In a world where Nazis and the KKK walk freely on our streets with a friendly wink and nod from our unhinged president, we are happy to report some get-up-and-dance good news.
Well-known beer maker, Lagunitas, debuted their new brew, Supercritical, an IPA made with cannabis terpenes provided by CannaCraft, a California company that makes vape cartridges called AbsoluteXtracts.
As we know, small brewing companies have become just about as creative in naming their brews as weed producers. Which makes sense, points out the Washington Post, because cannabis and Humulus lupulus (AKA hops) are members of the same Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They both rely on terpenes to provide their essential flavors and aromas.
While breweries have attempted to imitate the flavors of marijuana in their beers, few that we know of have actually brewed with cannabis extracts.
“These are created using a combination of dozens of terpenes that we isolate and refine during cannabis extraction, and they are what give our strains their unique flavor and sensory profiles,” said Kial Long, the vice president of marketing for AbsoluteXtracts.
Long said a number of terpene blends were prepared “with the Lagunitas-style taste in mind,” and Lagunitas brewermaster Jeremy Marshall selected one that was a mix of the Blue Dream and Girl Scout Cookies weed strains.
Then, he picked six different kinds of hops to match and balance the flavors of the cannabis terpenes.
As part of the Lagunitas’s collaboration, the beer company joined forces with AbsoluteXtracts in the development of a line of vape cartridges, flavored with a mix of hop terpenes and cannabis oils.
“We really just wanted to pool our resources to see what we could create,” Long said.
Because Supercritical is made with only the terpenes that AbsoluteXtracts removes from cannabis plants, it doesn’t contain THC, so any pleasant buzz you might feel after a few beers is from the its 6.8 percent alcohol content.
The Washington Post described the beer as dank, with “grassy flavors, a decent amount of earthy hop bitterness and a noticeably sticky finish.”
Sounds delicious. We should still get up and dance. Weed is becoming normalized, and that’s what we all want.
