How Does a Master Chocolatier Craft Gourmet Cannabis Edibles? Let’s Ask Chef Julian Rose

Most cannabis edibles are engineered around a number on a label, not the experience in your mouth. That’s why this conversation with Chef Julian Rose hits so hard: he’s a master chocolatier and master pastry chef who now serves as Director of Research at INSA in Massachusetts, and he refuses to treat infused chocolate and cannabis gummies like an afterthought.

From savory edibles to terpene-driven flavor pairing, we talk about why unfamiliar combinations can scare buyers, how full spectrum oil versus distillate changes both taste and effect, and why regulations can quietly force worse ingredients. We also pull apart fast-acting edibles, including what’s pure marketing, what can turn bitter, and what might truly improve onset through emulsions, oil and fat carriers, and better dispersion.

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Transcript

A Chef’s Unlikely Origin Story

SPEAKER_01 0:04

How does a young Montreal boy grow up to become a master chocolatier, a master pastry chef, and the director of research at INSA in Massachusetts? Julian Rose shares his journey and the challenges of creating unexpected flavor combinations in high-quality edibles. We talk savory edibles, why a lot of fast-acting claims that you see on labels are just marketing, and what the research shows in consumer preferences when it comes to full spectrum versus distillate. It's not what you'd expect. And welcome back, friends. I'm your host, Margaret, a certified gangier and a cannabis educator who believes your kitchen is the best dispensary you'll ever have. And you're listening to Bite Me, the show about edibles. So grab a snack and let's dive into this conversation with Chef Julian Rose. We're recording and we're live. Julian, I just want to say thank you for joining me today and the listeners of Bite Me, the show about edibles. I'm really excited to have you here. And you're a master chocolatier and a master pastry chef as I understand it. And I think we're going to be getting into all those good things in this conversation today. But just to get us started, you're a fellow Canadian and you grew up in Montreal. You are the son of bakers. And as I mentioned already, you became a master pastry chef and chocolatier. Continuing the family tradition, started growing up in such a family. Teach you to taste and appreciate food.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Well, you know, it's it's it was very interesting. My mom was a professional dietitian, and my dad was a hotelier professional and came from Germany. So immigrated to Germany in the 50s, started a family, and then also right away started a business, a pastry shop. So of course, I was around, you know, food and desserts and everything sweet, you know. And but on the on one side, my mom always had the this kind of obsession with balanced diet. And then the European side from my dad, we would be exposed to a lot of European specialties, whether it's cheese and wines and traditions and chocolate and holidays. So we're talking now, like when I was younger in the 60s, you know, there was not the availability of foods that we see now. It was very much seasonal. So you'd go to the supermarket, you had strawberries in June, July, and that was about it. Now, you know, with the global market, you you get access to all these things. But I remember my mom, for instance, telling telling us that she went to the supermarket, grabbed some artichokes, and the cashier was like, ma'am, excuse me, what are those? And what do you do with them? You know, so I was exposed to a lot of food, I would say that was not specifically every day. You know, I remember my mom as well buying kiwis when they first came out because she she liked to experiment. She liked to see like what's what's different, what's new. You know, now another example, we go to a supermarket, you got you can get plantains now, but it a lot of people don't buy plantains because they don't know what to do with them. But with more being exposed to restaurants and different cultures, you go to a Mexican restaurant, you eat fried plantains, and you're like, oh, these are actually good. So all of that was kind of my my upbringing. I was exposed to a lot of different things, and we had a shop that specialized in pastry and catering. So food everywhere all the time.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Right. It sounds, I guess it might spend kind of nice to have a mother that was a dietitian because then you could never really overindulge, which is probably good when you're enjoying all those fine foods. But I will say, like the global market, like you said, does provide us a lot more access, but there isn't really there's nothing like the smell of strawberries at a farmer's market in the summertime when they're like in season. There's there's nothing better than that.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So I do miss a little bit that, you know, that you can get strawberries all year, but then they don't feel so special and they're not very good all year, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Yeah, because yeah, I've I I remember when when you know it was seasonal, when it's so funny because restaurants go like, oh, we compose our menus seasonally with what's available on the market, it which is kind of true, but you're then you should not have celery in December, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Oh, a hundred percent, yeah. Yeah, it's it's nice to put that on a menu or to like market that way, but also, you know, when push comes to shove, if you need to serve food, you have to use what's available. So yeah. Now you obviously have a very robust background with food. What drew you to culinary cannabis?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Well, it really kind of was a more or less uh an accident, if you will. Because of what I do in the chocolate world and pastry world, I'm I'm quite well known in North America for one quality, I guess, is I solve a lot of problems. So I started somebody in the cannabis industry on the West Coast asked for consulting. So they they said, hey, we're we're in the cannabis industry, we want to do chocolate bars, we don't know anything about chocolate. Can you help us? So that's kind of how I got introduced to this industry. Much much more as a troubleshooter to help them get started, also equipment-wise, like companies, you know, like investors in this industry, they they they're typically people that are business people, so they don't necessarily know machinery and implementation and process and tampering and all that stuff. So that's kind of how it happened by circumstance. I was connected to a company and then another company and then another company and so on.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

