THC Beverages: Preparing Your Brewery for the Opportunity

As a brewer, you have experience in making delicious beverages, but hemp-derived THC drinks are not beer. Here’s what to know about production timelines, sales, staffing, and more.

By now, breweries in jurisdictions where hemp-derived THC can be sold are at least aware of the opportunity it oers. 

As of July 2025, that includes about half of the 50 states, according to the Coalition for Adult Beverage Alternatives (CABA), a trade group of hemp and alcohol companies that advocate for the accessibility of hemp-derived THC beverages. In Minnesota—whose legislature legalized them in 2022—roughly half of all craft breweries currently produce them. 

At industry conferences, proponents tout the upsides for small breweries: good margins, high demand, short tank time, and the opportunity to co-manufacture these drinks for other companies. 

“I tell brewers all the time, you could take over this [hemp THC] space,” says Jason Pickle, president and cofounder of Volunteer Botanicals, a Tennessee-based biotech company that makes and sells botanical ingredients, including cannabinoids, for food and beverage applications. 

However, Pickle says brewers sometimes talk themselves out of launching a hemp brand, assuming the learning curve is too high and that they’re too busy to take on an entirely new category. That’s why, at the Craft Brewers Conference in Indianapolis, Volunteer Botanicals announced an accelerator program to guide brewers and distillers toward producing and selling new nonalcoholic hemp or other botanical beverages in as little as three months. The program covers topics such as recipe formulation, compliance, supply chain, and even distribution. 

“You’ve got all the tools in your toolbox,” Pickle tells small brewers. “You just have to apply them in a new way.” 

Still, the shift toward hemp beverages can be intimidating. (It took Chicago’s Revolution—the 36th-largest Brewers Association–dened craft brewery—until spring 2025 to launch its Reverb series of THC and CBD drinks.) Brewers have experience making delicious beverages, but THC drinks are not beer. They’re made dierently, marketed dierently, and they have their own set of requirements—including third-party testing, sta training, and sometimes pasteurization. 

Alcohol and hemp brands alike began coming to Volunteer Botanicals not only for ingredients, but also for operational advice. 

“There’s a knowledge gap here,” Pickles says. “They’d say, ‘We need a formula. We need avors. Where do we source this? Where do we get the best price for that? Do you know somebody that can make my cans in Georgia?’ That was the genesis of the accelerator. If these are cracks for the hemp guys, there are even more so going to be … cracks for beer guys that don’t know our side of the business.” 

Volunteer Botanicals isn’t the only one creating paths for knowledge sharing. In March, the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild hosted its rst Hemp Beverage Brew Day, a collaborative event hosted at Chicago’s Twisted Hippo Brewing. Dozens of brewers gathered for a chance to learn, hands-on, how to brew a gin and tonic–inspired seltzer with 10 mg of hemp-derived THC and CBD. 

As they did in the early days of the U.S. craft-beer boom, operators have proven willing to share information, particularly about operations and logistics. Here are their most important operational considerations for those thinking of jumping into the hemp-derived THC waters. 

Good Things Take Time 

Hemp beverages are much quicker to make than fermented alcohol, but brewers still need to factor in the time it takes to evenly dose, homogenize, and lab-test each batch. 

Beginning homebrewers know how to calculate ABV, but THC dosing is an entirely dierent science. Emulsion companies generally provide brewery clients with detailed instructions for formulation, but dialing in the process can still take a few months. 

Brewers also must be prepared to send every batch of their THC drink to a third-party lab for testing. Most states require testing to ensure the accuracy of dosage and, thus, potency. The Hemp Beverage Alliance trade group advises that any variance between stated and actual potency shouldn’t exceed 0.25 mg or 10 percent of the package’s stated dosage. The lab should also run tests to ensure the cannabinoids are free of pesticides, heavy metals, mycotoxins, residual solvents, and other contaminants. 

None of that is cheap or instantaneous. Marc Makarem, head brewer and co-owner of Back Channel Brewing in Spring Park, Minnesota, says his lab tests cost $75 each in 2023. Now that Minnesota has more closely regulated these beverages and required additional lab tests, each panel costs $450 to $550, and it takes about ve days to turn around results from the day the sample is received.

Makarem also recommends that breweries ship multiple cans to their testing lab. That serves as a safeguard in case one can leaks in transit, but it’s also important to test for dosage consistency across the beginning, middle, and end of a canning run. (Some good news for shipping costs: Because the 2018 Farm Bill created a legal status for hemp, brewers can ship these samples via the U.S. Postal Service provided they comply with all other applicable laws.) 

Back Channel posts lab results for each batch on its website, and its THC-drink cans feature a QR code that links to those certicates of analysis. 

“It’s a great thing to have for your customers to see, and it also gives me condence behind my product,” Makarem says. “But on the ip side, the business side, those dollars chip into your margins.” 

Breweries also must ensure that their THC beverages’ dosages don’t degrade over time or become non-homogenized. Can liners and organic matter, such as fruit purees, may attract cannabinoids and take them out of suspension. Some breweries avoid the use of purees altogether when making THC beverages, while others heavily lter their products. 

Back Channel recirculates its THC beverage tanks for anywhere between eight and 16 hours to ensure homogeneity throughout the batch and thus in each can. It also packages its canned THC drinks with 5 to 7.5 percent more THC than the label states, knowing that it will degrade by roughly that amount between packaging, testing, and reaching the nal consumer. 

