Kootenay Craft 8/10 – I’d been hearing good things about KC’s flower for a while, so I figured I’d finally bite the bullet and give them a try. Ordered back in mid October, but I believe many of the strains I tried are still in stock, or have been restocked. I had somewhat of a mixed experie...nce, but I’ll get into that more below.

Sign Up: Fairly straightforward, only it took about a day longer than with most MoMs to get approved – no big deal. I believe they are only accepting MMPR patients now, but I’m sure it’s still worth applying either way.

Ordering & Pricing: Pretty pricey without a discount. I ended up combining two discounts – the $50 off WELCOME code and 20% off because I got four quarters. Otherwise their top-end stuff is definitely out of my price range. They do offer a free shipping threshold of $120, which is better than the average $200 a lot of MoMs offer.

Communication: Not the best, if I’m being honest. They generally take a few days to respond to emails. But one thing I’ve noticed with some of the more popular MoMs is that customer service tends to decrease as they gain in popularity. While cs is super important to me, at the end of the day as long as I can get good weed in a timely fashion I don’t really mind much.

Packaging: Packaging is definitely on point. Clear jars with black lids and nice labels. They keep everything from getting crushed, but they’re pretty staticy if that bothers you. Each jar came with a one gram boveda, but they were all completely dry and hard. Everything came vac-sealed as is standard these days.

Products / Photos:

Green Grease Monkey This one came recommended as a heavy hitter, and while at first I was a bit underwhelmed by the size of the nugs, I found it to have a nice subtle gassy aroma, and it was glistening with trichomes. The taste is really nice as well – earthy, but sweet and gassy. I definitely got a creamy cookie flavour from the cookies genetics as well. I would definitely re-order and recommend this one.
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Goji Berry Haze My favourite of the four strains I tried. It doesn’t stand out all that much appearance-wise, but the flavour and smell on this one are just perfect. I can’t quite figure out how to describe it, but it’s fucking delicious – sweet and fruity with a generic berry flavour – almost reminiscent of Hawaiian punch or fruit punch. The high is nice and uplifting, and very energizing. I found myself organizing and cleaning the house for like 4 hours after vaping two bowls. This is also one of KC’s ‘living soil’ strains; idk if it made a difference, but it was super terpy and fresh-tasting.
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Amnesia Haze Here’s where things started to go south a bit. I found the smell on this one to be really off-putting. It just has an overpowering musty, stale smell that covers any earthy lemon, citrus smell it’s supposed to have. Based on a couple reviews and their website description I really don’t think it smelled right. I checked all the nugs over pretty thoroughly and couldn’t see any rot or mold, so maybe it’s just an old batch, or it was jarred a while ago. After spending a week in a jar with a larger boveda it still smelled bad, but tasted somewhat sweet and earthy like it’s supposed to. I quite enjoyed the buzz from this one, and found it energizing like the Goji berry. Definitely wouldn’t re-order because of the smell, but I’d say it’s still worth a try if that’s not a deal breaker for you.
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Watermelon This one unfortunately had a similar musty earthy smell to the Amnesia, though there were definitely sweeter undertones. After a week with a boveda it smelled a lot better and was much less dry. I still hate having to do that though. I feel like drying and rehydrating degrades the quality of the weed. Maybe I’m wrong, idk.

I also unfortunately found some white specks on the leaves under the microscope that appeared to be mold. I can’t say for sure, but I checked with others on discord and multiple people said it looked like it to them. I want to say that I don’t hold this against the MoM – I literally stumbled across it while taking pics under the microscope for this review. Other than that one spot I couldn’t find any others, so I just threw that nug out. I sent KC this pic, and they said they hadn’t received any complaints about those two strains and offered me some goodies on my next order to make up for it. I could have pressed the issue further, but it just wasn’t worth it to me tbh. It appears they have a new batch of watermelon in stock, so I would maybe give this one more chance, as it’s pretty cheap. Maybe.
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Incentive for Customers:

As mentioned above I used the one-time code WELCOME for $50 off and got 20% off for combining four quarters.

Incentive for Review: No incentive.

Notes: I found KC’s quality to be a bit hit and miss. One pro is that they offer a good first order coupon, so it’s absolutely worth trying them at least once if you can still sign up. I also found everything to be fairly potent, even the two strains I had issues with. Granted, I probably have a lower tolerance than some people on here, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I would re-order 2/4 strains, which is generally a positive for me as I’m pretty picky. I find their communication to be pretty lacklustre, and their response to my issue with the watermelon and amnesia was tepid, and left me a bit underwhelmed. If they had another good sale going and the Cactus Breath is in stock I’d consider giving them another shot.

