Hilary Brown, Director of Research and Development with SoRSE – Interview Series

While every product sector of the cannabis industry has its own appeal, few experience the rapid, multifaceted innovation seen in the edibles market. Moving far beyond distillate-infused brownies and gummies, today’s consumers can find edibles in diverse formats ranging from chocolates and hard candies to troches and everything in between. Even outside of the booming beverage sector, experienced chefs and scientists with deep backgrounds in product research and development are designing water-soluble cannabinoid and terpene solutions that could fundamentally transform edible manufacturing.

To take a closer look at the pioneering research behind these forward-thinking products—and why this work matters for the broader industry—MyCannabis.com spoke with Hilary Brown, Director of Research and Development at SoRSE.

What subjects in Business Administration did you study while attending Washington State University?

At that point in life, I was interested in eventually starting my own business so I took as many general business admin courses as possible at WSU that could I could build a practical foundation, at least of a knowledge base to know what would best not to do for myself. I have always liked the structure of spreadsheets, planning, and problem-solving, and that mix of business and analytical thinking has been useful throughout my career.

What were some of the most memorable events when you worked as a pastry chef for Fairmont Hotels and Tom Douglas Restaurants? Outside of the kitchen, how would you say that roles strengthened your customer/client service skills?

Kitchens can be intense working environments. There are many things happening at once, the space is compact, and everything is moving quickly. On the other hand, it is really creative. In pastry you get to make some beautiful plated desserts with multiple components that need to be ready at the same moment, and that still tastes delicious. I have previously worked in a few high-end restaurants in Seattle; the Georgian room at the Fairmont hotel, the (no longer open) library bistro at the Alexis hotel and Tulio’s, as well as Tom Douglas restaurants. Some of my most memorable times from working as a pastry chef involve the intensity of those kitchens and the people working in them. At Fairmont, I had to work large plated service for weddings or other special events. There were a few times where these special events meant a dessert course of over 200 soufflés that all had to leave the kitchen at the exact same time. Because these are a such a delicate dessert, they required a ton of communication and coordination. Everyone received an ongoing countdown on when the souffles were done cooking, there needed to be a line of servers ready to go at the exact moment the ovens opened, and the servers already had a path mapped to each of the tables in the dining room so the souffles didn’t collapse before getting to the dinners. Those moments taught me a lot about service beyond the food itself. They taught me to anticipate problems, communicate clearly, adapt quickly, and make sure the guest or client only experienced the finished result. That mindset still comes in handy; these days it boils down to never letting the mistakes leave the lab, customers should not be aware of the struggle or issues you have had to get to the final product.

What were your favorite aspects of being a chocolatier? What all went into product development and deciding which chocolates would be the most appealing to consumers?

Chocolate has always been one of my favorite creative mediums. Even though I no longer work as a chocolatier professionally, I still make chocolate bon bons or bars for myself and my family. I think that connection started with my grandmother. When I visited her as a child, she had a room in her house that was always filled with the chocolates she had made.  To this day her almond toffee is still my gold standard. Her style of chocolate making was different from mine, but the love of the medium and the joy of making something special for people definitely stayed with me. What I loved most about being a chocolatier was the balance of creativity, technique, and experimentation. I enjoyed making things beautiful, texturally interesting, and most importantly delicious.  When developing a new product, I would think about flavor profiles that I thought would be interesting together, then which format would be best with that flavor and how to layer those flavors together.  For example- sarsaparilla lent itself more to a caramel than a ganache, citrus flavors did really well as a jell that was surrounded by marshmallow to lessen the hit of acid on the chocolate and make it smoother on the pallet.  After deciding on the flavor profile, I would work on the color of the chocolate. I focused on bright colors with playful designs that matched the flavor without taking themselves too seriously.  More recently, my curiosity has shifted toward cacao fermentation and bean-to-bar chocolate, which has given me a new way to stay connected to chocolate at a deeper level.

How did your vast experience as a pastry chef help you at Botanica Seattle? What were the most transferable skills between pastry chefs and cannabis edible chefs?

When I first joined Botanica Seattle, the legal cannabis industry in Washington was just beginning, and a lot of companies were starting with chocolate because it was a familiar and popular infused format. For me, the cannabis side introduced a new language and a new set of rules to product development, but the underlying work was very familiar. When I started at Botanica I started their chocolate program from the ground up.  I already knew how to think through texture, shelf life, production flow, equipment, and consistency. The biggest shift was learning to treat cannabis as the sensitive, expensive ingredient that it was, which required another level of precision to get a consistently homogenous final product. In pastry, you might be balancing a lot of components for a plated dessert; in edibles, the focus becomes making sure one product can be made and dosed consistently every time and performs the same. I had to think about potency retention, where product might remain in equipment batch to batch, and how to account for that in production. That experience pushed me to become even more disciplined about SOPs, formal and controlled troubleshooting, and building processes that someone else could follow successfully. In many ways, pastry gave me the foundation, and cannabis made me sharpen it.

What type of work did you do as Head of Research and Development for Botanica Seattle? What types of projects did you often oversee, and how did the products evolve while you served that role?

