Mike Adams took a 12-pack of 1 mg THC lager to a cabin in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge to find out whether weed finally has its light beer. Then he checked what the federal hemp ban does to it.
The last time I was high in Kentucky, I was surrounded by more than a hundred thousand festivalgoers, all in various stages of a mean bourbon bender. Not this time. This time I’m high in the hills of Red River Gorge, smack dab in the Daniel Boone National Forest, and not a creature is stirring, not even a… Okay, something is stirring out there. I can hear the bastard, whatever it is, closing in from across the way, trying to be all sneaky and stuff.
Look, it’s not what you think. This isn’t the paranoid delusion of a stoned man. I just opened my first can of Herb Light, a new low-dose THC beer that promises I’ll get stoned gradually rather than turn into a hairless werewolf in thirty minutes or less. Under normal circumstances, I’d entertain the prospect of auditory hallucinations. Not yet. It was likely just a wild animal rooting around: a bobcat, a coyote, maybe even a bear. Goddamnit to hell, please don’t let it be that. I guess I should have come better prepared for 42 teeth. The last time a bear chewed up a hiker’s leg around here was 2010, so, you know, given the odds, someone could end up getting gnawed on again any minute now. I wanted to make damn sure it wasn’t me.
Shouting into the cabin, I asked my partner Holly if she packed the bear spray. She didn’t respond (she usually doesn’t when she thinks I’m being ridiculous, which is a lot), so I’m assuming that’s a no. “You see anything in those pamphlets about hillbillies?” I asked, calling out from the deck once again. “No,” she replied, reminding me not to respond to any racket coming from the woods, especially if something calls my name. Could be an evil spirit, she explained, and I don’t think she was talking about moonshine. Haints and Wendigo supposedly haunt these parts, and no amount of bear spray or Herb Light will keep you safe. Probably just squirrels getting it on.
So far, so good, though. It’s that nice out here, folks. Try to imagine it: a breeze whipping through a vast woodland, the constant reverberations of an avian chorus and time, that dastardly construct, virtually nonexistent. It’s the kind of rustic scene that will turn any man into Grizzly Adams (go ahead and Google him, kids, and try to keep up). The mountain air makes you want to grow a beard, chop wood and eat copious amounts of red meat. It also makes you thirsty. I asked Holly to bring us a couple more Herb Lights. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, or so they say. Out here, among the forest spirits and furtive wildlife, we prefer to keep our sundial at 4:20. We still aren’t stoned, but we’re on our way.
Photo: Holly Crolley
Full disclosure before we go any further: Herb Light sent me the 12-pack I’m drinking. It showed up on my porch two days after I first read about the brand online, before I’d even reached out.
A Light Beer for People Who Don’t Want to Call 911
Herb Light is the work of Quality Meats, a Chicago ad agency whose cofounders, Gordy Sang and Brian Siedband, decided to become their own client. The result is a non-alcoholic, lager-style drink with 1 mg of THC and 1 mg of CBD per can, made for people who enjoy cannabis beverages but think most of them are too potent. What a novel approach: a beer for people who want to get high over time rather than get blasted in the face with the stoner equivalent of a dead horse hurled across a battlefield by a trebuchet. That’s a fancy way of saying catapult, in case you were wondering.
It was about time a drink-maker noticed what’s been missing from cannabis beverages all these years: a true low-dose product for the sensible social consumer. Not that I’ve had many weed drinks that felt like they were crushing my testicles with a pair of six-inch heels, but I’ve had some that made me rather uncomfortable. I, like most, drink to forget, not to battle waves of crippling psychosis. “Anyone who’s dabbled in cannabis has a few horror stories,” Siedband said in a press release.
For too long, the cannabis industry has insisted the market is full of raging algophiles, red-eyed simps chasing one frightening dimension after the next in pursuit of seeing God. Herb Light challenges that tired notion. It’s designed for people who, as the can puts it, don’t want to “forget how to say words and move your mouth at the same time.” The idea is that you can sip it all day without ever feeling the need to ring the undertaker for a ride to the morgue. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think?
I’ve been convinced for some time that part of the problem with normalizing cannabis is that cannabis companies refuse to abandon the notion that stronger is always better. It’s not. Not all alcohol is created equal, and neither are drinkers. The people who knock back cans of light beer over the weekend are not in the same treacherous league as those who prefer the enthusiastic quaffing of hard liquor. Writing in The Atlantic in May, Tyler Austin Harper recalled his father’s advice: “It’s hard to get in trouble drinking Miller Lite.” Drinking it, Harper wrote, shows you have “the patience and strength of character to build a buzz slowly.”
Truth is, most people can get through a few beers at 4.2% ABV without taking a dump on the bar, getting belligerent and ending up in handcuffs. It takes a lot of them to get someone drunk enough to puke, piss themselves and suffer an apocalyptic hangover. We all have that one uncle who manages anyway, but it’s a lot harder to do damage with light beer than with vodka or tequila. Herb Light borrows that philosophy. I’ve been preaching the need for this kind of drink since long before I became a weekend mountain man.
THC’s Answer to Mister and Missus All-American
Does Herb Light taste good? Sure. I mean, it’s light beer. Flavor isn’t exactly the main selling point. It’s a crisp, run-of-the-mill pilsner, similar to Miller Lite, and there’s no weed taste. Take away the label and there’s no way anyone would know it’s a cannabis beverage. It’s for conservative beer drinkers who hate the hoppiness of an IPA: backyard pitmasters, sports fans, book clubbers and even depressed porch drinkers, like me. Come to think of it, I suddenly feel compelled to fire up the grill and ponder the many ways I’ve royally screwed the pooch. On second thought, I don’t need the aggravation.
