Moose & Lobsta by Divine Buds

Recently, in my review of Triangle Kush, I wrote about sense memories, how in particular a certain smell or combination of smells can take you back to a time and place. Cannabis is such a perfect vehicle for this, as the complexity of a single strain can encompass so wide a variety of aromas and flavors, and can thus paint a more nuanced and layered overall picture in your mind. This review isn’t so much about a strain evoking a pre-cannabis memory. Instead, this story is about a strain whose vivid description was composed first, and then the strain has since infused itself into a memory because my description made me want to smoke it in that very specific context. I am coming back to the very strain and description that ended up planting the initial seed in my brain that would eventually (a year later) sprout and grow into Stoned Coast.

It was way back in April of 2022, April 20th to be precise. It was my first 420 working in the cannabis industry, having been at my job for just under 6 months at that point. Everything was still new and fresh and shiny for me. In fact, it was the first big event that I had worked at all in the cannabis industry. And, if you’re reading this and don’t know me from budtending, the rec store where I work goes pretty big for 420. (I imagine many do, but we have a large space and really make use of it.) Many of our growers table about the store like a mini ComicCon (CronicCon? I assume that exists, but I’ll look it up later. Update: of course it exists.), we have food trucks all day, a DJ or live band, and an almost Black Friday-esque crowd. Except that unlike Black Friday, everyone is chill. Unlike Black Friday, we’ve had zero deaths due to customers trampling each other in a consume-all-buy-everything-fuck-everyone-else stampede. In fact, we’ve had zero deaths total, for any reason. It’s great.

I hate Black Friday. It’s the worst. But moving on…

Twas 4/20/22 and I was meeting for the first time many of the aforementioned growers. In my introductory Ramble “Preamble. Pre…Ramble…?” from when I launched this blog, I wrote that the positive feedback from one such grower gave me the confidence to want to do this. I was a confident writer before, but I hadn’t really had a ton of specific feedback on the way I composed my cannabis descriptions. Customers and co-workers had noted that they enjoyed the way I talked about certain strains, but receiving the kind of encouraging feedback from the people who actually grew the flower I was talking about was a game changer for me. And so Moose & Lobsta from Divine Buds holds a very special place in my heart. I probably should have started Stoned Coast with it, honestly, sentimentalist that I am.

I love opening any new package of cannabis flower. The initial burst of previously sealed-in aroma pops, the buds are as fresh as I’ll see them, and especially when it’s a new strain for me I get pretty excited to get to know the thing in person. I love seeing if my predictions are at all accurate about its characteristics, even well before smoking it. Moose & Lobsta has lost none of that excitement. Divine Buds packs their flower in opaque bags, so there’s a little bit of gentle squeezing before it’s open, but otherwise the sizes and shapes of the nugs is a mystery. I’ve had an eighth that was basically a single nug the size of a toddler’s fist, and I’ve had eighths where it was close to ten medium-to-smalls. But they’re always good looking, always fresh, always top shelf.

The buds, regardless of size, have a very clean quality to them. They’re gently fluffy to the touch, but sturdy in structure. They’re a lovely medium-bright green, with small clusters of orange hairs, that are more like little micro-scale tumbleweeds tucked into the recesses of the frondy bits. The flower isn’t particularly snowy or frosty, but there’s a very consistent and even quality to the texture that the trichomes give the flower, even if it’s not as visual as some strains.

The aroma of the strain is quite enticing. There’s a gentle earthy quality underneath a bright, fruity overtone. I have a weakness for fruity gummy candies, fruit snacks, Swedish Fish, and the like. But I’m not into the orange and grape ones. Be that as it may, the fruity aroma of Moose & Lobsta is heavily reminiscent of the smell of a bag of fruit snacks were I to leave those oranges and grapes for last instead of eating them first (a strategy that my kids still do not subscribe to, as they leave the undesired for last in all things, thus ruining their experience by ending on a down note).

But the smoke is where it takes a turn into the description that became so pivotal. It’s important for me to draw a distinction between “it tastes like blank” and “the flavor makes me think of blah.” The aroma above is a literal “this is what it smells like.” The flavor here is more the latter. The fruity notes of the aroma melt behind a more herbal and earthy flavor. It’s the flavor of what I imagine the finest pipe tobacco would taste like, the kind of tobacco aristocratically puffed by the robber barons of the early 20th Century, whilst they sat in high-backed leather chairs in their home libraries, surrounded by old books and older curiosities, casually polishing their monocles, sipping unreasonably expensive cognac, and fuffing at each other about the workers they were endeavoring so hard to oppress. It doesn’t taste like vanilla and old leather, but it evokes this feeling of every fancy beard oil that the internet wants to sell me. Smell like a man, but a man with good taste. It’s what I imagine this guy smells like:

There are times when my descriptions of the aroma and flavor of a strain is inspiring enough that I never even get to tell a customer about the high itself. That happens with Moose & Lobsta a lot. But it should not be forgotten, as the high a fun contrast to the aforementioned sophistication of the flavor. Briefly, the high is uplifting and clean. But when am I brief? (I ask as I pass the 1000 word mark.) The high is the kind of lucid euphoria that begged me to have my feet in a lake and my hand on a tree, to eschew the comforts of the library and monocle and leather chair and oppressing, and instead take my shoes off and watch a sunrise.

Most of my reviews come from the first or maybe first couple of times I experienced the strain. I try to bring a fresh take not just for you, the reader, but for myself as well. But again, Moose & Lobsta is a special case for me. I had described what I thought the perfect context would be. For years, my family would spend a week each summer on a lake in the middle of nowhere in northern Maine. It’s been something my parents have been doing for about 30 years at this point, and that my family and my brother’s family have been added to over the last almost decade. My parents also have a couple of best friend couples who go on this same vacation. We would all rent a series of cabins (cabins with bathrooms and kitchenettes, mind you) all next to each other, and we would just chill for a week. My parents are far more “we must do things with our time, even on vacation” people, but a lot of those things we had to do were activities like taking the boat out to an island for a picnic lunch, swimming, going to a folk art festival, dinner with everyone, and the like. But in the end, it is a week of mostly relaxing by or on the lake, in hammocks, canoes and kayaks, Adirondack chairs, and aged picnic tables.

Last summer was my first year taking this vacation since becoming a budtender, and while I was excited to bring a variety of cannabis products, I knew that Moose & Lobsta was going to occupy a large percentage of that, given that I was sure my description was going to fit. I’m an early riser, and every morning I was getting up solidly two or more hours before anyone else across all the cabins. That’s my time, those early hours. And I started every day there on the lake by brewing a pot of coffee, taking my vitamins and such, and then sitting in an Adirondack chair mere feet from the lake, listening to a podcast or audiobook, sipping my piping hot black coffee from an enameled camp mug as the sun rose from behind me and lake gently lapped against the shore, and I smoked a Moose & Lobsta joint. Every morning. It was, in a word, perfect.

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed my meandering narrative review. I think you’ll enjoy Moose & Lobsta even more. I truly appreciate everyone who’s reading this. Thanks so much, and have a good one.

Suggested Media: Audiobook or podcast while sitting by a lake. Did you skip to the end of the post? 😉