It’s pretty hard to come across nearly any kind of product that doesn’t have a hemp or cannabis element to it yet. Soap, clothing and textiles, foods and desserts, beauty products of all kinds, medicines, TV shows—even weddings are getting all sorts of danked up. Now, one of the more recent in a long line of offerings incorporating pot into their production is beer.
Due to red tape, government restrictions, misinformation and antiquated laws, it has been challenging to get beer a ticket to the toker’s ball. Mixing weed and alcohol can give some people the spins, and it definitely makes the federal government spin its wheels on how to keep the two apart. Like a barrier between forlorn lovers, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TBB) just won’t let the two substances unite. For example, in May, Massachusetts shuttered Down The Road Beer Co’s attempt to be the first in the state to brew a beer containing CBD.
Many beer companies get around the fact that beer and marijuana aren’t allowed to commingle in the same beverage by making a proprietary formula that includes certain parts of the hemp plant that their state does allow to be used in brewing. This may include seeds or oils, or in certain cases, such as Hemperor’s HPA, or “Hemp Pale Ale”, hemp hearts, which were approved for use in beer-making in the 2014 Farm Bill. Despite that, Hemperor HPA was banned by the state of Kansas.
Because hemp and hops have similar odors, companies have also found ways to play upon our senses using the natural skunky stink of hops and perhaps a bit of olfactory sleight of hand to make beers that smell like weed without using any actual cannabis. Other brewers,