Review: 3 thicc, luxury California cannabis joints of 2023

Reviewed by West Coast Weed Reviews

What a time to be alive and love weed. California nears 2,000 licensed stores and delivery services that will prepare and deliver the world’s finest, most potent, most flavorful joints ever rolled. We’re in this highly artisanal phase where expert aficionados individually roll top-shelf joints for customers. Sometimes they are called ‘handrolls’, noodle doinks, hash holes, or cannons. But what unites them is hand-crafted, fat-bodied, massively potent joints that only require a lighter and a sense of adventure.

Here are three thick, top-shelf California handrolls to shop for this year, reviewed by Southern California expert, West Coast Weed Reviews.

RS11xZnacks 3g Handroll

Preferred Gardens

Batch size: 200

Preferred Gardens has made a name for themselves as one of the premiere mixed-light greenhouse growers in California since their official founding in 2015. Their mission statement: “Provide high-quality medicinal grade cannabis to the recreational and medical consumer at an affordable price.”

In that same “for the people” spirit, Preferred Gardens decided to bring these incredibly unique, extremely limited, super-sized handrolls to market. Each joint weighs in at 3 grams of high-quality indoor flower wrapped in a king sized Elements paper, crutched with an elegant wooden tip, and carefully hand-crafted by a single individual (Michael Cabrera), which speaks to the reason why these beefy cannons are so scarce.

This sample was a mixed salad joint containing both the famed RS-11 and Znacks (Chauffeur x Runtz). Znacks ranks as a personal favorite of owner Dave Polley out of the 260 strains in their current library, all of which they’ve pheno-hunted from seed. The nose came through with a bold freshness powered by notes of mint and pine, while the flavor was a beautiful combination of candy sweetness, a touch of a Gelato-esque cream, and a lemony lilt on the backend. The effect will leave you semi-sedated physically, while relieving you of any anxious feelings you might have stored up from the work week, which helped achieve the perfect mindset to compliment a cannabis friendly stand up show during which this particular joint was consumed. Be forewarned, you’ll likely need reinforcements to take this beast down in a single sesh, but seasoned smokers looking for a challenge can definitely consider this the Everest of joints.

Production on the very first drop was super limited, they dropped it at four stores in Cali and one in Florida. They are trying to ramp things up so look out for new drops soon on a wider scale, but as it sits, it’s literally one guy rolling them all in California. They will always be fairly limited drops. 

Zkittlez 3.5g Handroll

Heady Heads

Heady Heads has made a splash in the recreational market, and with joints this big, you might need to bust out the rain poncho if you’re sitting too close. Utilizing a series of carefully chosen cultivation partners that they’re keeping close to the chest at this time, they are on a mission to bring a variety of high-quality, all-flower handrolls, hash holes, and even packs of dogwalkers to market at a fairly affordable price point (this pack ran $105 after discounts and tax).

One of those offerings is this 3-pack of 3.5g Zkittlez joints. When totaled by weight, these 3 all flower joints weigh an astounding 10.5gs per pack—a rarity in the recreational market to say the least. Each joint comes with a slickly branded wooden tip and is hand-rolled using a king-sized Elements paper. The December launch was huge with about 1,300 rolls being dropped at Greenwolf, Cookies Maywood, and Packs SGV, however the batch sizes will be limited to about 200-300 rolls going forward. 

The material from this sample was extremely clean, had a beautiful green coloring, and was free of any signs of unwanted debris. Upon smoking, the joint started out with some fairly light Zkittlez flavor but as it progressed, a prominent gassy must with a sharp lemony lilt developed and remained consistent throughout the rest of the smoke sesh. A joint from this pack managed to topple three seasoned smokers in a single sesh, so just know while you can attempt to navigate this adventure solo, you’ll likely need at least a second player to help you get all the way across the finish line. 

See also: Paletas premium blunts.

Randy Watzon #13 1g Hand Rolled Noodle Doink 

710 Labs

For the uninitiated, 710 Labs reigns as a veritable household name in the world of legalized cannabis, and if you live in one of the several states in which they operate there’s no doubt you’ve seen one of their products on the shelf.

The folks at 710 Labs have been using noodles to crutch their personal joints for a long while, and after an overwhelmingly positive response to the initial test batch, the decision was made to move forward with the “noodle doink” model for wide release. Each hand roll starts with smalls from the top colas which didn’t quite make the grade to be featured in a jar. Technicians take out any stems, add a rotini noodle crutch and roll it up in Element papers. They hand-tailored the doink to the appropriate size, roll it and sealit via a droplet of distilled water along the glue line. 

Randy Watzon #13 crosses Runtz x Wedding Crasher, delivering a power-packed punch. There’s a sharp lemon nose that straddles the line between candy and floor cleaner as it rounds out with a very astringent backend. The smoke presents a sweet lemon gas-like quality with a citrus zing coating the tongue after a few puffs. The effect comes on quickly and with an authoritative strength that will have you asking yourself “Do I even need to smoke the whole gram?.” Alertness and a sense of self-awareness remain intact, however, the mind has a tendency to wander if you don’t consciously wrangle yourself in.

So that’s three girthy, tasty handrolls to go grab a hold of in California. Start your order by clicking on over to Leafly pre-rolls, blunts, and joints and put the doinks in the basket. And share your favorite fatty in the comments below.