Episode 97

You Know THC and CBD. Meet the Cannabinoid Behind the Next Big Buzz.

Hosted by:
  • Melissa Traverse
    Melissa Traverse
    Director of Community • BevNET

THC and CBD fueled the early growth of the cannabis beverage world, but today an expanding palette of cannabinoids is giving formulators license to design experiences that build a feeling and create distinct mood states. Cannabis brand FABRIC’s Tom Eddleston, Magic Cactus founder Jonny Locarni and SōRSE Technology’s Michael Flemmens explore how minor cannabinoids and other emerging compounds are reshaping flavor, feel and functionality, discussing the science behind emulsions, stability and sourcing while sharing real-world lessons from building next-generation drinks. Find out how minor cannabinoids shape mood, how formulation choices influence flavor and effect, and how evolving regulations are driving the next wave of innovation.

Guests

Jonny Locarni

Founder Magic Cactus

There is no bio available for this guest.

Thomas Eddleston

Founder & CEO FABRIC

There is no bio available for this guest.

Michael Flemmens

EVP of Research and Technical Business SoRSE Technology

There is no bio available for this guest.

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Episode Transcript

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies and spelling errors.

Hello, and thanks for joining.

I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, and I am pleased to welcome you to the Nombase Podcast.

Don't forget to check out nombase.com, BevNET's platform built for the CPG community.

It's where you can find episodes of this podcast and so much more.

THC and CBD are well known and widely used in the cannabis space, but there's a wave of other cannabinoids making their way into cannabis food and beverages that promise new effects, new consumer experiences, and new challenges for brands.

Joining us on the brand side are Tom Eddleston of Fabric and Jonny Locarni of Magic Cactus, two founders building products around these emerging compounds, and Michael Flemmens of SōRSE Technology, who brings a product development and innovation perspective on how cannabinoids function in food and beverage formulations.

Together, we'll dig into what these cannabinoids do, what consumers think they do, and how brands are marketing them.

Plus, the sourcing and supply chain hurdles, regulatory realities, distribution strategies, and investor expectations shaping these functional ingredients.

Well, I am so thrilled to welcome you all to The Nombase Podcast.

Tom, Jonny, and Michael, thank you so much for joining us.

We are going to start off with some brand introductions.

Jonny, please tell us about Magic Cactus.

As you well know, Magic Cactus is one of BevNET's favorite cannabis beverages.

It's a low-dose beverage with a sparkling cactus water base.

Tell us all about it, please.

Magic Cactus launched end of 2023.

It was really born out of one simple focus, which was to sort of capture what we love about both alcohol and cannabis, but more importantly, drop what we hate about each one.

So, alcohol being the obvious, we're all familiar with the ritualistic social aspect, that first drink buzz, the reason why so many wind down with alcohol, but it's also no secret that the hangovers, the calories and the long-term toxicity are there too.

So, what I think we focused on more than that even was what we don't like about cannabis.

We like the natural non-toxic buzz as an alternative, but didn't like the unpredictability, unapproachability and the intimidating kind of products that were out there at the time, which led to sort of paranoid effects or anxiety or just a very non-social effect.

So, we tried to sort of take both worlds and combine those into an approachable, sustainable product that can live alongside any drinking environment or any alcohol environment and kind of provide that optionality.

Tom, I'd love to hear a little bit more about Fabric.

Fabric is a cannabis-infused beverage that differentiates its skews based on mood state, something that we're seeing so much more of in functional beverage overall.

How long have you been at it and why did you start Fabric?

Yeah, we're a new market entrant.

We've been on the market now for six weeks, so it is very new.

I started and I hit the ground running on Jan 1 of this year, myself and two co-founders.

And yeah, it's been a sprint.

I was previously in the corporate world.

I spent 10 years in real estate, private equity and corporate burnout.

I was just extremely disenfranchised by the whole corporate experience and so wanted to do something that I was more passionate about and with something that we could infuse a mission into.

