An Introduction To The Dark Arts Of Mixing Different Cannabis Strains

Eventually, after smoking or vaping for a while, you develop a preferred flavor and sensation profile and likely have some favorite go-to strains you have bought a few times.

Inevitably you’ll probably also dream up your own magical cross between various preferred phenotypes, and maybe you’ve been able to act on those dreams.

However, if you don’t have the space, time, energy, or desire to breed your own plants, the next best thing would be to buy flower that someone else (a real expert) grew, harvested, correctly cured, and distributed to a dispensary near you and then mix those two strains at the point of bowl packing/joint rolling.

Woah woah woah! Am I talking about mixing strains? Is that even allowed?

Well, officially, idk, but unofficially, yeah, I do it all the time, and I like it a lot! Some may call it ‘dark arts’ to mix various strains already bred to exhibit specific traits, but I say, the darker the arts, the better, baby!

Why I Sometimes Like To Blend My Buds

Riding the Trimet around Portland with any regular consistency over the last few years (arguably a low point for society in general) has been a grab bag of experiences.

One day you get sucked into the delusional musings of a drug addict, and the next day you think you’ve had an uneventful ride until the guy sitting across you starts vomiting profusely at your feet.

After a particularly intense trip, my wife and I decided to take the edge off a bit by communally packing a big brass bowl of some of Fox Hollow’s finest Jet Fuel Gelato, a particularly memorable strain bred by the one and only his highness Mr. Chris Lynch of Compound Genetics.

We were, however, at the end of our quarter ounce and didn’t have quite enough JFG to fill the bowl up, and we NEEDED a full bowl on that particular evening.

At this point, I remembered I had left some leftover Fruit Loops in the grinder that I had left in there because I’d ground up too much for the join I’d rolled the prior day. There was just enough Fruit Loops that, if combined with the last of the Jet Fuel Gelato, would equate to a full bowl.

So the dice were tossed to the wind, and we mixed the two together in the same bowl. If this sentence shocks you, I’m sorry, but I enjoy trying new and wild things. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don’t, but that’s simply the inevitable process of discovery.

As it turned out, the taste and the sensation of mixing these two strains was quite pleasant!

The flavor was complex, soft initially on the palate but with a slightly tickling punch, like a big inhalation of juicy, soft black pepper aroma, to the throat, a calling sign of a bitter fuel strain like the gelato but with a softer entry and exit in the mouth.

The Jet Fuel punch isn’t to say it is harsh by any means, and no coughs were had. The fuel is like the slightly surprising yet pleasant kick you get from getting a chunk of wasabi from your wasabi-soy sauce slushy you just dip a thick, fat, bright-orange cut of salmon nigiri into.

In the end, I counted this experiment as a win. I already had some leftover forgotten weed in the grinder and added some more freshly ground gas bomb to it, and you know what?

It smoked just fine, and the high was perfectly fine too, no spinning off into a new dimension, just a calm, pleasurable, NEW type of high…

To Mix or Not To Mix? It Depends

Mixing things and taking risks can be life-changing, but they can also sometimes fail.

For example, I’ve always shat all over Taiwanese for bastardizing two foods I hold dearly to my Wisconsin heart.

One is an all-American breakfast of pancakes, quality bacon, crispy yet oily as fuck hash browns, and at least two (three if you’re indulging) still slightly jiggly-on-top sunny-side-up eggs.

The other is spaghetti. That dark, spicy, sausage-laden, oregano-saturated, al-dente-pasta smothered, 24-month aged Kirkland parmesan blanketed Italian-American classic.

Taiwanese often fuck both up so hard that sometimes when I’m feeling more paranoid, I wonder if it’s intentional, as some cruel joke or racist rejection of classic American cuisine.

Spaghetti in Taiwan is just noodles with some canned tomato sauce, usually with too much sugar added, and maybe about 6 or 7 mouse turd-sized bits of sad meat if you’re lucky. That’s it. It’s palatable like Bush’s baked beans to home slow-cooked molasses and bacon beans.

They don’t treat our beloved breakfast much better, often including oddly narrow hotdogs, often split the long way (wtf?) paired next to an iceberg salad (with cherry tomatoes if you’re lucky) with some basic ass mayonnaise dressing that you wished so bad was ranch or sesame or something less plain and sweet.

If you’re have a solid indica-leaning strain you bought specifically for relaxation and then you have a fuel-heavy sativa you got for daily productivity, it would seem at odds, at least in your original intentions, to mix the two.

