A while ago a friend gifted me a Qi Pop from QiCo Pdx, a Portland based OMMP compliant company that specializes in creating beautiful artisan chocolates, sweets, and concentrates. Having already tried their sinfully delicious chocolate salted caramels, I was excited to see if the Qi Pop was just as good.

The Qi Pop I was given was their watermelon flavor, but the pops come in a variety of others. I was quite pleased with the taste and overall watermelon flavor, often times with certain candies I feel like some watermelon flavoring can taste fake. I was glad that wasn’t the case here. The watermelon flavoring isn’t overpowering and I feel it blended perfectly with the cannabis taste without masking it. The candy mixture for the Qi Pops are infused with pure cannabis oil and then poured into molds until they’re ready to be packaged. My Qi Pop tested out having 9.4 mg of THC and 14.8 mg of CBD. Since the Qi Pop was higher in CBD, this means that its effects will most likely be physical.

I emailed Qi Co to get more information on how they make their pops and how they get the flavor pairings right:

Our extract for the Qi Pops, caramels, and chocolates is a grain alcohol concentrate. We wash and agitate dry and cured cannabis in grain alcohol at sub zero temps for 96 hrs. We strain the pulp and carbon filter the resulting tincture, then reduce in glass until syrup consistency is achieved. We then reconstitute with grain alcohol, winterize for 24 hrs, carbon filter, and then reduce again to syrup consistency. The resulting syrup is the extract that we dose our confections with.

 

My hunch as to why the flavors meld so nicely is that the terpenes remain partially intact from the cold process of our extraction and the low temperature of our reduction. The natural flavorings that we use in our confections also have intact terpenes that blend and compliment the cannabis flavonoids, aromatic esters, and terpenes. An artisan approach is necessary to impart powerful and pleasing flavors, we aim to achieve that in every batch of cannabis that we grow and extract, as well as in every batch of confections we produce.

CBD is one of the key ingredients in cannabis and because of it’s non-psychoactive components, strains and products higher in CBD are often used by patients to treat pain, inflammation, seizures, anxiety and many other conditions without feeling the psychoactive effects that THC is known to cause. (Check out Medical Jane for an informative look into CBD and what it can do for patients.) The only CBD rich strain I’ve tried was Harlequin and at the time I wasn’t in any sort of pain so I don’t feel like I properly utilized it’s effects. That wasn’t the case with the Qi Pop, before eating it I was in an immense amount of pain in my right hip and lower back. Usually I smoke to help ease the pain, but on this particular day I needed more so after a few tokes decided I needed more! I work in an office and sometimes sit for long periods of times, when the pain in my hip is flared up it can be hard to sit there comfortably. The Qi Pop’s effects kicked in before I was done eating it and I was met with instant relaxation in my muscles, each one felt like they were a toasty little cinnamon bun happy to be pain free. I was able to go on with my workday and there was no pinching in my hip. My back felt nice and loose, this was something no other medible has been able to do without making me groggy afterward, thank you CBDs and thank you Qi Co Pdx! Qi Pops are great starter medibles for new patients who may be wary of overdoing it. Since they’re lower in THC and higher in CBD’s they won’t be hit as hard like with stronger medibles and they can rest knowing they’ll be anxiety free. If you’re a more experienced cannabis user and smoke or use topicals to ease pain or relax, these are great to have on hand when you need a little extra help, or if you want just a little bit of love. Have you tried Qi Pops?

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