American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
One South Florida brewery, won’t be throwing a planned 4/20 party today thanks to the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) who are proving themselves to be a major buzzkill when it comes to brewing beer using cannabis terpenes oil.
According to South Florida, the TTB is putting the kibosh on growing marijuana beer practices in general and on two breweries in particular, who’ve been selling craft beer infused with cannabis terpenes oil, an adjunct that the federal agency hasn’t approved.
Both Fort Lauderdale’s Invasive Species Brewing in and Devour Brewing in Boynton Beach, received ‘cease-and-desist’ letters from the TTB, potentially ending planned pot beer release events on 4/20 Day, an unofficial holiday that celebrates cannabis.
Cannabis terpenes are fragrant oils, extracted from marijuana plants, which give pot its signature stinky flavor and contributes to marijuana beers flavors and aromatics…
But those oils they don’t contain THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana, which actually produces the mood-enhancing high.
The oils also contain zero Cannabidiol (CBD) a non-psychoactive said to offer relief from pain, anxiety and depression.
So basically the only thing that gets you high in the beers banned in South Florida is alcohol…something that even non-alcoholic beers can have trace amounts of.
The TTB’s position is that any brewery using terpene oils in beer needs to test negative for controlled substances and be submitted for approval by the agency to ensure brewers aren’t spiking beers with illicit chemicals.
So it appears that at least for now there’s a hold on pot beer sales in South Florida.
But given the growing interest in beers brewed with terpene oil, we see the TTB’s actions as but an opening salvo in what threatens to become a war.
