Lavish Your Valentine With These Cannabis Edibles

By Sean Cooley

Published on 2/9/2020 at 12:04 AM

ALEXIS ZAMLICH/THRILLIST‌

Just about the sweetest thing you can do for your 420-friendly Valentine — aside from smoking them up and going to opening night of Sonic the Hedgehog — is to get them something sweet… with weed in it. In order to help you show your significant other’s cannabinoid receptors some love this V-Day, we’ve test-driven and stamped a seal of approval on the following top-tier cannabis edibles and drinkables, all at low-to-mid recreational potency, perfect for gifting. 

So forget all about roses, we all know there’s only one flower we really need in our lives, and it really does the trick after it’s been infused into butter and baked into cookies.

This guide assumes you’re not buying a cannabis product for the first time. However, if you — or a person you’re buying for — are noobies when it comes to edibles, find informative primers in the form of our extracts guide, CBD gummies guide, and cannabis news feed.

COURTESY OF GREATER GOODS

Greater Goods Marshmallow Bon Bons

Dose: 15mg CBD per bon bon (6 bon bons per pack)
Availability: Oregon, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas
Greater Goods bon-bons offer all the benefits of a chocolate-covered marshmallow without any of the mess of setting up a fondue pot — or driving over to Golden Corral for the Chocolate Wonderfall. There’s a bevy of other benefits, namely a CBD infusion of full-spectrum hemp oil and the perfect balance of both texture (firm coating on gooey marshmallow) and taste (dark chocolate sprinkled with chocolate-infused sea salt). Hailing from Portland, Oregon — surely, the epicenter of artisanal salt — it’s no surprise that Greater Goods turns to local Bitterman Salt Co. for its Chocolate Fleur de Sel, a sea salt blended with chocolate extract and cacao.RecommendedVolume 0%00:0003:00FOOD & DRINKBehold the Taco Cone

Sweet Grass Kitchen White Chocolate Chip Butter Pecan Cookies

Dose: 10mg THC (10 cookies per pack)
Availability: Colorado
Whether it’s Pringles or pogs, great things come in stacks. Hence the packing of Sweet Grass’s delectable full-flower offerings into canisters with 10-cookie stacks. You’re getting the goods with these sweets, no leftover trim or hash sprays involved. The savory, sativa-dominant recipe is made with cannabutter which enables the cannabis to naturally bind with the fat in the finished white chocolate chip butter pecan cookie (and the fat in your body) for a long-lasting high.

Nug Pops

Dose: 10mg THC and 10mg CBD per pop (10 pops per pack)
Availability: California
Nug Pops take the popular summertime sugar-water delivery method of your youth and turns it on its head. The flavors, including raspberry pomegranate, salted caramel apple, and prickly pear and key lime, are more befitting of a high-end sorbet than a “this tastes like blue/red/green” freeze pop. There’s 10mg of CBD and THC per pop and Nug uses a nano-emulsion technology that’ll have you seeing effects in about 10 minutes.

COURTESY OF DAY ONE

Day One Sparkling CBD Water

Dose: 20mg CBD per can (6 cans per pack)
Availability: California, Maryland
From Lacroix to Spindrift to every beverage in Millenial office fridges, sparkling seltzers are going strong. It was only a matter of time before they hooked up with CBD. Day One’s zesty lemon fizzy water has the requisite zero calories and is made with natural fruit juice so there’s no lingering artificial aftertaste and it’s not unduly sweet. It packs 20mg of CBD, which is non-psychoactive, so it takes some edge off without getting you high.

Papa & Barkley Releaf Tincture

Dose: 7.5mg of CBD and THC per 1/4 dropper dose (60 doses per bottle)
Availability: California
While cannabis tinctures are technically a separate category from edibles, they can easily be added to beverages like a smoothie, juice, or mocktail, rather than administered sublingually, for a slightly different effect. Papa & Parkley is top of the line when it comes to putting out pain-reducing and general wellness products like balms, patches, and body oils that are guaranteed to be free of needless additives. Their line of tinctures is a great option for precision dosing, coming in a variety of CBD:THC ratios including 1:1, 1:3 (some psychoactivity), and 30:1 (CBD dominant).

