How to Identify High-Quality Hemp Flower

Hemp flower is everywhere these days. You might have been skeptical at first, but it’s clear that hundreds of thousands of people around the country have bought CBD flower online with no repercussions.

Scientists haven’t discovered any serious side effects of CBD, it’s non-intoxicating, and this cannabinoid might have some impressive benefits. You can’t conflate the safety of CBD-the-cannabinoid, however, with the safety of CBD-flower-the-product.

The truth is that there’s a huge gap in quality between CBD flower brands. Secret Nature is the gold standard of hemp flower — we aren’t being braggadocious, that’s just what the numbers say.

In this guide, learn the identifiers of low and high-quality CBD flower, and along the way, be persuaded that Secret Nature truly is the best hemp flower on the internet.

Why does hemp flower quality matter?

It all depends on your personal philosophy, we suppose. At Secret Nature, for instance, we never stop short of striving for the best. That’s because higher quality offers:

• Better value
• Better results
• Less hassle

And that’s with everything. With CBD flower, high quality buys you:

• More cannabinoids
• Tastier terpenes
• Safer buds
• A better customer experience

It’s a bald fact that money buys quality. For those who haven’t experienced true quality, it’s easy to scoff. There’s nothing like the real thing, however, when you hold it in your hands.

Benefits of high-quality hemp flower

Why is high-quality hemp flower better? Well... 

— More potent —

Grown right, hemp flower is more potent. Grown quickly and with maximum plant matter yield in mind, CBD potency in hemp plummets.

— Tastes better —

High-quality hemp flower is usually grown indoors or otherwise cultivated to maximize flavor. Naturally, the terpenes in hemp are delicious, but they’re often damaged.

— Smells better —

Low-quality hemp absorbs the aromas around it, which often include manure and other crops. Indoor-grown, high-quality hemp, on the other hand, only smells like cannabis.

— Improved texture —

Hemp that is more potent is stickier since it expresses more trichomes. It’s also often softer and juicier since it’s cultivated and processed carefully.

— Enhanced safety —

The higher the quality of your hemp, the less likely it was exposed to pesticides, chemical fertilizers, mycotoxins, or other harmful contaminants often found in bottom-string cannabis.

Risks of low-quality CBD buds

Why should you avoid low-tier CBD flower no matter how appealing the price tag might look? Honestly, you probably don’t want to know.

— Toxin contamination —

While it might not be immediately obvious, low quality also means low standards and low effort. As a result, toxins that have no chance of making their way into high-quality hemp have the opportunity to infest lower-tier alternatives.

— Low-potency results —

Once you’ve smoked the difference between low-grade and high-grade, you know there’s no turning back. There’s just something categorically different about hemp flower with high concentrations of cannabinoids and all its terpenes intact.

— Diminished experience —

Your experience with low-quality hemp will be diminished in terms of effects, flavor, aroma, and even potentially your health. The value of low-price CBD flower plummets in the face of this harsh reality.

A word about Secret Nature premium quality

There are lots of ways to enter the hemp industry. You can offer low quality at bulk margins, reasonable quality for a reasonable profit, or high quality at considerable risk.

Connoisseurs will always gravitate toward the best, but there’s no guarantee others will. At Secret Nature, we took this risk, and it paid off by making us the world’s unquestioned #1 hemp flower producer — period.

Learn to recognize safe, dank CBD flower in 7 simple steps

OK, you’re ready. Follow these seven simple steps, grasshopper, to become a master at consuming CBD flower:

1. View product information

Don’t start the process after your flower arrives at your house. Begin by poring over all the information the producer of your CBD flower provides about itself and the products it produces.

Reputable producers of high-quality hemp flower will provide product information that, at a bare minimum, includes:

• High-resolution, professional product pictures
• Clear pricing information for each size and variation
• Information on aroma and flavor profile
• Customer reviews
• Ingredients (if applicable)

There is no valid excuse for this information not being readily available. The truth is there are lots of pretenders out there, and the website is the first place to look if you want to sniff them out.

2. Check lab reports

We wouldn’t quite say lab reports are all-important in identifying high-quality hemp flower. But, they’re definitely essential. Trustworthy, informative CBD flower lab reports include information on:

• Cannabinoid concentrations (including ∆9 THC — very important)
• Prominent terpenes
• Microbial screen results
• Pesticide screen results

Thorough hemp flower lab reports might include even more categories of information. What’s important is ensuring that:

• Your CBD flower contains the amount of CBD advertised
• It doesn’t contain any harmful contaminants

It’s an added plus if the product’s packaging contains a QR code, a batch number, or some other type of information you can use to pull up lab reports. You’ll need to buy the product first and wait for it to arrive to check, though.

