KNOXVILLE, Tennessee — Hemp is now calling the Old City home.
"Hemp-infused cocktails, hemp-infused beer, hemp-infused avocado toast. If you name it and we serve it, we'll put hemp in it," said Cody Seals with Blühen Botanicals.
Blühen Botanicals is a Knoxville based hemp processing company now open for business in its more than 4,000 square foot retail space in the Old City.
"We have capsules that we sell, vape pods, all made from the hemp that we produce," said Seals.
Some of that hemp is in a greenhouse right in the middle of the store.
"So this is high-CBD hemp," said Seals.
He's the the Senior Farm and Extraction Adviser at Blühen, the expert at extracting CBD -- the ingredient people want -- from the hemp.
"To extract the CBD from this we use ethanol, so we use ethanol as a way to literally wash the CBD off this plant," said Seals.
They can then separate the ethanol, and what's left is an olive oil type substance of pure CBD.
"These are what farmers grow out in the field when they produce biomass to sell to Blühen ," said Chief Agronomist Don Fowlkes.
The Knoxville based company works with about 130 hemp farmers in and around Tennessee, many who used to farm tobacco, like Fowlkes.
"They're looking for things to help them stay on the farm and hemp has proven to be that crop," said Fowlkes.
From their farms to the tables in Knoxville.
"Seed to shelf is the way we like to think of it," said Fowlkes.
Blühen's one-of-a-kind hemp cafe sells their hemp and CBD products, including capsules, sprays, vapes, pre-rolled hemp flower, and dried hemp flower.
A cafe serves hemp infused foods and drinks, or you can add a boost of just CBD. A meeting space in the back is for concerts, yoga classes and other events.
It's all happening under the lights of the indoor hemp farm.
"They see it grown and they see it in their products and they can see all the different ways that hemp can be used in their daily lifestyle," said Seals.
They're open here East Jackson Avenue and excited to get to work with the vast amount of hemp farmers now growing the crop in Tennessee.
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