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The Science of Terpenes: How Abstrax Tech is Revolutionizing Beer & Cannabis · Ready To Drink Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jack Pete, and I am the president and co-founder of Abstracts Tech and Abstracts Hops.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we'll go.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to talk a little bit about your story, but just to kind of grab everybody right off the bat, tell me kind of elevator overview about what it is you guys do and kind of what you bring to the industry.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, Abstracts Tech is where we started.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're originally from California, here in Southern California.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we started as licensed cannabis manufacturers.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took us about two years to build and get through all the red tape of perimeter and processing to where we could actually start extracting cannabis.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in the you know, roughly two years, we started consulting um with other groups, and through that, got pulled into a number of projects.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we built another type 7 manufacturing lab in Coachella, and then a second one in Linwood near like Compton area.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, again, just through those interactions, started asking ourselves, well, what makes us different from any other manufacturer?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it really came down to um Kevin Kobe, our CSO, now our CEO, his experience um right out of university, he was an organic chemist and went into a testing lab and was testing cannabis for potency and pesticides.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also it's terpene, it's aromatic compounds.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he quickly learned a lot about these uh different compounds and got pulled into you know a brand that wanted him to formulate a terpene blend for their vape cart.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time it was a pretty novel product that there weren't a lot of these vape carts on the market.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Cannabis vape carts were just now emerging.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um he you know quickly got pulled in that company and I think they won over 20 cannabis cups with his terpene blends.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we were just thinking through all our business plan and you know what makes us different, and it really was his unique experience creating these flavor and aromas that replicate uh cannabis, and so we decided to uh build a website and start selling these things online.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And within a couple months, we were at uh one of our biggest trade shows called MJ BizCon in Las Vegas, and we were selling these and it quickly became the business.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and through that, we started to double down and uh reinvest in the RD of creating these flavors from cannabis, and we invested in what's called the GC cross GC, and it's a two-dimensional gas chromatograph, and that helped us discover a lot of these unique compounds within cannabis and you know, later on in Tahops and other natural products.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what that does, you know, you know, a one-dimensional gas chromatograph shows you the peaks and valleys.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And a two-dimensional gas chromatograph is like a helicopter flying above that peak, so you can see what's lying behind it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's important because you know, one peak of delimiting, for example, it's very strong and it might look like just you know one compound.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: But when you fly over that, there's actually 30, 40, 50 other flavor compounds that are hiding behind that peak that you would have missed.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so on average, you know, with like cannabis, we're seeing you know, three to five hundred aroma compounds, not cannabinoids or anything else, just aroma compounds.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, half of those we've roughly been able to discover, but the other half, you know, just have never been discovered, uh, haven't been identified, and um just aren't readily available for you to just pick up off the shelf and and grab and use.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so a few of those, you know, we've we've been able to nail down or like the really ethereal sulfur thy thiol compounds, which in the beer industry, you know, they they know very well what these thiol compounds are, and they're they're traditionally known as you know, an off-putting, not a great thing to have in your beer, um, but in Canada, it's quite the opposite.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you don't have those, like you're missing a lot of the freshness and the luster that comes with a fresh bag of of OG Kush, for example, that's packed full of you know these sulfur thiol compounds, and they're so um light and ethereal, you know, they're they're found in like parts per quadrillion, right?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so a typical um gas chromatograph has a hard time picking these things up and discovering them.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we have uh an actual sulfur detector on our gas chromatograph that picks this up.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, again, it's it's found in such small concentration, but has a huge impact on the overall aroma and flavor of cannabis.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably the biggest lesson we've learned over the years of doing all this research, whether it's with hops or cannabis or any other natural product, you know, it's it's these really light and ethereal, hard-to-find compounds that had this huge overall impact on the flavor and aroma.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if if you're missing these key ingredients, you're you're missing a big part of the picture when it comes to this.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think um you actually blew my mind because a lot of times we don't, you're right, we don't talk about this enough.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And from my experience being 20 years in craft beer, you know, I ran beer schools and tasting dinners and all this stuff, and we talked about the neurogastronomy and the hop complexities.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Siebel Institute, got a master of beer styles, did the Cisero and stuff.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna admit right now, I didn't even know because we're so busy pushing the product out and getting the product moving.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: So there are, I'm gonna be ignorant and in public here.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you the way that we love hops and how they can bring out tropical notes and citrus notes and different things like that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: When you properly do the investigation, we can do the same type of thing with in the canvas side.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, um our first product for the brewers was uh a base extract, it's a CO2 extract, which is not that great, to be quite honest.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's missing a lot of the top notes.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we did was add those back in with botanical um top notes, and we call this the omni profile.