ROCKY MOUNTAIN WAY: The Hemperor From New Belgium Is Colorado’s Latest Hemp Beer.

Hemp Beers are nothing new in Colorado. Several have been brewed over the past fifteen years — if not further back — but when New Belgium Brewing releases its new hemp beer, the Hemperor HPA, next month, it will represent a serious effort by the state’s largest craft brewer (and the nation’s fourth-largest) to bring the often controversial and quasi-legal plant into the mainstream market.

The 7 percent ABV beer, which will be sold in six-packs, is brewed with hemp seeds, adding a component that the brewery believes will re-create the flavor of cannabis terpenes, the aromatic oils in plants. Hemp itself is the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana, often used in textiles, soaps and food.

I can’t recall anyone who smoked pot for the flavor, but this beer has to be better than an over-hopped IPA.