Suck It Strawberry Sweets

Dose: 5mg THC per candy (20 candies per pack)
Availability: Colorado
While the brand name may be uncouth, Suck It does pack a party in your mouth where everyone’s invited. The hard candies arrive get their fruit-forward strawberry taste from a mix of organic cane sugar, organic tapioca syrup, and natural flavors. They’re made by Colorado-based Canyon THC which has been a player in the medical marijuana industry since 2010 and prides itself on making edibles that’re free of synthetic ingredients or petroleum distillates like butane or propane.

LORD JONES

Lord Jones Valentines Day Old Fashioned Gumdrops

Dose: 20mg CBD per gumdrop (9 gumdrops per package) 
Availability: Nationwide
We’re fans of Lord Jones for all the same reasons we mentioned in the last cannabis gift guide. This season, the fanciful CBD gumdrop purveyor has a limited edition Valentine’s Day package with rich and tart passionfruit and raspberry flavors, in their classy signature box with a gold foil heart gift band primed for gifting.

Emerald Sky Peanut Butter Cups

Dose: 5mg THC per peanut butter cup (20 peanut butter cups per package)
Availability: California
If you’re like me then you’re currently battling an addiction to Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups (note to self: stop grocery shopping while high… or at least not high and hungry). So it’s high praise to say that Emerald Sky’s peanut butter cups are equally craveable — milk-chocolatey and sea salt sprinkled to boot. The Bay Area edibles manufacturer is helmed by President and Co-Founder Josh Taylor, who’s spent three decades as a confectioner for major companies like Whole Foods, Newman’s Own, and, you guessed it, Trader Joe’s.

Ra Whole Flower THC Capsules

Dose: 50mg THC (15 capsules per pack)
Availability: California
Fun fact: Ancient Egyptians were into weed, so says the Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest medical texts known to humankind. A number of formulas with the cannabis hieroglyph “shemshemet” were developed to treat earaches, joint pain, and a slew of other maladies. It’s only natural that a cannabis brand like Ra would look to carry the spirit of the Sun God and spread the healing properties of marijuana. No fuss, no muss, Ra’s vegan-friendly capsules are THC-rich, made with sun-grown flower harvested in Mendocino, CA, and placed through a decarbing process that’s solventless in order to best preserve key terpenes, cannabinoids, and flavonoids that hold therapeutic value.

Stonebush Pink Cannabis Infused Beverage

Dose: 7.5mg THC per serving (4 servings per bottle)
Availability: California
While it’s a bottled adult beverage made with California grapes, consider Stonebush as less of a weed wine  — as tempting as it is to see the pink hue and think “rosé that gets you high” — and more a tasty semi-sour infused beverage. Serve it up chilled and prepare to chill yourself with a glass of Stonebush that has a moderate 7.5mg of THC that’ll onset after 10-15 minutes. The beverage is also alcohol-free too, so there’s no need to worry about that cross-faded feeling of being boozed and stoned.

As featured in Love Potion Delta-9: Three Infused Rosés to Celebrate With This Gal/Valentine’s Day
By Melissa Hutsell @ The Emerald

The era of cannabis wines is upon us, bringing with it a new category of consumption. 

Leading this new category (and even the traditional wine industry) are rosés. 

The overall infused beverage market, which includes THC and CBD wines, is predicted to earn more than $1 billion in sales by 2022, reports BDS Analytics. 

While (legally) new to modern consumers, the history of infusing wine with weed runs deep. However, today’s cannabis vino are unlike those made by our ancestors.

Cannabis Infused = Alcohol Free

Most cannabis infused wine doesn’t contain alcohol. In California—mixing two of the state’s finest crops is prohibited.

