Cannabis-infused beverages are among the industry’s hottest trends. The consumer packaged goods sector is seeing steady growth in both legal U.S. states and Canada, which only allowed sales of the drinks beginning in 2020.

Companies like Keef, Cann, and Wync are making nonalcoholic sodas, tonics, and seltzers that will get you high — typically infused with low doses of cannabis. 

Meanwhile, traditional distilleries — like Breckenridge Distillery in Colorado — are being acquired by Canadian cannabis giants. These corporations likely see a legal future in the U.S. that will allow them to manufacture liquor-free and cannabis-infused versions of popular spirits. 

At Breckenridge, the founder told Denver Business Journal that he’s already experimenting with making alcohol-free “liquor.” He said the next step, when cannabis is legal nationally, will likely be replacing that alcohol with cannabis.

How to Make Your Own 

And then there are the bootleg mixologists creating their homemade concoctions. Most U.S. states will not permit the coexistence of a liquor license and a license to sell cannabis in the same establishment. With similar rules in Canada, you’ll not likely find a craft cannabis cocktail at a restaurant or bar nearby soon.

Some scientific evidence indicates combining alcohol and cannabis at the same time can magnify the effects of one or the other or both. Most governments aren’t itching to be the first in the nation to allow people to consume both in one public setting.

Still, mixologists, like the famed chef and author Warren Bobrow, are experimenting and walking aspiring cannabis cocktail creators through the process. 

According to the food-focused website The Spruce Eats, Bobrow, who’s earned the enviable nickname “The Cocktail Whisperer,” offers the following advice in his book:

• Be safe and kick things off with nonalcoholic drinks spiked with low-dose cannabis-infused products like syrups or tinctures. 
• Use recipes from solid sources, like Bobrow’s book. And don’t go rogue. Follow the recipes to a T. Once you know how they will affect you, begin experimenting.
• Consume in a safe place that doesn’t require driving.
• Be patient: The effects of consuming cannabis through eating or drinking can take longer to experience. Big-name manufacturers like Cann and Keef are figuring out how to make fast-acting THC-infused beverages. You likely don’t have the time, team, or resources to do that yourself. So be safe and go slow.

But, Should You?

Remember that it’s not as simple as grinding up some flower and throwing it in your drink. Not only would that be inedible, but it would also be ineffective. Cannabis has to be heated to activate the cannabinoids you want in your drink — like THC and CBD.

Companies like Ripple, Sprinkle, and Ebb are making increasingly tasteless and odorless powders with relatively fast activation times. Think 15 minutes. And concentrated additives like tinctures have been around for years.

The bottom line is that you could make your own activated (“decarboxylated”) cannabis at home. But it will stink up the whole house or apartment building (and risk getting evicted in most cases — read your lease). Or you can visit your local dispensary for the active ingredient to perfect your house-made cocktail.

And take it easy, will you? Weed and booze aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

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The canna-brew market is heating up, with more and more drink makers considering entering the legal marijuana market. Lifestyle Global Brands is a legacy alcohol business launching a cannabinoid-infused beverage line, coming first to California (other legal states, stay tuned!). With a multitude of brands, Lifestyle Global has manufacturing and distribution agreements for some of its brands with Coca-Cola Amatil  and owns manufacturing, distilling, and beer facilities in Sydney Australia and Los Angeles, California – and is on pace to quickly become a leader in the infused-beverage category.

CFN Media spoke with Lifestyle Global Brands CEO Raj Beri at the recent Cannabis Drinks Expo in San Francisco to learn more about the company’s incredible success, their latest product line and their go-to market strategy.

CFN:  How did you come to decide to enter the cannabis space?

Raj Beri:  I moved to the US three years ago to set up our sales and marketing office for our alcohol company, and at the same time saw significant opportunity to get involved in the cannabis industry, and started a new subsidiary that is focused on creating new CBD and THC-infused products. 

We’re in the midst of our current capital raise and in 4 weeks or less we’ll be going public on the Canadian exchange, but the development of cannabis happened while it’s a sole industry here and saw that there was consumer demand for products. 