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it basically allows us to emulate any different varietal you can imagine, which is cool for the brewers because again, like you know, year over year, what we've heard from the brewers is like Citra from 2007 just can't find it anymore.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It like keeps getting worse, it's it's move, it's losing its luster.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so with this Omni profile, we can now lock in exactly what that strain is, whatever that day is that we test it, and we can basically Jurassic Park it for the rest of our life, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And keep it that that same consistent flavor forever.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, that's another cool thing that we can do with the Omni product.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But um we started doing um the quantum extracts, which is just pure hop extract, and what we started finding was that you know people's shelf stability actually went up, and it's a lot to do with you know these bad sulfur compounds I mentioned, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah that you get from the vegetable mass of uh whole hop cone or even a T90 pellet.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of lipids and waxes and and just chlorophyll that transfers into the beer and can quickly convert over time and spoil your beer spoil your beer.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the less of that you put into your beer, the longer it can survive, basically.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And with our quantum extract, we're really just stripping the aromatic compounds off the plant material and we're leaving behind a lot of the chlorophyll and the fats and the lipids.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what that does is gives you all those bright, fruity aromas that you love and leaves behind all the bad, you know, club that ends up, you know, spoiling your beer very, really fast.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh every distributor and retailer that uh watches and listens to this show just perked up when you said it actually extends the shelf life of the beer.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's a big deal.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for for breweries that are shipping across state lines or even you know overseas, you know, a couple few ones that that adds up to a huge ROI.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, there's other cost savings I can go into as well.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I want I want to get more into your story, but I'm gonna nerd out with the offline, and I want to invite everybody to kind of realize that's that's that's just the tip of the iceberg of what Jack and them do.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I want you guys, I want you to get a lot of feedback and uh some inbounds on this.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: But talk to me real quick before we get to your story, because now you peeked me again with the craft beer things.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: So with with with the beer, a lot of people don't realize when you brew the hops, and I'm not a brewer by trade, I'm on the other stuff, but when you brew the beer and you have the hops, the hops gives the liquid taste, and then you put hops in the finishing towards the end to get the aromatics.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a process that's overlooked with how hemp beverages are produced today as an enhancement that could be a replicable process that that's worked with beer?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: For hemp, you mean specifically?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for hemp specifically, yeah.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean with hemp, um the problem with hemp is it inherently is bitter, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: The extract is is very bitter, and um it can make it very difficult to make it palatable, to be quite honest.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you gotta use either a lot of sugars or mouthfeel bitter blockers um to mask a lot of that.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, there's um a lot of techniques you can use, and you know, I think on our side, we we've developed a lot of really cool tech to help, you know, combat that bitterness and and create a better tasting hemp beverage.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we have a number of flavors that range not just from beer flavors, but you know, there's obviously a lot of cannabis flavors we're really good at.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: We even have the a lot of these Sky Farm flavors that are just the most aromatic, just in your face fruit flavors you can imagine.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the cool thing about them is you know that they don't have a lot of sugar in them.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually zero sugar, there's zero fillers, it's literally just the top notes that you would want to get.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're making a beverage and you're using puree's, whether it's in a hemp beverage or in a beer, you know, it comes with a lot of pitfalls too, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, your puree might taste good this year, and then next year is totally different.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you get a lot of inconsistency there.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sugars, making anything with the sugar, you know, you can get, especially in alcohol, you get like that post-fermentation.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So dealing with your CO2 content, and you know, you can have beers exploding or beverages popping, or you know, your aromatics might get burnt off too from the CO2 that that gets burnt from all the digestion of the sugar and the yeast.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's a tough balance when you're using purees, and again, like um our Sky Farm flavors really help drive these um just really fresh, um, true-to-type fruit flavors.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I would recommend that with any hemp beverage, you know.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it it's a combination of bitter blockers and and sugars in your recipe, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a tough one to crack, to be honest, the hemp thing.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's I I that's that's the reason I asked.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Was I I a lot of times we think of it like uh it's just produced in twisted tea.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: You take this, you put this, you put it in the closet, you pull it back out a day later, and you're good to go to sell.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I think uh I like to to be able to show people that the science behind what goes on inside of things.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is again me thinking in real time, and this is part of the joy of this podcast.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: If I was to like I love Durban Poison, like that's one of my favorite streams.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: If I wanted to make a drink, are you the type of people that you or is this a thing now where like people will take the flavoring of a cannabis and then put it into the hemp side of things?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in fact, that's kind of how we got pulled in in the beer industry in the beginning.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these cannabis and hops are cousins of each other, and they actually share a lot of the same aroma compounds.