Cannabis Edibles and Drink Review had the pleasure of speaking with Matt Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder at Lively Spirits.
CEDR: Matt, can you please share a bit about your background and how you got into the Cannabis space?
Matt: How much time do you have?
CEDR: I’m open.
Matt: I got started as an activist in college, then dropped out and moved to the Bay Area on the heels of Prop 215 getting voted into law (1996). Prop 215 was the world’s first medical marijuana law. At the time, there were only three dispensaries. We figured, hey, if their are dispensaries, then there must be growers, right? Well, no, there weren’t. And we were the first ones to really go to the authors of Prop 215 and ask that question. And they said, well, talk to this lawyer and they’ll incorporate your company and you can start doing it. So, we were some of the first people in the market that had basically set up corporations, tax paying corporations and were growing cannabis specifically for medical marijuana dispensaries.
CEDR: How were you feeling about your new business?
Matt: At the time we felt it was highly risky. People were still going to federal prison for growing marijuana. And as the years went by, we kind of morphed from social activists into businesspeople.
CEDR: In addition to growing, I understand that you were also focused on other aspects of the industry?
Matt: I became a consultant to states that were implementing recreational laws like Washington State. I was their production expert. So, I’ve been kind of a jack of all trades in the cannabis space for the last 20+ years.
I stumbled across a nutraceutical company in the space who had a technology. I had a technology. I was a free agent, and we merged our efforts to create the company which I’m running now.
We were focused on powering ready to drink beverages with our unique technology. After the CEO was removed, I ended up taking over the company. Nobody else had this ability to make a powder that had stabilized all the volatile compounds and that could deliver the pure expression of the plant and power a cocktail experience with similar onset and offset. We thought it was novel enough to go direct to the consumer as a product. It pioneered the dry sprit category. It’s called Purejuana and it’s in the market now selling through dispensaries, online and through events that we throw.
CEDR: What makes Purejuana unique?
Matt: The powder is packaged into a little sugar (like) packet that is put into a box like a cigarette box, with ten drinks in a box. It comes in three different potencies to serve all the different user types, 2.5, 5 and 10 milligrams.
CEDR: I’m assuming this is a nano technology?
Matt: Everybody has that same question. It’s way more complicated than that. It’s just not accurate. It’s a an emulsion science. I think to just call it a nanotech is not accurate.
We have an organic, good tasting emulsion that we dry with a proprietary drying machine, that dries at the ambient temperature. So, no flavor or taste compounds are volatilized. Those flavor and taste compounds are largely what steer the unique effects of a cultivar.
So, our tech retains the pure expression of the plant in a stable white powder, which has no smell. You drop the powder in the water and a bouquet of that cannabis cultivar comes to life. People drink it neat as it tastes so good, but you can also use it to power any type of cocktail occasion. And that’s what we’re focused on with the branding.
CEDR: What’s your feedback on the degree to which you can make an emulsion (or a drink or an edible) to effectively incorporate Indica, Hybrid and Sativa affects. Could you maybe share a little bit about how that is accomplished?
Matt: We have three potencies, but we also have a wide variety of cultivars in the market right now. These are strains that have a market appeal, taste good in a cocktail, and have a really good effect.
(To my knowledge) all the other drinks in the business and the few powders that exist are all powering with distillate. And distillate is the market equivalent of Everclear. You can make pure grain alcohol out of anything. You just distill and ferment any grains.
So, distillate is the same thing as it ranges from trim to small buds, to moldy bud, to stuff that doesn’t pass. It gets cleaned up later on as an extraction process. Waste from the industry which turns into distillate pretty much powers the edible industry as well as the ready to drink beverage space.
We’re not that at all. We’re at the opposite end of the spectrum. We’re like a fine gin compared to Everclear and we have the real live essence of the plant. I would say it’s actually even more pronounced of a difference than the gin / Everclear analogy. Distillate tastes bitter, doesn’t taste like the strain at all, and has the exact same effects; a flat high that is not a very interesting high. It lacks the euphoria that comes with the entourage effect from all the other compounds.
We actually source the cultivar. We contract grow the cultivars and sometimes we actually grow them ourselves on our own farms. It’s all sun grown organic. It’s grown to peak ripeness. It’s just like making fine wine. So, then we have a unique technology in that we don’t apply temperature anywhere in the process, no heat at all. And that’s why we’re able to retain all those compounds. Just the process of making distillate reaches temperatures over 400 degrees.
CEDR: What’s coming down the pike?
Matt: More strains and bulk packaging for people that don’t want to deal with sticks anymore because they’re at home and they know how to make their own cocktails. Additionally, they are for bartenders at private events and lounges as they start to open in California.
CEDR: Thank you Matt for education and insights. Best of luck with Purejuana!
