Alcohol and marijuana can be great friends or quarrelsome roommates

By John Garvey

Hops, weed, terpenes and alcohol can all play nice, but they can also derail your dinner reservations.

If you’ve ever been mildly high, drank an IPA and felt like you had smoked enough weed to kill a flock of seagulls, you have some appreciation for how cannabis and beer play together. My research into the effects beer and cannabis have on each other began as you might guess. It led to a most enlightening interview with a man who possibly qualifies as a mad scientist.

Mad scientist creds aside, Keith Villa comes across as disarming and authentic. After earning his Ph.D. in science with a brewing specialization from the Free University of Brussels, he created Blue Moon Brewing Company in 1995, and was the master brewer at Coors in Golden.

Villa also literally wrote the book on cannabis and brewing (“Brewing with Cannabis: Using THC and CBD in Beer”), and has an extensive craft brewing acumen spanning over three decades.

“I brewed beer with chicken,” Villa says, “beer with just all kinds of crazy things in the 1990s. And you name the herb, fruit or spice and I probably brewed with it.”

Villa did not consider the chicken beer to be his greatest success. But it does speak to his long and mostly successful track record as an innovator. In 2018 Villa and his wife Jodi co-founded CERIA Brewing Company, an alcohol-free beer company that specialized in cannabis-infused beer. Eventually, Villa stopped using THC in his beer and brews mainly non-alcoholic beer now.

Villa helped me dial in on the two key reasons beer and weed pair so interestingly.

The Entourage Effect

Pine, vanilla, lavender, citrus, cracked pepper, juniper.

Hops.

Cannabis.

Many of the scents and flavors we both love and too often take for granted come from aromatic compounds called terpenes. Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) and hops (Humulus lupulus) both belong to the Cannabaceae family, and terpenes are responsible for their rich variety of scents and flavors. Some terpenes found in cannabis, like myrcene and humulene, are also present in hops, contributing to shared scent profiles.

But scent isn’t the only reason terpenes matter.

Individual terpenes have a range of effects, some quite significant. They can be anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing), sedating, antidepressant, and appetite curbing. The way terpenes and cannabinoids (like THC, CBD, THCV and CBG) modify one another’s effects is called the entourage effect. It’s also why drinking a beer will typically enhance your high.

“For example, humulene is a terpene that’s found a lot in hops and to a minor degree in cannabis,” notes Villa. “But if you have an IPA that has a high amount of humulene, and then you have cannabis that has THCV, together, they can really cut down on the munchies.”

Ergo, a hoppy beer like Dale’s Pale Ale from Osker Blues or Odell IPA may help you relax into an evening walk instead of ransacking your pantry.

Villa also notes that herbs and spices in specialty beer contribute terpenes as well. Anything lending a citrusy, peppery, or piney character to your beer or weed is also going to influence how it affects you physically and mentally.

“The entourage effect, to me, it really exists, and you can have different feelings with different IPAs and with different other styles of beer like a bohemian pilsner,” Villa states.

Cross-fading

The entourage effect is about a lot of compounds influencing each other, often in non-quantifiable ways. Cross-fading, by contrast, is pretty linear: it’s about THC and alcohol.

THC and alcohol mutually enhance each other’s effects. The margins between a relaxed buzz and drooling down your chin are narrower than many people realize when combining alcohol and THC .

“I would say most experts … advise that most people should stick with one or the other, meaning if they’re gonna enjoy an evening with cannabis, do that and stay away from alcohol,” says Villa. “... But there are some folks who enjoy the effect of cross fading at low doses.”

All told, this is why if you keep the key variable THC constant, you’ll experience distinct effects depending on what you combine it with: a conventional IPA, a pilsner, a shot of vodka, or an alcohol-free IPA. The IPA will have the strongest effect because you have both cross-fading (THC + ethyl alcohol) and the entourage effect (THC + myrcene and humulene) at play.

Of all beers, IPA is the most obvious dancing partner for weed. The terpenes that give it such pungent, hoppy characteristics also grant it the strongest synergistic effects. This is something to consider from an enjoyment standpoint, but also from a planning and safety standpoint. If you don’t want to miss dinner reservations because you fell asleep on the couch, pair the two with caution. If you have any intention of driving anywhere, just … don’t. Pairing beer and cannabis isn’t a 1 + 1 = 2 thing; it’s a 1 + 1 = 4 equation. And with IPA, it may be more like 1 + 1 = 6.

In short, cannabis and beer tend to produce a relaxing and satisfying effect together. But the edibles mantra of “go low and go slow” fits nicely here as well.

This story is in our January-February print issue. Click here to read the full magazine.

John Garvey is a storyteller, freelance writer, illustrator, and nerd. You can see more of his creative ventures at clippings.me/johngarvey and CreativeFollies.com.