Juicy Jay's Hemp Paper Rolls, 5m, box of 24

Five metres, in papers

A roll is sold by length and a booklet is sold by count, which makes them almost impossible to compare unless somebody does the conversion. Nobody does, so here it is.

Five metres is five thousand millimetres. What that gives you depends entirely on how long you tear, which is the whole point of buying a roll rather than a booklet.

Using the standard rolling paper lengths, a king size paper runs 100 to 110mm, a classic one and a quarter is 76 to 78mm, and a single wide is around 68 to 70mm. Divide five thousand by each of those and the picture becomes clear: this roll is worth somewhere between roughly forty-five and seventy-odd papers depending on how you use it.

That is one to two booklets' worth in a single roll, and it is the honest way to think about it. It is also why a roll suits people who roll inconsistently. If you sometimes want a short one and sometimes want a long one, a fixed-size booklet forces a compromise every time and a roll does not.

One caveat on the arithmetic. These are our calculations from published paper size standards, not a manufacturer claim, and real-world tearing wastes a little at each end. Read the numbers as a guide to the format rather than a guarantee.

The paper is printed, and nobody mentions it

Pull a length off one of these and you will notice something no other paper we stock does. The flavour is printed onto the paper itself, as a repeating image, using natural soy ink.

It is a genuine oddity of the brand and it is visible in the hand rather than being a specification you have to take on trust. Not one retailer page we read while researching this product mentions it, which is strange for something you can see.

Soy ink matters here rather than being an eco-badge. It is a vegetable-based ink rather than a petroleum-based one, which is the relevant distinction on a paper you are going to burn.

Every other rolling paper in our range is unprinted. If you want a plain paper with nothing on it, the Elements, Tokies and Monkey King papers are the ones to look at, and they are linked below.

Triple dipped, and what a flavoured paper actually does

Juicy Jay's built its reputation on flavour, and the process has a name. The manufacturer's own wording is that only its flavoured papers are produced with a proprietary triple-dipped flavour system, meaning the flavouring is applied in stages rather than sprayed on once.

What that gets you in practice is flavour that lasts down the length of the paper rather than fading after the first few seconds. Lightly sprayed papers tend to give you a scent when you open the pack and very little once it is lit.

It is worth being clear about what a flavoured paper is and is not. The flavour is on the paper, not in whatever you put inside it, so it sits alongside rather than replacing anything else. Some people find it complements a herbal blend and others find it competes.

Both of the flavours in this listing are straightforwardly fruity. Banana is the sweeter and rounder of the two, Green Apple the sharper. Neither is subtle, and that is the brand's whole proposition rather than a criticism of it.

The paper itself is hemp, which burns more slowly and evenly than a light wood-pulp paper and is the reason the flavour has time to come through at all.

Sugar gum, and why you should not lick it

The adhesive on these is a natural sugar-based gum. That is different from the acacia gum used on some premium papers and it behaves differently, which one retailer out of nine we checked bothers to explain.

The instruction that page gives is the right one: moisten gently rather than lick. A sugar gum dissolves readily, and a properly wet edge goes slack, will not hold, and takes the paper with it.

On a roll this matters more than on a booklet. The gum strip runs the entire five metres, so a soaked edge does not just ruin one paper, it can ruin the length you have just torn and leave you starting again. A light touch along the strip is all it needs.

There is a second practical point about rolls that nobody explains. Because you tear rather than pull a pre-cut leaf, tear against a straight edge if you want a clean line. A ragged tear rolls perfectly well but it looks like a ragged tear.

Keep the roll in its dispenser and keep it dry. Sugar gum and damp are a poor combination, and a roll that has absorbed moisture in a pocket will not seal properly afterwards.

A third naming system from the same brand

A small thing we noticed, and it is useful if you buy across the Juicy Jay's range.

Its hemp wraps run two different flavour naming systems, an older one using names like Manic and Red Alert and a newer one using names like Purple Wave and El Dorado. We set that out in full on our wraps page because it makes those products genuinely hard to research.

The papers use neither. Banana and Green Apple are plain fruit names that say exactly what they are, which is a relief and also means the flavour research you do on one format will not carry across to another.

So if you have used a Juicy Jay's wrap and want the paper equivalent, do not go looking for the same name. It will not be there.

Rolls, booklets and the rest of the paper aisle

We carry both roll and booklet formats and the choice between them is about how consistently you roll rather than about paper quality.

This is the flavoured roll. Monkey King's four metre roll is the unflavoured equivalent and slightly shorter. Everything else we stock is a fixed-size booklet, which is simpler if you always roll the same size and restrictive if you do not.

One note on the American listings

Most of what you will find online about Juicy Jay's is written for the American market, and two things in it do not apply here.

The first is age. US retailers state a 21 requirement, because that is their rule. In the UK we sell to over-18s, which is the standard that applies to you.

The second is the tobacco framing. American listings carry wording about the papers not being sold for use with tobacco and being only for legal smoking herbs, which reflects US flavoured-tobacco regulation. The brand actually went to court over that in 2009 and the outcome kept its flavoured papers on American shelves. In the UK a rolling paper is simply a rolling paper.

The brand itself is American, founded by Joshua Kesselman and based in Chicago, with a range that has run to more than thirty flavours across its formats.

Who should buy something else

If you want CBD, there is none in this. It is flavoured hemp paper with no cannabinoid of any kind. The CBD aisles are linked below.

If you always roll the same size, a booklet is simpler. A roll asks you to tear and measure every time, and that is only an advantage if you actually want different lengths.

If you dislike flavoured paper, avoid the brand entirely rather than picking the milder flavour. The triple-dipped process is the point of the product and neither option is understated.

And if you want a plain, unprinted paper, this is not it. The flavour is printed across the paper in soy ink, and while that is harmless it is not discreet. Elements, Tokies and Monkey King all make plain papers we stock.