So, winemakers remove the alcohol from these products through dealcoholization. This process eliminates all, or nearly all (.05%) of the alcohol. It’s the same process used to make alcoholic wines, reports Winerist Magazine. However, “the alcohol is simply removed at the end.”

That’s done using vacuum distillation or reverse osmosis. But, in any case, it begins with an alcoholic wine. That alcohol is then extracted; leaving the aroma and flavor fully in tact, according to BevZero, a company that processes non-alcoholic and cannabis-infused beer, wine and cider.

But, there’s more to creating these intoxicating blends than removing alcohol, and adding cannabis. The Emerald spoke to the experts at Vertosa to learn about these intoxicating blends. 

Creating Intoxicating Blends

Each wine has its own complex chemistry, explains Dr. Harold Han, chemist and founder of Vertosa, an infusion technology company.  

“There’s a whole living mixture in wine,” he adds. “That’s different than a simple soda water.”

Effectively creating these love potions requires an understanding of oenology (wine science) and cannabis emulsion science. 

An emulsion is a liquid suspended in another liquid, explains Han. Vertosa is one of the first companies to create such emulsions for wine. 

When it comes to cannabis oil and water, “those two liquids don’t like each other.” He continues, “Our technology makes them like each other, and be stable together.”

The goal with emulsions—it doesn’t matter if it’s wine, juice or coffee—is to infuse oil into water. Otherwise it’s very hard to put cannabis oil into a beverage,” Han adds.

“Imagine you have a big blob of THC distillate. The distillate doesn’t dissolve in water,” he explains. “But, then we add our proprietary mixture of surfactants.”

That’s the magic component, says Han. It’s the molecule that makes the oil like water because half of surfactant is oil-like, the other half—water-like.

So, it sits on the surface between the oil and water, connecting the two, Han says. The result is a more water-compatible solution. The more water compatible it is, the more bioavailable it is. Simply put, this means it can be absorbed better, and more quickly, by the body.

Increased Bioavailability 

Vertosa’s process also uses energy to break oil droplets into micro, or nano-sized droplets, further increasing their bioavailability. 

The result: more accurate dosing, and quicker onsets, says Han. “For example, if you want 10mg of THC  in an 8 ounce aluminum can, or 50mg CBD in a 750mL wine bottle, you can accurately dose that.”

On average, Vertosa’s emulsions have an onset of less than 10 minutes. When it comes to wine—this is especially important.

With regular wine, a drinker typically feels its effects by the end of their first cup. That is what consumers are looking for, says Han. “If I drink cannabis wine, I want to feel that also. That’s where emulsions help.”

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. For example, emulsions that work for coffee in a can may not work for red wine in a glass bottle, says Han. And what works for reds doesn’t necessarily work for whites or rosés. That’s why Vertosa starts with the end product, then works backwards to create a stable solution specific to the end application.

That further enhances the individuality of each. See how so in these three rosés below. 

Note: Serve chilled, and pair with an aged cheese (I went with a personal fav, Dubliner).

Stonebush Pink: The Vino for Flower Lovers

The THC-infused blend is marketed as a crisp, California treat—and that it is! 

Sontebush uses all-star line-up of Emerald Triangle cannabis. Strains include: Lemon Kush, Purple Trainwreck, and OG Kush. 

It tastes slightly floral, subtly sweet, a bit bitter—but boldly tangy. It’s earthy, and has a plant-like flavor and aroma. True flower lovers will appreciate this rosé.

At only 30mg per bottle, I found it easy to finish a bottle in one night with no crazy high, or a hangover in the morning. Don’t worry, I shared! And even split between two or three others, this low dose bevy is suitable for those with a high tolerance (thanks to emulsions process).  

I was most impressed, however, with the quick onset. The company boosts a 10-15 onset…but, I felt it slightly sooner. Similar to drinking wine, I was feelin’ euphoric by the end of the first glass!