If you infused sugar crystals with CBD, what would you make with it: mixed drinks, baked goods, or just add it to your morning coffee?
In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, our host Matt warns about fraudsters selling Coronavirus cures. Then Chef Ron Silver, CCO and Founder of Azuca, comes on the ‘cast to talk about their unique CBD infused sugar. Their CBD sugar is perfect for CBD drinks or almost any elevated recipe that requires some sweetness.
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Combining cutting-edge CBD encapsulation technology and old-fashioned cooking skills, Azuca creates CBD sugar products that are perfect for cooking, mixed drinks, or just your morning coffee.
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Below is the complete transcript of episode 33 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast.
Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by MinistryOfHemp.com, America’s leading advocate for him and hemp education.
Matt Baum:
Welcome back to a another edition of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. My name’s Matt Baum and I am your host and today in the show we are going to talk about Azuca, a company created by a chef that is infusing CBD into sugar in small packets to help you with your dosage. It’s very cool. But before we do that, let’s take a minute to talk about the coronavirus.
Matt Baum:
The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19 as it’s been called, has dominated the news cycle recently and for good reason, it’s dangerous. The NBA has canceled their season along with the NHL. March Madness is canceled. Baseball doesn’t know if it can get started. As of Tuesday of this week, things seemed to ratchet up very quickly in the news and the United States woke up to the fact that this is serious and it’s probably going to affect a large chunk of the population.
Matt Baum:
Now with a warning like this comes a lot of misinformation. Just last week, disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker got a cease and desist letter from the state of Missouri for selling a fake cure. Alex Jones of InfoWars fame also just received a cease and desist for selling fake coronavirus cures. And of course there are people on the internet saying that CBD can cure of coronavirus. This is absolutely false.
Matt Baum:
CBD will not cure the coronavirus. It can be used to help with pain. It can use to help with anxiety centered around the coronavirus, sure. But I repeat, it is not a cure for the coronavirus. And if you find a site or a person or a shop that is selling CBD and saying that it is a cure or even preventative, they are lying to you. Do not give them your money and report them to your local authorities so they can be told to stop lying to the populace.
Matt Baum:
It’s kind of a scary time right now, I know. But we’ve all just got to stick together. We’ve got to share facts as we get them and make sure you and your loved ones are not being taken advantage of by criminals and conspiracy theorists trying to make money off this latest national panic.
Matt Baum:
Ron Silver has been the chef owner of Bubby’s, with locations in New York and Japan, for 30 years now. But recently he started a new venture called Azuca. Azuca took the idea of infusing CBD into organic sugar. They’re now doing it with simple syrups and chocolates too. I spoke to Ron from his apartment in New York and here is our conversation.
Matt Baum:
You started off as a chef. What kind of cooking were you doing? What was your background cooking?
Ron Silver:
Well, I own restaurants in New York City and in Japan called Bubby’s. And our specialty is home cooked American food, but it’s sourced from local farms that … I’ve been open for 30 years. So, I’ve been doing that. [crosstalk 00:03:54]
Matt Baum:
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cut you off. What was the name of the restaurant? You blinked out a little bit.
Ron Silver:
The name of the restaurants are Bubby’s.
Matt Baum:
Bubby’s, gotcha, okay.
Ron Silver:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
So, how do we go from being a chef to hemp? How does this come about?
Ron Silver:
Well, first of all, being a chef I have absolutely also been in the scene and I’m not a big drinker, or I haven’t been a big drinker, so cannabis is my go to thing and it really always has been all my life.
Ron Silver:
So, cannabis is something that I have a weird understanding of more than your average person. So, when cannabis started to become legal, I started to try to understand what the problems were and how I could help solve those problems and that was maybe seven years ago. And since then I really have been zeroing in on a lot of interesting solutions for cannabis edibles.
Matt Baum:
And how did you get to CBD from cannabis? Was it something you just about seven years ago you haven’t discovered?
Ron Silver:
Well no, I didn’t know anything about CBD until maybe six years ago. Actually I was at a little meeting where people were talking about what the new cannabis industry was going to look like. We were in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco and there were about 20 people and there were all kinds of things going on there.
Ron Silver:
And one of them was that people were dabbing. And I had never heard of that before. I didn’t know what it was. And somebody had too much of the dab. And another person said, “Well, just smoke of this CBD, it neutralizes it.”
Ron Silver:
So, that was the first time I had ever heard of CBD. And I was really quite interested in that. And since then, the things that I’ve learned about CBD in the possibilities of what CBD is and also in experiencing how it has affected other people or has affected people who I’ve given it to or who take it, is amazing. It’s been an amazing journey of learning about another aspect of this plant, cannabis, and really what I surmise and realize is that what we called dirt weed back in the day in the old days was actually just high CBD cannabis.