And that's kind of that's how I got connected with INSA. I was living on the West Coast, and they had actually an issue with chocolate and tampering and equipment. So the equipment manufacturer said, I'll call this guy. And I so I flew over, did my thing, solved the problem, went back on the West Coast, and then I I we kept in good contact. So I was coming back every three months or so uh as a consultant, and then it kind of they they said, Hey, would you be interested in joining us in a full-time job? And at that point, it was just before COVID, I was on the West Coast. I was like, no, we can just continue as the relationship, but then COVID hit and all the consulting gigs kind of disappeared. So then at that point, I I accepted the the offer. So I just packed my things, came over here, and I'm in Massachusetts since.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Right. So you left the West Coast during the pandemic for the East Coast.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Well, I'm sure, and you're now the chef and director of research at ANSA, as I understand it.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, correct. So it's developing developing all the products and innovating and in creating new opportunities and new avenues, I guess. You know, uh I don't approach it as being like, hey, I'm in I'm in the cannabis industry, so that's the only thing I do. I'm I'm still very much kind of in the chef work world of food and chocolate. So the ideas kind of commingle, they they cross each other. And when I think it's viable, then I I try to do something.

Defining Real Quality In Edibles

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Right. Well, I think that makes like edibles sound a lot more interesting when you're coming at it from that perspective. And you've said that you want INSA's edibles to be indistinguishable from what you'd find in a high-end chocolate shop, for example. What's the biggest misconception the cannabis industry still has about what quality means?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Well, I think this was at the point where I did consulting for INSA, uh, here on the East Coast, the the whole cannabis legalization, I would call it, started with medical and then it kind of flipped into recreational. But I proposed to Insight that we should, or you should, start at the very top, because it's it's easier to start with very high quality. And then if the price gets compressed, or if if you feel that you want to reduce the quality, it's easier to go a little down. But when you start with cheap, it's hard to go up. Just just the economics, the economics don't work.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So if you start with high-end quality, high-end ingredients, yes, they're a little bit more expensive, but when you break it down to a portion size, especially in cannabis where the portions are not very big, I think my opinion was you can start with super high quality and make it taste really good and separate yourself from the masses in this industry. Because what I was seeing as a consultant, I was seeing that the companies just were focused on the cannabis and not so much on quality. It was just sell, sell, sell cannabis, and it happens to have a gummy in it.

unknown 9:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

So it was kind of it was a little kind of opposing for me in philosophy, you know, especially like pastry, like in Montreal. If you're familiar, there's the food scene is wonderful. There's a lot of bakeries and pastry shops and chocolate shops, and it's probably the best kind of reflection of food in North America. So that's what I expect. And then you you you're almost forced to suppress your your professionalism, I guess, and go like cheap, cheap, cheap. And it's like, oh yeah, well, anybody can sell sugar and and you know, fat and cheap products. But and then when I would when I would talk to these entrepreneurs and I'd say, well, uh, are you are you trying to cheapen your flour? They're like, no, no, no, that the flour needs to be great. Well, then it's like, well, then the edibles need to be great, you know. So so that's where we started here at Inso. We the owners completely accepted, they're like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Let's start up here, and later on people will have to catch up to us.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, that totally makes sense to me too, because you have like if you have companies that are just saying, well, the THC is going to sell itself and they'll just jam it into whatever and people will buy it, you know. Next thing you know, there's uh a ton of products on the market that are all just kind of mediocre, and the only there's no differentiator because they all have a certain amount of THC in them or CBD or whatever the cannabinoid is. So it definitely becomes a different differentiator. I think people are are looking for that because you know, if you're gonna enjoy a single square of chocolate, for instance, you want that to be an experience instead of just the cheap stuff that you find at a you know, a regular store, grocery store, dollar store, whatever the case might be.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

So gas station.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah, gas station, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Now well, you know, and and it's funny, I was gonna say, you know, when when you taste something good, you're more prone to go back to it.

unknown 11:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

When you taste something average, you're like, eh, I can do something else, and it's gonna be the same. So I I get a lot of comment people saying, like, why is your chocolate bar? Why is your chocolate bar so good? I was like, no secret. I mean, every chef has basically the same availability. You know, the in restaurant, I've I've drawn parallels before. It's like, why does a five-star restaurant become a five-star restaurant and the little joint next to it is struggling? They have access to the same ingredients. It's a choice. They they they can buy this, they can buy the same meat, they can buy the same vegetables, they can buy the same cutlery, the glasses, but there's a market for everything. But they the five-star restaurant, they choose to be top quality, top professionals, best process, best everything. And the little restaurant, which is you know, trying their best, they're struggling because if you're like everybody else, it's easy to it's easy to change.