Imgur album with all the pics: https://imgur.com/a/N6fVnJ7See More

Hillside Pharms 9/10 - I Haven’t seen any Hillside reviews lately so figured I’d write about my experience ordering with them over the last few months.

Sign Up: Just like any other MoM. ID required on sign-up, approved within a couple hours.

Ordering & Pricing: I’ve been orde...ring from HSP exclusively since February. They have consistent 20-30% discounts every few weeks, which keeps the price per gram around $7-$8 after shipping. Free shipping over $200; $20 under. Lots of rare and unique strains. Lots of deals beyond coupons - sampler ounces, bulk orders, concentrates deals.

Communication: One of their strengths. I usually get a response within 15 minutes; never more 45 mins during regular business hours. They’re helpful with offering strain suggestions and quickly helped fix a small issue I had with one order (they left out an eighth of Moby by mistake, but sent me a quarter separately a couple days later).

Packaging: Black resealable mylar pouches with custom branding and strain names & info.

Products / Photos:

Mint Chocolate Chip #2 - Really nice hybrid with a slight herbal minty nose. Earthy and very slightly gassy. Has an sweet earthy flavour when vaped. Frosty AF. A nice balanced high. Definitely not their hardest hitter, but an enjoyable and very unique strain nonetheless. Great appearance as well.
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Space Candy - One of the first strains I ordered from HSP and one I keep going back to. To me it has a very cookies-like smell with herbal undertones; really pungent and tasty. It tastes even better than it smells and leaves you with a nice light body stone, while enveloping you in a very blissful state. I did find the odd seed in this particular batch, but I mean it’s a plant, it happens. Tons of trichomes - just coated. And the purple hues on this one are insane.
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Chocolope - One of their best and strongest sativas. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a daytime strain as it hits a little harder than I’d like for that purpose, but YMMV. I don’t always get the energizing effects of sativas, but I’m a lazy p.o.s. so that might negate that. I also don’t really get chocolate from the nose - more earthy, but its taste is very unique and hard to pinpoint exactly. I’ll be honest and say that it’s not my favourite strain in the world, but that’s purely my opinion. This is a very good example of this particular phenotype. I’ve had chocolope from other MoMs and dispensaries that were mediocre in comparison.
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Some strains from my last couple of orders, which I neglected to take photos of:

Humboldt Black Gold - Really nice, tasty Indica. Nice mix of colours, with heavy trichome coverage. Has that particular earthy taste and smell of strains with Afghani lineage. Would definitely re-order if it popped back up again. Pricey, but worth it. Highly recommend if you can get your hands on it.

Blue Sapphire - One of my favourite-smelling strains from HSP. It’s really pungent and gassy, but sweet and fruity, with maybe a slightly sour undertone. For me this highlights what good weed should be capable of. The terpenes are bright and full, and help make it taste really fucking good in my Solo II. It leaves you feeling fairly energized. This is get-shit-done clean-the-house weed for me. As far as sativas go it’s top-notch.

Sour Pink Lemonade #1 - A new favourite of mine. With all the phenos available from this strain I wasn’t sure which one to grab, so I went with #1. I feel like it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because this strain is tasty as a motherfucker and has a super pungent, sweet lemon aroma. I really enjoyed the high from this one. It was like getting a nice warm hug every time i puffed on my vape. Top notch for sure.

Moonshine Ghost Train Haze - Super tasty from the Moonshine genetics (If they could bottle those moonshine terps I would buy the shit out of that), nice and strong haze high. Really enjoyed this one. It came recommended as one of their strongest sativas, and I would say it lives up to its billing. What I liked most about it was how little burnout there was. I could smoke it all day. And I did.

Incentive for Customers: On this I occasion I used the coupon ’supportcraft.’ They have sales regularly with good discounts, usually coinciding with holidays.

Incentive for Review: None. Quality, consistency, and good customer service is what caused me to write this review.

Notes: I’ve been nothing but pleased with my orders from HSP. Even their one minor fuck up was fixed by sending me double what they forgot from my order. I had no incentive to write this review and normally wouldn’t waste my time doing a write-up like this, but I feel that honesty, consistency and good customer service deserves to be commended. I know they’re a popular MoM around here, but even so I still think they’re underrated and haven’t seen them talked about as much lately. For what it’s worth, I’ve ordered from about 10 other MoMs in the past. I vape around 1-2 grams a day and would consider myself to have a moderate-high tolerance. I’ll try to remember to take photos of my next order, but for now here’s a few more detailed shots from my latest order:

https://imgur.com/a/vgGDXHH

Thanks for reading fellow Canadients. Long live craft cannabis!See More