Sour Stomper is the first Mephisto variety whereby someone else had a hand in the project, and we've been delighted with the results at every stage since. So first and foremost we have to give credit to GBD @Autoflower Network for having the foresight, skill and taste in quality genetics to get this project underway. He made the F1 cross using a Sour Crack female and Grape Stomper OG male, so here's a word from the man himself: "Sour Stomper began with a trip to Denver, Colorado to celebrate the legalization of recreational cannabis use on January 1, 2014. After spending two weeks sampling almost one hundred strains there was a clear standout: Grape Stomper. The grape flavours she emits are other-worldly, almost too good to be true! I had been disappointed by grape strains in the past, but after two tokes of her greasy, grapey, sweet, mouth coating smoke, accompanied by an instantaneous rush of full-body relief, I knew she was something special. This began the quest to find Grape Stomper genetics and introduce them into the already unbelievably good autoflower genetics created by Mitch and Tim. The search was damn near impossible, taking correspondence relay races, waiting lists, and some asking extra nicely to finally acquire the beans. If anyone goes on a successful quest for them today my hat is definitely off to you! Once in hand they were immediately germinated, vegged, cloned and flowered. All of the females were absolute crystal queens, but they all left something to be desired in the way of grapey goodness, however, one of the males was a different story. The scent from his tacky stems transported me right back to the flavours of the original Grape Stomper, with a little something extra, slightly offensive in the mix. He was selected to pollinate a super sweet Sour Crack that had strong grape undertones and was caked in resin. From there the offspring were handed off to Mitch and Tim to work their magic on, and to translate the best qualities of Grape Stomper into autoflower format. After seeing the Sour Stomper F3 grown out first hand in Spain last year I can safely say the quest was a complete success." On receiving the F1 seeds from GBD, we set about our usual process for F1 runs, starting 30-40 plants, narrowing down to a selection of 9 females. During the F1s we witnessed some of the most complete, thickest trichome coverage we've had the pleasure of seeing, out of anything, automatic or photoperiod, ever. We selected two pollination candidates, a thick Sour Crack dominant lady; big, thick, fingered leaves, fantastic resin, with an added injection of a sweet grape scent. The second, a Grape Stomper OG dominant lady with nice branching and more elongated colas. She had thinner leaflets, a positively intoxicating smell and again covered in whiteness. The F1 grow was in winter 2014 and the plants quickly turned a deep exotic velvet purple to black with the cooler temperatures. Generally, we like to steer away from the plants at F1 that favour the auto parentage, but with this variety and the other Artisanals so far, the already high-quality building blocks used to donate the auto trait is making this decision trickier, but we opted to go with the Grape Stomper leaning parent. Actually, in hindsight, I don't think we could have gone far wrong with any of the selections from this cross at F1. The foliage of these F1 females were so triched out, it almost felt like sacrilege to trim them. At F2, we witnessed a more compact version of the F1s, but a larger version of the Sour Crack, one of our strains we've grown and played with relentlessly over the years.

It's getting harder to rate the frostiness of these new projects, but Sour Stomper is definitely very high up there and can only be described by a potentially invented word 'frostiliscious'. Sour Stomper has actually been the hardest strain to photograph and showcase as its covering of whiteness against its purple hues is difficult to capture and definitely best seen first hand. She starts off growing squat and looking very indica, however when she begins flowering she can really stretch - quadrupling in height throwing out branches and her OG heritage sure makes itself known. From early to mid-flower a sweet red grape smell is evident, this develops throughout flowering becoming more intense and complex with a more raw meatier edge coming through as the flowers build. The flower to plant ratio is extremely high, meaning although the outright size of the plants isn't large, this is a small-medium sized variety, the yield is impressive. There isn't a big swing in the phenotypes Sour Stomper puts out; we found two thirds will display colouration under cooler temps, but the flower structures and aromas are very similar throughout. She is a delight to trim and manicure and is an ideal candidate for extraction work. Performs very well in an autoflower sea-of-green configuration. We pollinated just two candidates to make Sour Stomper F4s, one we've labelled simply as 'the delicious pheno' the other is branded 'whiter than white'.