test the males guessing u mean dry up some flowers and burn a bowl see how he smokes ? This is totally new to me so sorry for the dumb question
no, i mean test breed each of your males to a single female or several clones to see what each actually produces and select the one that makes the best offspring. it adds an entire 2 generations worth of work before you even start breeding, but that's how the elite breeders do it... they select and breed and keep repeating it with as many individuals to start with as possible. there would be a noticeable difference between plants bred with the best male & females in a pack and the worst, especially if a strain has wider pheno variation.
the more time and effort you put into selecting for the best parents at every stage in a breeding program, the better your final results will be.
if you're just playing around trying to make strains up with new combinations of traits from a couple favorites, i don't think selection is quite as important as some seem fanatical about. if you start with the best strains from the beginning, then pheno variation shouldn't be a bummer as whatever parents a top strain had each were awesome in their own rights. my C99 male shorty and the super cali haze freebie i knocked up with it turned out great. it was every good as all of the generic fruity hazes in my grow and maybe even a little better (but none of them were 12 week+ auto hazes like SCH) but not as good as sweet haze.
both of it's parents were from good strains and maybe hybrid vigor gave the cross a little extra sumethin' sumethin' that was starting to fade in stabilized strains. once you stabilize a strain, it will tend to wane like a clone mother or clones of clones. eventually genes get tired and introducing fresh genes perks them back up. that's why you see breeders polluting their own strains with different genetics after a few years sometimes.
some here hate strains that aren't stable and predictable where sloppy hybrid vigor works for me and pheno variation gives you more variety to pick and chose from.
all i know is i liked fruity booty
i imagine there was a little pride bias testing it because it didn't suck and at least held it's own. i think it was a little denser & stickier than a few strains objectively, but sweet haze was the stickiest and fruitiest plant in the entire grow. that one will make something really nice i'm positive because the mother was very awesome