All this B-List talk of banana hammocks, beaching and barbecue had us thinking about getting blazed.
Smoking is an experience; besides the obvious recreational qualities, you smoke for the experience of smoking. Grind, pack, roll, lick and seal. When you twist up a fatty, there’s a ritual to the process and that’s part of the appeal.
So why the hell would you choose to use a standard (boring) Zig-Zag when so many better options exist? A simple trip to the local head shop reveals the wide assortment of flavors you can have in your mouth while enjoying the best of bud.
None of these are technically blunt papers, more like baby blunt papers. But in this economy, who can afford to smoke a real-size blunt, anyway? Ballers, shot callers, the sort of dudes who’d put 20 blades on their Impalas. Not regular working class folks like ourselves — so, we improvised, judging these novelty papers based on ease of roll, aroma, sturdiness, appearance, taste, tokeage (how well does it hit?), and blaze time (did we have to re-light?).
Wait, what were we talking about again?
So we blazed all three back to back; a tough job but someone had to do it, right? Don’t worry, we took copious amounts of notes.
Let’s begin with the lowest-scoring paper of the group —and unfortunately, we’re talking about Juicy Jay’s bacon-flavored papers, which were printed with cute little cartoon pigs and had a salty odor upon first sniff.
“Burning the little pigs to death while I smoke is harshing my buzz,” one smoker commented.
If you like a briny aftertaste in the back of your throat and a mysteriously fatty flavor on your lips, the bacon papers might be for you. Everyone else, steer clear (please note the livestock pun) — the papers taste less like bacon and more like old ham steak, and nothing about that bodes well for the beautiful herbal blend packed up inside. In fact, the papers actually ruined the smoke. Also, we wondered, is this kosher? Is there a kosher substitute?
“Abort mission! Abort mission!” someone shouted, so we cut our losses and put it out after one puff each. The taste continues to haunt us.
Bambu’s banana-flavored papers came to us all the way from Spain and seem to be made from rice or hemp, their color a darker but still translucent yellow.
“It smells like banana Laffy Taffy,” someone said.
“I feel like I’m on the Kong ride at Universal Studios,” someone else offered.
Not overloaded with nanner piquancy, these papers seemed to do the trick. Aside from an issue keeping it lit, we burn it until it reaches roach-dom. Success!
For dessert, we turned to Brown Sugar’s Chocolate Mint tobacco papers.
The domestically produced papers smell like Hershey’s chocolate kisses and have a blunt-like consistency and color. They’re produced from tobacco like a standard blunt wrap but are smaller, making for a tighter and more durable roll. The taste is creamy like chocolate but the minty component is missing. It’s an okay paper, though, because it stays lit and pulls nicely, making for a fine sweet treat, a baby blunt of sorts, providing the perfect end to our three-paper taste test.