So Fabric is a mission-driven brand.

We have 2% of all revenue goes to mental health.

We incorporate it as a public benefit corporation.

And yeah, we've got some interesting activations coming up with philanthropic partners.

And yeah, to your point, Melissa, we have built around moods.

And so our three skews on the market at the moment, clarity and non-infused products, rhythm, which is a 1.5-milligram THC-infused product, and then downtime, a 10-milligram product.

Michael, thank you so much for joining us from SōRSE Technology.

I'm counting on you to get into some of the weeds and the science of cannabis.

Please tell us a little bit about what you do over at SōRSE Technology.

Sure.

Yeah.

SōRSE Technology is first and foremost an emulsion provider.

So we take challenging ingredients, in this case, cannabis, constituent components that are presented as oils and are challenging to drag into an aqueous environment.

So we can emulsify any number of cannabinoids.

Some are a little more challenging than the others.

But then we also do a tremendous amount of other functional beverages, other functional ingredients that play nicely with cannabis or sometimes in addition to the cannabis.

So you look at nootropics or adaptogens, mushrooms are huge right now.

But then also some additional compounds that some people are just becoming aware of as functional ingredients and those things present is the turbeins that are present in a good number of products and cannabis essentially.

First I'd love to hear from you, Jonny and Tom.

Why did you decide to move beyond just the THC and CBD that I think so many of us are familiar with and have been familiarized with over the past few years and include CBG in your formulations?

Was that based on consumer demand?

Is it based on what you were seeing in the marketplace?

How did you decide on your formulations?

Tom, why don't we hear from you first since you're so fresh in the marketplace?

Sure.

I'll focus on our low dose product, which contains 1.5 milligrams of THC.

There's 25 milligrams of CBD and 5 milligrams of CBG in that product.

Noticing in this one, it's heavily skewed towards the CBD.

The reason there is largely compliance.

I'm in Colorado and in Colorado, when hemp beverage started to really gain popularity, the dispensary lobby lobbied to cap it at its knees as it represented quite a threat to the industry.

One of the concessions that they made was that there is a 1.75-milligram dosage cap and there's a 15-to-1 CBD to THC requirement in Colorado at the moment.

Because of the cogs and the low-dose cap, that's meant that it's really deterred a lot of brands from playing in this space, which we saw as a huge opportunity.

When you look at other states, there is Minnesota, everyone uses it as the benchmark, 300-odd brands in that market, there is five actively selling in Colorado.

We saw it as a huge opportunity to play in that low-dose space, and we really wanted to create a beverage that was beer-adjacent, something that was sessionable and light, zero calories, zero sugar.

That was our original focus.

With the CBD requirements, I think CBD has a bit of a stigma surrounding being a sedative and a sleepy time cannabinoid.

CBG actually gave us the ability to offset that effect.

I think it's better as a modulator, I think of the THC effect.

But regardless, we thought that the inclusion of CBG would help uplift the product, give it a more energizing feel, and then also offset that consumer perception that CBD might be something that's going to put them to sleep rather than keep them out and active and energized.

To me, the THC and CBD are things that are commonly well-known.

How did you know about CBG and how did you decide to put that into your formulation and when in the process?

Was that just from the very beginning that you knew that's what you wanted to do?

Yeah, I think so.

Coming into this, we'd spent a lot of time really studying the effects of various cannabinoids and the interaction of those.

Even I mentioned the hop base of our product, pairing hops and hemp was something that was very intentional as well.

They both share the same compounds or terpenes.

Instead of really masking the flavor of the earthiness of the cannabinoids, we decided to combine that with hops, which really helps add a complexity to the flavor profile.

That meant that we didn't have to mask it with sugar as many other brands have to do.

Similarly, really targeting the occasion, we were thinking about when is someone likely to drink this product.

Being so low dose and sessionable, it's something that lends itself to a daytime occasion.

We wanted to ensure that the way that the consumer felt and the perception of the product was that it was squarely for that daytime occasion.