Bastardly fusions go both ways, though. Don’t worry, American’s probably mix things that shouldn’t be mixed more than any other culture.

Did anyone else’s grade school have “Chickin Chow Mayne” (pronounced like Gucci Mane) meals with those deep-fried crunchy “noodles” that were more like thin tubular shaped crackers than they were any form of real pasta, which then became soggy as some goopy chicken, uh, stew(?) was ladled over the top?

Go to an authentic Hong Kong restaurant and order some fried noodles, both soft and crispy, and then try not to laugh at what you experienced, “chicken chow mein,” as a child.

We’ve done equally dastardly things to wonderfully rich and complex staple dishes like hot/sour soup, “teriyaki,” and god have mercy on their fatty little souls, cream cheese wontons.

Yes, those little deep-fried cream cheese mother fuckers that are so godamn delicious. So goddamn delicious, in fact, that you realize that, you know what, sometimes maniacal mixing of new textures and flavors, of all genus and phyla, both in food and in cannabis, can result in some truly new and wonderful things!

America’s adoption of sushi resulted in the Titanic-rivaling rolls of the west coast. I think when fusion works out, it’s called glocalization.

Pros & Cons of Blending Buds Together

Outside of my abovementioned food analogy, there are a few specific reasons to support the idea of mixing strains, and there are also reasons why you might want to keep them separate.

Ultimately the decision to experiment is a personal one. No single person can say you are right or wrong regarding your own taste.

For a quick and dirty alcohol analogy (because, unfortunately, due to unfair cannabis prohibition, it’s probably one of the most universal analogies to make), single malt Lagavulin and Johnny Walker Blue Label blended whiskey are both things to behold and marvel at, are they not?

Trial and Error and Randomization Already Dictate Existence

This is evolution, the random, chance combining, and constant jumbling of genetics via natural selection, tectonic plate shifts, weather systems, organic living matter and animals, and even asteroid impacts.

Heck, even planets forming from space dust are acts of combining disparate elements to produce new and sometimes amazing ecosystems.

And yet, through all the randomness, here we are.  

So try getting a little spunky in the kitchen tomorrow night. Dip something in something you wouldn’t normally dip. Also, read into that as much or little as you’d like.

People will scoff. Eyes of strangers at over-crowded group tables at bars with excessively loud generic background music may dart nervously to and fro when you share the strains you’ve been mixing recently.

Let the haters hate. As the Jedi proved, it’s a shitty way to live your life ultimately. Seeking out good things and trying to introduce them together and to see if their click can be applied in equal amounts to both food and people and, ultimately, cannabis, too it turns out!

I’ve taken this open-mindedness to heart and have been mixing strains on the regular. Not all the time, but when I smoke two tasty things that I think will complement each other, I WILL play matchmaker and roll them up both together in a joint.

How To Go About Blending Different Strains

A more recent combination I’ve really enjoyed is mixing Orangeade we got from some friend’s home grow, with a bit of Meraki Gardens Grateful Breath.

I already love the sensation of the Grateful Breath, and mixing in the Orangeade helps make the fruity notes pop off. I think the Tangie and Purple Punch from the Orangeade vibes well with the GSC in the Grateful Breath.

You should have some rhyme and reason for your experimentation, though. I think the proper steps for strain mixing should include the following:

• First, sample and become familiar with each strain’s flavors and effects in isolation to establish baselines
• Develop a hypothesis and intention, and have a goal when picking which strains to mix to maximize positive outcomes vs. randomly mixing whatever for the sake of it.
• Go back and forth between the mix and the individual strains a few times to dial in unique characteristics between the single strains and the married ones.
• Continually evolve to find blends that speak to what YOU enjoy!

Be Respectfully Adventurous

In conclusion, I want to reiterate the intention of this post was not to try to change anyone’s mind or devalue the enjoyment of consuming strains one at a time.

90% of what I smoke is just one strain because I like distinction. It takes me a while to form a complete opinion of a strain, so I can only start to appreciate a blend once I’ve become intimately familiar with both actors in isolation first.

Think of it like a ménage à trois. You don’t immediately jump onto the bed with just any randoms you meet. You want first to make sure everyone is comfortable with everyone before you start to work together.

At least, this is what I’ve learned from YouTube, but it makes sense as it all starts with respect, respect for the individuals, and respect for the plants.

I’m curious to hear other people’s take on mixing different strains together. Hell no or hell yeah? Sound off on me!