Cannabidiol (CBD), the star compound of hemp, may be known for its relaxing properties, but one company has uncovered how to make a relaxing—and even intoxicating—product using an entirely different portion of the plant: hempseed.

Highway Vodka, a company founded by lifelong friends Ben Williams and Wendell Robbins III, had been seven years in the making when it launched in 2019. 

Williams began distilling vodka as a hobby. But when he visited a friend in California who owned a cannabis dispensary (and is a fellow vodka-distilling enthusiast), he met others who were distilling their vodka with cannabis. It inspired him to try the same with hemp.

Now, the Houston-based company has become the first Black-owned distillery in the city, according to Highway Vodka, and is expanding its distribution beyond Texas to include Georgia, California and Florida.

“It’s not about hemp flavor, and it’s not about CBD, to be honest,” Williams says. “It was really about what the plant does for my particular process.”

© Emily Jaschke

Developing the Formula

When Williams began experimenting with different hemp vodka formulations, the crop was not yet legal in the U.S., so Williams began sourcing from Canada. Eventually, federal farm bills in 2014 and 2018 opened the legal landscape for hemp, allowing Williams to expand his experimentation with hemp grown in the U.S.

He tried different parts of the plant as well as different forms of the grain, from full raw hempseed to roasted grains. 

“I’ve played with every part of the plant I could get my hands on,” Williams says. “The thing that’s right under your nose and most readily available turned out to be what I needed: hulled hempseed.”

Williams spent years honing the formula. Then, it all clicked.

“One day I was just being lazy and dumped everything into the still [the apparatus used to distill vodka]. Right off the rip at a super high proof, it was just better. It had a better smell, feel,” Williams says. “We immediately started proofing it down, making cuts and filtering it. … It was literally just the best stuff we had ever made.”

That formulation consisted of corn, water and hulled hempseed. From that day, Williams and Robbins continued honing that formulation, trying out distilling it a wide number of times and settling on six for the “purest, sweetest” taste, Williams says.  

Williams, who owned his a small bar and also opened a restaurant called Lucille’s 1913 with his brother, Chris, began taking the vodka to his establishments to let people sample it. 

“It was just consistently winning,” Williams says. “I was like, ‘Let’s just try to make a go at it.’”

The Hemp Touch

Vodka is typically made with fermented grains that are then put through a distilling process. This can include corn, sorghum, rye, rice or wheat. 

But hemp grain is unique in that it has a high fat content. And while the vodka doesn’t necessarily have the taste of hemp, Williams says the additional seed does give it a different mouthfeel.

“At distilling six times, after it goes through the process of going through the still, you’ll notice it has a viscosity difference. I don’t think it’s thick or creamy—it just has a little more body than your typical vodka,” Williams says. “What we’ve found is that oil and those fats coat your palate and smooth [the taste of the vodka] out, so there’s no burn. It makes it easy to drink neat and straight up. It also holds the sweetness from the corn on your palate.”

The two also found that the hemp actually produces higher yields of alcohol. While yeast nutrients, which are used to produce more alcohol, can produce an unwanted flavor, Williams says, hemp did not.

“I found out different proteins in hemp act as a superfuel for my yeast,” Williams says.

Texas Roots

As Highway Hemp Vodka gains popularity and expands its distribution, Williams he’s looking to expand his sourcing network as well.

While the two partners were dialing in their formula, Williams was searching for “the fattest hempseed I could find.” He settled on a supplier in Minnesota and is currently sourcing anywhere between 550 to 800 pounds of seed a week.

Williams says he’s currently in the process of finding a Texas-based source for the seed. But it’s been a challenge, as many growers in Texas kicked off 2020—the state’s first year of hemp production—with fiber varieties.

Still, his search will continue as Highway Hemp Vodka grows. In addition to retailers selling the vodka in several states, it is available in more areas via online ordering at reservebar.com. 

The company is also working on putting out new products in the upcoming year, including honing a formula for hemp whiskey. 

“We have no choice but to make everything,” Williams says. “We’re just having fun with it.”

The FTC took its first-ever enforcement actions against CBD companies this past December, obtaining settlements against six companies for deceptive marketing. The enforcement was part of Operation CBDeceit, targeting companies that made unproven claims about their products’ ability to treat diseases and medical conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.