Potency Math And Perceived Value

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I totally agree. And yeah, I think people are looking for that special experience when they're when they're buying their edibles. I know, I know I am. So now the edibles market has, of course, as we all know, largely been driven by THC, maybe CBD as well as a selling point. But do you think there's a point where flavor and craft are starting to win over? Or is that still are people still pretty much going in and buying edibles based on THC potency?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

I would say they they are still buying on THC potency. It's it's interesting because the best example I have, we started back like five years ago, I guess, making peanut butter cups, a nice little chocolate, and with five milligrams, because in Massachusetts for recreational, it's five milligrams per portion. Right. So I felt like a nice piece, you know, with good peanut butter, great chocolate. But cost-wise, of course, our cost was higher because the piece was quite large, and the box had six pieces, so only 30 milligrams. At at I guess back then, I think it was like$30. So it's like five dollars each. But now, like if you go in a real nice chocolate shop, four to five dollars per piece is kind of standard. But imagine now we're like in the cannabis world, we have cannabis in a top quality product, and people quickly started looking. It's like I can get a chocolate bar for$25 at 100 milligram, and I can get six chocolates for 30 milligrams for$30. So then you could see they loved the piece, but they didn't like the the equation.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

So I ended up changing the piece to make it smaller, to put 20 pieces, and and I worked backwards to to do the costing correctly, so that I can put 100 milligrams in a container and 20 little pieces to be to compete internally with our chocolate bar. So, like now they can buy a chocolate bar or the peanut butter smooches, we call them, uh at the same price with the same THC. When I started in in this industry, when I started in this industry, I said, why don't you sell the products per milligram? So then if you would have six pieces and there's 30 milligrams, you you you pick a number, but let's say each milligram is a dollar, so you have 30 milligrams, it's$30, and you have a hundred milligrams, it's a hundred dollars. You know what I mean? It's like when when you buy fish or meat, it's by the pound, right? And in cannabis, this is where it's a little weird because you can have even for us, we have a gummy, for example, that has THC, CBD, and CBN, five milligrams of each, and then it's the same price as a gummy that is five milligrams of THC. So, like the the consumer goes like, all right, wait a minute, I get CBN and CBD on top of it, and it's the same price. Sweet. So that is the best-selling gummy because it has more cannabinoids, beneficial in different ways, but that's where it's a little challenging, I guess, because uh to your question, it's like, yes, people tend to go for the higher THC. Flour is the same. They they they come in the store and they say, What's the highest testing flour? And they're like, Yeah, uh, this one's 32. Got it. And that's what they go for. I mean, it's changing a little bit, but it's slow. The consumer wants the the best volume of THC for the money.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, and I've seen that too, because I used to work in a dispensary and customers coming in asking for the highest THC flour was pretty prevalent, and it they would buy flour regardless of anything else but that number. But when it comes to edibles, it is a little bit different. But do you find that that perception of value changes across different products? Like to me, maybe a gummy would be different than a nice chocolate, like because I guess some people might see you know the gummy itself not necessarily being as higher quality as a nice chocolate. So do you find that that changes across different product types?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Uh only if people don't like gummies, for example, or don't like chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Uh because right now, what's happening here in Massachusetts, and it's happened before in on the West Coast, you know, when when it starts being legalized, the prices are relatively high because there's high demand, low volume. And as the market kind of stabilizes, then the prices start coming down. And so that like a gummy for us, the gummies are priced equally uh as the chocolate bars, so then it becomes really a preference. Do you like gummies? Do you like chocolate? Do you like other edibles?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Right. Okay. And that I find that interesting just because to me it would seem like the I guess the ingredients would be more expensive in in chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

So it's uh, but I I did a I do in-store tasting sometimes when we launch a product, and it's interesting because I'm behind the scenes, but when I go in a store and I present, hey, it's here's here's the new product, and and I offer uninfused versions because I'm giving you away some, I'm giving them away as some uh like a free piece of chocolate. And I'm like, hey, do you want to taste this new chocolate? And they're like, is it infused? I was like, no, I can't give you infused product, and they're like, oh never mind then. But then yeah, it's like going to going to Costco and they offer you a piece of you know pizza, and you're like, oh no, no, no, thanks, because it's there's no pepperoni on it.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

Right. Yeah. So yeah, who turns on chocolate?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

But I've heard uh sometimes people, a few, like very rare, they they say like, I don't like chocolate. I was like, oh, that's fine. And uh and that's okay, you know.

Why Savory Edibles Rarely Sell

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Yeah, yeah, people have their tastes and preferences, which sort of brings me to my next question around savory edibles. I mean, that's sort of it still feels like a very untapped frontier. What do you think standing in the way of more savory edibles becoming a more mainstream category in the edible space?