Photo: Holly Crolley
Of course, cannabis purists might argue that a product like Herb Light isn’t what the scene needs. These are the folks who insist smoking is the only way. Just give them a joint, a bowl, a bong or an old Coke can. It’s the hill they’re going to die on. For those people, by all means, go with God. Herb Light isn’t for them. It’s for everyone else.
The cannabis industry has known how to make a THC drink since its mad scientists figured out how to use the 2018 Farm Bill to their advantage. What it has resisted is the idea that plenty of consumers, especially those who don’t smoke and don’t want to get higher than Tommy Chong standing atop the Burj Khalifa, might not be all that different from beer drinkers. I can’t imagine anyone wants to sit down with their buddies to watch the game on Sunday and end up having a panic attack thirty minutes later. My editor calls it “sessionability.” I like to think of it simply as common sense. Catching a buzz should be a leisurely pilgrimage, not a sprint.
Eight Cans In
I’ve now had eight Herb Lights, and I’m feeling good, happy, all things considered. I’m still not what the new-school cannabis kids would call “elevated,” but I’m getting there. I’m no longer all that concerned about bears or barbaric rubes named Jed. Herb Light and I have become one, and I’m more interested in the music playing in the background, a British progressive rock band from the 1960s called Black Widow. Holy hell, is that a flute?
The most interesting thing about this beer is that, unlike most cannabis beverages I’ve tried, it sort of functions like a beer. The onset is quick, like really quick, giving you a little twinge of a head change right between the eyes, similar to the first few swigs of any light domestic brew. There’s no waiting around. By my third, I could tell I’d been consuming THC and could predict with some certainty how I’d feel after three more. The best part is that I figured I could finish the entire 12-pack and not get much higher than if I’d had a single can of a 10 mg cannabis beverage. Twelve cans is still 12 mg, and THC drinks hit everybody differently, so your mileage may vary. But spreading the buzz out over several hours, one small dose at a time, gave me a kind of control I’ve rarely had with weed drinks.
Obviously, not everyone looking to get stoned wants to knock back a 12-pack to get there, but that’s the beauty of it: they don’t have to. There’s a slew of THC products on the market that can take the die-hard masochist from zero to sixty in a snap. Going full throttle is always an option. That ain’t ever going anywhere.
This beer is designed for the Sunday driver. It’s for casually drinking alongside friends without getting high enough to freak out in front of their kids about being hunted by invisible cannibals and never, ever getting invited back. In my honest opinion, it’s a game changer for social consumption, especially for people averse to alcohol and searching for a subtle alternative.
Photo: Holly Crolley
I nearly drank the entire 12-pack on the deck that night. Lo and behold, no bears came after me, and I never got high enough to turn into a werewolf. Well, that is, until later that evening, when I ate some edibles on the side and spent the rest of the night listening to Volcanic Rock by Buffalo, staring into the darkness of the woods and jabbering to Holly about how we’re all just ants on dust. Still, it took all day to get to the point where I began to wax philosophical under an Appalachian moon. It’s hard to get in trouble with Herb Light.
Low-dose products like this one might even help as this country inches ever so slowly toward full-blown legalization. Herb Light makes THC less scary. It could help the average person see cannabis as a tamable beast rather than a rabid chupacabra in desperate need of being put down. Your pot-hating parents might even try getting high for the first time if they knew they could nurse their way there with a familiar flavor, without landing on a couch full of dread. This beer could be the nation’s training wheels. Send a 12-pack to every pot-loathing member of Congress and watch the votes start to move. Herb Light seems to agree: in October, the brand urged Americans to buy their congressperson a round. If only it made a hazy IPA version (just tossing it out there, fellas), I might never drink real beer again.
The Light Beer of Weed Has a Deadline
Here’s the problem, aside from Herb Light’s apparent inability to defend against bears. A federal law signed in November 2025 rewrites the definition of hemp. Starting Dec. 11, finished hemp-derived products with more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container lose their federal hemp status. Most of the change was supposed to hit on Nov. 12, until a stopgap funding bill pushed it back a month.
In Illinois, where Herb Light launched, the clock runs out sooner. Starting Nov. 12, liquor stores and restaurants there can no longer sell THC drinks above the 0.4 milligram line, and consumers will have to go to a dispensary to buy them. Binny’s, one of the chains carrying Herb Light, has already stopped restocking them.
Herb Light, which the brand’s publicist confirmed is hemp-derived, has 1 milligram per can. That’s two and a half times the new limit. The lightest THC beer I’ve ever had is, as far as Uncle Sam is concerned, about to become too strong to sell.
It won’t be alone. Whitney Economics put U.S. sales of legal THC beverages at roughly $1.1 billion, and practically any hemp drink with enough THC to notice blows past the new cap. Some lawmakers want something more sensible. The Beverage Regulatory Parity Act would regulate THC drinks like alcohol, with a 5 milligram per-serving limit and an excise tax. The Lawful Hemp Protection Act would regulate consumable hemp products instead of banning them. As of mid-October, both were still sitting in committee.
Look, I don’t want to get into all the complexities of Uncle Sam’s antipathy toward Americans getting stoned. This is a country where violence is perfectly acceptable, normal even, but God forbid the population enjoys a little THC. It’s clunky, conservative and inarguably ass-backward.
And here’s the cruel part. A 1 mg beer makes the most sense exactly where beer lives: in the liquor store, in the cooler at the corner bar, next to the Miller Lite. That’s the channel the new rules shut down. If Herb Light had to go dispensary-only to keep the dream alive, it would land in front of shoppers who mostly come in for something stronger. People probably won’t want to pay dispensary prices for moderation.
So just as drink-makers finally figured out that low-dose THC is what a lot of us wanted all along, a new wave of prohibition could clip the wings of the industry’s best idea before it has time to generate a buzz. I’ll be on the deck. Bring a 12-pack, if you can still find one.