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so our cannabis blends, you know, they they almost emulsify beautifully into a beer product, right?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, it's uh it's interesting because we we've spent a lot of time perfecting our hop extracts, and I think we've done a great job, like no doubt.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but people in the beer industry are continually winning awards with our cannabis terpene blends, and it's hilarious to us all internally because we're like, man, like we want to see more people winning with the hop extracts, but you know, it's like these cannabis extracts, they they really do add a third dimension to the beer, and it just adds this unique um aroma that you even can get it as soon as you start seeing that beer being poured out the tap, it can just engulf the whole room, and then when you go put it up to your nose, it's it's just a whole different experience getting the sense the sensory notes off your nose and then and then tasting it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's really unique for sure.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I remember when uh your Belgian brewing company used to be a client of ours, and uh, I remember when they came out with Hemperer.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like that like shook sent shockwaves through because I remember like when we we were carrying, we couldn't carry it because of some law in our state and all that stuff.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: But I remember going to other states where they had it, and exactly what you just said, it was like one of the first beers in in my experience when when they poured that, and then it sat at that bar.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: The wafing of that aroma just had everybody looking around, like who the hell smoking?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like everybody thought somebody was smoking in the middle of the bar, and it was just like it was perfect, like to have a legal product that that incited that uh that response, you know, that physical response from people.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that was like a Durban Poison, more like a Jack Perrera type, too.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it was a jack, it was a jack, yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, when you so I I'll I'll go to your story after one more.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, you got me because you got the beer and the parallels, and I need to say this and I want this on camera.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you and I are in the same boat where we're looking back at this infighting of alcohol and cannabis and hemp as one of the most silliest things in the world that they can't see how well they can grow together.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true, and that's why you know we it's cool we've been able to create these cannabis blends that are TTB approved.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it I'm sure people have worked with a TTB in the past know it's it's it's not that easy.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so yeah, you can be rest for sure, like all our cannabis blends are TTB approved and you know, ready to use in any kind of alcohol, which is a cool, unique product in itself, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people can't believe it when they smell it and they're like, there's no real cannabis in here.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's like this can't be real.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: But uh again, it comes back to our RD and research and how we've just been able to pinpoint and discover all these different compounds, and it's helped us create these really dynamic blends that you know, some of these have 80 to 120 different ingredients.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that we're trying to get to that three to five hundred mark, which is naturally found in the plant.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, half those don't even exist naturally in nature, you know, which is pretty unique.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: What um so take me back timeline-wise, now we're gonna jump into your story.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh, what year are you when you guys started the cannabis in California before pre-ab before abstracts?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, to be quite honest, um I've been selling weed since I was like 15 years old.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're together on that stuff.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Water under the bridge at this point.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, my parents can co-sign that.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I got caught when I was a freshman in high school selling weed, and um, you know, it definitely, you know, left its mark on me, but I think um early on I just realized, you know, it it resonated with me.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I enjoy it more than I enjoy alcohol, to be to be quite honest, um, especially in my later years.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I it's just healthier for me and my lifestyle, to be quite honest.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um you're seeing that across the board, you know, as more and more states become legal, alcohol use is definitely going down um 10% on average, is what I'm seeing.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so yeah, it's been it's been a part of my life from early on, and something that's you know helped me personally um and financially, to be quite honest.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, it's uh I've always had um an entrepreneurial spirit, and I think this plant has kind of helped me with that.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um prior to this, I was in the swimming pool industry, and so um we uh built pools, remodeled pools, and serviced pools, and we had a retail store, we had an online retail store.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, anything pools you can think of.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we ran that for 10 years and uh sold that company to um a nice gentleman named Will, who's still in business.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: His company is called Vivo Pools and Vivo Aquatics.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um at that time, he just had Vivo Pools, and when he acquired our company, we started a whole new company with him called Vivo Aquatics.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that was part of the deal when he purchased our company, was that we had to work for him for two years to get the earnout.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um through that we started Vivo Aquatics, which was basically um servicing um the commercial swing pool industry and properties that had you know 10, 20, 100 pools on their property.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we took these chemical controllers and put them on their pools and basically uh built the website and they could see all these controllers live, and it would email them whenever a pool fell out of calibration, and it was a big deal for the pool industry, um, especially in like Las Vegas, where there's a lot of injuries from pool chemistry, believe it or not.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think we've all seen the hard rock pools back in the day, and uh you know, I've personally seen it go from crystal clear in the morning to just milk white in the afternoon, and nobody's leaving to go to the bathroom, right?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're all just in the pool all day long, and I'm pretty sure we can all put together what they're they're doing in that pool, and it's gross.