Matt Baum:
I’m from the Midwest, so it was ditch weed, is what we called it here.
Ron Silver:
Ditch weed, exactly. Where are you located?
Matt Baum:
I’m in Omaha, Nebraska.
Ron Silver:
Cool.
Matt Baum:
So, you had a lot of river basin and a lot of ditch weed growing all over the place.
Ron Silver:
Well, yes. It basically grew wild. It does, it grows wild out there, right?
Matt Baum:
We had no idea that it was CBD benefits we were getting.
Ron Silver:
Well, it’s not only CBD benefits, it’s fiber benefits, it’s fuel, it’s building materials, it’s a million things, plastic replacement. A billion, weird little things that can come out of that.
Matt Baum:
So, you get interested in this at this party and experiencing it, did you start to incorporate it in your life after that to see how it affected you?
Ron Silver:
No. First of all, things were not that available seven years ago. So, it was part of a process of understanding, first of all, that it was something that was super interesting and really, I know that there is a big trend and fad and all kinds of people using it for all kinds of different things, but I’m not really so interested in that.
Ron Silver:
I’m interested in like actual … I wouldn’t call it hard data because it’s hard to get hard data. But I have direct experience with direct people in all kinds of different ways. Including for example, my nephew. He’s high functioning Asperger’s and he’s 22 years old probably. I think he’s something like 22 and he has a really high functioning job and he does amazing shit. This kid is amazing in that he sets up whole stadium sound systems for concerts.
Matt Baum:
Oh wow. Yeah.
Ron Silver:
Engineering that goes on behind that. And he also does computer programming and stuff like that. Super high functioning guy. And at the same time he has anxiety because he really does have Asperger’s and it is a certain way of looking at the world that requires medication oftentimes, that is given to people that is very, very strong.
Ron Silver:
And so this particular nephew of mine basically has been using this sugar for probably four years and he really uses it as a medicine and he’s replaced all kinds of bad drugs like Prozac and, I don’t know, Thorazine, just really serious drugs.
Matt Baum:
Anti anxiety drugs.
Ron Silver:
That were really messing him up.
Matt Baum:
Yeah.
Ron Silver:
and giving him other affects, and so he’s replaced it with this and he really is the best ever patient to tell, because he really is very specific with how it helps him and how much he takes and how often he takes it and exactly what he uses it for. In the daytime, he uses it in this way. At nighttime, he uses it in this way, and he’s very conservative and very responsible about it.
Ron Silver:
He reached out to me just yesterday. He said, “Uncle Ron, I am out of sugar. Could I get some more? Because it’s the only thing that helps me.” And we talk about how to get more out of it and to get the feedback on it and what exactly it is doing. So it’s super … I don’t know, it’s almost like being doctor, but not really [inaudible 00:10:51] and I’m used to that because I feed people food and I really do take that seriously. And so it feeds into that. But this is, this is a special thing and I take it very seriously. Very seriously.
Matt Baum:
So you brought up the sugar. Let’s talk about that because that’s why you’re here today. You started a company called Azuca, which literally means sugar, that incorporates CBD into sugar. Can I ask why go that direction instead of just starting a company that makes a CBD tincture like a lot of other people did? Why sugar?
Ron Silver:
Well, for one thing, it’s a very understandable thing. My main concern is making it so that people can take a controllable dose and decide what that dose is.
Matt Baum:
Yeah, very important.
Ron Silver:
If we sell a packet of sugar and it’s 25 milligrams, that means that that person takes half that packet, or 1.25, whatever the measurement is in there, a quarter teaspoon, 12.5 mg, or if they want 30, it’s easy to figure out.
Matt Baum:
Yeah.
Ron Silver:
So, essentially that’s the first a reason that I went with sugar. And it’s also something that you could bake with or make beverages with or put it in your coffee or tea. It’s very easy use and it’s a familiar thing. The main thing is, is that the technology that we have, it’s called Azuca Time Technology, which time stands for Thermodynamic Individual Molecular Encapsulation.
Matt Baum:
That’s so cool. It’s like shield out of the Marvel universe. I love it.
Ron Silver:
It’s cool, but it’s also accurate which makes it actually cool. To me, it’s amazing how cool it is in that it really does it allow that CBD molecule to be delivered in the best way possible. So, there’s a lot of amazing sort of science and factors going on to make that happen.
