Dry Haul – Taste the terpenes of your cannabis by taking a dry haul

Whether you’re a cannabis newbie, a longtime stoner, or calling yourself a cannaseur, you should be familiar with the term dry haul. If you don’t, then now is the time to get familiar with dry hauling as it allows you to taste your cannabis’ terpenes completely.

So, let’s look into practicing the dry haul and how this can help you evaluate your cannabis.

What is a dry haul?

As its name already implies, dry hauling means to take a puff of your joint before lighting it (dry). The best way to do this is by removing the excessive paper at the end of your joint, as this creates more airflow, enabling more of the Terpenes to land on your taste buds.

The Entourage effect and Terpenes

If you’re versed in Cannabis, you should have heard about the so-called entourage effect. 

The entourage effect is a theory that suggests that all of the phytochemicals of a cannabis plant, such as Cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBG, CBN, etc.), Terpenes (Limonene, Myrcene, Linalool etc.), flavonoids and others work in synergy to create even better effect and healing properties. 

Or simply put, the entire plant chemistry is more beneficial than having only THC and CBD.

So, it is speculated that the main components that are actually responsible for creating a more sedative or stimulating effect type aren’t the cannabinoids but the Terpenes. 

Terpenes are the essential oils that the glandular Trichome heads on your buds produce.
Once these oils are exposed to heat or air, they turn into a gas that releases into the air.

These gases are what give your cannabis bud its distinct aroma. 

Terpene gases and flavours

Besides causing the complex scents of a cannabis bud, the Terpenes are also responsible for the taste of your weed. But, when you’re lighting your joint up, you’re combusting the entire plant. 

By combusting the plant, you inhale not only the tasty essential oils but also the plant material and its contaminants. That’s why the best way to taste the terpenes fully is by taking a dry haul.

So, starting your sessions with tasting the unlit plant will allow you to experience the pure terpene gases without their change through combustion.

How taking a dry haul helps you assess the terpene content of your products

Now that we know that the dry haul can help us sense the Terpenes responsible for the effect and the flavour of our cannabis, let’s explore how we can use this practice to evaluate the quality of our buds.

There are many different aspects that we have to look at when determining the quality of a bud. In our opinion, the two most important ones are the aroma and the flavour of our weed. 

Because the aroma comes from the Terpene gases, we can expect to face complex effects and a great flavour when smelling intense and diverse cannabis scents.

The same applies to the dry haul. When we taste our unlit joint and perceive intense flavours like gas, skunk, pine, lemon and many others, we are likely to experience more diverse effects and flavours.

Keeping the complexity of the dry haul in mind, we can then light our joint up and compare the smoke flavour to it. This allows us to evaluate the smoke quality of our weed because properly manufactured cannabis will have a smoke flavour that tastes similar to the dry haul.

When it comes to cannabis and its effects, you should always follow your nose to define and look out for the aroma profiles that work best for you. That’s why we especially recommend doing a dry haul when you purchased a pre-rolled joint.

You usually won’t be able to get much smell off a pre-roll, so the dry haul will help you indicate if you bought a good product or not.

Add the dry haul to your routine

As you can see, tasting the pure Terpene flavours of your cannabis by taking a dry haul can tell you a lot about the quality and the effects a certain product is likely to produce.

Besides, it also helps you build your own palette of cannabis flavours, so you become better at assessing your weed.

Lastly, we recommend starting a cannabis journal to take notes about the flavours, aroma, and effects you perceived. This practice will help you to define the exact cannabis profiles that work best for you.

Let’s discuss your favourite cannabis aromas and how they make you feel. Is it the skunky strains that knock you on the sofa? Or the citrusy ones that make you run around your house?

Let us know in the comments, on Instagram or our Facebook page.