Whether you’re a cannabis newbie, a longtime stoner, or a certified Sensemillier, you should be familiar with the term dry pull. If you don’t, then now is the time to get familiar with dry pulling, as it allows you to taste the entire spectrum of flavour compounds.

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

What is a dry pull?

As its name already implies, dry pulling 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 flavourful compounds to land on your taste buds.

The Entourage Effect and Phytochemicals

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, including flavorants like VSC, Esters and so on work in synergy to create even better effects and medicinal properties.

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

So, it is speculated that the components responsible for creating a more sedative or stimulating effect aren’t just the cannabinoids but various phytochemical (plant) compounds such as Terpenes, Volatile sulphur compounds (VSC), Esters, and many other compounds in the plant’s resinous trichome heads.

However, once the plant's phytochemical resin is exposed to heat or air, it vaporizes slowly and turns into a gas that is released into the air.

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

Dry pull vs smoke flavours

Besides causing the complex scents of a cannabis bud, the aromatic compounds such as Terpenes, VSC, Esters and others are also responsible for the taste of your weed. However, when you’re lighting your joint up, you’re combusting the entire plant.

By combusting the plant, you inhale not only the tasty oils but also the plant material and its contaminants. That’s why the best way to experience the plant’s entire flavour profile fully is by taking a dry pull.

How taking a dry pull helps you assess the flavour content of your products

Now that we know that the dry pull can help us sense the compound cocktail 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.

When determining the quality of a bud, we must consider many different aspects. In our opinion, two of the most important ones are the aroma and flavour of our weed.

Because the aroma comes from a high concentration of aromatic Phytochemicals, we can expect to face complex effects and a great flavour when smelling intense and diverse cannabis scents.

The same applies to the dry pull. 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 pull 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 clean smoke flavour that tastes similar to the dry pull.

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 pull when you have purchased a pre-rolled joint.

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

Add the dry pull to your routine

As you can see, tasting the true flavours of your cannabis by taking a dry pull 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.

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

To use the world’s leading digital cannabis journal and assessment tool, visit www.gradingplatform.com

The Grading Platform will guide you through the entire evaluation process, from gauging the dry pull intensity to assessing its complexity and the actual flavours you taste.

If you have any questions, feel free to message us on Instagram @sensemillier or email us at info@sensemillier.com