We tried it: Raw Garden Holiday Vapes

If cannabis use is part of your Christmas celebrations this year, you could achieve far worse than the unmatched taste and potency of a top-notch live resin dab. And if you’re looking for something understated and reliable in your back pocket on your vacation trips, it may be time to grab a high-quality vape pen. Raw Garden – the brand I think is most associated with the ideal dab at an ideal price – is responding this year with a variety of vacation-ready terpene profiles in their ever-expanding line of single-source live resin extracts.

Raw Garden is heavily focused on genetics these days; more specifically, to respond to cyclical cannabis consumption trends by growing a mix of new hybrids and old strains in-house. Coincidentally, abundant resin production – a clear trait you’ll want to cultivate when making extracts – often indicates a structurally vital plant that is also mold and insect resistant. And it’s this kind of consistent plant health and integrity that Raw Garden’s breeding program is designed to deliver.

“By breeding, we are really trying to breed on agricultural seeds that are semi-homogeneous, if not homogeneous,” Khalid Al-Naser, Raw Garden’s product director, told Cannabis Business Times in May 2021. “They give us repeatable aromatic bouquets, but also repeatable agronomic characteristics that facilitate cultivation and harvest.”

For this review, we’re using the Apple Fritter # 74 Refined Live Resin Vape Cartridge + Battery and the Double Cookie Funk Sauce to see how the flavors and effects of Raw Garden hold up for the “Holidayze”.

First impressions

Raw Garden products tend to offer an experience that is far from “lightweight,” but their no-frills approach to packaging is by and large inviting without feeling overly corporate. Each Raw Garden box includes an instantly readable sticker with THC content, strain information, lot number and QR code that leads you to the thorough, up-to-date page with the company’s laboratory results.

Apple Fritter # 74 Refined Live Resin Vape Cartridge

taste

When I tried the Apple Fritter # 74 trolley, I started with a few small puffs, inhaling very little, and holding the steam in front of my mouth to get a strong feel for the taste. Immediately I tasted something completely different than the last Raw Garden I had tried, less overtly spicy, tropical and spicy, more berry-sweet with distinctive notes of red apple, which lives up to the name of the variety. Delicious stuff with a personality all of its own.

effectiveness

If convenience, immediacy, and a smooth draw are the hallmarks of a good vape cart, Apple Fritter # 74 undoubtedly has it where it counts. Once I got a strong sense of the taste, it only took me two generous hits and about five minutes to get myself high like a kite and hold on like this for at least the next hour, with a long, breezy descent doing the rest of the afternoon.

Experience

The train on my Apple Fritter cart was exceptionally smooth compared to other carts (even high quality live resin carts) that I have tried over the past few months. The shape and color of the high were also more complex, indescribably deep, and compelling for both my body and mind. I tried this cart on a rainy afternoon and there were very few options but to stay inside and let it wash over me. Equally relaxing and energetically psychotropic, the Apple Fritter High felt more like a full dab than any other recent experience with a vape cart storage.

Double Cookie Funk Sauce

taste

It had been a minute since I had some Raw Garden Sauce in my hands, and when I opened this gram of Double Cookie Funk I really took the time to enjoy the aroma – wonderfully earthy with an almost doughy undertone, punctuated by rustling Curlicues of spicy fruitiness.

effectiveness

A creature of habit, I’m still a torch and bang guy when I dab. This time around, I think I managed to time my cool-down time just right because when I dripped a medium-sized blob of Double Cookie Funk into the nail, it went exceptionally smooth. The effects were fairly instantaneous, peaking in about 45 minutes, but lasting a strong, energetic hum for the next few hours.

Experience

With a THC content of 74%, this sauce strikes like an electric molasses wave, ultraviolet and multidimensional, in a way that a pure distillate high is rare. It started with an instant hit of “indica” head thickness with a heaviness in the eyelids and that weird sensation that you can feel the weight of your eyeballs behind your forehead. Then a full-body buzz set in and I gave in, laying back on my couch while The Beatles’ Let It Be played through on Spotify. Like the rest of America, I’d just watched this Beatles: Get Back documentary on Disney + about the Thanksgiving holiday, and it got me in the mood to sit down and listen to the Fab Four’s final album cover to cover. As I continued to sink into the slippery, proverbial tingling rabbit hole on the couch, the freight train moment of “Get Back” kicked my energy and raised the frequency of my cerebral high until I jumped up to walk on the beach.

Outside, the crisp December air and the hazy refraction of the Californian sun and even the distant smog of the ships piling up in front of Long Beach harbor hit just right, setting the stage for a slow, steady descent of the brain that helped me become active to stay the rest of the afternoon without losing a persistent feeling of calmness of body and soul.

Bottom line

In my last review of Raw Garden products, I referred to myself as something of a “Dos Equis guy” when it comes to concentrates: “I don’t always dab, but when I do, I prefer Raw Garden.” Whether you are a rare or regular dabber, Raw Garden is still the brand to beat if you want to make sure you are getting the ripe flavors and deep, all-consuming high of a premium live resin. Both the Apple Fritter Vape Cart and Double Cookie Funk Sauce did what cannabis should do. They took me on a journey that was complemented by flavors and alternate dimensions tailor-made for groovy, canna-friendly Christmas parties.

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Selected images courtesy of Raw Garden