In doing so, the agency intended to send a message: a new market is subject to the same laws and enforcement action as an established one.

“The six settlements announced today send a clear message to the burgeoning CBD industry: Don’t make spurious health claims that are unsupported by medical science,” Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a Dec. 17 release announcing the action. “Otherwise, don’t be surprised if you hear from the FTC.”

Leslie Fair, a senior attorney at the bureau, took it a step further in an agency blog published that day.

“‘It’s the Wild West out there!’ How often have you heard that statement made about health claims for products containing CBD? But here’s the thing: It’s not the Wild West,” she wrote. “In fact, health-related representations for CBD products are subject to the same established requirements of scientific substantiation the FTC has applied for decades to any advertised health claim.”

The six companies—Bionatrol Health, LLC, CBD Meds, Inc., Epichouse LLC, HempmeCBD, Reef Industries Inc., and Steves Distributing, LLC—made health claims without necessary scientific evidence. Each company settled with the government and was required to end all misleading advertising and notify consumers of the agreement. Also, five of those companies were assessed fines ranging from $20,000 to $85,000.

According to the agency release, these companies are also prohibited from making any claims of prevention, treatment, or safety in the future unless they have human clinical testing to back this up. The companies are also required to have “competent and reliable scientific evidence” to support any other types of health claims.

Pennsylvania state officials will be working to bring attention to hemp during its annual farm show, including a presentation for students about hemp plastic as a sustainable material.

The virtual event, Cultivating Tomorrow, occurs Jan. 9-16 and includes sessions on hemp that review previous actions the state has taken and its future plans for the crop.

“After being banned by federal law for more than 80 years, Pennsylvania’s budding hemp industry is ripe for innovation and holds tremendous promise for the future,” Shannon Powers, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, told Hemp Grower. “Fiber varieties of hemp promise seemingly endless opportunities for sustainable building materials, bioplastic industrial components, fabrics, and a myriad of other environmentally friendly materials.”

Sustainability will be a focus of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educational programming provided to students each day of the show. These STEM sessions include a Jan. 12 presentation about bioplastics, including hemp-based products. “Daily STEM demonstrations of at-home activities for K-12 students will include lessons on how to make butter, plant-based plastics made from hemp and other sustainable materials,” according to a press release.

Sustainability is especially relevant for the hemp industry, given the incoming Biden administration’s focus on the issue as one of its priorities.

There will also be a panel discussion on Jan. 11 by members of the Pennsylvania Hemp Steering Committee to explain their vision for the future of the state’s hemp industry. This includes efforts to develop an economic and workforce development plan in partnership with the state’s Department of Agriculture and industry members, ranging from farmers and processors to product designers, merchandisers, and consumers.

Also, there is a Jan. 13 panel discussion, Cultivating Impact—A Year in Review of Pennsylvania’s First Farm Bill—that explores what the state has done so far to build the hemp industry. For example, the state granted nearly $233,000 in state Specialty Crop Block Grants to five grantees to advance the new industry.

Hemp Benchmarks found that several states experienced large shifts in the number of hemp licenses issued over the past year, including large increases and decreases across the country. However, the change in acreage tells a more nuanced story, Hemp Benchmarks Editorial Director Adam Koh told Hemp Grower.

"You'll be hard-pressed to find examples" of real growth in the market, Koh said, noting that all the states that led in acreage in 2019, including Tennessee, Colorado, and Oregon, saw significant declines in 2020. The states that did see growth in cultivation were either those that had small pilot projects in 2019 or just started their programs in 2020, he added. And the overall growth that did take place was minimal, with only a few thousand acres in total.           

Below you will find stats from 2019-2020 on the five states with the largest increase* in hemp licenses and the five states that experienced the biggest decline:     

*Clarification: Pennsylvania’s increased hemp license numbers does not necessarily reflect the actual increase in licenses from 2019-2020 due to a change in state licensing policy. The state allowed numerous grow sites to be under the same license in 2019 but changed its policy in 2020 to require that each of these sites have its own license, leading to an increase that may not represent the actual change.