While there are many ways you can enhance the taste and flavor of your weed, there are some things that you should avoid.

Sometimes, cannabis just doesn’t taste great.

Maybe you don’t have access to top shelf product, find it too expensive, or are trying to grow your own and still haven’t figured out how to improve taste and flavor. Or perhaps you’ve already got delicious bud but want to experiment with flavor enhancing tips and tricks. No matter what your reason is, there’s a handful of effective ways you can improve the flavor and taste of cannabis.

Making Your Pot Taste Better 

After cannabis has been harvested, there’s still a couple of things you can do to improve its taste. (You’ll need an air-tight glass jar such as a mason jar to carry out some of these tips.)

• Food-grade essential oils: If you want to try using essential oils, be sure that you are using only high-quality essential oils or food-grade essential oils that were made to be consumed by humans. Others are only meant to be diluted or applied topically. When it comes to flavor, look for lemon, peppermint, lavender, chamomile, eucalyptus, or orange.

With a quality essential oil, you can place a few drops on a cotton ball then stick it on the lid of the jar. Place your stalks in the jar and leave it there for a few hours, ensuring that the ball will not touch the flower at all. Check the jar occasionally for signs of condensation or moisture since this can cause the bud to rot, though it is best practice to also air the jar once in a while during this process to reduce the risk of mold.

• Food extracts: Convenience stores will usually already carry some type of food-grade extracts, which are a great and inexpensive way to make your weed taste better. Vanilla extract is one of the most popular and widely used extracts out there, though you can also try strawberry, rum, and almond extracts.

• Alcohol: If you have a favorite alcoholic beverage, perhaps a great-tasting whiskey or wine, you can also try to imitate its flavor in your bud. Soak up a cotton ball with your favorite drink and then stick it to the cover of a mason jar for a few hours.

• Fruit peels: For those who want to infuse pot with a taste of fruits or spices, the good news is that it’s so easy to do. Lemon, orange, or grapefruit rinds can lend a delicious flavor to cannabis when you smoke it, but it’s best to dehydrate the peels first. Doing so would reduce the risk for the growth of mold.

• Other dehydrated aromatics: There are a variety of other dried aromatics you can add to the jar, such as flower petals, dried spices including cloves, cinnamon, and rosemary. The best way to do this is to fill the loose material into an unused tea bag that has been emptied out of its contents. This way, the flavorings and the cannabis are separated.

• Flavored drops: If your favorite neighborhood dispensary sells flavored drops, go check them out. These drops were formulated specifically to add a great flavor and taste to cannabis when smoked. Just add a few drops either to the rolling paper or directly to the cannabis. There are so many delicious options out there including blueberry, chocolate, cinnamons sugar, and so much more. This is the easiest way to add flavor!

• Tea leaves: Tea lovers, rejoice! You can infuse cannabis with the flavor of your favorite teas. Make a tea joint by emptying out a tea bag and putting some of them into your joint or bowl. Tea leaves are a fantastic flavoring alternative since the tea leaves are usually uniformly cut, so it will burn at around the same time your weed does.

However, keep in mind when experimenting with flavorings on cannabis that various strains will have a different absorption rate for these enhancers. We recommend experimenting with small amounts first until the outcomes are more predictable and easier for you.

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What To Avoid

While there are many ways you can enhance the taste and flavor of your cannabis, there are some things that you should avoid, such as using sugary ingredients. Sugar is not an ideal companion for anything smokeable including pot. So stay away from flavorings that have a lot of it. Not only does it smell bad, but sugar burns extremely easily. Other sugary ingredients to avoid include molasses, soda, maple syrup, and honey.

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Additionally, avoid leaving your newly flavored cannabis exposed to open air for long periods of time. These new aromas can easily fade, and if you won’t be consuming them all after the process has bene done, keep the bud in an air tight jar.

Other Ways To Improve The Taste Of Cannabis

If you are growing your own marijuana, be sure to slowly dry the buds. When cannabis is dried too quickly, this can contribute to a sharp, unpleasant taste and smell.

Cannabis taste usually improves from being exposed to consistent temperatures. It will always do well in temperatures of around 70F when it’s being dried but in any case, they shouldn’t go beyond 60F to 75F. These temperatures will prevent terpene burn off, while slightly higher temperatures protect from mold growth. This is why most cannabis growers ensure that the temperatures are always at 70F while drying cannabis.

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Also, remember that you should avoid touching your plant at all during the growth process, or even when you are storing it. When you touch your cannabis bud, it will compromise its trichomes content, which are also responsible for storing the terpenes that give it the aroma, among other important functions.

Check out this article to learn more about how to grow cannabis by influencing its terpene production.

This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and has been reposted with permission.