How we grade
Most dispensaries call everything “premium AAAA” and hope you don’t look closely. We score every batch by hand on four things, publish the numbers whatever they say, and lab-test the lot. Here’s exactly how that works — so you can judge the scores instead of trusting them.
The four scores
Every flower batch we stock gets hand-graded on these four, each out of 10. They’re judged on the actual lot in front of us — not the strain’s reputation, not the grower’s sell sheet.
Nug size
How big and well-formed the buds in the batch actually are.
Pure bag appeal — it says nothing about how it smokes. It's why popcorn scores low here and still smokes beautifully.
Nose
How loud the batch smells the moment the bag opens.
A loud nose means the terpenes survived the dry and cure. It's the single best predictor of flavour.
Trichomes
Frost coverage — how thickly the resin glands sit on the flower.
Trichomes carry the cannabinoids and terpenes. Heavy frost usually tracks with potency, but we score what we see, not what the lab says.
Stickiness
How the flower breaks down between your fingers.
A proxy for cure and moisture. Too dry crumbles to dust; too wet is a mould risk. We want tacky, not soaking.
A real batch, scored
Not a hypothetical. Here’s an actual lot on the shelf right now — Zombie Kush — exactly as the team graded it:
- Nug size7/10
- Nose9/10
- Trichomes7/10
- Stickiness8/10
These are the same numbers on the product page — pulled live, not a marketing mock-up. Every flower page carries its own set, and the comparison tool puts them side by side.
Where the letter grade fits
The four scores are the detail; the letter grade is the summary. AA is honest everyday value, AAA is the strong daily driver, AAAA is top-shelf, and AAAA+ — our Craft Weed shelf is the small-batch ceiling. A tier that trips people up is popcorn: it scores low on nug size by definition, because it’s the smaller buds left behind at trim — same plant, same cure, same lab results. Low bag appeal is not low quality, and grading it honestly is the whole point.
Lab testing
Every product we sell is third-party lab-tested before it reaches the page, and the potency we publish comes from those results — not from our own eyes. The hand-grades and the lab work answer different questions: the lab tells you what’s in it, the grades tell you what it’s like to actually open the bag.
The part most sites leave out
We sell what we grade. These are our own products, not an independent review — so we publish the scores either way, including the unflattering ones.
That’s the honest frame. A review site that doesn’t sell anything can claim neutrality; we can’t, so we don’t. What we can offer is a method that’s the same for every batch and published whatever it produces — you can hold the flower up against the numbers and tell us if we got it wrong. See the scores in action in the strain comparison tool, or on any flower product page.
Methodology: frequently asked questions
How does Dank Weed grade its cannabis?+
Every flower batch we stock is hand-graded in-house on four axes — nug size, nose, trichomes and stickiness — each scored 1–10, and every batch is third-party lab-tested. The scores are published on the product page and in the strain comparison tool, whatever they come out to.
Are these independent, unbiased reviews?+
No, and we won't pretend otherwise — we sell the flower we grade, so we're not a neutral referee. What we offer instead is a transparent method: the same four scores on every batch, published in full, including the mediocre ones. You can check our scores against the lab results and against what shows up at your door.
What do the AA, AAA, AAAA and AAAA+ grades mean?+
It's the Canadian quality shorthand. AA is solid everyday value, AAA is a strong mid-to-high daily driver, AAAA (quads) is top-shelf, and AAAA+ is the rare exhibition-grade ceiling — which we front as Craft Weed. The letter grade is the summary; the four scores are the detail behind it.
Why does a batch's score change between drops of the same strain?+
Because we grade the batch, not the name. The same strain grown or cured differently will score differently, so a strain you loved last month can land a different score this month. That's the point of grading every lot rather than trusting the label.
Who does the grading?+
Our hands-on team inspects every lot as it comes in. Katie, our editorial lead, sits in on grading and quality control and writes up what the team finds, so the notes on the site come from the same people handling the flower.