Matt Baum:
How did you stumble upon this, this Time, we’ll call it, how did you happen into this? And I’m not trying to downplay your job as a chef, but you don’t usually think of chefs when you think of molecular chemistry and whatnot. How did you find this method, I guess, we’ll call it.
Ron Silver:
So, that is a really interesting question. And one of the things I would say is that cooking is chemistry.
Matt Baum:
Oh, definitely, definitely.
Ron Silver:
You just don’t think about it. But it is chemistry and if you do it poorly, it really doesn’t taste good.
Matt Baum:
That’s true.
Ron Silver:
And that’s because of chemistry. 100%. And the other thing is that I’m sort of dilettante-ish in figuring out stuff. So, I’ve read a bunch of textbooks and theses and interviewed people and experimented with a whole bunch of stuff and tried to understand where the problems really were and really stumbled on a bunch of things and one of the things I’ll say is that because cannabis was illegal, I was able to have fairly candid conversations with CEOs of companies that were willing to, to me off the record because they couldn’t do anything about cannabis.
Ron Silver:
So, I was able to really dive into … Well, one thing that I would say is that oftentimes in the world, there are 37 people thinking about really interesting ways to approach a problem. But those 37 people don’t really talk to each other. And some of them don’t talk to each other because they’re dead and some of them don’t talk to each other because they’re competing with the other guy, and some don’t talk to each other just because whatever.
Ron Silver:
But what I found myself doing is diving into a whole bunch of different thoughts about how to approach this problem. And was able to, after really a long time, it took me five or six years to really, really get to where it is now, which I would say, this is always a mistake to say, but I would say it’s in a really, really good spot. I don’t see how it could be better. But of course, things can be better and I think it’s important to pay attention to that.
Matt Baum:
Do you think the Genesis of incorporating CBD into sugar, making it almost an ingredient, did that come directly out of your experience from cooking and whatnot?
Ron Silver:
100%. I would say that for sure. It makes it easy to think about. Sugar is easy to think about. There’s a million ways to use it. And all those ways can be used with this product through this thing. But the technology can also be applied to savory things. I’ve made weird food things with it, but we also have what I call plop, plop, fizz, fizzes, little-
Matt Baum:
Alka seltzer type things? Yeah.
Ron Silver:
Yes. And those really work nicely and there’s no sugar in that. Personally, and I catch grief from this and unfortunately in the Azuca family and the company, I’m the weird brother [crosstalk 00:17:10] really the business end of the stick at all.
Ron Silver:
And the blessing for Azuca is that we really do have leadership that is totally responsible and I’m just not that one person who is [inaudible 00:17:23].
Matt Baum:
That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Have you incorporated anything with the sugar into your own restaurant?
Ron Silver:
Well, in New York city that is forbidden. So, we do not do that. We were doing that for awhile and then it became not allowed and we stopped.
Matt Baum:
There was a cease and desist type thing or?
Ron Silver:
Through the whole city. A lot of people started to do it and the city said you can’t do that. And they gave certain deadlines and everybody, well, we followed them. So, one of my main things is to be compliant and it’s really work to do that.
Matt Baum:
In the future when things loosen up, is that the plan to start to incorporate stuff like this into menus and whatnot?
Ron Silver:
That’s not necessarily my plan. If I had my druthers, and I’ve said this a whole bunch of times, I would prefer to sell THC infused, cannabis infused drinks at my bar than liquor any day.
Matt Baum:
Absolutely.
Ron Silver:
The thing that Azuca Time allows us to do is, and one of the things that being a chef allows us to do, is have a bunch of cool syrups.
Matt Baum:
Right?
Ron Silver:
And it’s possible to have a cocktail that’s exactly three milligrams. And that way you can have three or four or five of them and being really fine shape and not have any problem in it and it hits you while you’re sitting at the bar. It’s not like you’d go home, feel it eight hours later, you’re in a bad state of affairs.
Ron Silver:
So, for me I would love to see that, but I don’t foresee that happening. But I do think that would be a responsible and interesting thing to do with no … It’s not dodgy. I would way rather sell that then whiskey any day.
Matt Baum:
Fair enough. So, let me ask you as far as your product goes, and you sent me some and I really enjoyed it, it’s very cool, and I tried the sugar in my coffee and I use the simple syrup to make some drinks. Can you explain for someone who’s never messed around with something like this, what will they experience when they take a packet of your Azuca sugar and pour it into their coffee? What is the experience like?
Ron Silver:
Not to double back a question with a question, but what was your experience like?