SPEAKER_00 19:05

I would say, like, I hear a lot of people like out in the streets, if you will, when I talk to people, it's like, well, what kind of food do you like? People go, like, oh, I love Mexican food, but I don't like spicy. So it's so they they like they like mainstream, you know, chipotle, I guess, or to give an example. They like mainstream, they don't like too spicy, they don't like tongue, they don't like things that are too weird or out there. The reason I'm saying this is because I did a really nice pineapple, a spicy pineapple gummy that was, in my sense, outstanding. It was not extremely hot, it was not, it was delicious because it had the full pineapple flavor and then a little bit of chipotle. So it's like a little smoky, a little peppery, but you would feel it down your throat, not on your tongue and and hair on fire. And and it the reaction was because we called it spicy pineapple, people are like, oh, I don't I don't want to try it, because they're they they have a preconceived idea of what spicy is and they don't want to risk it.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

So I think that that's the challenge between the savory, because uh so actually I just released just when I did that tasting last week, it's uh Frito's chips crushed and mixed into milk chocolate. So I guess this is where it's interesting because people then they relate, they like, oh, I like Fritos and I like chocolate, I'll try it. So it's not too out there, and it has this perfect balance of sweet and salty, and a little savory because the corn. So when you eat the peace, the first thing you get is like a little bit of uh sweetness because the chocolate is a little bit in percentage, there's more chocolate than chips, and then then you get in your nose like the nice roasted corn flavor or scent, and then the saltiness. So then it's all mixed, mixing in your mouth, and you to savor, to savor is I guess uh people have to stop a minute and savor. Because we we eat we eat food, we just gobble it and swallow it. So when you when you really taste it, uh what I tell people is like the first bite is challenging, even if it's good, because you have no reference, reference of it in your brain. You don't know what you're tasting. Are you tasting uh a sweet or a savory? Or and then those mixtures together give a new flavor for you. So, like it just talking about like strawberries or vanilla ice cream. If I say vanilla ice cream in your head, You can taste it. You know, you have a reference in your data bank of that flavor. So you don't do not have a reference of Fritos and chocolate together. So it's gonna go in your file of new flavors. So I you I usually say taste it once, and then they're like, huh, interesting. Oh yeah, I get it. Salty sweet. And then I say taste another one. And when you taste it, when you taste the other one, you'll see that it has that great blend of flavors that is unexpected.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

So it's sort of like a way you sort of introduce the savory by introducing a bit of the sweet first, and that makes it approachable to people. And it sounds like you're also showing people how to maybe slow down and take a minute to sort of think about what they're tasting and enjoying it. Because I think we have an issue of eating too fast in North America in particular. So yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Yes, yeah, we don't we don't take the time to savor. And I think that's a really nice point that you bring up is that just slow down a little bit can go a long way to sort of really enjoying what you're eating. And I will say, I think it's a shame because I think that spicy pineapple sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

And I've done you know, spicy chocolates before. I love spicy chocolate. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna venture to say that the cannabis consumer typical is a little vanilla, very kind of they they want to know what they're buying. So there's of course, you know, the the cost is higher than a typical chocolate bar, where you buy a chocolate bar and it has coconut, for instance, you taste it, you're like, ah, I don't like coconut, but you spend two dollars. When you spend 20 or 30 dollars, that's a little bit more, they've taken more commitment to it. It's like buying a bottle of wine, you know. Like when when you're like you buy a bottle, it's ten dollars, and you see a bottle right next to it at 40, and you're like, Is it is it really 40? You know, what's what's the value?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah, I have wondered that myself many times.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, and you like what you like. At the end, you like what you like. Yes, I you know, like people can say, like, oh, I love this red wine, it's ten dollars, but uh, it's what I love. I love the flavor, I love the the bouquet, I love the the smell. It's fine. Nobody is judging you, but I think sometimes it's for standing or or you want to impress your friends and you're like, Oh, this is a$40 bottle of right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, it's interesting though, because there's so many people that really enjoy savory foods, that why aren't we seeing more of them? Unless it's just maybe they're more difficult to develop.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

And also, like uh, I think it's when you we talk savory, we talk about like cooked products, you know, like sauteed or uh steak or something like that. And I think that's where it's difficult to incorporate cannabis, and then legally on the legal market, we can't touch that because we need to send it out for testing. That takes like a week, then we have to package it, and then we have to portion it legally, we have to determine what is the portion size, like five milligrams. So I could put five milligrams in a tiny gummy, or I could put five milligrams in a giant gummy, but it has to be five milligrams, right? And that's where, like, so then suddenly on the savory side, when you have much less shelf life, you have fresher, you know, whether it's meats or all sorts of different products, it they're perishable. So unless you sell them frozen, we can't we can't touch that right now.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Right. So it's almost just almost like the product format is more difficult. And there's only, I mean, I've seen in Canada they've had like sauces you can buy on the market, but again, we're limited to the THC content in any given package. And I remember the ones that when they first came out, like the bottles were like they were tiny. It was like it was like a one almost a one-time use kind of thing, and it was I don't know, I could see why maybe that wasn't as popular as just buying your gummies or chocolates or or cookies or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

And I think that's the again the perception of value. It's like a tiny bottle for like$40. And they say put two drops of this olive oil in your salad. Yeah. That being said, like, do you put two drops in a big bowl or two drops per serving? So it's it's a little bit too blurry. It's not right, it's not defined enough, I guess.

