Photos by Michael Piazza

“You should like the chocolate as is, not just want to eat it to get high,” says Haley Bain, cofounder, with her husband, of Ahh Moments cannabis-infused artisan chocolate. Bain, an herbalist, and her husband Andrew Moon Bain, an artist, musician and reggae music producer, approach their business as food lovers first, though cannabis was integral to the business’s creation. “Cannabis and culinary are finding each other,” says Andrew.

The couple began to develop Ahh Moments in the fall of 2020. “There was a perfect opening in the market,” says Haley. “We’re chocolate lovers. We love delicious foods, and health and wellness products. The cannabis market hadn’t married yet with the foodie world.” Thinking that customers would soon want a higher-quality product with the same cacao percentage as non-infused artisan chocolate bars, the couple began to experiment in their kitchen.

Andrew grew up in Seattle, where he played cello in the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. He switched from cello to guitar as a young teen and later started writing music. While touring as a musician, he visited cacao farms in Jamaica, Costa Rica, Trinidad and the Dominican Republic. “That sparked my curiosity and love and honoring the plant,” he says.

Haley grew up outside of Boston in a food-loving family. Her father always had “a massive garden,” she says. “I grew up growing lots of food and taking it into the kitchen.” She and her husband now grow herbs and vegetables on their 1½-acre property in Barre, where they live with their three children. (Andrew also has an adult daughter who lives in Providence.) And Haley grows food, flowers, herbs and medicinal plants for her wellness business on an 11-acre plot in Petersham.

In 2017, Haley and her sister took a chocolate-making class with Beth Kirsch, of Beth’s Chocolate in Newton. Four years later, with their concept for cannabis-infused artisanal chocolate becoming reality, Haley and Andrew turned to Kirsch for guidance. The couple has also benefited from their relationship with Peter Greweling, a Culinary Institute of America baking and pastry arts professor and author of books on chocolate making for professionals and home confectioners. And they are working on a new bar with Bryan Graham, of Fruition Chocolate Works in upstate New York.

The couple formulate the Ahh recipes in their home kitchen. “We take a lot of care with sourcing all of our ingredients—the cacao, but really all of the nutraceuticals,” Haley says. “Every element is thought out and cared for.” For each bar, they test the straight chocolate for flavor before adding the cannabis. Much of the R&D is devoted to finding the balance between cannabis and other flavors. “In each recipe we try to have something that will counterbalance the cannabis flavor,” Haley explains. For example, in the Atlantic Bliss bar, which contains Maldon sea salt and sea moss, the salt from those two ingredients tempers the cannabis.

Ahh launched in December 2022 with three bars—Serene Dreams, Summit Ascent and Atlantic Bliss—and is developing several more. Each selection has a different flavor profile, cacao and THC percentage, as well as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and other nutritional and health-related properties. The bars are produced in partnership with Treeworks, a cannabis products company in West Hatfield.

Ahh’s bars are sold in dispensaries throughout Massachusetts. “Partnership with Treeworks has been integral in doing that,” Andrew says. “It’s very difficult to get in. As a brand owner, additionally as a Black brand owner, I can’t get a callback from some of these places.”

“It’s a slower burn than we anticipated,” he says of the company’s growth so far. “The market—and the whole space—is so nascent.” With three products on the shelves, four more ready to go and others in development, this could be Ahh’s moment.

ahhmoments.com

This story appeared in the Winter 2024 issue.