As I mentioned, we also have a 10-milligram product, which is appropriately named Downtime, which contains a very different mix of cannabinoids.

But CBG, we had really spent time studying and understanding that it had a lot of interesting properties.

You'll hear people refer to it as the caffeine cannabinoid.

It's uplifting and without the jitters.

I'm actually sipping our functional product right now, which contains no THC but just 10 milligrams of CBG.

There's also really interesting research going into the antidepressants qualities of CBG as well.

It's one that I think we're going to see incorporated into a lot more beverages going forward.

I think a lot more research and time spent studying those effects.

Were there other cannabinoids that you considered putting in your formulation or was this it?

This was really it for us.

I think broad spectrum CBD is really interesting too, where you get, as is said there, a full broad spectrum of these minor cannabinoids, which can really enhance the experience.

The problem, as I'm sure Michael can speak to, is that with stability and especially in a state like Colorado, where the tolerance levels in low dose have to be quite precise, we look to isolates instead.

So we use THC, CBD and CBG isolates to try and create that effect in lieu of something like a full spectrum or broad spectrum emulsion.

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Jonny, I would love to hear from you and Magic Cactus as well.

When you launched Magic Cactus, I think we had heard even so much less about minor cannabinoids.

How did you decide to include CBG in your formulation?

Was that because people are asking for it?

Did you just have special knowledge because you had been in the cannabis space?

How did you decide to include the minor cannabinoids in Magic Cactus?

Tom had hit the nail on the head on a lot of his points as far as the sleepiness and fatigue.

I think that was the main driver of obsessing over the cannabinoid formula was we didn't have the privilege, and so I'm jealous of you Tom, of knowing any state's regulations or what they're going to do.

So we had no guidelines as far as compliance.

When we actually came out of the gate, when we launched, it was THCV, not CBG.

So it was the same number of milligrams, but instead of four milligrams of CBG, it was four milligrams of THCV.

When we launched, I knew more about THCV than I did about CBG.

The fatigue aspect, and I'll get back to the reason we switched, but the fatigue aspect is a big reason that I thought THC couldn't be a stand-in for alcohol environments, like if you're at a dinner party or a barbecue, a couple THC drinks, I'm going home, sitting on the couch and not talking to anybody.

So it's a really long, probably over thought out formulation process of like, do we do caffeine?

And we avoided caffeine because this stress-reducing, anxiety-free product suddenly has caffeine that changes the whole point.

For a lot of people, a lot of people are very sensitive to caffeine.

Not me, I'm probably going to have my third cup of coffee soon, but like that causes a lot of anxiety for people.

So we wanted to avoid that wired jittery effect.

And also sort of like when you think about the wind down ritual, having caffeine at 9 p.m.

doesn't make a ton of sense.

So we wanted to offset it with something that wasn't a stimulant, but added a little bit of uplift.

And THCV was perfect until the sort of regulatory conversations developed and people started throwing THCV into this sort of synthetic bucket.

Because that's kind of how, that's the theme of what's, you know, it's all state by state and you kind of just follow the conversations on the federal level, but there's no real movement.

And the federal level is what sort of scared us away is, you know, I think their main thing is cracking down on synthetic products, which is completely, completely makes sense.

And instead of drilling down on each product and brand and seeing how, you know, checking if cannabinoids were naturally derived, they're just saying, hey, most Delta-8 is synthetic, so that's a synthetic cannabinoid.

Most THCV is synthetic, so that's a synthetic cannabinoid.

And it would have been tough to guarantee that it was never going to be synthetic at scale, so it does make sense.

And so we had to switch to CPG, which is, I think, the everyday customer walks with the product, you can't tell the difference.

But yeah, that was our cannabinoid journey.

The fatigue aspect drove that, and then regulatory drove us to change, to kind of iterate that.

So hopefully no more changes, but that's how we landed on CPG.

