GG4: a strain that exists because of a mistake

At a glance

Type

Balanced hybrid (as usually given)

Parent strains

Chem Sis × Sour Dubb × Chocolate Diesel

Where and when it appeared

the United States, the early 2010s (as usually given)

Credited to

GG Strains (Joesy Whales, Lone Watty)

Flowering

8–9 weeks indoors, in the range growers usually report (as usually given)

Terpenes usually reported

beta-caryophyllene, myrcene, limonene (as usually given)

Aroma

fuel, chemical sharpness, cocoa, roasted coffee, damp earth, pine needles

Aroma family

kush and fuel

How the character is usually described

noticeable weight in the body, comes on slowly, usually described as an evening profile

Competition results

High Times Cannabis Cup 2014 (Michigan), High Times Cannabis Cup 2014 (Los Angeles), High Times World Cup 2015 (Jamaica)

Also sold under

Original Glue, Gorilla Glue #4, Glue

Compare it against

OG Kush, Sour Diesel, Do-Si-Dos

The pollination nobody planned

A Chem Sis plant — the name is also written Chem's Sister — threw male flowers and pollinated a Sour Dubb female. The seeds should have been discarded; instead the growers behind GG Strains grew them out, liked what came up and crossed the survivor onward with Chocolate Diesel. The plant that came out of that second step is the one now sold under three or four names.

This matters for reading a menu because the lineage is one of the few on this list that comes from the people who made it rather than from a catalogue reconstructing a family tree after the fact. Where most old names carry a pedigree that is a best guess, this one carries a story with dates attached.

Chocolate Diesel is the parent that does the sensory work. It is where the roasted note under the solvent comes from, and it is the reason a genuine Glue nose reads as coffee and cocoa rather than as plain gas.

Why the name on the jar keeps changing

The adhesive manufacturer of the same name went to court in 2017. The settlement required the breeders to stop using the Gorilla Glue name and every piece of gorilla imagery by September 2018, which is why the same plant now appears as GG4, as Original Glue, or simply as Glue.

So three labels here are one cultivar, and a shop using the older wording is not necessarily selling something different. This is worth knowing precisely because the reverse trick is common: a name that everyone recognises gets attached to material that has nothing to do with it.

The original name was never about how the plant feels, either. It described trimming scissors gummed solid with resin at harvest — a working complaint that turned into branding, and then into a trademark problem.

What the nose gives away

The leading terpene reported for this plant is beta-caryophyllene, which is the peppery, clove-and-dry-wood side of the spectrum rather than the citrus one. Over it sits a solvent sharpness, and under both there is the roasted tail from the Chocolate Diesel side.

That three-layer structure is the check. Fuel with nothing beneath it is a fuel hybrid, and there are dozens of those; fuel with cocoa and coffee behind it is the thing this name was built on. If a jar smells only of solvent, the Chocolate Diesel half is not showing.

Growers usually report eight to nine weeks of bloom, with breeder-adjacent sources giving fifty-eight to sixty-three days. That is an ordinary schedule, which is part of why the plant spread so widely after its 2014 and 2015 competition results.

Placing it beside OG Kush and Sour Diesel

All three sit in the same aroma family, and a counter will often offer them as alternatives to one another. They are not interchangeable. OG Kush leads with lemon over its fuel; Sour Diesel is sharp and sour; GG4 is the heaviest and the most roasted of the three.

The character is described as slow to arrive and weighted in the body, which is why it turns up as an evening suggestion rather than a daytime one. That is how people describe it and not a promise about how any particular evening will go.

If you already know which of these three you prefer, you have a usable shorthand for any shelf in this city: ask for the roasted one, the sour one or the lemon one, and let whoever opened the jars this morning do the matching.

GG4: questions people actually ask