The emergence of marijuana in liquid form shouldn't be surprising. Before its possession was criminalized in the 1930s, marijuana was commonly ingested via liquid tincture alcohol. Today, tinctures - sometimes made instead with glycerin - are increasingly popular in legal marijuana dispensaries.
Still, California marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal doubts that even as weed laws are relaxed nationwide, we'll ever see legal pot brew.
"It's not going to happen because commercialization would get into the realm of alcohol regulations," said Rosenthal, who in 1984 authored and self-published Marijuana Beer: How to Make Your Own Hi-Brew Beer.
Now out of print, a single copy costs more than $100 on Amazon.com. I asked Rosenthal if he would share some tips.
Most recipes, he said, make use of the leaves, not the more potent buds. More industrious homebrewers use kief, the resinous, THC-packed cannabis glands that can be painstakingly sifted from the plant.
The two biggest challenges, Rosenthal said, are off flavors and contamination. If the marijuana is added during the initial wort boil, its water-soluble tars and chlorophyll will be extracted, giving the beer a nasty, plantlike flavor. Added after the boil, it can introduce bacteria and sour the beer.
Rosenthal said the easiest solution is soaking the weed for a couple of hours in cold water, without stirring, to remove those foul-tasting ingredients. The marijuana (about one ounce per gallon) is then added during the initial wort boil.
What's it taste like?
Not long ago, I got my hands on a bottle of homebrewed hemp hooch. Purely in the spirit of journalistic curiosity, you understand.
Dark and murky, it looked like an unfiltered brown ale. It smelled like a resinous dry-hopped ale, but it tasted like a freshly cut lawn. I'd tell you more about it, but I seem to be experiencing a bout of short-term memory loss.