All right, Michael, can you break down for us, walk us through, you know, what's synthetic, walk us through the isolates, can you break down the science of the different cannabinoids that we've been talking about and what you're seeing come across your desk?

Like all of these compounds that we're discussing here today are naturally occurring in the plant.

Like the challenge for the industry as a whole is that they are not present in sufficient quantities in the plant to really be a commercially viable stream of input materials.

So there's some very intelligent folks that have figured out, hey, I can take this CBD, which is in abundance inside the extract that I'm collecting, and do some conversions to Jonny's early report.

THCV is really popular, has been popular for a while.

It's almost predominantly all synthetic if it's in the marketplace, because it's simply just not available in concentration sufficient to meet demand.

The CBG, you can see there are cultivars now that brands are doing the genetic research so they can produce plants that have higher concentrations of the specific compounds that we're looking for.

We have to be, as an industry, thinking of trying to anticipate what the regulations are going to come from the federal government.

We already have regulations from the state, but there is thought that the feds are going to trunk the state-by-state regulation to some degree, so that giving up the today, their synthetic compounds is probably the best course of action for a lot of brands until the time that we can get some naturally occurring compounds because that the D8, D10 discussion has been long, long been slapped against the head of most regulators and they still don't understand what it is they're talking about.

They've just been told it's bad.

And when we talk about D8 and D10, you're talking about the fact that those are synthetically derived mostly?

Again, the plant does contain some constituent components of D8 and D10.

It is a natural product that occurs.

But again, it does not occur in sufficient quantities to be a commercially viable product.

So again, we figured out how to convert CBD into these intoxicating products.

And I think that's the biggest slap against D8 and D10 where there's not as much knee-jerk about the synthetic minors because they don't intoxicate people.

But the D8 and the D10 does.

So you do get effects from CBG.

It's a great euphoric miner that's added.

It's probably one of my favorites.

We look at the history of cannabis consumption.

We predominantly have bread plants that fall into two buckets.

You got Sativa and Indica.

There are different experiences associated with Sativa and Indica.

But when we go down to this extract route, now we're just singling in on a single compound.

So we're starting off with emulsifying D10.

Well, D10 is omnipresent in Sativa and Indica.

The difference between Sativa and Indica is not driven by the D9.

It's driven by the terpenes and the abundance of miners and the concentrations of miners that are in there.

So what the beverage category is now starting to do is create a Sativa-like beverage or an Indica-like beverage, or a hybrid between the two.

That's great because there is a market to be reached of people that perhaps currently smoke or previously smoked and have that experience.

If you're used to a full spectrum product where if you're inhaling cannabis, if you're smoking a joint, you're getting all the stuff.

Now you come back to a beverage and if it's just D9, that experience from the beverage versus a smoking or even an edible, to that matter, is pretty different.

So it's really great to see these brands developing products that are really like, you may not be the intent, it may be the intent is I want to build this beverage, so I do have a nighttime version and a microdose version.

But what really is an industry driving to, we're coming back to sativa, the indica, and the beverages.

It sounds like it's almost like you're painting with more colors by adding more of the cannabinoids into these formulations.

The other thing that we have to remember is that all of these cannabinoids hit our endocannabinoid system.

There's only so many receptors in the body.

Then if you give it a monotone stream, it's a fairly flat experience.

As most people reported, it's just a singular flat experience.

But now you introduce these miners and some terpenes, and Tom's products, you're getting these beautiful terpenes from the hot products, which also have functionality.

And now the experience is now not a monotone, black or white experience.

It's more of a kaleidoscope of colors.

Then you get a much more rounded, much more spirited experience with these combination of products.

And the miners are helping generate that really much better experience for the consumer.

Tom, how do the terpenes from the hops interact with the terpenes in the cannabis in Fabric's product?

Scientific answer.

I think Michael is probably a better place to explain there.

But I mean, really, there's a harmony between the two, given that they derive from the same kind of plant.

They both share the same compounds and terpenes.