Terpenes And Flavor Pairing Basics

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, well, I guess in in a lot of ways, too, the industry is still relatively new. So maybe it takes some time, some s sophistication of the of the buyer at the end of the day to sort of also get used to buying food with weed in it. Yeah, yeah. Now, can you walk us through a little bit? Because you're obviously developing a lot of really cool sounding products, they sound delicious. Like, how do you think about the relationship between terpenes, flavor profiles, and effects? And where do you start when you're developing something new?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah, that's a good question. Because for me, creativity just happens, you know. I'm influenced by my daily drive-in, really. Like I can drive in and it's a cold day, and I think about pine, pine trees, and then it triggers like, oh, I need to try pine and you know, apricot, for instance. The secret to pairing, pairing well, and terpenes are it's funny because terpenes always existed, right? They they're in fruits and vegetables and herbs. What we perceive the lemonine is is the one that comes to mind that's easy for people to relate. That that smell of lemon, and when you squeeze the zest, that's lemonine, and that's the oil, the natural oil, and that's a terpene. So, how do you approach how do you approach pairing is what goes well with lemon? Well, a lot of stuff, you know. So then that's where you like I think for the home enthusiast, if they want to do something with cannabis in the savory side, that's how you approach it. You say, like, well, a nice piece of sole, a nice white fish, just sauteed in the pan, and then I can use the lemonine in in lemon to enhance because we know lemon and fish go well together. So, you know, that's as simple as that. You don't have to be too adventurous or too wild, but of course, you need to learn about all the different terpenes that are naturally occurring in in our foods and uh plants, and then you approach it that way, you know, because in cannabis, when you have kind of the plant, it has all these terpenes naturally occurring, and then when we do the process of distillation to distill it, we strip everything. So an RSO or FSO, the full spectrum oils, they they retain a lot of that. But that being said, they don't retain a lot because during the process, the heating process, those terpenes evaporate, they flash off.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, they're too volatile with the heat and all processing.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

It's almost better to add them post-processing, I guess you would say. Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

To keep the values or and the entourage effect that people describe. You know, the thing that I hope is gonna happen if it's ever legalized, especially in the US, as in the country, and so that research can there, there's gonna be people and companies that are gonna invest in their actual research of what actually happens when you have terpenes or not terpenes, full spectrum oil versus distillate, because you can actually improve, you could improve the distillate by reintroducing the terpenes, but then you still need to be conscious of the heat, the temperature of processing. So, like it in a gummy, we have to boil the the gummy slurry, the mixture of fruit and sugar. We have to boil that to like 200, almost 230 degrees Fahrenheit. The terpenes, if if I would add them, I would add them at the very, very, very last moment. And I might I might retain some of the flavor, but some of the value has already evaporated.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you essentially start with like the flavors and then you kind of work out from there. Yeah, I have to admit, have you heard of the book called The Flavor Bible?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I have, yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Okay, that's what sometimes when I'm putting stuff together at my house, I just pull that book down from the shelf because it literally has like all these pairings. You could pick lemon and it would suggest all these things that go amazing with lemon, and it's actually really cool for the home cook to sort of play around with if you're looking for inspiration. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, and and uh as a chef, like there's a a system, a web system that's called food pairing, foodpairing.com. And you go you can go on there, and there's like a a very free kind of a reduced version of the system, the food pairing, and it this is the same thing. It's like they study it to the to the the molecules. So let's say you you take lemon, so you'd go in the in the fruit directory and you pick lemon, and then it's gonna give you a choice of things that pair well with lemon. So let's say you have lemon here, and then you click on soul, the fish, and now you have lemon and sole, and then it gives you another option, a third option of like what goes well with lemon and sole.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

So it kind of dominoes, right? And you can compose a menu quite easily with this system. So it's a it's a paid subscription, but online you can get like the free version, which gives you a sense of go check it out. It's kind of interesting. It's it's uh and and companies, let's say, because I contacted them and I said, Would you be interested in doing something with cannabis? And then they're like, Ah, it's kind of risky, and we don't want to alienate our customers, which are in the food industry. So I understood that, but that's where maybe it's gonna go eventually, where you know you can say, Well, this uh flower has a specific profile, you know, grassy and and so on. And then what they do is you send a sample and they analyze it to the molecular level. And when you do a graft on the HPLC, it gives you peaks and valleys. And when you have a high peak, it says, you know, like, oh, this is gonna match well with rosemary, for instance.

Full Spectrum Versus Distillate Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Right. Well, that's really cool. I will I will check that out. Yeah, that's that's interesting. Now, you you mentioned this a second ago about full spectrum oil, and we've mentioned distillate already. And sometimes for some people, that's like a real fork in the road when it comes to edibles. How do you approach the decision between using either or and how does that change your formulation process?

