Thanks for the vote of confidence Joe! I've read a lot on foxtails, but the non-genetic reasons all seem to be related to heat/light stress, which this plant is def not suffering from, especially since it's happening on the bottom buds as well. It is a bit high in the RH dept for flowers at night (~70%) but there's nothing I can do about that for now except not put it under the CFLs. Tough trade-off.
Maybe the flush is fostering some new growth having cleaned out whatever issues might have been lurking in the soil. I'll let it go a few more days and keep an eye on it, but since I'm seeing more amber on the top cola, I may take that off this weekend and let the rest ripen a bit longer. And I will be flushing the other on the next watering to have clean soil to work from into final ripening.
It's definitely an adventure, this growing thing!