Getting cannabinoids into a beverage was the industry’s first challenge. Ensuring they remain accurately dosed and perform as intended throughout the product’s shelf life is the next step. A beverage may spend months moving through production, distribution, warehouse storage, and retail shelves before reaching a consumer. Labs exist to verify that what worked in R&D continues to perform as intended throughout the entire journey.
Austin Stevenson has worked inside the most rigorous quality infrastructures. He spent time at EuroFins, a pharmaceutical-grade testing lab, was one of the co-founders of Vertosa, a leader in cannabis infusion technology, and now leads revenue at ACT Labs.
We sat down with Stevenson to learn why a testing lab is a beverage founder’s most important partner in the R&D process, and how the right relationship can help you avoid product development and scale-up mistakes.
The Unique Testing Challenges Hemp Beverages Create
Beverages require a fundamentally different approach to testing than flower or concentrates. As Stevenson explained, “cannabinoids are oil-based ingredients being delivered in a water-based product. Everyone knows oil and water don’t mix. That makes formulation, emulsion stability, homogeneity, and shelf-life behavior very, very critical.”
With traditional flower or concentrate testing, you’re mostly working with a relatively stable matrix. With beverages, it’s a different story. Labs must answer several important questions:
- Is the cannabinoid content evenly distributed throughout the liquid?
- Will the product still deliver its labeled potency after months of distribution, warehousing, and retail storage?
- Does the emulsion stay stable, or does it break, float, sink, or adhere to the can liner?
- Do cannabinoids interact with other ingredients in the formula?
Innovation Creates New Complexity
As brands push beyond Delta-9 THC to differentiate, incorporating minor cannabinoids like CBN, CBC, and CBG, as well as functional ingredients like L-theanine, caffeine, ashwagandha, and lion’s mane, becomes more complex due to the chemistry.
“I learned early on, both at Vertosa and now at ACT Labs, that those other ingredient components can cause interference that we have to solve for,” Stevenson said. “The emulsion solves for that, but so does the R&D formulation.”
A lab isn’t just running a compliance check—it’s your R&D partner in diagnosing whether the full ingredient stack you’ve designed will actually survive in the real world.
Can Liners: A Regulatory and Formulation Variable Most Founders Miss
Not all can liners are the same, and some state regulations require or exclude specific types. In California, Prop 65 mandates BPA-free liners, meaning brands must use a BPANI liner. In the Midwest, BPA liners remain permissible. The choice of liner matters at every level: cost, supply chain, regulatory compliance, and formulation performance.
As Stevenson noted, even non-cannabinoid ingredients can interact with liners, as evidenced by Monster Energy’s need to reformulate after B vitamins adhered to its can liner. “If you’re going to put cannabinoids and B vitamins in an energy drink—say, THCV plus B12—your can liner becomes critically important. Not only your formulation, but everything centered in that formulation has got to be compliant with the state it’s going to be distributed to.”
The industry has evolved significantly since the early days of cannabis beverages, when THC was being absorbed by can liners and leaving consumers without the key ingredient and desired effect. Industry experts now recommend selecting can liners specifically designed to minimize cannabinoid “scalping”—the absorption of lipophilic cannabinoids into packaging materials that can reduce potency over time. Founders should request technical specifications from packaging suppliers and verify compatibility during shelf-stability testing.
Getting the formulation right means accounting for every variable in the system: cannabinoids, emulsion technology, beverage ingredients, packaging, and storage conditions. The biggest threats to shelf stability are time, heat, and oxygen. THC is particularly vulnerable to oxidation: over time, Delta-9 THC converts to CBN, a cannabinoid associated with sleep rather than the euphoric effect consumers are expecting. If the can isn’t properly sealed, oxygen is already present before it ever leaves the facility.
The key is an additional manufacturing step called a nitrogen push: filling the can and sealing the remaining headspace with nitrogen to block oxidation. It sounds like a small step, but Stevenson calls it one of the most critical in the entire production process. Founders who don’t come from traditional beverage manufacturing often don’t know it exists, and it can be detrimental to the end product.
Bring Your Lab In Early
Stevenson’s core argument is that labs should be brought in as product-quality and risk-reduction partners from the beginning, not just called on at the end for compliance sign-off. That means involving them across the full development timeline: R&D formulation, ingredient qualification, pilot batches, shelf life and stability studies, packaging selection, scale-up, pre-launch verification, and ongoing batch monitoring.
That last piece matters more than many founders expect. Distributors increasingly expect evidence that a product maintains its quality, potency, and consumer experience throughout its intended shelf life. Having that documentation ready, including a full dossier of verifications, certifications, and stability studies, is a requirement for getting on shelves and staying there.
He also flagged an underappreciated part of the lab ecosystem: pharmacokinetic (PK) studies. Companies like Caliper and Vertosa have invested in studies that measure how much cannabinoid is actually absorbed into the body, which is the real measure of whether an emulsion works. These studies are expensive, but they provide scientific validation that builds both brand and consumer trust. For any founder evaluating an emulsion provider, Stevenson advises asking for evidence about bioavailability claims.
What Terpenes Can (and Can’t) Do in a Beverage
The entourage effect is well documented in flowers and concentrates, where terpene profiles shape the experience strain to strain. In beverages, terpenes represent the next frontier of innovation — not just for their potential effects, but for flavor design.
Distillate-flavored seltzers served their purpose as a cheap, easy way to test the market for infused beverages. As the category grows and moves toward more complex adult beverages, he points to Harmony Craft Beverage (now part of Snoop Dogg’s Iconic Tonics brand) and Klaus as early examples of brands leaning in that direction. Similar to gin drinkers who embrace high botanical notes. The hemp beverage category can get there, too.
On efficacy specifically, Stevenson sees the science as still developing and defers to terpene manufacturers like Eybna, Abstrax, Terpene Belt Farms, and True Terpenes for hard data. Anecdotally, there is published research on specific terpenes — linalool, the compound found in lavender and commonly used in beverages and cosmetics, has been shown to have relaxation properties and is already being incorporated into formulas. Researchers at Western Washington State University are currently studying the bioavailability of ingesting terpenes and hope to have a report out in the near future.
Slow Down Early, Scale Fast Later
Stevenson’s parting advice to any brand preparing to launch is to slow down early so you can move faster later. Before launch, Stevenson says, nine critical variables must be validated without exception, including ingredient quality and emulsion compatibility, as well as package performance and microbial safety.
Formulation problems are cheapest to solve before you scale. Once a product is in market, the cost of discovering an issue that could have been caught in R&D adds up fast: failed batches, retesting cycles, delayed launches, and inconsistent potency data all create downstream financial risk. Other repercussions include recall risk, damage to distributor relationships, and reputational harm that can be terminal for a young brand. Cans exploding on a retailer’s shelf, Stevenson noted, is a lights-out moment.
