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Marijuana manufacturer uses homegrown inputs to create one-of-a-kind edibles

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Turkish delight, the sweet, chewy, powdered confection, has captured Nathan Cozzolino’s imagination since he was young.

“I thought there was a dreamy quality about it from my childhood reading,” Cozzolino, the owner-operator of Rose Los Angeles and maker of marijuana edibles brand Rose Delights, said of the candy that appears in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis.

As an adult, Cozzolino made buying Turkish delights from a neighborhood candy store an after-school ritual he shared with his son.

‘Infinite possibilities’

As an infused cannabis product, Turkish delights can be as practical as they are magical, he said.

“The formulation gives infinite possibilities in terms of the types of ingredients that you can use. You can throw anything at it and make it make sense and make it taste good,” said Cozzolino, who started the California-based cannabis company Rose Los Angeles in 2017.

Rose Delights, the brand’s marquis product, are cannabis-infused Turkish delights. Rose Los Angeles also sells packaged flower, infused chocolates and capsules.

“It gives you an opportunity to create a more shelf-stable, gummy type of product without having to introduce all sorts of weird synthetic or artificial ingredients,” Cozzolino said.

Cozzolino’s culinary team and occasional guest chefs have created an exotic selection of homegrown flavors infused with single-strain rosin from flower grown on Rose’s Farm in Penn Valley, California.

The farm also grows many of the fruits and vegetables that go into the delights. Ingredients not grown on the farm are sourced from local farmers and specialty producers.

Flavors of Rose Delights include apple-ginger-ume (a Japanese fruit similar to a plum) infused with Sunshine No. 4 rosin, pear-kimchi infused with Maltese orange rosin and, in a nod to the traditional Turkish delight, two types of rose hibiscus: one infused with Fruit Gushers (an indica strain) and the other with Super Lemon Mac (a sativa).

“The whole intention behind Rose Delights was to create an edible product that took responsibility for and cultivated the majority of its inputs,” Cozzolino said.

Farm and flower

The process begins at Rose’s Farm, a property in central California that includes a 10,000-square-foot cannabis garden.

Rose Los Angeles uses only a fraction of the garden to grow roughly 300 plants, which typically yield about 500 pounds of dry cannabis.

Of that, 100 pounds is selected for manufacturing rosin, which will go into Turkish delights or chocolates, and the rest is sold as packaged flower.

If Rose maxed out its grow space, it could harvest more than 1,000 pounds of flower and produce 30,000 packages of Rose Delights per month, Cozzolino said, adding: “We just focus on the genetics that are inspiring.”

Cozzolino noted that Rose uses the same grades of flower for rosin pressing that it sells as packaged bud.

“Whether we’re packaging it for prepackaged flower sales or we’re putting it in a 35-micron bag for pressing, the process all the way up until the very end is exactly the same. So, all of our flower is treated like smokable flower,” he said.

“It’s all graded similarly; we’re not only pressing smalls, we’re pressing 7-gram buds.”

After harvesting, the flower is cured for 10-14 days and then stored in bins separated by strain. It often won’t be trimmed until it’s ready for sale or pressing.

Rose’s trimmers are careful not to overtrim buds, which can cause unnecessarily trichome loss.

“For pressing, we want to preserve those. But we get off anything that could affect the flavor—so anything that’s not trichrome-encrusted. And then, a lot of the sugar leaf goes away as well. We take it down pretty close to just the bud,” Cozzolino said.

“We pretty much process that same exact way that you would process to package smokable flower, except instead of putting it in flower packaging, we put it into a nylon mesh bag for pressing.”

Pressed to impress

The flower then goes to Rose’s 3,000-square-foot facility in San Francisco’s Mission District, where it is pressed.

The facility also is home to Rose’s kitchen, where the edibles are made, as well as a curing room where the delights are cured.

For pressing, the flower is put in 35-micron bags (about the size of a single human hair, Cozzolino said) that can hold up to a half-pound of flower.

Rose uses Sasquatch Yeti rosin presses of various sizes and presses at low heat, averaging about 210 degrees, depending on the strain.

While some rosin-makers will double-press a bag to extract the maximum amount of rosin, Rose does a single press to avoid “overtoasting” the flower and creating rosin that tastes burnt.

“We do short-duration low heat in order to preserve the aromas and terpenes and not toast that flower before we cook with it,” Cozzolino said.

One pound of flower yields 60-90 grams of rosin, Cozzolino said, adding that whole-plant pressed rosin has the same terpene, cannabinoid and chemical profile as the original flower.

 Perfecting recipes

After pressing, the rosin is decarboxylated for up to a few hours, depending on the volume; it is then added to whatever carrier fat is going to be used in the recipe.

