Euphoria Critical CBD Hash 6%, 1g

Critical is named after a plant collapsing under its own weight

Cannabis variety names are usually descriptive of a smell, a colour or a place. This one describes a structural failure.

Critical Mass is a cross of Big Bud and Skunk #1, commonly attributed to Mr Nice Seedbank, and it was bred for one quality above all others: sheer weight of flower. It produces very large, very dense colas, and it produces them faster than the plant's own architecture is really built for. The consequence is well documented among growers, who routinely stake, net or tie the branches, because a plant left to its own devices can snap under the load in the final weeks.

Critical mass is a physics term for the point at which something becomes self-sustaining, and in this context the joke is that the plant reaches its own tipping point and falls over. The name has stuck well enough that dozens of derivative varieties carry Critical in the title.

That is the story. What it means for a pot of pressed hemp is a separate question, and the honest answer is: less than you might hope, but not nothing. Our 9 per cent listing covers what a strain name can and cannot tell you about the strength of a hash. What the name does still point at is the type of plant material the product is imitating, and that is worth one more section.

Does a dense flower actually make better hash

This is the assumption the name invites, and it deserves an accurate answer rather than a flattering one.

Sieved hash is made by separating resin glands from dried plant material. What determines how much you get is how much resin the plant carries, which is a different property from how tightly the flower is packed. A dense bud is not automatically a resinous one, and a loose, airy variety covered in trichomes will out-yield a heavy, compact one that is not.

So density on its own is not a hash-making virtue. Where it does matter is drying. Tightly packed flower holds moisture in the middle long after the outside feels dry, which is why very dense varieties have a reputation for needing slow, careful drying and curing, and why growers of them watch humidity closely.

That is a genuine consideration for anyone making hash from dense material, and it is one of the few places where a strain's growing characteristics carry through to a pressed product at all. It is also not something Euphoria comments on, so read the above as background about the variety rather than a claim about this pot.

Six per cent, and where it sits in the range

This is the entry tier, and it is deliberately mild.

Euphoria builds its hash range as a ladder, and the trade codes it uses give the tiers away: nothing at 6 per cent, a Strong marker at 9 and 19, an Extreme marker at 25 and an Ultimate marker at 40. Our Afghan listing sets that ladder out in full. This sits at the bottom of it, and that is the point of it rather than a shortcoming.

Our Amnesia listing, which is the same 6 per cent in a different strain name, goes into what a deliberately mild hash is for and how six per cent compares against other formats. There is no sense in writing that argument twice, so it is linked rather than repeated.

One practical note specific to this tier. All three of the 6 per cent strains, Critical, Kush and Amnesia, are frequently unavailable at once, so if you are set on starting at the mildest grade it is worth checking all three rather than assuming the tier is gone.

A retailer has quietly retitled this range from hash to incense

An update rather than a new discovery, and it matters because it now covers this product.

Our listing for the Euphoria H4CBD solids recorded a Leeds retailer renaming those products from solid hash to solid incense, adding a notice reading not for human consumption, incense, souvenir or novelty purposes only. At the time that hedge applied to the semi-synthetic H4CBD line.

We rechecked this week and it has crossed into the ordinary CBD hash range. The same shop's page for this Critical 6 per cent now serves an incense title with the same notice, as does the Kush 6 per cent next to it in its catalogue. Search results still show the old hash title against the Critical address, so you can click a result that says hash and land on a page that says incense.

We are not going to pretend that is not happening, and we are not suggesting the shop has done anything wrong. Retailers hedge when a category's position is unsettled, and quietly renaming a listing is a rational response to that. The reason to tell you is that it is a signal about how the trade currently reads the position on pressed hemp, and it is worth more than any confident sentence a shop might write.

What we will and will not say about the THC line

Every listing in this range prints the same THC percentage regardless of strength, which is a specification rather than a measurement of any particular pot.

Our 9 per cent listing takes that figure and works it against a one gram piece, and the result is not reassuring. We are not going to repeat that arithmetic here or improve on it, and we are certainly not going to tell you this pot comfortably clears the limit.

The rule that matters is a maximum of one milligram of controlled cannabinoids in the whole container, whatever the container's size. You will also see the limit described elsewhere as a percentage and a milligram figure interchangeably, as if satisfying either one settles it. They are not two versions of the same test. The percentage belongs to the rules on growing hemp as a crop and the milligram figure is the consumer rule, and only the second is about what may be sold to you.

Settling any of this for an individual pot needs the batch certificate of analysis, which we have requested for the full spectrum lines in this part of the range.

What this is, without decoration

Pressed hemp resin, sold in a form intended to be burned.

It is not H4CBD. Nothing here has been hydrogenated and nothing is semi-synthetic, unlike the Euphoria solids sold under that name, which are covered separately.

It is smokable hemp, and the UK position on that is unsettled rather than clearly permitted. The industrial hemp licensing regime covers stalk and seed, which is not where a pressed resin comes from. The owner of this shop has decided to list this range, and we would rather write that down than describe it as an aromatic novelty and hope nobody reads carefully.

Everything on this site is 18+ only.

Who should choose something else

Anyone expecting the Critical Mass they have read about. This is hemp pressed at the mildest grade in the range, and a variety's growing reputation does not transfer to a pot of resin.

Anyone who wants strength. Six per cent is the bottom of a ladder that goes to forty, and it is mild on purpose. Our Amnesia listing explains who that suits.

Anyone who wants certainty about the THC content. The published percentage is identical across every strength, which tells you what kind of number it is, and the batch certificate is what would answer it.

Anyone who wants a settled legal position should buy an oil, a capsule or a vape instead, where the regulatory picture is far clearer than it is for anything pressed and burned.

And anyone who finds it out of stock should check the other two strains at the same grade before moving up a tier, because the whole 6 per cent shelf tends to come and go together.