And so from a flavor perspective, as I kind of alluded to earlier, it just means that we don't have to try and hide that earthiness and dank flavor that people often associate with cannabinoids.

And instead, it kind of enhances the flavor and the flavor profile and complexity.

So there is research to suggest that different terpenes have a relaxing effect, and that much to Michael's point about the other, the entourage effect of these minor cannabinoids, that's also, we can play with terpenes to create a similar effect there too.

And I'm sure we'll touch on, but in some of Jonny's products, he's using conventional functional ingredients like L-theanine as well.

So I think it's really cool seeing how we can curate these different moods and cater to the occasion.

And Michael, one thing I would love to hear your explanation of, a common question we get at tastings is, having a fairly well-versed consumer base here in Colorado is, is your product sativa or indica?

And a lot of the time that's their benchmark for how is it going to make me feel?

And is it going to be uplifting or is it going to put me in the couch?

And so each time we have to go through, kind of stumble over an explanation to say that as an isolate, this isn't sativa or indica, but the way that we've curated the miners is, in our case, more of a hybrid.

And so they've become a short answer, hybrid, a long answer that I'm not sure most actually understand the science.

They just want to know at a fundamental level, how's this going to make me feel?

It turns into a thesis, basically trying to describe, to distill down what Tom and Jon are doing to answer that question.

But the best answer I've ever given people is that we're not trying to create a sativa or indica, we're trying to emulate the experience with the sativa or indica.

So you're never going to be perfect.

It's never going to be 100 percent match.

If someone has been a 50-year consumer of smoking marijuana, the G9 beverage market is still not found the perfect replacement for them.

But I don't think this is intended to find the perfect replacement for them.

You're finding something that's sort of kissing cousins.

So for the folks that get confused, I always bring it back to alcohol, right?

It's the thing that most people understand and it's like, are we talking about having a double shot of a neat bourbon?

Are we talking about an apparel spritz?

Are we talking a white-claw?

They all have different experiences, but yet they all contain the same ethanol molecule.

So, you can have like, before Faux Logo got pulled from the shelves, that was a really interesting ride of, you know, but it's kissing cousins to a Red Bull vodka.

Like, I want to stay awake so I can enjoy the party, but I'm also getting a little alcohol so I can increase my social stance or reduce my social anxiety.

So, these products are really well-intended and well-defined, and it's great to see companies like these going out and curating an experience.

That's what we're really, as an industry, we're trying to do.

In some cases, you are looking for a microdose to reduce anxiety.

Then, hey, maybe like a milligram and a half is the perfect amount at the United to settle the nerves, but now I'm worried about staying awake, so now I want the CPG to help keep me on my toes while I'm reducing anxiety.

So, these are fantastic products, but we have to get people away from thinking about them as marijuana products.

They're not marijuana products.

Like a Red Bull or a Monster is not, that's a curated product.

There's a lot of stuff going on in there for a lot of effects, and that's what we're trying to do.

But the beautiful part is we're trying to do it with natural materials from a plant.

Like there's not a lot of hearts in the chemistry we're not introducing things that are incredibly toxic.

So it's a really holistic approach to giving people a performance product or a curated experience product.

And Michael, what are the minor cannabinoids that you're seeing come across your desk?

Jonny was talking about moving from THCV to CBG.

What are you seeing over there at SōRSE?

We see a kaleidoscope of minors when something comes up or there's some new studies that shows some therapeutic effect of these minors, then people instantly gravitate, want to try them and build averages.

And in some cases, it's a point of differentiation.

In some cases, it's trying to produce this desired outcome effect.

But it sort of ebbs and flows because there might be the hot new minor and people gravitate to it, and now the natural source of it exhausted, and now you have to transition into a synthetic route.

And then people are less likely to want to take that synthetic route.

In some cases, in some cases not, which is, you know, the brand's choice is fine.

CPG is definitely the hot, probably the hottest one out there.

And I think the brands that are carrying some component of having at least a beverage with that particular minor in are doing the best in the marketplace.