3. Observe appearance

Remember those product pictures we mentioned? Pull them up, and zoom in.

There’s not much you can hide from an experienced eye when it comes to hemp flower quality. Purveyors of low-grade CBD buds are just hoping you won’t become educated enough to tell the difference between cannabis canned beans and caviar.

Here are some of the things you should see in high-quality CBD flower:

• Abundant orange, furry-looking hairs
• Bud surfaces studded with shiny, crystally trichome oil sacs
• Dense buds that light can’t shine through
• Interlocked bud structure with trichomes down to the center

Here are some visual traits of hemp flower that should make you raise an eyebrow:

• Dull buds that aren’t crystally
• Flat, colorless or brown appearance
• Thin, scraggly buds with lots of holes
• Jagged, elbow-y bud structure with trichomes only on the outer surfaces

4. Detect aroma

At this point, you’ve chosen a CBD flower product, and it is now in your physical possession. You can handle it, touch it, and smell it.

The smell of hemp flower should be pleasantly fragrant when you crack open its container and almost overwhelmingly potent when you crack open a nug. If you don’t notice much of an aroma even when you break up or grind a CBD flower bud, it’s clearly low-quality.

This one requires a discerning touch. The aroma of hemp varies dramatically from strain to strain, so don’t conflate personal preferences regarding the note-balance of a particular aroma with an unbiased judgment of overall quality.

5. Touch texture

Take a nug in your hand, and break it up with your fingers. Does it crumble nicely, or does it crumble into dust? Do you mainly feel nugs disintegrating between your fingertips, or do lots of pokey stems try to make their way between the ridges of your fingerprints?

You can learn a lot by getting hands-on with hemp flower. Breaking apart a nug in your hands is also a great way to get a handle on your CBD flower’s aroma and appearance — both inside and out.

6. Experience effects

It might take a little while before you become a competent judge of the comparative effects of CBD flower strains and product types. For your first few orders, you might be too blown away by the effects of inhaled CBD to absorb the finer points.

As time goes by, however, you’ll start to get a sense of the effects different strains and different grows provide. Hemp and cannabis is all about the experience, so pay attention to your body as you inhale CBD, and learn to recognize when the effects of a particular nug especially resonate with your vibe.

7. Judge value

Here’s the last — and most important — step: Learn to judge the comparative value of different CBD flower products you try. You’ll soon find that a price tag alone doesn’t tell you much about what you’re really paying for a CBD flower experience.

CBD flower that costs more up-front might provide you with an overall smoking experience that’s twice as pleasant or long-lasting as an option that costs around 20% less. That means you saved about 40% on your overall experience even though you paid more out of pocket.

High-quality hemp flower FAQ

Shall we wrap up with some quick answers to common hemp flower quality questions?

How do I choose a CBD flower?

To choose the perfect CBD flower for your needs, there are a few factors you need to consider:

— Potency —

For people in pain or who need help sleeping, maximizing CBD potency might be appropriate. Others may find 25%+ CBD to be overwhelming, however, and stick with potencies in the 15% range instead.

— Genetics —

While science hasn’t quite discovered why, there’s a significant difference between the effects of indica and sativa hemp strains. Choose a sativa strain for pep and an indica strain for relaxation.

— Flavor —

The flavors of hemp flower are rich and varied. You might find one strain’s flavor to be delightful and another’s abominable — with Secret Nature, at least you know you’re smoking something pure and high-quality even if you’re not personally a fan of the taste.

Can you legally buy CBD flower online?

Yes, you can order CBD flower online as long as it contains less than 0.3% ∆9 THC. Plenty of retailers openly produce and ship these types of hemp products all over the country.

The 2018 Farm Bill officially severed “industrial hemp” from the DEA’s definition of “marijuana.” As a result, Cannabis sativa containing less than 0.3% ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol on a dry weight basis (which is considered to be industrial hemp) is in an entirely separate legal category from federally illicit forms of cannabis.

What is the best hemp flower?

The world has voted Secret Nature the best hemp flower brand. No, there wasn’t a competition, but all you have to do is crunch the numbers.

We dominate in Google Search. We have more than 9,000 3rd-party verified customer reviews. Our product line is always expanding with new and better offerings.

As an industry old-hat, that’s all you need to know to whiff out the aroma of genuine quality. Secret Nature isn’t the only good hemp flower brand, but it is the only brand to be universally regarded as #1.