One thing that differentiates Rose Delights is that they are made with potato starch, while conventional gummies are made with pectin.

The difference is important, Cozzolino said, because with potato starch, the delights won’t melt below 180 degrees. Conventional gummies, he said, can melt at half the temperature.

“Our formulation has a higher melting point, so it’s something that you can take with you in your pocket at Coachella and not worry about it melting,” Cozzolino said.

Rose’s recipes are unique and high end.

The apple-ume recipe, for example, is made with “cult classic” Bernie’s Best apple cider from Northern California, house-made ume plum syrup and a bit of fresh-pressed ginger juice. The mixture is infused with rosin pressed from Sunshine No. 4 flower.

High Energy Rose Delights are made from house-made green juice that includes spinach, watercress, cucumber, lemon and pear, blended with 90 phenotypes of the Congolese Bubblegum strain from Purple City, a partner farm.

“It was an exclusive collaboration for this High Energy recipe,” Cozzolino said.

Because Rose Farm grows from seed and not from clones, it can blend phenotypes “to get a more robust expression” of terpenes, cannabinoids and other chemical compounds in each strain.

“The purpose behind that is, yes, it’s 5 milligrams of Congolese Bubblegum, but it’s a really robust 5 milligrams because it has all the phenotypic expressions across the 90 phenos,” he said.

Curing the delights

After being unmolded, the delights are cured for six to eight weeks. Most other gummies are cured for a few days, Cozzolino said.

The delights are cured at room temperature on parchment paper at Rose’s kitchen in San Francisco.

“We have a constant cycle of curing happening at our (kitchen) facility. Half of our facility is a curing room where we’re letting the fruit and other natural ingredients in Rose Delights reach a point where we’re comfortable that they’re ready to package. It’s always a moving target because our ingredients are different all the time,” Cozzolino said.

He noted that Rose Delights makes several products that are always available, plus seasonal offerings.

“Those things get taken out three times during the curing phase, bounced around, repowdered and resituated; parchment paper is changed out. The number of touch points with Rose Delights is extremely high.”

Even though 30% to 40% of the recipes call for fruit, Rose Delights are extremely shelf-stable because they are suspended in sugar, which acts as a preservative.

Cozzolino said the delights can be good for up to three or four years. “Preserved fruits can age a long time, even at room temperature,” he said.

 The fruit decides

How the Rose team makes each recipe changes with every batch because the fruit used is different every time.

So, Rose’s chefs chart their culinary course according to each new batch of fruit and its characteristics.

The brand’s many methods include poaching fruit before pureeing, using an immersion blender or a tabletop blender.

Sometimes the Delights are heated with an induction cooker; other times, employees use kettle cookers.

On some occasions, the team hand-cuts fruit; other times, it goes through a confectionary depositor or a confectionery cutter.

“That’s also unique about our recipes: They’re not stagnant; they’re always changing, depending on the fruit. Fruit preservers, jam-makers, they start with the produce; then, they build around that,” Cozzolino said.

Paraphrasing a lesson he learned in a class with master jam-maker June Taylor, he added: “You have a relationship with your farmers who have a relationship with your produce. And then everything stems from there.”

“There’s an improvisational element. And I think that doesn’t often happen with edibles manufacturing. Everything is about standardized SOPs. And you know, we have SOPs that we follow, but there is always a component of improvisation with the production of Rose Delights.”

Rose recently opened a rosin-pressing and kitchen facility in Albany, New York, where Cozzolino hopes to replicate the success that his company has had in California. The press cost $150,000.

“With low amounts of equipment, we can really cover a lot of ground and produce at a pretty high rate, considering the style of products that we’re making using seasonal produce,” Cozzolino said.

“I think we’ve surprised everybody and proven that you can design something like this and have a direct connection to an agricultural network and produce at scale.”

Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/cannabis-manufacturer-uses-homegrown-inputs-for-edibles/

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New Mexico cannabis operator fined, loses license for alleged BioTrack fraud

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New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.

The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.

Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.

The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.

The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.

Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.

After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.

In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.

The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.

At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.

Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.

Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.

The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:

Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.

Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/

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Marijuana companies suing US attorney general in federal prohibition challenge

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Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.

According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”

Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.

The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”

The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.

They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.

The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.

Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.

One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.

In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.

In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.

Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.

“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.

“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”

Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”

While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.

“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”

Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/marijuana-companies-suing-us-attorney-general-to-overturn-federal-prohibition/

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Alabama to make another attempt Dec. 1 to award medical cannabis licenses

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Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.

The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).

Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.

Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.

That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.

Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.

Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.

A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.

Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/

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