Entrepreneur creates what he says is the first beer brewed from cannabis

(Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

last updated 23 July 2018

It took awhile to get right, but now, Dooma Wendschuh's beer brewed from cannabis no longer tastes like "rotten broccoli."

Wendschuh is an entrepreneur who moved to Ontario, Canada, from Miami in 2016, and is developing what he says is the world's first beer brewed from cannabis. He started Province Brands in order to ride the pot wave; on Oct. 17, Canada will legalize marijuana for recreational use, with edibles expected to follow next year. Most cannabis beer on the market was brewed from barley and infused with marijuana oil, he told The Guardian, but "that's not what we do. Our beer is brewed from the stalks, stem, and roots of the cannabis plant."

To get the beer to lose its broccoli taste, Wendschuh hired a chemist, and he has since come up with a concoction using hops, water, yeast, and cannabis, which yields a non-alcoholic, gluten-free beer that gets you high. "The flavor is dry, savory, less sweet than a typical beer flavor," he told The Guardian. "The beer hits you very quickly, which is not common for a marijuana edible." This beer is also environmentally friendly, since roots, stocks, and stems are typically tossed. "We take them off the grower's hands, saving them the cost of hiring a licensed disposal company to dispose of them," Wendschuh said.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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