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This year I was asked to judge The Extractors Cup. This was the first cup I’ve judged which has focused purely on cannabis extracts, but cannabis cups in the UK have been going on for several years, including The Dead Fox Cup 2018 / Dead fox Cup 2019, The UK Canna Cup 2019, Crumpet Cup 2019 and the Dopefiend Cup 2018 which I have been honoured to be a judge of and other cups such as The Secret Session Cannabis Cup and more I’ve probably forgotten to mention here.
These competitve events are an excellent way for people in the industry to work out which cannabis products are people’s favourites, and the bar is generally very high. I love the competitive aspect and think that the UK has loads of great breeders, growers and extractors, meaning ther are always incredible entires to sample when there competitions take place.
This year’s Extractor’s Cup was split into two categories – solvent and solventless. The Solvent category had 13 entries and the solventless had 6 entries, with concentrates ranging from diamonds and sauces to hash rosins. There were terp profiles from across the spectrum, and a whole host of quality extracts to sample and mark from 1-0 for appearance, aroma, terps (taste), effects and potency for a maximum mark of 50 points.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on both categories, and I was pleasantly impressed with a vast majority of the samples in the competition, awarding my winning sample in the solvent category 46/50 and my winning sample in the solventless category 44/50.
You can view each of the entries below:
Solvent Category
Solventless Category
There were some very notable entries to dab in both categories, leading to a genuine kid in a candy shop-type moment when I realised the task I had ahead of me. Each sample was anonymous and labeled with a number to make scores fair.
What did I gleam from trying out each of the samples and marking them out of 50? There were some great flavours and even some profiles I recognised: I think GMO made an appearance in the solventless category, and can remember tasting what I think was Pink Panties in the solvent category. There was also a Marmalade entry which I could pick out as that strain is just so distinguishable.
On the solventless side, there were a majority of hash rosins, with one flower rosin entry. I enjoyed judging both categories equally but experienced a broader range of flavours across the larger solvent category.
The competition winners of each category are set to be announced soon. After this point I’ll know which sample was which extract/ by which extractor, but at the time of writing it remains a mystery.
One thing is certain though, I have thoroughly enjoyed myself while judging this competition. I take pleasure in the whole judging process, and especially enjoy the challenge of using my senses alone to discern as much as possible about a range of samples with no other information to go on.
It will be interesting to see how my score card matches up with the other judges of The Extractors Cup 2021.
Thanks to the organisers for putting on a professional cup with some incredible entries and a high standard across the board, and thanks to the extractors who submitted these tasty extracts that I have enjoyed dabbing.
You can watch my video about Judging this competition out now on the ISMOKE YouTube channel, and look out for an event video coming soon
