Serious Seeds: Amsterdam Cup Winners From AK-47 to CBD-Chronic

Serious Seeds keep the catalogue small on purpose, and the same names have been turning up in Amsterdam coffeeshop jars for years. If you're picking your first pack off this shelf, the decision usually comes down to smell control, tent height and how long you're willing to wait. Here's how it splits up, plus one pack that isn't actually a Serious Seeds strain.

Three Xs on the logo, jars in Amsterdam

The three Xs of Amsterdam's flag sit in the Serious Seeds logo, and the breeder supplies that city's coffeeshops. That's a useful filter: these are strains that had to survive being sold by the gram to people who came back the following week and asked for the same thing. Our wider cannabis seeds shelves carry breeders with far longer strain lists; Serious Seeds went the other way and kept reworking the same handful of lines.

Cup wins that AK-47 and White Russian actually hold

AK-47 has taken 16 competition prizes, including second for best Sativa at the 1999 High Times Cannabis Cup, first at Highlife in Barcelona and first at the Treating Yourself Expo in Toronto in 2010. White Russian, AK-47 crossed with White Widow, is documented at 22 percent THC and won the 1996 Overall and the 1997 Best Bio Grass Cannabis Cups. Double Dutch (Warlock x Chronic) has three awards to its name, first place at the ICMag Grower's Cup among them.

Smell, height and patience: matching a pack to your space

AK-47 grows fast and easy and packs dense, crystal-covered nugs, but watch out for the smell in flower. Growers have been warning each other about that one for years, so budget for a carbon filter before you germinate. Motavation stays short and compact with a little stretch in bloom, which makes it the SOG and ScrOG pick, and it gives off a sweet, almost chemical smell. Double Dutch handles outdoor beds well and smells honey-sweet rather than sharp. Strawberry AKeil (AK-47 x Bubble Gum) smells like strawberry candy, finishes in 56 to 63 days indoors and gives 400 to 500 g/m2, while Serious Happiness (Warlock x AK-47) needs 60 to 70 days for a similar 400 to 500 g/m2.

The auto, the 1:1 pack, and the Killer Glue caveat

Autoflowering White Russian stays 70 to 90 cm and wraps up in around 70 to 75 days, so it's the fast lane. Be realistic about the trade: it yields per plant, roughly 10 to 20 grams, where the photoperiod White Russian gives up to 500 g/m2 if you can wait about three weeks longer. CBD-Chronic is the outlier, bred with CBD Crew and lab-tested at a 1:1 ratio, averaging 5.8 percent CBD and 5.4 percent THC across the samples, earthy with sweet undertones, 56 to 63 days flowering and 350 to 600 g/m2 indoors or out. Then there's Killer Glue. It sits on this shelf, but it's a Little Chief Collabs pack (AK-47 x Original Glue), not a Serious Seeds strain, so don't file it under the same breeder.

What growers tell us

AK-47 and White Russian are the two that come back as reorders most often, usually with a comment about the smell. First pack from this breeder? Take AK-47. Want the 1:1 spec instead, take CBD-Chronic.