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the health department required uh and pool a director of engineering to basically test the pool chemistry every hour on the hour, which is a lot of labor.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially when you have multiple bodies of water, I mean it's it takes a lot of labor.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so with our controllers, we basically got the health department of Vegas to agree to um only have somebody check the body of water one time a day and calibrate it against our machines.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so the ROI was months, and we were putting these controllers on you know every body of water we could for the NGM properties.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we did even some work on the Bellagio Fountain, the Mirage Fountain, um Cosmo, the Aria Vidara, MGN, all of them.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh, you know, I was traveling a lot, going to Vegas, all over California, even Hawaii, um, servicing, you know, the Sheratons and Marriott's and Ritz-Carlton's and St.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Regis's, you know, all these big corporations that have multiple bodies of water.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it quickly made a lot of sense for them, and the ROI was there.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, yeah, I was doing that and uh my two years was up.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I would are you, and then what year is this right now?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: This this is from 2000 2014 to 2016.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so um right at the end of 2016, my two years were up.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've been working a lot.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I remember I I had about two, three months straight.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't stop working all weekends, days, like I was just grinding.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in Park City, Utah, working at a uh mountainside right on the bottom of the ski lift, beautiful resort.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in the chemical room where a chlorine line had split, and there's bleach all over the room, and my my taste is smell, everything's gone.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm just in this horrible environment, and I'm fixing these lines, hanging in these rafters, and my phone kept ringing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I come climb down from the rafters and I I pick it up, and it's this director of engineering from uh Ritz Carleton in in downtown LA, and he's screaming at me, telling me that you know our company's gonna get sued, my my unborn kids are gonna get sued, and that our chemical feeder had overfed into a jacuzzi that bleached a billionaire's ball sack.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Literally what he told me.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, oh don't they pay for that now?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that something they're paying for now?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is it have time times have changed?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I know a service.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was free of charge.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But um that was a big deal, you know.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd spent a couple years building that relationship and he quickly just threw me under the bus.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: That I think was the one that that hurt the most.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: But standing as they ended up, they ended up that you lost that client over that, or did you get to recover from that?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: We we smoothed it over, but it was just again like at that moment where I'm in this chemical induced environment and I'm stressed out.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm you know, incorporating this new equipment that takes on a lot of responsibility.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I wasn't an owner anymore, to be quite honest.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And working like one, and uh, that's how I've always worked, you know, it was my heart on the sleeve.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I told Will, like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take uh, I'm gonna take off, but I'm gonna finish my projects and um I gave him three months time.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, I I finished all my work, and I remember it was July 15th was my my end date, and my I've been doing jujitsu for 20 years, and at that time my my sensei sent out an email to everybody that he needed help at the gym July 15th, the day that I was quitting, so or stopped working.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, well, this is a sign, I'll uh I'll help him out.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I helped him part-time, um, signing up new clients.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I built them in a little retail store, and we started doing more merchandise and gis and shirts and rash cards.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, helped him, you know, pretty much triple his business really quick within like a year, year and a half.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was right in that year um when Kevin came to me and his brother, Max, and basically said, you know, I want to start a licensed cannabis manufacturing company.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I should back up, but Kevin's brother Max and I were both in the pool industry together, and we had both sold that business together, and so the two years for both of us were up, and we were free um to start a new business per se.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so um that's what we went after, and I I uh convinced my dad to to buy a building in Long Beach, and that was the building that we went after to to permit.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in 2017, we got the building, we started permitting it, and I also had just had my first kid that year.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Putting it all on the line, there you go.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was it was a lot, and um, you know, it took us a year to where we could even make money and start paying ourselves, and then you know, once we uh we had a product that was making some money, um we started reinvesting.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, I think that's just uh part of the struggle.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you sometimes get over your skis, and at that time in 2019, we had um kind of a downturn in our market, and we had to stop paying ourselves again and start keep paying all our employees at that time.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, thankfully we did, we persevered through all that, and um, you know, here we are 2026, and you know, we we've got some really cool products, and uh, I'm really excited, you know, of what to come about to come too, because that we're just getting better at what we're doing.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh it's the most exciting piece is this industry.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like I work on I work in all aspects of it, all the categories and stuff like that.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: And most of my history obviously is with the beer industry.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I started out with the in the hemp space in 2019, so I've been in it for a decent amount of time now.