Honestly it was a disappointment. If I hadn't had a golden judging ticket and gotten the 75 free strain samples I would have been pretty bummed I even went. The non card area for the general public was pretty weak. They had a half ass itinerary that only listed half the speakers that ended up being there and nothing went down on time anyway. Usually at least 30-60 minutes late. Willie Nelson and Tommy Chong were there, didn't meet them, but it was cool they were there I guess. The dispensaries didn't seem to know what was going on and half of them didn't even label their samples, not sure how we're supposed to rate their product if we don't know who's it is. They gave us a packet that had the dispensary names, strains, and judging criteria, but since a lot weren't labeled that wasn't helpful, and as we went through line getting samples it turned out that several dispensaries weren't actually present, or didn't have the strains that the packet said they would, or they weren't even in the packet period. Basically the whole thing was victim to extremely poor planning. All in all it was a nice to take a weekend off and kick it in Aspen and get about 3/4 of an oz for free but I guess I expected a lot more.
So that's my breakdown of the event, here's my breakdown of the weed.
So my count came to 75 strains. Of these 75 I would say that 15-20 were either not labeled at all, only had the dispensary name but not the strain, or had the strain name and not the dispensary. Assuming the packet is at all correct I bet I'll be able to match up 5-10 of them based off knowing the strain or dispensary name and matching it, otherwise they're complete unknowns. That being said there were several dispensaries that had obviously thought ahead and labeled their stuff. This ranged from just a dispensary name and a strain name to names and a brief description of the strain to a full on page about the strain with the sample attached to the top. Most buds came in baggies but several dispensaries stepped it up with little plastic containers and one even had glass jars with the names etched on the side. The bud itself varied a LOT. There were several custom strains: Rocky Mountain Magic, Carbondale Kush, etc and of course some well known classics: Sour Diesel, Cindy-99, Vortex, etc. The quality is all over the place. Some of it looks awesome and gets you high but has zero taste. Others look like crap, taste ok, and blaze your brains out. Definitely can't judge a book by it's cover here. As far as I can tell about 25% is premium, 50% are growing good pot but probably more quantity than quality, and 25% don't know what they're doing and jumped on the "make money with a dispensary" bandwagon. So far I've had stuff that's been really impressive and stuff that I've had random bagweed kick the crap out of, as well as everywhere in between. I'm not sure which is my favorite so far, but one bowl of the Cindy-99 got me straight retarded, so it's up there. A strain called Kandy Kush won the official judges competition (I'm part of the people's choice which culminates next weekend with the winners). It was pretty good but didn't strike me as the obvious winner.
So all in all I'm glad I went and definitely enjoying the free pot. I don't know that the best weed in the state was there because frankly I've seen equally as good (and better tasting) bud in most of the dispensaries up here. I think some of the taste issues comes from having to grow on a timeline with a date that the plants HAD to be finished by, but even still. I've never smoked more pot with dank names and been like "where is the fucking taste!?"
