The unique smell and taste of the Exodus Cheese cutting has always intrigued me, and I have been growing and breeding with it for about two years now. I first tasted this unusual strain in my travels to the UK. Later I was able to pick up a cutting from a good friend nicknamed Obsoul33t, an old-school grower and collector of fine genetics. Jill loves the flavor and my patients really compliment its ability to manage day time pain.
I had used the cutting to create our own version of Cheese using our Space Queen to add potency, resin and an undertone of cherry flavor. I am still blown away by the way this plant smells and tastes, but like many strains the thrill quickly wore off for me and these days I don’t medicate with it that often.
I really like mixing the Exodus Cheese with Purple Urkle in a joint or a bowl. The musty, pungent taste of the Cheese mixes really well with the grape and lavender flavors of the Urkle. Using TGA’s Querkle male, the father of Qleaner, Deep Purple and Qrazy Train, I pollinated the Cheese female and produced a small load of test seeds.
I started 8 seeds total and they all germinated, but I didn’t like the way one plant lagged behind so I tossed it away. I transplanted the remaining seven into two-gallon square pots to take up as little floor space as possible. These pots are high maintenance–you have to water the plants almost every day–but until I sex them it helps conserve room. I let the plants remain in veg until day 45, when the males began to form tiny stamens. I got four males and three females which was cool with me.
I transplanted them into five-gallon pots and placed them in the rear of the main flower room, which is climate-controlled and uses CO2 to increase the rate of growth. The plants were grown in even layers of super soil and Roots potting soil, and fed only water until day 30 of flowering.
The plants gave me no problems and like most plants from seed were very vigorous and fast growing. Overall the plants looked pretty uniform but one was slightly mutated, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. I have had some amazing mutated plants produce cannabis of devastating potency with unusual tastes and smells; but usually yield suffers, or the plant may stress easily and grow male parts, the other danger of a mutant. So I will watch the third, different plant and if I don’t like the bud growth I may toss her. Floor space is critical here and if I don’t like what I see I have a plant to put in her place.
I could not remove the plants for almost a solid month in order to take proper photos so we will advance forward here 4 weeks. As I suspected, the mutant just got more and more weird leaf growth and I had to make the call to remove her and make room for something else. This worked out really well for me though, as I prefer to have only two plants wide and as always I am only looking for that one keeper female. One plant, called Shaggy, is Urkle-dominant but I can also smell cherries and grapes in a big way. It actually smells like a grape cheese Danish pastry. The other plant, tagged Wilma, is more Cheese-influenced and looks to have a higher calyx to leaf ratio at this point.
By week seven of flowering the plants had really packed on some weight and the smells had intensified. The Shaggy female smelled now like Sour Grape gum, the kind with the hard candy outside and the white gum inside.
I harvested Shaggy at 58 days and Wilma at 61 days. Both plants were allowed to sit in the dark room for three days. Trimming these plants was pretty easy and only took a few hours to complete each one. Both yielded right at 3 ounces. Even the lower buds were hard and dense and those buds that hung below the were pot responsible for about 1 ounce of that yield. I was extremely happy with the results: while both plants are very similar they each have their own character and I have not decided which I like better yet. Once all the bud was dry and the stems crisp, I place all the bud in jars and allowed it to cure for two weeks.
Smoke Report
First we sampled Wilma, the Urkle-dominant Cheese Quake female. The buds were very hard, very nicely structured and had a classic cheese-like smell. We also picked up hints of a fruity, sour smell; it’s very hard to actually put a name on it. I find cheeses the same way–while we call it “Cheese” it doesn’t actually smell like cheese, it’s just extremely pungent and funky and no other strain smells like it. Until now, with the creation of Cheese Quake.
We used a clean 14-inch beaker bong made by Sleek Designs, freshly cleaned and packed with ice. The first hit was very smooth, but forceful and potent. You could tell right away that it’s industrial strength medicine. I felt the first hit in the back of my head, then immediately onto the top of my head, followed by a very strong, creeping high. The second hit was even sweeter now that my lungs had woken up slightly, and I tasted something slightly spicy along with the funky and sour notes. MzJill started coughing on the second hit and it’s rare to hear her cough from a bong hit. Our faces and heads were now tingling, or at least stimulated in some way. While chopping up bowl number three the first two hits continued to come on very strong.
The taste, whatever it is, is amazing and the patients already dig this new strain. Both of the females are special in their own way as far as flavor is concerned. Shaggy has a more grapey, musty taste, but both of the females have the same euphoric head high combined with a body stone. I can’t wait to have this strain tested at the lab as both MzJill and myself get really high after smoking it to the point of impairment and that’s unusual for us. It’s easy to smoke and has a nice flavor but the high is much stronger than you would expect and I think Cheese Quake gets me higher, with more pain relief, that either of its parents.
Over the last two weeks we have shared our Cheese Quake buds with all of our friends who hold cards, and even a few strangers who are legal in our area, and its unanimous: Cheese Quake is a big hit! The samples have dried and cured into a really complex bouquet and while Shaggy still smells like the Cheese mom, it also has a fruity floral taste as well that people can’t help but mention when they smoke her.
The standout by far though is Wilma, the Urkle dominant variation. It wraps the tongue in its flavors, causing you to focus your thoughts on figuring out what the tastes are by taking hit after hit and making pleasure sounds as you do. Before you are able to nail down all the flavors of Cherry, Grape, Cheese, Dank and others you find yourself higher than expected, with a big ‘ole grin on your face. It’s fun to smoke and it really does the job. Pain relief without making a patient sleepy is a big plus and this strain seems to be quite strong in effect without the accompanying drowsiness of many potent Indicas. The THC and CBD profiles seem to be very evenly distributed. MzJill says this is her new favorite and requests it now more than any other strain we medicate with. It will be hard to put some aside so we can have it tested; it tastes that good.
If you get the chance I highly recommend sampling this bud or growing some in your medical garden, you won’t be disappointed.
Originally Published in Weed World Magazine Issue 89