While THC drinks may be a relatively quick turn compared to beer, they’re not instantaneous to produce. Make sure to budget time for pilot batches before fully launching a product and factor in testing time between packaging and sales. 

“Unlike beer, where packaging marks the end of the process and the product is ready to sell, THC seltzers involve additional steps after production,” Makarem says. “You’re now dependent on third parties—shipping carriers, lab timelines, internal lab workows—and on top of that, you may need to troubleshoot if a sample doesn’t meet spec.” 

New Beverages Mean New Sales 

It’s not just brewers and cellar sta who’ll need to learn a new skillset—front-of-house and salespeople will, too. 

Twisted Hippo tasked its existing salesperson with selling its Shine On line of hemp beverages, but those drinks opened up new retail accounts that were unfamiliar to that employee, including corner stores, bodegas, and smoke shops. (In Illinois, some retailers that don’t have liquor licenses can sell hemp-derived beverages.) Brewery director Karl Rutherford says it took that salesperson outside of his usual comfort zone. 

“There are opportunities there, but there’s also education and a learning curve to going into those businesses as well,” Rutherford says.

It also required persistence with bars and restaurants, who Rutherford says were initially skeptical or outright opposed to serving THC drinks. It took about six months for them to warm up to the idea, and many are now even asking for these beverages on draft. The adaptation in sales strategy to include THC beverages has paid o for Twisted Hippo, which now sees 30 to 40 percent of its production volume come from hemp drinks. 

These drinks also have had knock-on sales eects for some breweries, including Bottle Logic of Anaheim, California. Bottle Logic can’t sell its hemp beverages within California because of that state’s laws, but it can ship directly to consumers—and in other states, it’s picked up new distributors who are excited to work with Bottle Logic as a supplier of both THC drinks and beer. That’s helped revive the brewery’s highly regarded barrel-aging program, which had shrunk to a fth of its peak size because of declining consumer demand. Because it can pre sell barrel-aged beer to some of these new distributors, the brewery is now regularly selling out of those releases. Bottle Logic has even hired sales reps in a handful of states to represent both its THC and beer brands. 

Volunteer Botanicals’ VP of distribution, Greg Sisto, came from the alcohol sector; he’s leveraged past relationships to get hemp brands into retailers that might also be interested in selling a brewery’s beer. For example, he helped Yee-Haw Brewing—with three locations in Tennessee and one in South Carolina—connect with retailers who were interested in both IPA and THC. 

“If we’re helping a brewery move their THC drinks, and a retailer will also take their top-selling beer, what a positive thing to come out of that,” Pickle says. “The distribution opportunity for this is getting better and better.” 

THC? Don’t Forget FOH. 

Drinkers are going to have a lot of questions about THC beverages. It’s management’s job to equip front-of-house servers with clear, condent, and correct information about how these drinks are made, what they taste like, and what eects they’ll have on patrons. 

Sta should also get training on how to recognize when a person could be overserved. CashoM, which provides cannabis certications for hospitality workers, plans to launch a program in September 2025 called THC-ServeSmart Certication. This online training is designed specically for bartenders, distributors, bar managers, servers, and retail sta who want to expand their knowledge and serve this new category of beverages. 

Back Channel brought in third-party experts in THC to train its sta to safely serve these drinks. They’ve also emphasized to servers that Minnesota will conduct compliance checks— similar to underage drinking “stings”—to ensure THC beverages are being served properly. To reduce potential overconsumption, servers are instructed not to serve patrons more than 20 mg of THC per day, and to enforce a “stay in one lane” policy: Guests can order THC or beer during a visit, but not both. 

Outside of guest safety, there’s also the broader issue of guest education. People’s understanding of THC varies widely, from those who don’t even realize it’s legal to experienced users with questions about particular cannabinoid compounds. Given Back Channel’s expansive range of hemp drinks—it has three product lines, including infused fruit water, infused seltzers, and a new THC coconut water called Coco Flow—bartenders need to be able to articulate the dierences between them and explain their eects. Small printed cards that explain the ve cannabinoids in Coco Flow are displayed on the bar as a “cheat sheet.” 

Makarem says his ultimate advice to other operators is to approach hemp beverages with the same care, attention to detail, and high standards as they would beer. Typically, Back Channel has about 22 beers on tap that appeal to a range of palates; simultaneously, it usually has 20 to 24 nonalcoholic options—including THC and CBD drinks—on draft. 

“If you’re thinking about getting into the THC market, start with avor and think about giving the customer an experience,” Makarem says. “Give them something they take a sip of and say, ‘Oh, wow, this is awesome,’ rather than something they’re just drinking to feel the eects. Otherwise, they can just buy a gummy.” 

Here are a couple more things to keep in mind: 

Canning Considerations: Because hemp beverages are nonalcoholic, they require acidication or pasteurization to ensure safety and shelf stability. Some avorings and ingredients in nonbeer beverages may also benet from the addition of preservatives. 

Ensure You’re Insured: Serving THC drinks requires a separate policy from your brewery’s property, liability, or worker’s compensation insurance. More insurance companies have come on board to oer these so-called “gram shop” policies, so check with your provider or broker to make sure you’re covered before you begin manufacturing or serving hemp drinks.