SPEAKER_00 33:12

So it does come down to preference at the at the retail level. I I don't have a preference either or it's much more the consumer that is asking that is a little bit more into how they feel with one or the other. So what I've heard and been reported, like people say a distal gives you like a head high, and FSO gives you a body high. So, and of course, everyone's different, and everyone has a different tolerance, but that's kind of the difference, is I would say, you know, like black and white preference, but for for formulation it kind of comes down that with an FSO, it's gonna taste the the cannabis profile, it's gonna have grassy hay, right? A little funky, and I I can't hide that too much, so that's where you suddenly then you're like, would I take like a delicate like pear? Am I gonna pair this fruit with FSO? No, I'm gonna take something that's very, very strong, mint, you know, very strong flavors that can compete with the FSO. But I mean, of course, the consumer says, I want strawberry, strawberry gummy with FSO. Yeah, we can make it, but it's gonna be not as good as the distillant. And some people accept that and they want the cannabis flavor because they enjoy it. But I would say, as of now, every time I've tested, kind of tested out the market, I get a 50-50 result. Oh, that's interesting. Almost unanimously, like some like it, some don't. And then when we come when we compile the results, we're like 4951.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Right. Which isn't that helpful, I guess. It doesn't give you anything. Yeah, I find that interesting because I I prefer personally the full spectrum. I do find I enjoy the high better, but do you not find or have you had customers say that the distillate can have like a sort of a bitter taste to it?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Not not very often, anyways. I mean, I've I've rarely heard that with distillate, you know, we we have tricks in the in the industry also, because we I'm gonna supplement like even if I use strawberry flow strawberry puree, I can, it's only a percentage of the recipe, right? So it's like if there's 30% fruit, the rest is sugar and glucose and and pectin. But when you when you boil something, you you boil a fruit, you boil, even if you boil uh you know broccoli, once you you cook it and cook it and cook it and cook it, you lose a lot of flavor, you lose some color. So we always supplement with natural for in our case we use natural flavors, but we supplement the the strawberry flavor at the end of the mix. We add a certain amount of natural uh strawberry flavor, and that typically masks well the cannabis.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

When when you're at five milligrams, like here in Massachusetts, we're at five milligrams per portion per gummy. But like in in Pennsylvania, we have a production facility, and in Pennsylvania it's medical only, and they can put 20, 25, 30 milligrams per gummy. So then there's no point, it's gonna taste bitter and and uh harsh. Yeah, so it it depends on the market, but I I think it's wouldn't you be like fooling yourself if you go to to buy a cannabis product and you're like, I don't want it to taste cannabis.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yeah, I I think so a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

There's a little there's a little flavor, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

I mean, I have maybe have noticed too some of that dissolute taste in some of the beverages I've tried. Yeah, like over time, some of the beverages uh maybe it's just harder to hide in that particular product format, and yeah, it's not that nice, but I don't mind a little green taste in my edibles, so yeah, it's challenging in beverages are water basically.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Uh so that's the challenge.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Yeah, that's the whole game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

That water tastes nothing, really. And and then you're trying to hide a little bit of material in there.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

Yeah.

Regulations That Change The Recipe

SPEAKER_00 37:41

So so obviously they put flavor as well, but it and then it's right on your taste on your taste buds right away.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Right. Yeah. Now, this sort of circles right in nicely into this next question, which is about you've talked about how you want products that taste as real as possible. For instance, like the strawberry emulsion you were just talking about a second ago. How do you balance that commitment to real ingredients with regulatory and production constraints that you know usually push manufacturers to putting out something that's less expensive, which usually means lower quality ingredients?

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Yeah. That's, I would say, state to state or different countries, different different situations. I think in Canada they legalize across the board, but then each province can still do some variations of what the federal law says. In the US, it's state by state. And I deal with that every day because we have facilities in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Florida. In Florida, for instance, we can add we cannot add any color. And this was interesting, yeah. No color added, so it's to make it not appealing, I guess. Okay. So when they they the the regulations say you cannot add color. So I said, Oh, perfect. We can add we can use strawberry puree and make the gummy, and then that was refused because they said no color. I said, I'm not adding any color, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:11

It's the product, it's the strawberry, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

And they're like, No, no color. And I was like, I know, I'm not, it's not artificial or natural added color, it's just from the ingredients. So let's say sugar would be green for some reason. They would be like, you know, you can't use sugar.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

That's that's interesting. Yeah, so how did you get around that?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Well, uh, we just uh take the most neutral juice, which is apple juice, and then they allow you to make a strawberry gummy made with apple juice, okay? That's but no color, so all the gummies are like bake or tan or like like you know, like an oxidized apple juice, like kind of brownish. So all the gummies are or brownish, but they taste different, and that's where like you eat with your eyes, also. Pennsylvania a little bit the same. We we're doing a what we call a pastel, it's so it's like a hard candy, and initially we check, we like we can put color, yep, no, no problem. And at the last at the 11th hour, they're like, nope, no more color. So then I'm same thing. It's like when you eat a watermelon candy, you see it red or red-ish, and you're like, oh, watermelon, because you eat with your your reference points again. You reference watermelon with red color and lime with green. But if you everything is white, it doesn't taste the same.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Yeah, I can I can see that. That seems, and that's regulation, it sounds like by people who don't understand food or cannabis, maybe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

