Dutch Pie, A Old Favorite’s Tough Guy Big Brother

When it comes to cannabis, I have some prejudices that I struggle with in regards to cultivar lineages, and while there are so many strains available that it’s not as though I can’t find something I want to smoke – far from it – as a professional in the industry I worry that I am underselling or at least underrepresenting whole branches of the cannabis family tree.

I’ll come clean and level with you all: I don’t typically enjoy strains with names or lineages containing “meat,” “breath,” “burger,” “animal,” “apple,” “cheese,” or “piss,” to name those that I can think of specifically. That’s not to say that there are no strains I enjoy with those names or lineages, it’s just that either the majority haven’t been particularly appealing, or that more than one strain with that characteristic had a really uncomfortable high, and so I am simply being careful.

There are also some of which I am always skeptical as they have a real 50/50 track record when it comes to me enjoying them, like “grape” and “glue,” which I know sounds insane, given the sheer number of popular strains with those in the names alone, but given how many strains I’ve smoked and cataloged for myself, I see trends that are hard to ignore, and I’m really pretty ambivalent about grape and glue strains. Some absolutely slap, and others have fallen flat for me.

But there’s a whole broader collection of strains that I don’t dislike, but that are so far-reaching and so prevalent that I’m inclined to overlook them simply because there are just so many of these types. When looking over lists of strains in almost any context, my brain is simultaneously trying to decode and classify anything with a known quality (strain name/lineage, cultivator, terpene profile), while looking for something new and intriguing. It’s not often that I come across a strain for which I have any information about its genotype or phenotype and yet I can’t confidently predict its possible effects. That’s not meant to be a brag so much as just a reminder that a lot of this can be really formulaic if you have the exposure.

Regardless, these broader collections of strains that I often overlook are strains with baked goods names: cake, pie, cookies, fritter, muffin, and so forth. At this point you may be thinking “Dude, you don’t like meat, breath, burger, animal, apple, cheese, piss, grape, glue, cake, pie, cookies, fritter, or muffin? That covers a lot of strains. So what do you like?” And you’d be right, that does cover a lot of strains, and a lot of really good strains, like Meath Breath, Han Solo Burger, Animal Mints, Apple Fritter, Critical Cheese, Cat Piss, Grape Kush, GG4 (Gorilla Glue), Divorce Cake, Wedding Pie, Girl Scout Cookies, or Blueberry Muffin (to cover all the noted types above). Well, some of them I do like, and admittedly there are some that I do not. And there are some that I may like the flavor and not think much of the high (Apple Fritter), or I may like the high but not the flavor (Critical Cheese).

Here I am rambling again, as promised in so many of my reviews. What is my point here? Why am I telling you all about my cannabis prejudices? Well, at the shop where I budtend, we recently picked up a new strain from a favorite grower, and I caught myself immediately inclined to pass over trying this new strain, and for no better reason than that it had “pie” in the name. Luckily I caught myself quickly on this one, partly because of the other half of the name (Dutch), partly because of the cultivator (The King’s Stache), and partly because I’m trying to get better about this whole thing I’m writing about right now.

“Dutch” caught me because of a strain from Divine Buds that we used to have called Dutch Treat, an offspring of Northern Lights (itself an Afghani and Thai strain) and Haze (a strain whose own history is somewhat unclear, but widely considered to be a pure sativa strain, created using some combination of pure landrace strains). I love Dutch Treat. We only carried pre-rolls and vape carts with it, but if I get the flower I’ll certainly be reviewing it.

So I gave Dutch Pie another look, and I was happy to find that yes, the Dutch comes from Dutch Treat, and that the pie comes from Cherry Pie, perhaps my favorite Pie strain, and the offspring of Granddaddy Purple and Durban Poison (another landrace strain). If we keep going, GDP is the child of Big Bud – which is a cross of Afghani (a landrace), Northern Lights (which we’ve already discussed), and Skunk (bred from Acapulco Gold, Colombian Gold, and Afghani) – and Purple Urkle (unknown, but likely a Pakistani or Afghani landrace).

While there are some unknowns in the total lineage of Dutch Pie, I like that it has some very clean and direct lines through well-known and well-documented (for the most part) strains, and that you can see the influence of the landrace strains in its background, specifically a lot of Afghani, some Thai through Northern Lights on both sides, and a mix of Central American, with that one South African Durban Poison in there for good measure. See below for a chart of the lineage. This reminded me very much of decoding Princess Magic Girl (which I’ve written about here) and who also has a cherry strain as a parent, in that case it’s Cherry Punch.

Speaking of Princess Magic Girl, looking at Dutch Pie this closely, I was suspecting that this high might be like the PMG anti-anxiety high that I enjoy so much, just ratcheted up to a more traditional head high: calm and relaxed, centered, but with more of a euphoria. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

As for Dutch Pie itself, to say that I wasn’t disappointed is starting to feel cliché, as I don’t really feel the need to put this much energy into reviewing strains I didn’t enjoy, but it continues to be true. I can’t speak for every jar out there, but the eighth I brought home was comprised exclusively of five almost identical nugs. I almost took the time to take fully staged pictures of all of them, but then I remembered this meme, and decided to stop at one:

The nugs themselves were the classic raindrop shape, sporting a wide range of greens from bright to dark. Of note, the orange pistils weren’t just abundant and large, but the individual hairs themselves were crazy long and the clusters were all tangled up in each other. To the touch, the bud was dry and firm, easy to handle and break apart, but it wasn’t crumbly or over-cured at all.

Regular readers will know by now that I relish the aroma above basically everything else. Even an ugly bud can be redeemed by an enticing aroma. Dutch Pie smells wonderful. It has all the components of an unbaked, spiced fruit pie, but without so much of the fruit. It has a sweet, cinnamon aroma, with an undertone of dough and herbs. Lurking in the wings – and it took me a minute to suss it out and disaggregate it from the rest – there’s a faint current of coffee, not unlike my description of Strawberry Grapefruit Banana.

The smoke was amazing. It was incredibly smooth and light, with a medium body and little lung-feel. The flavor was light as well, keeping the sweet cinnamon tones from the aroma, but bringing in a musky apple flavor. What little bitterness existed from the smoke itself was soon gone, leaving a surprisingly clean mouthfeel after each hit, like a minty strain, but of course without the mint itself.

The high was basically as expected: calming and centering, but uplifting and lightly euphoric. While it’s not explicitly a high for starting your day (if you’ve things to do), it didn’t hinder my productivity when I did smoke it early in the morning. This is a good smoke for when you’re feeling like you need a little pick-me-up if you’re just not feeling 100% yourself, or you just need to get out of your own way so you can be productive, but you don’t need a highly energetic, laser-focus kind of high. It was a decently creative and thoughtful kind of high, good for either doing menial tasks while listening to a serious and deep podcast or audiobook, or relaxing while stretching those creative muscles for a project that’s a little stressful but doesn’t specifically call for a rapid pace, like doing some reorganizing in a cluttered basement, attic, or garage.

On the whole, Dutch Pie is another triumph by The King’s Stache, and given that so many of their best strains are less than subtle (SuperBoof, Heady Tropper, Funk Mountain, etc), it’s nice having a strain from them that’s fills a gap that I hadn’t necessarily been looking for, but am very glad to have found.