As Head of Research and Development at Botanica Seattle, I spent a lot of my time taking ideas and figuring out how to make them real, repeatable products. That meant creating formulations, developing flavor profiles, testing shelf life, recommending new equipment purchases, and then getting that equipment up and running. It also involved putting QA/QC parameters in place so the products could be made consistently and were able to retain the desired shelf life. I liked that the work sat right between creativity and technical control. One of my personal favorite products was a Sweet Tarts-style tablet. It is no longer in production, and visually it may have looked a little too much like a Necco wafer, but I loved the concept.

It was sour, firm, and still soft to bite, and it felt like a fun way to think beyond the more expected edible formats. Projects like that were rewarding because they let me experiment with flavor and consumer experience while also solving the practical questions of production, potency, and scale. During my time in that role, the products we created evolved from early ideas into more refined controlled commercially produced items as we learned more about ingredients, equipment, testing, and the market.

What interested you about joining the SoRSE team? What were they doing and designing differently when it came to edible production?

What interested me about joining SōRSE was that it felt like the next real challenge for me in cannabis. By that point, I felt like I had a good grasp of working with distillates at Botanica—getting potency right, understanding how cannabis behaved in products, and helping to build consistent processes. But as the company matured, the product line started to move more toward flavor variations of successful products, and less new innovation.  I was ready to learn something new. SōRSE was working with emulsified, water-compatible cannabinoids, which was something I had looked into but had not worked with directly. I was also impressed by the R&D group itself. The people had technical backgrounds across different industries, and they were true scientists on the team who I knew I could learn from. I originally joined to help start edible production, but the emulsion work was what really challenged me.

Most confectionery products end with very low water activity, so figuring out how to work with water-based emulsions in those formats was not straightforward and provided an interesting challenge. That combination of bringing tested knowledge into a different space, wanting to understand the science, and getting to help build something new was what drew me in.

What are your duties as Director of Research and Development with SoRSE? What types of research do you conduct on SoRSE’s products?

As Director of Research and Development at SōRSE, I oversee research that supports both customer product development and our internal technology work. The research and development team that I lead is a talented group with extensive backgrounds in chemistry, CPG goods, cannabis, and flavor compounding. A lot of my day-to-day focus is on helping connect the science to finished consumer products For customers, that means formulation and flavor work, sourcing ingredients, and helping formulate new products. It also means getting them get ready to produce with a co-manufacturer through understanding production lines, and being able to talk our customers through possible hurdles during production.

Internally, we look at new emulsion formats, different active loadings, and ways to make our emulsions perform better in applications like gummies, beverages, and other finished goods. I also spend time thinking about new active ingredients we may want to emulsify, such as kava, and what it would take to make those ingredients stable and useful for customers. Another important part of the work is looking more closely at the cannabinoids and actives themselves so we can understand stability, interactions, and degradation pathways. What I enjoy about the role is that it is not research in isolation—it is research that needs to turn into something practical, stable, and useful that is enjoyed by consumers.

How does the company rely on the research and development that you oversee to better design and implement their products?

I think one of the most important ways R&D supports the company is by helping separate what is possible from what is practical. We get excited about new ingredients, new emulsion, and new product ideas. But as we are looking at those new technologies and testing their potential, our team performs extensive analytical testing on products prior to them being commercialized through our operations team.  Because we have internal analytical capabilities, we can test and learn before something moves too far down the pipeline and provide that information to the decision makers above us. We also help vet suppliers, evaluate materials, and support training so the knowledge does not stay only in R&D, and new products can be commercialized through our operations team. I see our role as building the bridge between an idea that works on the bench and a product the company can confidently stand behind.

How has that research and development already been implemented in the products so far? What are some notable examples of inclusions or evolutions based on your department’s findings?

Some of the most useful R&D work has shown up in the less obvious parts of product development—the places that can make or break a product after it leaves the lab. Packaging is a good example. We have looked at can and packaging scalping, where active ingredients or other formulation components can interact with packaging materials and affect potency or stability over time. That kind of research helps us make better recommendations before a customer gets too far into commercialization. We have also used tools like FTIR to better understand packaging materials, which gives us more information when evaluating compatibility. In finished beverages, our work has helped us understand ingredient suspension and how emulsions behave alongside alternative sweeteners, adaptogenic ingredients, and other functional components. Those findings may not always be visible to the consumer, but they are the reason a product can be more stable, predictable, and commercially successful.

Based on your research and findings, how do you see the products that SoRSE offers further evolving in the future?

I see SōRSE continuing to evolve as customers look beyond traditional cannabinoid products and start asking what else is possible. With the uncertainty around hemp, we are already seeing interest in other active ingredients like kava, adaptogens, herbal components, and functional ingredients. That is exciting from an R&D perspective because it lets us apply what we know about emulsions in a broader way. My instinct is always to ask, “What can we do with this?” and then follow that with the more practical questions around degradation pathways, ingredient viability, sourcing, and stability testing. I think the future will involve finding new suppliers, new active ingredients, and new ways to make those ingredients more usable in finished products. The better we understand how each ingredient behaves, the better we can build emulsions that are stable, versatile, and useful across a much wider range of applications.

Thank you for joining us, Hilary! For more information on SōRSE, please visit its website.