It takes some planning to combine your morning coffee break and a wake-and-bake, two rituals widely practiced throughout the country that can produce widely opposite results. The folks at 1906, a cannabis-infused chocolatier based in Boulder, are ready to help you out with a new twist: consuming your cannabis and your coffee at the same time.
Partnering with Denver's hemp-loving Strava Craft Coffee, 1906 has created chocolate-covered coffee beans infused with CBD and THC. The new product, dubbed GO Beans, is supposed to offer a sweet, crunchy therapeutic jolt. Since pairing CBD and coffee is all the rage these days – a trend with which Strava is very familiar – it seemed like trying 1906's interesting take would be a fun morning mission.
And was it? I decided to find out this past Saturday.
According to 1906, the GO Beans are "scientifically engineered" to kick in within fifteen or twenty minutes. When I woke up, I ate five beans, each dosed with five milligrams of CBD and THC, and started cleaning up my house from a week's worth of degeneration. There was no need to make coffee – I'd just swallowed half a cup.
Grabbing five beans and popping them in my mouth like a handful of Skittles might've been too much, I thought. Generally, 25 milligrams of THC is easy for me to handle, but my limited experiences with CBD edibles have always ended in a docile escape to dream land. And what about the caffeine? I've always enjoyed judging people for drinking Red Bull-and-vodkas at the bar. Did I just do something even worse?
It took closer to an hour for the first wave to come, but the high quickly heightened after that. I could feel a tingling sensation rising up my body like an army of ants – a mark that the edibles were kicking in – and I braced myself for the upcoming ride. "This was going to be the funnest cleaning sesh ever," I thought. And it was, for about thirty minutes.
Midway through vacuuming my room, I felt jitters in my chest and stomach, like I was over-caffeinated. I tried sitting down and drinking water, but that did little to calm my fragile stomach. To counteract my jumpy guts, I took a dab and fell asleep. Four hours later, I woke feeling as if I had just gotten off a bender. And essentially, I had: I'd consumed fifty milligrams of cannabinoids and then taken a dab after that. I'd clearly approached these coffee beans like a rookie, even with 1906's attempted help (turns out it says on the label — which I didn't read — to start with two beans).
These magic beans weren't intended to get you "stoned"; they're designed to make you productive. Embarrassed by my frat-boy eating habits, I approached the next morning like an adult. Two beans would be enough for any slight pain or discomfort after a Saturday night on Colfax, I thought, and the ten milligrams of THC might even provide a small slice of euphoria.
This time, things went smoothly. Luckily, I don't have creaky bones or a bad back, but my normally jumpy morning stomach was subdued enough to crush a couple of Santiago's breakfast burritos (hot, not mild) from the gas station down the street, and I zipped through my unfinished chores like a child who couldn't go outside until they were done.
I was never high, per se, but neither was I slightly hung over and intolerable, like I'd normally be after a Saturday with the boys. The caffeine buzz was manageable, too: I wasn't shadowboxing and ghost-juking furniture like I normally do when I'm alone in the house after drinking coffee, but I still had more pep than I should've after a night out.
If you're smart enough to use 1906's GO Beans the way the company intended, you might never ingest coffee the same way again. This could be a recreational marijuana mocha experience, but approach it with a medicinal mindset.
You'll be surprised at how much you get done – and how good you feel doing it.