And then this is not an area where the consumers are exceptionally savvy about knowing what those three letters mean.

This is a direct result of having the consumer have a very positive experience with the products that they consume.

And it's that experience that good time they've had, the good things that have worked out, then now they go looking for CPG.

They still don't know why they're looking for it.

They still don't know what it does exactly.

They just know that when they've consumed it, it's worked and they've had a great time.

So, and as people are gravitating to CPG now, then you see more brands adding CPG.

So that's sort of the hot pony right now, but it's a really nice corollary, sort of ancillary product to GHC, then it really enhances the effects of CPG.

So those are great.

I mean, THC-V comes and goes, THC-A.

CBN has had a little bit of its time in the sun, but I think CBN becomes tricky because we're trying to promote a specific feeling and we may not be delivering an efficacious dose to get that feeling.

Like I've seen products with one milligram of CBN.

I'm not sure that that's going to move the needle for a lot of people.

CBN is supposed to make you sleepy, is that right?

Well, in the world where we can't make health claims, we say it promotes restfulness.

Jonny, I saw you nodding your head over there.

What do consumers understand about minor cannabinoids like CBG?

Do they know anything about them?

Are you explaining it to them?

How do you market something like this?

In the grand scheme of things, they don't know anything about the cannabinoids.

I think we all get so guilty of being in this industry that we just assume that everyone knows what's going on.

And so, you know, I mean, there's people that are walking into Total Wine, this is feedback from Total Wine saying that they don't even understand how THC milligrams work.

So let alone someone walking in saying, hey, what CBG products do you have?

It's just, it's non-existent right now.

And so we try to be cognizant of that constantly.

Because we have a lot going on the back end of the product.

There's Felfini and Magnesium and Cactus Water.

That's already, Cactus Water is already confusing.

And then the cannabinoid ratio is its own thing.

And so we try to just, and I liked that Michael brought up the energy category.

So I think it's similar to that.

We try to just communicate the Felt experience, not overwhelm with acronyms.

And like energy, like Michael said, there's 30 different ingredients in these drinks.

Most people aren't like walking into a convenience store being like, do you have L-Carnitine drink?

You know, they're just like, I just want an energy drink.

And so I think it's similar to that right now.

I do think, you know, thinking 24, 36 months ahead, there is a world where people are more aware and that starts to become more relevant.

But right now, we're just trying to avoid the overwhelm so that people are just like, I don't get it.

I don't want it.

Don't get it.

Right now, I think it's just based on like, if you look at like our reviews, they're on our website, for example, like people are, there's no one saying like, been looking for a CBG product.

It's like, I love this effect.

I don't, you know, they don't know why.

They just love the effect.

So I think that kind of sums it up the best.

It's like, someone likes a Celsius energy drink better than a Monster.

They're not naming the ingredients of why.

They just, they just like it.

You know, I almost wonder whether consumers are more familiar with L-theanine and magnesium, two other functional ingredients that you have in your beverage versus the cannabinoids.

How did you decide to use the L-theanine and magnesium, which are also functional ingredients in addition to the cannabinoids that of course have functional benefits?

Yeah.

I mean, we read a medical paper about L-theanine when we were formulating that basically clinically proved that it was a true antagonist to the anxious effects that come with THC.

And so, when we tried that, it was an, I think L-theanine was probably the most noticeable incremental added ingredient, like the difference in effect.

You know, CBG probably a close second, but like the same side formula without L-theanine is a different effect than with L-theanine, and you can kind of feel that sort of more clearheadedness and calmness, not that kind of heart race when the THC has its onset time.

And so, we were super pumped about that.

And to be honest, we put magnesium in the drink, not knowing it was going to be cool.

Now, magnesium is kind of having its moments, we're saying it more, but magnesium and potassium were just, again, this obsessive approach to fight the fatigue.

Another sort of thing in our research was that, you know, similar to alcohol, THC has a tendency to deplete some key electrolytes in the body, which are mainly salt, potassium, and magnesium.