Matt Baum:
That’s fair. I will say, obviously I use CBD daily and I host a podcast about hemp, so I’ve used a lot of it. It did seem to me that when I put the sugar in the coffee I felt the effects much faster than if I were to take the tincture that I take daily or if I were to, there’s a powdered CBD that I’ve been using daily as well in different drinks.
Matt Baum:
I felt like this hit really quickly and it really mellowed me out. I drink a lot of coffee in the morning because I work in web hosting and I need to be aware and I’m working in engineering, but I also don’t want to get to the point where I’m vibrating through my workspace and I do feel like this really hit me almost as fast as the caffeine did.
Ron Silver:
Right. Did we send you enough for you to … Do you still have some now?
Matt Baum:
Oh, I need much more. I’m going to beg for that later.
Ron Silver:
I’ll probably send you a bunch of cool stuff. 100%.
Matt Baum:
Yeah, most definitely.
Ron Silver:
That’s one thing is that I really do play with things and I need people to try things, it’s the best [crosstalk 00:21:11].
Matt Baum:
I would love to be your guinea pig, definitely.
Ron Silver:
That sounds good.
Matt Baum:
Is that part of the technology though? The effects hitting that fast? Or is the sugar doing something?
Ron Silver:
100%. The effects of the technology make it hit that fast. And essentially what that means is that, you use CBD all the time and you’ve seen the oil and you know how thick that is. If it’s very thick, and obviously if you drop the oil into a glass of water, it would drop right down to the bottom it does not mix up well. And even if you boil it up, it doesn’t mix well, it’s oil and water.
Ron Silver:
And so when it goes into your system, those molecules are perfectly round and very hard and they have to go through your esophagus and through your entire digestive system to your liver and your liver has to break that down and your liver can get 2% to 6%, in, say, one to four hours. There’s a lot of variables there depending on liver function.
Ron Silver:
And so some people have come up with something that’s a very popular approach, which is called nano lipid technology. Maybe you’ve heard of that.
Matt Baum:
Yeah. We’ve talked about this on the show.
Ron Silver:
Nano lipid is an emulsion. It’s like mayonnaise. The best nano particulate, smallest nano particulate, would be about 20 nanometers and that would be the smallest particulate and that would also be the weakest emulsion because it’s like making a mayonnaise. When you put that last drop of oil in, it breaks, and the same with nano lipid technology.
Ron Silver:
If you bring it to 20 nanodes, it’s the most possible that it can hold to make it that small. So, the nano lipid technology in edibles, which is not monitored or thought … You could almost say anything, but there are decisions made in a nano lipid process were you’re deciding how stable you want that to be because the less stable it is, the more returns come back on the shelf. That’s a big source of waste. Big source of waste. And so essentially the nano particle could be anywhere from 20 a 1,000 and people would more than likely choose a 400 or 500, 600 size to make it nano lipid but still shift stable on the shelf.
Matt Baum:
So, the smaller the better? Is that where we’re going with it?
Ron Silver:
(inaudible 00:24:02) particle is, the more able it is to pass through soft tissue. Your esophagus and your mouth and your stomach into endocannabinoid receptors that are placed all over your body. There are billions of them. And it’s a system that exists within your body, the endocannabinoid system. I’m sure you know about that.
Matt Baum:
Yeah, absolutely. Talk about it a lot.
Ron Silver:
With Azuca Time technology, it only works in one way, which is one molecule is completely encapsulated and that little molecule, 1.5 nanos, that’s how big our particle is. And so, that absorbs the best and it goes directly to your brain and the endocannabinoid system and does its thing. And that really is how it works.
Matt Baum:
So, correct me if I’m wrong. Most times when I’m talking to companies that are using tinctures or using something like MCT oil, because the CBD bonds to fat really well, is this basically CBD bonded to a very small amount of fat? On a molecular level almost?
Ron Silver:
There’s no fat involved with it. It’s more of like the difference between mayonnaise and slime that you would buy for your children at the store.
Matt Baum:
Okay.
Ron Silver:
And that slime, it stretches and it really stretches. And if you have the sort of machinery and the exact viscosity, you could stretch that out to one molecule thin.
Matt Baum:
Gotcha.
Ron Silver:
So, essentially this is what it is, is a really, really, really fine wetsuit around each individual molecule.
Matt Baum:
Gotcha. So, the same thing happens with your simple syrup where it’s basically, this is so small that you can break it down into a syrup and not affect it whatsoever.
Ron Silver:
Well no. What we do is we encapsulate the molecules and then we incorporate that into the simple syrup so that it’s evenly distributed. And before we apply it to sugar, there’s no sugar involved. So, we encapsulate and then we apply it to sugar, which is also simple syrup. It can be applied to topicals and it’s very effective. All kinds of stuff.