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the things I I want to connect with you on also with the with the baby on the way is uh I started this business in 2008, and then I was booking bands and stuff like that.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: But I really, really get into the like the risk investment of the business until like 2010, and it was right when we found my ex-wife and I found out we were having the first child.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was I feel you on that.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And now she's 15 years old and she, you know, she's lived a whole life where I've been doing this, but at that moment, that shit was fucking scary.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like is this it was the same moment where she's pregnant, baby's coming, and then I'm gonna quit my day job and start this business.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And thankfully I'm still in it, you know what I mean?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's 17, 16 years later.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it it adds a layer of complexity, sure.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it puts a lot of stress in there.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: But let's talk a little bit about, like you said, about the industry and stuff like that.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're doing you're doing incredible stuff behind the scenes, and you're be able you're bringing consistency into like a volatile market.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, no matter where it is, it's volatile in the sense that consumer demand is shifting every day, the regulatory bullshit that we're dealing with from a federal level as well as state by state.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: But you guys are kind of your consistent feature in it because irrelevant of what's going on, you're providing that service on a consistent level.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: What's it from your perspective?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably similar to mine from the service end of things, as far as like what's going on and what are the opportunities that maybe people are missing as far as what's going on right now.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, for like what specific uh Yeah, I guess that that was a loaded question.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk, let's talk, let's keep it specifically with hemp beverages just for this, because that seems to be where that part is with things.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, where do you see like uh the future of where that is and kind of some opportunities that people are missing that you guys you guys will be about to support them in uh in uh innovations and such?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean hemp, I I think anybody that's in that market knows, you know, with the the recent passing of that that bill from Congress, you know, it's uh supposedly put the kibosh on that come November, um, which is a bummer because you know on our side there's a lot of uh momentum, um, especially with companies like Betmo and TotalWine and even Target starting to carry a lot of these hemp beverages.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um we were getting we had a lot of enemies in the fire, and you know, since that bill passed, you know, a lot of that's been put on ice, to be quite honest.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: With that being said, you know, I think there's a lot of hope on the horizon for you know the bill to be passed or they delay that decision for maybe three years and come up with a better plan because it it will be you know detrimental.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hundred thousand people are gonna get you know lose their jobs and there's a lot of money in that market.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be a shame for them to just you know erase all that momentum.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then outside of that, like you see, other states like Illinois just said, hey, we're we're not abiding to that law, we're gonna keep hemp drinks the way it's been, and you know, screw that.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you'll probably see more of that as it actually like comes to fruition, you know, states are gonna be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we gotta figure something out for our citizens.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I'm hopeful, you know, there there'll be some common sense laws that'll that'll come into play and hopefully change all that.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um so outside of the legal thing, I would say the the biggest challenge is you know, like like you mentioned, supply chain consistency.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's kind of uh, you know, when we first started seeing the hemp come online, you know, I think uh a kilo CBD was ten thousand dollars.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And now that same kilo is like fifty bucks or something like that.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: I used to sell like uh the biomass and all the other stuff, and it was like the prices were insane, and now it's like just yeah, make it like I don't even know how they're making it anything.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: It costs more to ship it than it does to buy it.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: They gotta just be getting all the biomass for free, and economics make a lot of sense, but um so finding a consistent supply chain on that realm, you know, if you if you have it, I would keep it because you know it's it's um it's always ebb and flowing, I feel like on that end, you know, it's either it's available or it's not, and depending on if it's frothy in the market or it's not, you know, you really got to make sure you lock down your supply chain um and find a really good consistent supply of material.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: I want to I want to touch on that for one sec before we jump to the other one, is because I talk a lot with brands about scaling.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I think having you on this, I want to I want to dive a little deeper into exactly what you just said.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a lot of these brands are used to mom and pop sales or liquor store sales and things like that, where consistency isn't always empirical.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: And when you get, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, one thing I talk on my newsletter and on the show is about when you get to scale and you're rolling out 500 stores in convenience chain, or you're rolling out, you know, 700 stores in the grocery chain, if you don't have that consistency and then on the backside from a capacity and production standpoint, if all of a sudden you're in the middle of that and your your supply chain goes, oh, this is too much.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's let's talk about that a little bit as far as like how you guys bring that to the table, where it's like the scale is there, the the consistency is there.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is gonna be the wake-up call a year, two, three years down the road, as the law does change.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I personally, we we have a lobbyist uh with our company in Pennsylvania.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting ready.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we we already started in the fall.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're building a bill exactly aligned with alcohol and and uh carves out hemp beverages.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then later down the road, a couple years from now, it'll be edibles and flour.