Final Day report!
We're home now - was too stoned to type yesterday and no charge on my devices so this is a bit late

We only visited one shop on our last day as we had an evening flight...
Erste Hulp (1e Hulp)
Favourite new shop and will DEFINITELY be our first stop next time.
1g Casey jones (€12)
Never been particularly impressed with this before - I hadn't even remembered trying it although I'm told I definitely have

This time however - wow. Pronounced sour diesel tones with a lovely fresh fruit smell reminiscent of marshmallow candy. Not too sugary not too sweet. Like a skunky sour gobstopper. Nice effects too - pretty much the first thing I smoked that day and it got me there pretty damn quickly. Strong head high but clear and uplifting. Nice and smooth in the bong too. Nearly up there in my top 5 of the trip.
R: 7.4
M: 7.5
1g Sweet and sour (€11)
Can't quite remember the lineage of this one - but I know it was it's Mexican Haze parent that led me in. Doesn't have Sour D in the mix but that's all I know. Subtle notes of sage compliment Jamaican style herbal notes lifted by the cherry sweetness of the Mexican Haze. Not too strong - tasty from the vaporiser. interesting.
M: 7.2
R: Didn't test
1g Purple cheese (€10)
GDP x Big Buddah cheese. Very dark piney trees. Cheesey on the nose and grapey on the finish. Nice and smooth in the bong with a cheeky little Indica style stone. Great price too.
M: 7.2
R Didn't test
1g Elephant
Didn't try this one - unknown genetics. R liked it though
R: 7.1
2g Somari (€12p/g)
Up there with the best of the trip. This tasted like the best NYCD we ever remember hitting - dieselly ripe pink grapefruit and citrus top notes mixed with red fruit punch and velvety kush undertones on the exhale. Plus a certain something that I couldn't put my finger on - more testing required!
Easily a contender for a new favourite strain. Marked down only slightly due to a slightly dark ash and 'commercial' flush finish.
Strong enough. Slightly confusing on the head but a nice stone never-the-less. Recommended
R: 7.8
M: 7.6
Cheese candy (€11)
Nice nose on this one - and that transfers to taste really well. Great price too.
Struggled to rate the high on this one - we had a verdamper, a lovely little mini-bubbler and my hash pipes on the table in front of us - getting through 9g in pure J's in four hours between us. So separating the effects was understandably er - challenging!
R: 7.0
M: 7.1
1g Original g13 (€11)
Sharper with more pronounced lime notes than the other G13's in town we tried. We were told by a 1e Hulp regular that only this CS has this strain and it was noticeably different so who knows. The hash taste was missing for me and it finished a bit harsh in the throat so marked down ever so slightly. Nice though - really nice.
R: 7.1
M: 7.0
1g Pineapple Express (€12)
Fantastic nose on this one - and the taste really comes through. Very intense pineapple high notes with an unexpected darker undertone that's missing from some of the other tropical varieties. Less sugary - more ripe and rounded. Skunkier perhaps. This one was VERY harsh on the throat though. So takes a bit of a battering for that in it's final score. Could definitely have been the batch, could definitely have been more about the state of my throat after 2.5 days of hardcore smoking. Taking my plug-in vaporiser next time, the missus had no bother plugging her e-cig in to charge so I doubt I'll have any bother with the Da Buddah. Free hits for anyone who wants one!
R: 6.7
M: 6.9
In summary I think my top five strains of the trip were:
Shoreline from Green Place,
Champagne Haze from Club Media,
Lemon Bubble from Voyagers
Lime from Bluebird
Somari from Erste Hulp
Best hash of the trip was Bluebirds Melt Madness by a country mile
Favourite new shops were definitely Club Media and Erste Hulp closely followed by de Graal and Solo.
Won't be buying from Barneys again. Too expensive for this commerical grade.
I do want to just qualify a few points about flushing and curing. I think it's really easy to have overly high expectations of the quality of product in Amsterdam CS's. Personally I'm not surprised to see ash that burns dark or buds with trichomes heads knocked off through mishandling. I don't like to see those things in the product i'm consuming and I don't like harsh tastes but we have to remember that in the Netherlands / Holland the Cannabis trade is still operating illegally and as such the penalties can still be quite high under prosecution. So we're buying a commercial product, in commercial surroundings from a market generally awash with organised crime - with all the trappings, expenses and troubles that come with that - and with the added danger of prosecution and criminalisation. You're never going to find top-quality artisan gardener level product in those circumstances - especially not at bargain prices.
Nit picking and marking our scores down on flush is rational - and necessary if we want to drive the quality of product up. But we have to bear in mind the circumstances that the market operates in and temper our views accordingly. It's too easy to criticise and call a CS's product trash. Unless they're charging well over the top dollar (Barney's I'm looking at you) I think we should forgive the smaller shops to some degree. They have to compete with the richer shops to stay alive and there's an awful lot of product going through those shops. The difference between Amsterdam level and artisan quality is a two week longer flush and a 3 month longer cure… Makes a big difference in a growers profit margins when the payment is delayed by 3 months just to appease the very choosiest of consumers. The truth is - the vast majority of consumers have never experienced artisan levels of production, so it doesn't make any sense to cater to that audience in a mass market.
Roll on the Washington State and Colorado model everywhere.... You're paying $30 for 3.5g of top shelf if you're a local (have a med card). Recreational is more comparative to central Amsterdam pricing in order to control the flow of 'pot tourism' as I understand it - but this might change as other states legalise and regulate. Only a matter of time now I reckon - all over the world. The therapeutic benefits are no longer a debate. More importantly the tax revenues are huge, so it's a no brainer for government and they'll struggle to bury heads in the sand for much longer in the face of pressure from lobby groups using hard facts from the U.S. to back up the claims.
Until then - peace everyone.
JC2K have a good one this week. Shame we can't hook up and blaze one in Erste Hulp with you.
Macky - would be good to have someone else on board - we're back in Summer all being well.
Everyone else - thanks for the kind words, it was all great fun to write and nice to pay something back to the ACD forum community