And and and you know, we need to put the the cannabis logo warning and the wrapper and the this and the that. So to a point where it's like the responsibility of the buyer, once you get home, the adults should put their stash in a secure area. Yes, because kids are kids will explore. So I get I get that the government tries to you know check all the boxes. That's fine. But then at the end, the user is like, I mean, I don't want to get in a conversation of guns, but it's the same, you know.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Yeah, well, or alcohol, like you want to bring home your alcohol and leave it on the table for the kids to get into, and that comes in all kinds of colors as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

So, yeah, to suggest that so we we manage that the regulations we we do according to the rules of each state and maybe even each each area, and we just obey the rules, which they there there needs to be rules, it's good, but then they have to be very clear, you know, just saying no color and not adding color. That's where so I think they they catch themselves also being like, Whoops, we should have been more specific specific, you know.

Fast-Acting Hype And Bitter Truths

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Right, yeah, yeah. That sounds like a fun challenge you probably have to deal with all the time. Yep, yeah. Now, can you talk to me a little bit about fast acting edibles? Because that sounds like I it's a trend that I see more and more. And from a formulation standpoint, what's the trade-off when you're when you're building an edible that has this faster onset?

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Or is there a trade-off? Yes, there is. There, I think I would compare it to, you know, when you you like the imitation meat.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Like the I don't like where this is going.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Yeah, but I mean, it's just like you it's funny because like people that are let's say vegan, they say, I don't want, I don't want to eat meat, but I want it to look like meat, bleed like meat, cook like meat, brown like meat, but I don't want meat. So the fast acting, you need to push surfactants. Surfactants are agents that will dissolve the oil faster or disperse it faster. And surfactants are very bitter. So we we resisted going with fast acting for for a while because I didn't feel there was anything on the market that was actually true. Companies out there, suppliers, would say, like, I we have technology for fast acting, and I would say, tell me about it, and they'd be like, It's great. Like, yes, but elaborate already, you know, tell me why, why it's fast acting, and they're like, It's it it mixes really well with cannabis, and then it makes it more available, and then I'd go like, okay, but why? So this conversation was going in circles all the time in the beginning. Then it started changing a little bit. And I think it's a big part of it is a marketing play. So marketers will say even better than last week, even bigger. Best color, best washing quality, you know, tide, cascade, all that. So they they they tell you what to expect. So marketers, that's what they do. They they pre-sell, they they put out their a statement. So of course everybody was just plastering, fast acting. So we did for for a certain amount of time, we found a special ingredient, actually, that was cacao juice. Cacao juice is the the juice extracted from the cacao pod before making chocolate before making chocolate. Right. So I did a tropical gummy a few years ago, and we we got a lot of comments of people saying, wow, these gummies are fast acting. So like that's interesting. We didn't do anything specific, we just added this juice. And it seems like this, it's a superfruit, if you will. It's very unknown. It's a new product. Uh it's a little bit on the shelves in Europe and in South America. You can buy a bottle of cacao juice, it's very delicious, and it's full of vitamins. And I think the vitamin, the natural occurring vitamins were enhancing the effect of the gummy.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

So we we added this juice in every every reference gummy that we have to make them faster acting, you know. Right. This is this is where you have to to listen fast or faster, right? Faster acting. Or you can you can have you know words like nano emulsion, microemulsion, all these things. But I I would say to the the consumer, ask questions and go like, how do you get your microemulsion? And then be like, we mix it.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Well, you mix everything, yeah.

unknown 46:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

So you know, not to get in too deep, but it it's like there's a lot of hearsay in this in this kind of product. They they just marketers are just gonna say it's fast acting and it's appealing because people for edibles, it tends to take you know, half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour sometimes. So this got me to kind of do more research. And I I partnered with a South American company that is a very, very large oil and fat company. They produce specialty oils and fats for the industry from pharmaceutical, bakery, agriculture, all sorts of different avenues where people and products we we use oil and fats in a lot of products. So I approached this company through contacts and I said, what is the best oil as a carrier to get the best effect of THC cannabis? And at first they're like, Well, we've never been asked that. So we did some, they did some research and they came up with a specific blend of oils and fats. So the difference between oil and fat, oil is always liquid at room temperature, and a fat is typically hard or firm at room temperature. But when you melt all of them, they're they're all oils or all fats. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

Yeah.

Emulsions That Actually Hit Faster

SPEAKER_00 47:49

So they came up with a blend of different oils and fats, and then they create an emulsion. And an emulsion is always like you try to disperse the water droplets between fat droplets to make them as small as possible and as stable as possible. So they they did some research, they went to university here in Massachusetts, they partnered with that university. This is where now you have something to bite on because it's not just hearsay, it's not just, hey, it's fast acting. And we just just started just last week producing those new gummies that have this technology incorporated in. So what we have to do prior to making the gummy is create this this tight emulsion of fats, oils, water, and THC. And we use a sonicator. So a sonicator is a machine that vibrates at very, very high frequency. And when you dip this rod in the mixture, you vibrate it until all the molecules are exploded into their finest and smallest particles. So imagine like bubble bath. If you when you start, there's like big bubbles, but you mix it at such a high speed that the bubbles are extremely tight and extremely small, which make which makes more bioavailability. So you hear this word also. Yes, yeah, in the whole discussion of like fast acting, bioavailability. So all of that, there's like parts of it that are true. And then but then you need to validate it.

