I wonder if marijuana will also be able to avoid being crushed and consolidated by monopolies. I don't think the cigarette industry was able to avoid it but I am not well versed on tobacco industry regulations.
My gut tells me that since at the end of the day marijuana is an agricultural commodity large players will come to dominate the market. But on the other hand there is a decent variety in strain types and flavors and with time you could see interesting strains being developed that have a uniqueness similar to craft beers.
One thing about beer that the article didn't touch on is that it's a fragile product which has its quality harmed by the standard supply chain. It's both temperature and light sensitive.
This makes many smaller producers compared to few large producers more attractive than in a more easily transported good eg. phones. One big factory with all of the quality standards and efficiency gains that allows works great for the iPhone, not so much beer.
I don't know enough about weed to be able to say where it falls on the fragility of product spectrum, but it's a factor worth considering and I'd be interested to hear from people who do know enough.
To me this actually makes me respect beers like Budweiser even more. They've managed to take a fairly temperamental style of beer, mass produce it in breweries spread around the world, and wind up with a product that is damn near uniform everywhere I've ever had it. It's not my preferred style, but I don't think I've ever had a truly bad one.
I don’t care much about smoking but I like edibles. From my own experience it’s entirely possible to differentiate your product as an edible and I see others finding brands they like and sticking to them. When I’m with friends buying plants they don’t seem to care as much about strain/grower (but that’s anecdotal).
I think edibles will be mostly taken over by concentrates. Instead of (in WA for ex.) paying $40 for 10 10mg edibles, I’ll pay $20 for enough concentrate to make 80 edibles.
I don’t know. Plenty of people like to bake regular cookies, but there are still plenty of varieties of store-bought cookies. People like consistency: consistent taste, texture, and, in this case, potency. That last one is a big one when it comes to mind-altering substances. That, and it’s much easier to buy a sleeve of Oreos rather than whip up a batch when you want a cookie
Do you have any good guide? I’d be interested but don’t where to start. I might try if it’s easy enough to make something that doesn’t taste like I’m eating plants.
Pro tip: Make savoury food. Anything with a high oil/butter content is good, and because it's savoury the "plant" flavour can be more easily masked by other herbs than you can in sweets.
Personally, I find stroganoffs to be really good, as well as things like small pies/quiches that you can mix the butter into the pastry.
Note: I haven't tried any American edibles and not sure how well the sweets mask the flavour - but for the home cook, a sausage roll that then welds you to your sofa is a good thing!
You can just squeeze it on a cracker. Some people like brownies, but using edibles to get high makes as much sense to me as eating rum balls to get drunk.
There was a recent news article on the developing market for marijuana that addressed this (was posted on HN, too lazy to search, unfortunately).
There are some state regulations restricting grow operations to remain somewhat small, and legal uncertainty has also kept the large players out of the market so far. But the trend was definitely towards consolidation, with wholesale prices dropping something around 70% from their initial levels.
One idea mentioned in the article was indeed marijuanas' character being well-suited for commoditisation, although some growers try to stem the tide by developing high-end brands. I believe they explicitly made the comparison to craft beer, where individual taste is far more different than it is for strains, which are largely defined by their content, and relative amounts, of THC and the other thing. Processing extracted THC into edibles and other largely standardised products also points in this direction.
I think marijuana being a weed :being able to grow as fast as it does while also being an incredibly easy plant to grow (or screw up, depending on how you look at tings) will lend to lots more home growing than we see home brewing, in my opinion. People are already comfortable with gardening or landscaping of some kind. I think home growing pot is more akin to the average American's day-to-day activities than anything like brewing beer is.
I think there are already too many people taking steps to catalog and categorize the already established strains and varieties of marijuana before it's already too late. That and international breeding and cataloging efforts will be the forces that help future home growers to have confidence in the genetics they are planting in the ground or substrate.
It been very helpful that the state laws are in conflict with federal laws. The uncertainty causes some financial difficulties, but in general it has helped to protect smaller producers.
In Oregon, AFAIK the laws were structured in such a way to help local growers. Growers had to be residents for X months and were quite limited in operation size to spread things out.
MJ is an interesting product in that its not a carcinogen like tobacco. Its classification as a Schedule 1 drug has been entirely because of some racist elements of the US government making it illegal in the US.
Anyways, the point is that it can be used in various forms. I see a bright future in the edibles industry. I find it hard to believe that any of the traditional confectionery companies (which are pretty conservative) will ever embrace edibles since their market is traditionally kids.
Huh, on the contrast, I find myself wishing beer flavors were as varied as weed flavors. I frequently find myself trying a new strain and having to smack my lips after each hit because I want to savor the flavor as much as possible.
My gut tells me that since at the end of the day marijuana is an agricultural commodity large players will come to dominate the market. But on the other hand there is a decent variety in strain types and flavors and with time you could see interesting strains being developed that have a uniqueness similar to craft beers.