When it comes to edibles, one thing is clear: They are booming in popularity. Data company Headset is estimating this year’s expected sales to reach $3 billion, and while there are lots of reasons why – people don’t want to smoke, they need something discreet, et cetera – one of the biggest is because lots of people need help sleeping. And these days, it seems just about every edibles line has at least one sleep formula in its lineup.
Sometimes the formulas include melatonin, CBN, and other relaxing botanicals and compounds. CBN in particular is known as the “sleep cannabinoid,” though it’s more expensive to extract and needs to be present in higher doses to be effective. But studies have shown that just the presence of THC, ideally with CBD, at the right dose is significantly effective for sleep – possibly even more than CBN is.
So, it was with great – forgive the pun – delight that I heard Rose Los Angeles recently debuted a Deep Sleep version of their popular Delights edibles. I am, unabashedly, a total Rose fangirl. First of all, flower rosin is used instead of distillate or even live rosin, which allows them to skip the freeze-drying process, as well as a couple of other steps. It also means a lot of the plant material, including terpenes, flavonoids and other minor cannabinoids are preserved.
In this case, Rose used Holy Tonic flower from genetics developed by Biovortex. They coursed through 28 phenotypes, each of which had varied and illustrative terpene profiles, and combined 60 pounds of flower from the fall 2021 harvest into one Deep Sleep single-source rosin. The native ratio of THC:CBD in this rosin is 4:1, which matches other sleep formulas on the market, though none are entirely single-source or entirely flower-derived with all of the other plant matter intact. It’s an impressive, laborious feat.
What’s more, these edibles – which are basically Turkish Delights – are delicious. The Deep Sleep formula emulates others in using dark-hued berries for its flavoring, specifically incorporating mulberries grown by the Bay Area’s Frog Hollow Farm. Also included are the calming botanicals vanilla and passionflower – both from the same farm. As an added bonus, they’re also totally vegan, gluten-free, and made with non-GMO ingredients.
It’s kind of hard to rate edibles according to how well they make you sleep, but I have to say, not only do these work well for the task, the state of relaxation that hits before the sleep takes over is sublime. It’s like a mulberry-flavored blanket, just for me. I can’t think of anything better than that.
This article was originally published in the March 2022 issue of California Leaf.
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