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: But right now we're just starting out with the beverages because we were told directly face to face with the lawmakers that's the only way it's gonna get through in Pennsylvania.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're so we're about six to eight months away from that law getting passed and becoming part of the bill.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: And in Pennsylvania, we have a unique experience, unlike other states, because the state needs the revenue.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, unlike the other states where this is getting pushed aside and pushed aside, our state is locked in to the point where the governor is gonna be championing it in a few little while and stuff like that.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we're a little bit different and unique in Pennsylvania.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: But what I want to get back to is when these changes in groceries, as we're starting to see what's target, sprouts, all the circle K, you know, these are they're picking the biggest brands.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of let's talk a little bit about, let's give a heads up to the startup brands and the small guys that all of a sudden want to pitch to Albertsons and they want to pitch to HEB, what that means is it from a supply chain level.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's it's very important, right?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um as a manufacturer from the cannabis side, you know, it's it trickles down all the way from the farm to the manufacturer to the to the buyers, right?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think ensuring that you know you you have somebody that can scale with your business is important, you know, because you might have a really bougie boutique extract today, but can it go nationwide?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how how high can you scale that product?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it's important to find good good suppliers, manufacturers that that can create those extracts that you need for your product and and scale with your business and you know also grow with you too, because you might be paying a lot as a young company, and then once you mature, you're gonna be expecting you know economics to scale, right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And better pricing.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: So um ensuring that you know you trust your partners to to grow with your brand is is important.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think uh sometimes that takes you know taking a little bit of a hit in the beginning to know that you know they're gonna grow with you in the in the long run.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I we see that personally on our side, you know, we're just one ingredient sometimes in a product, but we we work with so many different brands and and co-packers, and you know, we we're always trying to connect the dots and help our our clients grow, you know, because if they grow, we grow.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a it's a teamwork effort.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um I've always believed that you know you do good by people, they'll do good by you.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, that's my biggest piece of advice there.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: No, and it's the and it's the best.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you guys, you guys work in the alcohol industry as well, and everything's cut through it, you know, and and it's uh the trust needs to be there across the board with all this stuff because not only is it a regulated industry, but it's a constantly attacked industry.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: So everybody's cautious, everybody's paranoid, and I think that's the number one thing is like building relationships with trust and scale.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the only way this goes because mom and pops are really important.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: I live, I live and die by them.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: But those chains are what really is going to make building our businesses generational and built for 10 to 15 years from now.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, couldn't agree more.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that changes everything, that changes the mindset as an operator and a founder, too.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a challenge that a lot of founders are seeing right now is is going from the hobby to the small business to the chain activation and representation.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: No doubt.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk a little bit about uh we've got a couple more minutes here.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: I want to um talk about partnerships.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I was very interested to hear you just said you sold your business with your partner, and then is he also in this business as well?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he is.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's not active anymore, but um, yeah, I mean we we've been uh partners in a sense for over 20 years.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: What uh what what are some good uh tips there?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then most people ask that about married couples, but I want to know about business partners.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: How does it work?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: How how what are the trips and tips?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: Just trust?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um a lot of communication, you know.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um you gotta be trusting of your partners for sure.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is a marriage, and um, you know, when times are good, it's good, when it's bad, it's bad.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, you gotta be able to roll the punches a little bit and um treat people with respect at the end of the day, you know.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: To treat people the way you want to be treated.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of how I live my life.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's how we were raised, and unfortunately it has to be said because we don't always do that as a society.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I I appreciate you bringing that up.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: And uh in closing, are there any things uh you want to plug or anything coming up in 2026 that we can kind of get on the radar for everybody?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, yeah, if you if you're in the beer industry, you know, definitely the quantum.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we do a lot of toll processing there as well.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, when you when you quantum toll uh your hops with us, you know, we're we're seeing on average we can 5x your flavor and aroma.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you give us, you know, 500 pounds of of hop pellets, and we'll give you back 2,500 pounds of hop aroma equivalent.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so a lot of efficiencies there.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, we're not just seeing efficiencies on uh aroma, but also, you know, there's less biomass in your brewing process.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the more hops and biomass you add into your brewing process, the more beer gets soaked into that biomass.