprise, they all ended up being things that make my tummy growl, and that’s enough to sell me.
Appearance: Code Stealth
Batmobile-stealth black in color. Squat and dense little triangle nugs. No colors jump out; it’s like the contrast is out of whack on these Dorrito3Ds-looking little turds.
Sure, there is a very faint sprinkling of light olive military fatigue green and a bit of dark brown kind of diffusing the intensity of the black, but if you really look deep into the cracks, into the core of Carbon Fiber, there is a black that is so dark your vision starts to go black and white.
I almost went cross-eyed a few times, peeping into the deep dark crevices of Carbon Fiber, only to zoom back out to rest my eyes.
Bag appeal? Well, they’re not very vibrant or huge or anything noteworthy like that. I think to a non-weed person, they’d look really boring, like really dark monochromatic turds. To a weed person, though, the minimalist expression of colors and the sheer depth of the darkness make it pretty damn intriguing, to say the least.
Smell: Who Left The Nilla Wafers Bag Open?
A calm, muted box of store-bought cookies spilled over a bale of dry hay. Warm and grainy. A faint whiff of Good & Plenty licorice candy. The corners were polished up with a very faint fruit, more like fruit breath or fruited waffle syrup than fresh fruit. Zero gas. Zero fuel. Friendly to the shnoz.
The smell is soft and rapidly departing. It could be some pleasant-smelling scent-cleanse from a perfume shop, and I wouldn’t be surprised. The vagueness of it is a little confusing as I was expecting just a straight-up pastry shop, but Carbon Fiber is more nuanced than that. It is a weird-smelling weed in that it doesn’t smell that much like weed, at least not in the traditional sense.
Dry pull tastes more of the Biscotti, particularly getting Gelato notes, that cream with a slight berry syrup note. Those notes could be the Biscotti parent’s Gelato #25 lineage or could be the Gape Pie coming through via the Grapes and Cream parent.
Interesting
In terms of dry pull, the flavor is muted and soft, fits the cookies, cream, and biscotti descriptors being a soft fuzzy approachable smoke. No gas or fuel or bright fruit bite here. Not a flavor bomb but appreciated, like those Biscoff cookies that come with expressos.
Sensation: Expertly Engineered Progression
It must be noted, on the nug structure side, these are dense little puppies. They really gave my wist and my Santa Cruz Shredder a run for our money. It wasn’t that they were overly moist and sticking things up that way; I wouldn’t mind if they were a little more moist honestly.
I think the plant material is just so dense with this Carbon Fiber that it’s just a dense grind requiring a bit of effort. It’s strong. Like really strong but also really light. Kind of like that, uh, carbon fiber stuff?
Evan’s Creek Farms is the shit, and so it’s no surprise their product would get my wrist veins a poppin’.
Salute to you, folks!
The smoke is very dry and vanilla wafer or just plain graham cracker in flavor, which I do not mean as a knock because I find those flavors super nostalgic and, well, fuckin tasty!
The smoke too that this joint produced reminded me of the one and only OGs, the Backwoods Sweet Aromatics. Now I’m sure to a layperson, my weed still smells like weed, but I’m cognizant of the smoke when I smoke, and this stuff smelled good.
See, I was smoking in a top-secret confined space that may or may not have been my bathroom, and when I’d finished and came back, it actually hit me that this smoke smelled good.
Carbon Fiber would be a good strain for smoking lowkey in public because it doesn’t smell like a dozen skunk scent sacs were dumped onto a pile of hot coals. No, it smells like a cheap synthetic kind of sweetness that is delightful and kind of fake at the same time, just like nostalgia demands.
The high is very measured and incremental. With each puff more you take, the higher the bake. No surprises with Carbon Fiber. The experience is layered in a measured way in a precise manner, just like its namesake.
To say this is an engineered high would not be a stretch by any means. Think about it; defining “engineered” as “the action of working artfully to bring something about,” then yeah, that IS Carbon Fiber, the bud and the new age material whose namesake it shares.
The appearance is intriguing but not showy. Nothing flashy. It looks like some dark-ass bud. That’s enough for me. Target acquired, I want to smoke it.
The first step in “the engineering” is complete; to commence a series of sensations and stimulatory experiences, one layered upon another, smoothly, like the gradient of a freshly constructed on-ramp gradient—gravel baby.
The smell is unoffensive, if not a bit plain, but that’s fine because engineers design and they build, and having such a soft, unassuming terpene expression, it’s kind of welcoming.
Then the mouth and smoke, it’s pleasant but not jumping off the charts in any one category. I kind of feel like it’s the Dunhill of bud, both in the actual int’l tobacco equivalent or in the fashion label, in its polished and precise nature.
The high is linear. Smoke one puff, and you’ll feel one puffs-worth high. Two puffs make you one step higher. Three to three, and well, you can climb the stairs as slow or fast as you like.
I’m perfectly productive after smoking 3/4ths of a gram-ish jay. I could socialize with no problem. I would consider this more one of those body-relaxing-while-maintaining-a-clear-mind kind of highs.
Carbon fiber is dope. Bonafide. This would be EXCELLENT before a modern art museum. You can get work done on this, too, I’d say if you just keep your fingers moving and the music grooving, baby.
Playing a ton of Kasblanca with this Carbon Fiber smoke, they seem like agreeable companions. They’re both focused and progressive with a hard beat but are cloaked in an equally cool and reassuring soft cloud of cookie fog.
This was pretty much my experience seeing them at the Gorge for Weekender 2023.
Carbon Fiber is similar to Kasablanca in its driving intensity without ever crossing the line into excess. Balanced yet powerful, layering, progressive, functional; these are all apt descriptors.
Conclusion: This Needs Further Reverse-Engineering
Carbon Fiber is a tightly woven experience that layers appearance, smell, smoking sensation, flavor, and high, all in a measured and functional way. This is a glass-encased escalator from a high-end Japanese-owned department store type of high.
Ultimately it was the lingering sweetness of the smoke that makes me want to find this stuff a bit sooner after it drops next time because, obviously, the heat burns out some delicious terpenes that were preserved deep in the nugs, and I’m confident sniffing this fresh would be an entirely different experience than what I documented in this particular review.
I’ll be keeping my eyes out for Carbon Fiber, but I’m also going to do a better job adhering to my #1 dispensary-shopping tip, which is first to ask “what’s freshest” and then go from there. Flavor chasers need to remember to be stickers on that kind of shit. What snobs!
