“All the strains, except one, I hunted on the legacy market,” Anthony Germinario, owner of Brookside Reserve in New Jersey, said to the Leaf. “You go through a lot of seeds to find the good ones.”
Germinario continued describing the process of pheno hunting the Strain of the Month, Duct Tape.
“The Duct Tape was so random. It was a seed pack I bought three years ago, and none of them washed. But I dried one branch of one that looked nice, and I smoked it and was like ‘Damn, I like that,’ and kept it around,” Germinario shared. “Never flowered it out again until we got to the facility. I filled up eight beds of it. It was a big risk because I know it doesn’t wash. I’ve never dried this much flower. But luckily our flower dried really good.”
He had twelve lights going for the past three years as Connoisseur Grade Hash, and is now “doing the same thing here, just on a bigger scale.” “The same thing” being organic amendments and living-soil beds: a clean grow yielding resinous, terpy flower.
“People are really liking it and seeing we’re putting in the passion,” said Germinario. “Everyone on our crew is super passionate about Cannabis.”
The smell off of the Duct Tape jar is deceptively quiet for over 3% terpenes, but a squeeze of the bud reveals layers of lemon, pine and a verdant gasoline.
Most of the 3.5 grams comes from three big, beautifully trimmed nugs. The light-green flower is smothered in trichomes, with flecks of dark-green sugar leaf that sparkle against soft-orange hairs.
Duct Tape is dry to the touch but sticky when broken up, and it smells like a camping trip. When milled, the terps get much louder: the Subaru is running, the forest floor is dank and lemonade dances with notes of evergreen in the crisp air.
In the Storz & Bickel Volcano, this flower produces thick clouds with an earthy, lemon-pastry exhale.
Burned in a joint, the lemon-gasoline note dominates with a sour-pine exhale down to the filter. It’s a clean smoke, smooth on inhale.
The effect is stoney, but not stupefying. It’s a perfect paddling on the lake and gazing into the fire, kind of high. The ideal smoke for a good let’s sit on that rock over there in the sunshine sesh. It might make you feel like someone laid Duct Tape over your mouth and relieved you of the need to speak, so choose your company wisely and enjoy.
brooksidereserve.com | @brooksidereserve
This article was originally published in the May 2026 issue of Northeast Leaf.
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