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you're on average, we're seeing brewers are able to make 30% more beer when they use our quantum extracts.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we mentioned the shelf stability, right?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's less of the chlorophyll and the fats and the lipids in your finished product.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what we're seeing on average is people's beer surviving two, three, four months more than they should.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, so you're almost done, you're doubling shelf life for certain products.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, IPAs they don't survive very long.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anything you do to help that is I think a huge advantage.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, the quantum's great.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're coming out with a lot of new Sky Farm flavors.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, these are all TTB approved.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just uh they they represent the freshest and the most perfect version of a fruit flavor and aroma.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's got you know none of that cooked off flavor that can sometimes happen in in when you're making beer.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, there's none of that like perfumey, potpourri, floral no biscuits here.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just true to type, really in your face flavors.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then, you know, again, I mentioned those omni profiles.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you have a strain of hops that you love this year, we can you can send that to us and we'll analyze that.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, we can jurassic park it forever.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so that'll be your custom skew.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And also with the omni, we can even add in like Sky Farm flavors if you want like a peach or a pineapple um citra.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can make a custom Omni hot profile for you, and that's kind of cool because also on the hemp side, you know, there's a lot of hot waters that are coming out.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's not enough people doing that, you know, it's a it's a category of its own, but on the hemp side, I haven't really seen that.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: I have yet to see a uh T a hemp infused uh hydration product, that's for sure.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, we're always innovating.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have a really cool team of flavorists and chemists, and so if there's ever a product you're thinking of or a flavor you're thinking of, um I guarantee we're already kind of scratching our heads on how to develop that if we haven't already.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of think of ourselves as like an application arm for our customers, and we can build an SLP around any product you can think of.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it could be a beverage, it could be a tincture, it could be a yummy, uh a powder.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: We do a lot of powder flavors as well.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even a bait, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: We do that all the time as well.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of different things we touch on.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say, you know, we're we're really good at like tropical notes.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, cannabis has a lot of tropical flavors, hops have a lot of tropical flavors, and we've been really good at dissecting what makes those flavors come out through those products and recreating them.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, if you're looking for something tropical and unique, I think we're definitely, you know, the ones to talk to talk to.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect, Jack.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, I'll close out and uh I want to first off say thank you for coming on.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's no scripts and there's no agenda, and we met about stuff irrelevant of this uh prior to.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I want to thank you for coming in because it takes a lot of courage to come on something in today's world where you don't know what's gonna happen, and there's a lot of gotcha-type people out there, and that's not what this is.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, I really appreciate you trusting me in this experience and and being able to share your story and your business and uh super fascinating stuff.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm really excited.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: I want everybody to check out abstractstech.com.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it'll be right here in the description below.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: And uh just a you know, overall to everybody, you know, just a reminder, it's 2026.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, don't be an asshole.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: Look at your friend, look at look at your friends, ask them how they're doing, actually mean it.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Hold a door for a stranger, whether it's a dude or a woman or whatever, it doesn't matter.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh just be nice out there.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it's really I want I want to thank you, Jack, for for coming out and trusting me.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I I want people to understand that this is how you strangers meet.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this is how you make friends, and this is how you make positive change in the world by being vulnerable and open with each other and just having a conversation and finding common ground.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks again, Jack.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, cheers to that, Nate, and and appreciate you bringing on your plot, me onto your platform and and for you to have the courage to build this platform.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's definitely needed, you know, behind the scenes for these these companies and these brands.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing else that I've seen like this.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: So kudos to you for doing that and I appreciate you having me on.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope to um continue the conversation maybe one day soon.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we will.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm already you'll get an e you're gonna see a LinkedIn message.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna introduce you to two suppliers as you were talking that were in my head that I need to introduce you to.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm already gonna I'll send you two leads right off the bat.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds good, buddy.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, you enjoy the rest of your day and stay safe out there, and I'll send you an email when this one's gonna drop.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thank you guys.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, take care, buddy.