Marijuana Strain Review: Fat Albert at LoDo Wellness

Just like foodies and beer geeks, pot connoisseurs often compare notes on certain shops and strains that they come across. With hundreds of dispensaries in metro Denver, it helps us figure out which shops to watch for — and which ones to watch out for.

While I’ve received many suggestions about places to visit in the central, east and north ends of the city, I’ve gotten very few recommendations about spots downtown. Maybe my high, lazy friends don’t want to deal with the congestion, or maybe they’re scared that prices are too high in the most tourist-heavy part of town. So I had little intel to go on as I braved my way through the foot traffic on the 16th Street Mall to visit LoDo Wellness at 1617 Wazee Street.

There used to be a separate joint-rolling room at LoDo where customers could get purchases properly gift-wrapped, but my budtender told me that didn’t last long; the owner apparently likes to play around with the basement that houses the shop. What he should be playing around with is the bud room: Customers wait in single-file lines to sniff buds and make purchases. The DMV-style approach made everyone impatient, and everything took longer. Once I finally got to the front, I found that the prices were disappointingly high, with $20 grams and $60 eighths after tax, which pushed me toward the lone on-sale strain, Fat Albert. Smelling heavy and sweet like the cartoon character it was named after, the clearance flower cost me $24 for a half-eighth.
Fat Albert, a cross of indicas Albert Walker and Deep Chunk, is known for a potent high that drains energy and focus in a heartbeat. LoDo’s cut smelled like a spicy blend of chocolate and cherries, with a woody finish that was hard to pinpoint. The Bubba Kush-like scents combined with the frosty, purple-covered buds sent shivers down my spine, but in a good way: I knew this would knock me out faster than an Ambien ever could. Breaking up Albert got a little messy thanks to the buds’ dryness and mediocre trimming, but I have to give credit where it’s due: Each calyx that fell on my table looked like a green roly-poly covered in fuzzy trichome receptors. I knew a full joint wouldn’t be necessary.

Strong flavors of fruit and chocolate were accompanied by dominant earthy overtones, making the Bubba Kush comparison even more relevant. And, just as I’d anticipated, a half a joint put me on my ass within thirty minutes. No dinner. No TV. Just sleep. Definitely living on the far end of the indica family, Fat Albert from LoDo Wellness would be a great post-workout/post-traveling strain for quickly winding down — but don’t expect to do much beyond that.

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