Matt Baum:
So for those who don’t know, simple syrup is basically exactly what it sounds like. It’s almost a sugary syrup and in this case, if I were to take enough Azuca sugar and cook it down, like I was making simple syrup, would that still work? Is it the same type of thing or is there another step in that process?
Ron Silver:
If you take Azuca simple syrup and put a teaspoon in, a teaspoon is 25 milligrams, and you can put that into a drink.
Matt Baum:
Right. I’m sorry, I was speaking as far as the sugar. If I just took your raw Azuca sugar, could I make simple syrup the same way out of it?
Ron Silver:
Absolutely. 100%.
Matt Baum:
Okay.
Ron Silver:
Yes.
Matt Baum:
So, you are literally just taking the sugar that you already make and making a simple syrup that has CBD in it.
Ron Silver:
Well, basically.
Matt Baum:
That’s brilliant. So, what else is Azuca working on right now? I noticed there were chocolates that just popped up on the website not too long ago.
Ron Silver:
We have chocolates. We have sugar stick packs. We are working on a nice cool stevia packet. We are working on some flavored syrups to make different kind of cocktails.
Matt Baum:
Very cool.
Ron Silver:
A bunch of cool stuff.
Matt Baum:
So, where’s the future go for this, do you think? After the FDA comes out and says, “All right, we figured it out. What’s the future for Azuca? Where do you see this going?”
Ron Silver:
Well, I hope that we can continue to find interesting ways to deliver CBD and THC to people in ways that are helpful for whatever the sort of use that they come up with is. We come up with different kinds of hangover cures and athletic ways for runners to take it and weightlifters and stuff like that.
Ron Silver:
So, I think there’s a lot of different ways to go with it. It also seems to help people who are dealing with opioid addiction. And then it somehow shuts off some receptors that create a lot of the addiction issues.
Matt Baum:
Yeah. There’s our early stuff coming in on that. I can’t remember who it was, the name of the doctor, but there’s some early information coming out on that that looks very promising actually.
Ron Silver:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
Very promising.
Ron Silver:
And there’s also other cannabinoids that are super interesting for specific things like weight, diet either control or diet stimulation or any number of things. Sleep and studying and all kinds of wild possible applications that obviously all need to be researched and one of the big things right now is that CBD companies can’t make any claims like that and we don’t make any claims like that and it really is a very big deal to understand those regulations and work within them every step.
Matt Baum:
Absolutely. And stay honest while doing so.
Ron Silver:
100% yes.
Matt Baum:
Definitely. Chef Ron, thank you so much for your time today. This has been fantastic.
Ron Silver:
Thank you for having me.
Matt Baum:
I love what you guys are doing and like I said, thanks again to Ron for joining me and the good people at Azuca for seeking us out and asking to be on this show. That was really cool. I wouldn’t have known about them otherwise. And if you want to try Azuca’s simple syrup or organic sugars or even their chocolates, we’ll have link to their website right here in the show notes.
Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of our episode. I hope you had a good time with this one and I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got comments, questions, you can call me at (402) 819-6417 with your Azuca or any hemp related question and every once in a while when we get enough good ones, Kit, the Editor in Chief of MinistryOfHemp.com and myself will answer your questions right here on the show. It’s very cool.
Matt Baum:
Of course, you can hit us up on all of our social media. You’ll always find us at MinistryOfHemp or /MinistryOfHemp and be sure to check out our Patreon over at Patrion.com/MinistryOfHemp. You can become a supporter of MinistryOfHemp.com and there’s all kinds of cool rewards including the podcast extra, and in this latest one I’ll be talking to Chef Ron Silver about some drinks you can make using Azuca products and they’re awfully tasty. We’ve already made a couple. So, get over to patrion.com, search for Ministry of Hemp, and become a supporter and help us to get the good word of hemp out there to the people.
Matt Baum:
Speaking of MinistryOfHemp.com, get over there right now and check out two awesome articles we’ve got up. One is an update to understanding the different types of CBD oil and an update to an article we had about how to identify high quality CBD. Both are great and very informational stuff.
Matt Baum:
Here at MinistryOfHemp.com, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everyone. So you will find a complete written transcript for this show in the show notes on the post for this podcast over at MinistryOfHemp.com. Next time on the show, we’re going to talk about testing and a company that is trying to make it easier for everyone to have access to real lab results. It’s going to be very cool. Be sure to tune in, and I know I say this at the end of every show, but I think it’s especially important right now. Remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum and the Ministry of Hemp Podcast signing off.
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