unknown 49:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

That's where it becomes that that way it's become serious or not.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

So so we're we're validating that right now. But the beta test that we've done, this this works for real. Because you you disperse the cannabis oil, which is an oil, with another oil, and you disperse it very, very well before incorporating it into your product. So it makes a lot of sense, right? And that's where like the beverage industry, all of the beverage are they're struggling because you're trying to force the oil to stay in water, but you have so little oil in a lot of water that the oil always beads back together. Yeah, and you might might have read or heard about it. The oil tends to go to the walls of the can.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

Yes, yeah, there's a lot of challenges to making good beverages.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

After six months, you taste it, you're like, I don't know, there's nothing there.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Yeah, so yeah, so I've heard that that's a big problem.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

That's where you need to you need to have substance to keep it stable, and stability comes at a cost, right?

SPEAKER_03 50:41

Yeah, that's interesting though. You compromise.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Yeah, it's interesting. You found a workaround with this. And for a fast-acting edible, is it like how quickly does it typically start to take effect?

SPEAKER_00 50:54

So the beta tests we've done, we've had results at 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Oh wow, okay, that is fast. Yeah, yeah, that's very fast. And that's probably better than some of the claims I've seen on packages of edibles and stuff like that where I live. Like, you know, you pay a little extra for something that kicks in in 20 minutes or half an hour, but yeah, I could eat a fatty snack and still have the same result, like do the same thing on my own with the regular edibles.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

So and of course, like I've also heard like people with high tolerance. Uh, we've we've had, you know, we we take a nice assortment of of tasters, people that never eat edibles, some people that are eat sometimes, and heavy users, and typically the heavy users don't feel much. They're like, I don't know, it was it faster, but their tolerance is higher, you know.

SPEAKER_03 51:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

The goal of so you metabolize in your liver, yeah. Um and that's what you want to do is bypass your stomach and preserve as much of the cannabis oil to not be affected by the acids and go to your liver. And so what we've seen in our in our tests is that people not only does it hit faster, but it hits higher and a little longer. Oh, interesting. So you feel that that five milligrams feels more like uh eight or ten milligram.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

So is that and it be and that's be it's hitting in or kicking in faster because it's bypassing the liver. Does that mean that the bypassing the stomach? Oh, the stomach. Okay, never mind. That that already answers my question. Because I was gonna be like, is that really an edible high if it's bypassing the liver? But it would still would be it's just bypassing the stomach. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 52:38

Um and that's where, like, I think once or a day soon when it's gonna be legalized everywhere, and then yeah, bigger companies, even pharmaceutical companies, are secretly looking into it, and when it's gonna happen, they'll be ready, you know.

Where To Find INSA Products

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Right, yeah. So yeah. Just as we wrap up here today, Julian, a couple more questions. Yeah, first, what would surprise people about you?

SPEAKER_00 53:05

I don't do sport.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Okay. You don't do any sports. Well, you're not wrong. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

All my friends have knee replacements and hip replacements and crack bones.

SPEAKER_03 53:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

And uh I've well, I've always worked like a like a crazy man, but yeah, and my hands are my hands are the value.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Yeah. Well, you know, you can get your exercise just by walking. So why why put yourself a hard way? Yeah, yeah. Pretty fit. And finally, where can people find INSA and your amazing sounding edibles?

SPEAKER_00 53:42

So in Massachusetts, this is our home base. I basically the we have our production facility here where we grow, process, distill, and make everything. So from A to Z, from the seed to the finished Massachusetts. So we have five stores in Massachusetts and we sell to other uh dispensaries. So you can just go to a dispensary and ask for Insta products. We are in Pennsylvania, so we have a large growth facility. We process, we have a limited amount of products because of the rules, but we do have gummies and the pastiles that we don't have here, so it's like a little bit of you know of everything. So we sell wholesale mostly in Pennsylvania. I think we were in about 150 stores in Pennsylvania, and then in Florida, we have 10 stores across the state, and then in in Florida, you cannot sell wholesale as of yet. So you have to have your stores to sell what you make.

unknown 54:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:44

So every brand, every brand has their stores and can only sell what they make. Right. So there's 10 stores in Florida, and of course, if you travel to Massachusetts, you know, you can stop at one of our stores and test it out. You can probably bring it home if you're put it in your suitcase.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Yeah, well, uh I've done that before. So can confirm they don't usually check the chocolates, especially if they're you know not in a label that has THC emblazoned all over it. So yeah. Yeah. All right, that's really cool. Well, thank you, Julian. I really appreciate your time today. Uh my pleasure. This was great. Well, friends, I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And as always, you will find everything in the show notes over on the website at bitemeepodcast.com. And until next time, my friends, I'm your host, Margaret. Stay curious and stay high.