Of all the coffee beverages, espresso is perhaps the most comparable to cannabis. There is a ton of craft that goes into the production of both high-quality weed and coffee. There is trial and error as roasters and growers change variables to perfect their end product. Espresso must be roasted to perfection, making sure not to over roast and burn the oils and cannabis must be cured properly so as to produce the most optimal representation of that strain. Each, in its perfection, should elevate your mood, enhance your day, and generally restore your faith in the abilities of your fellow man.
Everything is a balancing act. To produce the best-tasting espresso, a barista must ensure that the espresso is neither over nor under-extracted. When you under-extract espresso, the end result is tart or sour but over-extracted espresso leads to a bitter taste. Precisely done, espresso can have any number of tasting notes. Like wine, you can get bright, fruity flavors or caramels and chocolates. It might have a nuttiness or a stewy, vegetal quality. These are all experiences that toking connoisseurs might expect out of their cannabis. As such, one of the primary strains that really began highlighting its own flavors and attempting to imitate tastes was Girl Scout Cookies.
A favorite iteration of Girl Scout Cookies is Do-si-dos and it pairs excellently with a well-poured shot of espresso. Do-Si-Dos is a combination of OG Kush Breath, a Girl Scout Cookies phenotype, and Face Off OG. OG Kush Breath has a taste of roasted nuts and vanilla which is what makes it a great genetic parent for a strain striving to replicate peanut butter cookies. Face-Off on the other hand, with its OG Kush lineage, has light herbaceous and spicy notes reasserting some of the gas associated with most cookies strains. This inherent nuttiness and sweetness of Do-Si-Dos pairs with the syrupy and complex flavors of the espresso. Heightening each other, the espresso makes this cookies descendant even more akin to its baked good counterpart.
While the espresso brings you up, this indica dominant hybrid rounds out the caffeine’s edges. Do-Si-Dos is relaxing and stress-relieving from its OGKB parent while its Face-Off OG side provides a right behind the eyes psychoactive high.
This feeling with the uplifting effects of the espresso would pair well with taste testing pastries around the neighborhood or taking a ferry to one of the islands. Other activities that one could consider with this combination of coffee and cannabis would be thrift shopping for your ugly holiday sweater party, trying to find that little dumpling place you went to that one time when you were drunk in Chinatown, or working on that collection of short stories you’ve been pretending to write for the last 3 years. Or hey, maybe just go look for that next espresso shot and make a day of it. Just make sure to pre-roll those joints before your hands get too jittery.
Words: TJ Gagnier
Photos: Jesse Codling