Raj Beri, CEO of Lifestyle Global Brands

If you look at the top largest investments in cannabis to date, they have all been by beverage alcohol companies coming into cannabis and investing and making large investments there, so I feel that beverage will be one of the largest product categories after flower/smokeables.

CFN:  What sets you apart from potential competitors in this space?

RB:  What sets us apart firstly is the fact that we’ve been doing this for 10 years. We’ve scaled brands, we’ve launched them in multiple countries, we’ve partnered with the likes of Coca-Cola Amatil, and we really have a strong innovation hub.

Our brands and products have been created with a lot of proprietary technology, and knowhow. We know how to market to the right consumer audience for the right occasion for the right beverage, and we’re bringing that 10 years of experience in the alcohol industry with a proven track record into the beverage cannabis industry now.

CFN:  Tell us about your raise and go-to market plans?

RB:  We just hired our chief revenue officer, our chief marketing officer and we are really building a team around the cannabis division. The recent raise is for our go-public round. We’ve almost completed that now and we’ll be a public listed company on the Canadian Securities Exchange in the next probably four weeks. 

But the go-to-market strategy is developing the right team and people with the right product mix, and we’ll be launching a cannabis division with revenues this month.

CFN:  Why should potential investors look into Lifestyle Global Brands?

RB:  What makes us attractive is that there’s a team of people in the company who have a proven track record in beverages. We’ve just appointed a new director on our board, Mr. Smoke Wallin. Smoke’s also led a number of exits in beverage alcohol. He’s joined our board as well. And the team, we’re driven, we’re passionate, we have great new innovations and we’ll soon be launching with aggressive revenues. 

We run the business very lean as well. As of 2018, on a consolidated basis, we were revenue and EBITDA positive, which really sets apart. In 2020, we’re forecasting some large revenue streams and profitability as well. 

CFN:  What’s on deck for the next 18 months for the company?

RB:  The first product we’re launching is Life Brew. Life Brew is, for lack of a better term, a cannabis or hemp-infused beer style product with low dose of THC in one version and a mid-dose of CBD in another version. 

This product has a fast onset through technology that has been proven through human clinical studies, as we are quite proud of this technology that we have access to, and Life Brew will be launching next month with essentially a new beer style product offering for the masses. Consumers are already used to beer with an IPA version, then a dark ale in the next few months. 

CFN:  What else should our readers know about Lifestyle Global Brands?

RB:  The last 10 years, our company’s made successful exits. We operate under world-class quality assurance and quality control standards. 

We are bringing safe brands and products to the market with a proven track record of how to manufacture them well and then how to market them to the right consumer audience.

About Rachelle Gordon

Rachelle Gordon is a Minneapolis-based writer. Find her online at www.rachellegordon.net.

Drinks infused with marijuana-derived compounds could swell to become a $600 million market in the U.S. within the next four years, outpacing the growth of other categories of retail cannabis products, according to analysts at Canaccord Genuity.

Beverages with CBD or THC ingredients could grow to capture about 20 percent of the U.S. market for edible pot products by 2022, up from 6 percent of edibles sold now, Canaccord’s Bobby Burleson wrote in a note. It’s an opportunity mainstream beer and soda makers are eager to take part in — Corona-parent Constellation Brands Inc. became the largest stakeholder in Canadian pot cultivator Canopy Growth Corp. earlier this year, while Molson Coors Canada formed a joint venture with Hexo Corp. Also, Coca-Cola Co. said it’s exploring the idea.

“Interest has spiked from the beer industry on mounting evidence of a substitution relationship between cannabis and alcohol, while large soda companies increasingly view CBD as a natural fit within their strategically important wellness offerings,” Burleson wrote.

Canaccord sees the demand for beverages featuring CBD, or cannabidiol, the non-psychoactive compound in marijuana, reaching $260 million by 2022, up from the “negligible revenue” the limited number of drinks contributes now, while THC-based drinks could reach $340 million, up from $106 million expected this year.

Yet others are more cautious on the opportunity. Data from Colorado and Oregon show legal recreational marijuana use hasn’t cut into beer consumption, and the use of pot in Colorado has stayed close to the national average, Susquehanna’s Pablo Zuanic wrote Thursday.