And so, the cactus water is very rich in that, and then we add it even more, so we could feel the difference to kind of add that back, so you're not kind of sitting there like the groggy mind, like I said earlier, blocked to the couch effect.

Obsessively trying to avoid that, which is hard.

It's hard with THC, and naturally, it's going to calm you down and relax you.

So, we just tried to find a combination of, and took a psychotic approach of combining ingredients until we got it right.

If there aren't enough challenges in the cannabis space, certainly, I'm sure supply chain presents some issues here.

Are there any particular supply chain issues for sourcing minor cannabinoids?

I don't know what the supply chain issues are for THC alone, but I would guess that it's even harder to source things like CBG, considering where the industry is.

Tom, so far, how has it been for you six weeks in?

Any issues sourcing the CBG?

Is it harder than the THC or CBD?

No, short answer.

I think that we've been very fortunate to kind of step into this industry at a time where there is a lot of amazing, like, emulsion and isolate providers, and it seems like the technology is only improving, and the extraction is becoming more efficient, the testing protocols are improving out of sight.

Then what's been really important for us too, is the whole chain of custody, understanding where the hemp is grown, where it's been shipped to, has it been tested along the way, and is it compliance, because the rules and regs around this product, I mean, it has to be under 0.3% THC by dry weights, and so that alone presents a challenge in growing the product.

And so we need to, I think, best practice is being really methodical and being very focused on that chain of custody, ensuring full-panel COAs, that there's no pesticides or anything else present.

And I think looking at the household names in the emulsion space, obviously Michael SōRSE being one of them, has made our life pretty easy.

And CBG is one of the more abundant miners in hemp, and so it's actually quite cost-effective, and we haven't had any supply chain issues yet, fingers crossed.

That's right, Jonny, how about you?

Is it the same deal for you?

Yeah, no major supply chain issues.

I think if we would have stuck with THCV longer, that would have been a huge challenge.

And we're also, I mean, both Tom and I, for the most part, I know Tom has more of a variety of products, but being low dose, we can take it pretty far before the orders of THC are a real burden.

And so there's supply chain issues on other ingredients and other ends of the product, but we haven't run anything with hemp, fortunately.

Michael, what do you see for stability issues and R&D challenges with these cannabinoids?

Is it the same as THC?

Are there any differences?

People seem to want to throw them into the same bucket.

I would say for a decent slug of them, they do sort of behave the same, but there are some inherent challenges with some of the miners.

The one we, you know, Jonny was previously using THCV.

That bugger does not want to remain in oil.

If you give it, if you look at it sideways and give it time, it will want to go into a crystalline state, which is not really fun to deal with.

So the stability of some of the miners is better than some of the others.

So that comes into that, but that poses challenges for the formulators as these brands are playing around with combinations of different miners.

Like you may have a bad actor in there where like, oh, I could get nine to 12 months of stability out of these specific molecules, but this one's going to give me a shelf life of six months.

That's not a very well understood phenomenon inside.

Even the space that SōRSE plays in and we've evolved along with a number of the other great companies that are out there, that's still not a well represented or presented fact that these aren't necessarily all the same size Legos.

You may have to make some adjustments.

There are strategies you can do to mitigate some of the challenges associated with miners, but that adds some additional complexity and sometimes some additional sensory that maybe is not wanted.

I mean, the industry has come up with strategies, but there are inherent instability issues that are different between different cannabinoids.

Well, this has been a really interesting conversation.

Thank you all so much for joining us on the Nombase Podcast.

It's been a pleasure diving into this issue and learning a little bit more about the minor cannabinoids, Tom Eddleston of Fabric, Jonny Locarni of Magic Cactus, and Michael Flemmens of SōRSE Technology.

Thank you so much for joining me on the Nombase Podcast and for everybody else out there listening.

We will see you next time.

That concludes another episode of the Nombase Podcast.

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