AltaVie Airplane Mode

Going to do a Critical Kush today. This is MedReleaf, they call it Airplane Mode and sell it under their Alta Vie brand.

MedReleaf grew this in a greenhouse, way over in Bradford, Ontario, Canada. They packaged it February 8th 2019, and now were going to give it a review, 109 days later.

Active content for this listing ranges from 13.5% -17.3% THC, with a negligible CBD content. The container I purchased arrived with 16.04% THC, fairly close to the maximum end of the range.

The vendor’s description calls this a ‘classic kush, earthy and woodsy‘, ‘accessible to both new and experienced consumers’.

Relative terpene graph shows this as myrcene dominant (24%), with a A/B pinene secondary (15%) and terpinol bringing up the rear (12%). Other terpenes make up about half of all terpenes.

The cultivar we review today is critical kush, I hate it, it’s a cash crop kush, and not even a very good one. Two breeders carry a cultivar with this name, Barney’s Farm and Royal Queen seeds, both are obvious plagiarists. That’s just my opinion, and I’m a hypocrite, I have Barney’s Violator Kush in my queue and I can’t wait to review it. So, we’re going to review critical kush, look past the name and approach with some objectivity.

Let’s get into the package.

Visuals are half and half, moderate overall. Much of the total mass looks to be within two similarly sized buds, alongside about 300mg of stemmy lowers and shake.

The larger buds look really good, especially up close where the swollen calyxes create multiple jagged peaks towards the apex.

Buds feel dry, you could pulverize them with a pinch, but there is a noticeable degree of stickiness when you touch it.

Grinds well, has good looks. The material seems usable with the cohesion I’d regard as smokable quality.

Scent of these flowers are fraught with pine under punchy varnish/acetone notes lashing on the high side. It has good presence, you can feel it in the sinus after a deep sniff.

Flavours surprise with some flat cool citrus, ending abruptly against some friendly spice; its clean and bright, finishing with some warmth. Not totally devoid of the notes detected by sense of smell, but the translation in olfactory character goes quite the distance.

Pronunciation is initially good but longevity is on the poor side, the tastes drop off relatively quick.

We should take a second to note that my olfactory description and the vendor’s description are not at all alike. I don’t want to make an attribution either way, but just something to notice.

If I had to guess what this was based on tastes alone, I probably would have guessed a Nebula, certainly not a OG cross. Which leaves me wondering, was it the inclusion of terpinol (12% of all terpenes)? Half the amount of terpenes were allocated to the ‘other’ category, so there is a possibility the difference in character came from this unknown collection of terpenes.

The lineage on Critical Kush is an OG Kush crossed to a Critical Mass. One of the parents of the Critical Mass is a Skunk-type and I think we saw this in the olfactory profile, instead of the OG Kush the offering is named after. And I don’t think this is such a bad thing. There are many different types of OG available, many more interesting than Barney’s or RQ’s Critical Kush. This particular Critical Kush phenotype was perceivably different and I felt it had enough character that you could appreciate it for what it is.

Price on this Critical Kush was $14.99 for a single gram package. My package wasn’t consistent, about 30% was shake, but otherwise, the buds were nice. The character of the profile was appreciably different from competitors also growing a critical kush. I didn’t appreciate it, but I think there is a good amount of content, enough to make the choice yourself.

Let’s check out how this offering looks around the country.

My read on it is, it’s expensive. We’ve reviewed Alta Vie products at $13.99 previously, some haven’t been great. This one ups the ante by a dollar, and I’m not sure we received the same in quality or consistency. Whether you enjoy the profile or not, I’m not sure it’s deserving of the $15 price point.

Thanks for reading, see you for the next one!