QHA-Review_August_Digital

FOCUS
IN TERMS OF THIS FAMILY TREE, HOPS AND CANNABIS COULD BE BEST DESCRIBED
AS COUSINS, AS BOTH SHARE A KEY INGREDIENT CALLED TERPENES AND
TERPENOIDS, WHICH ARE NATURALLY OCCURRING PLANT COMPOUNDS.
a batch of beer and a harvest of hemp result from
these terpenes and terpenoids. This is why they share
a strongly similar aroma and flavour.
Science classifications aside, it is interesting to note
how the flavour profile and aroma of beers like IPAs,
which generally contain more hops than a standard
lager for instance, are nowadays described in the
same fashion as cannabis. Words such as dank, juicy
and earthy are often used to describe beers with a
high hop concentration as well as types of ‘grass’
you might purchase from a cannabis retailer in parts
of the world where the sale of marijuana is now legal.
Are the purveyors of such brews trying to appeal to a
certain audience?
If you wished to venture further down this wormhole
of exploring the link between hops and cannabis,
you would note the remarkable coincidence that the
very US and Canadian surf and snowboarding towns
where marijuana use was, and is relatively widespread
in those communities, is also the very place where
there has been a subsequent explosion of craft
breweries. Could it be that those crafty craft brewers
knew they already had an established audience of
converts to appeal to? To coin a new phrase, we
could say it appears, where there is smoke, there is
craft beer.
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