Thandai is the drink India already knows how to make. Soaked nuts and seeds, fennel, cardamom, black pepper, saffron and rose, blended into cold milk and drunk on a hot afternoon. It is a seed drink with a few centuries of practice behind it, which makes it the obvious thing to do with a bag of hemp seeds.
Disclosure. Kushiva sells whole organic hemp seeds, so read this knowing who is speaking. The protein numbers below are the ones that make our product look ordinary, not the ones that make it look good.
This guide covers what a glass of hemp thandai actually contains, why the kind of hemp seed you buy changes the entire method, and the one step that quietly removes most of the protein you were making it for.
This article is general information about a food, not medical advice and not a nutrition prescription. Hemp seeds are a food ingredient. Nothing here is a claim that they treat, prevent or improve any condition.
At a glance
- Hemp seed thandai is not bhang thandai. Bhang is made from the cannabis leaf. Hemp seeds are the seed. They are a food, they are not intoxicating, and swapping one for the other is not a milder version of the same drink - it is a different drink.
- About 9 g of protein in a glass, if you use 40 g of seeds and drink the whole blend. That is roughly a glass of milk. It is not a whey shake, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
- Straining is the trade-off. It is what makes the drink smooth, and it is what takes the protein out with the pulp. You can have texture or you can have the protein.
- Whole seeds and hulled hearts are not interchangeable. Nearly every hemp milk recipe online assumes hearts. With shell-on seeds you have to soak, and you will have to decide about straining.
- No soaking needed to eat them. The soaking in this recipe is for blending, not for digestion.
Quick answer
Hemp seed thandai is thandai made with hemp seed milk instead of dairy. Soak 40 g of whole hemp seeds for four hours, blend with 250 ml of water and the usual thandai masala - fennel, cardamom, black pepper, saffron, rose - and drink it cold. Blended and left unstrained it carries roughly 9 g of protein per glass, comparable to cow's milk at about 8 g a cup. Strain it for a smoother texture and a good share of that protein leaves with the pulp. It contains no cannabis leaf and is not intoxicating.
Is hemp seed thandai the same as bhang thandai?
No, and this is the part worth being precise about. Thandai is the base: a cold, spiced, nut-and-seed milk drunk at Holi and Mahashivratri. Bhang thandai is that base with bhang stirred into it, and bhang is a preparation of the cannabis leaf. The leaf is what carries the effect. It is also what makes bhang a regulated substance in India, sold through state-licensed shops where it is permitted at all.
Hemp seeds are the seed of the same plant family and a completely different proposition. They are sold as food. They are not intoxicating, they are not a mild bhang, and no quantity of them produces the effect that bhang thandai is drunk for. If you are making this expecting a gentler version of a Holi drink, you will be disappointed, which is the correct outcome.
The honest framing is that hemp seeds give you the seed part of thandai - the body, the creaminess, the protein that almonds and melon seeds are traditionally there to supply. They do not give you the bhang part, and this article is not a route to it.
Whole seeds or hulled hearts? This changes the recipe
Nearly every hemp milk recipe online is written for hulled hemp hearts - the soft inner kernel with the shell removed. Hearts blend to a smooth cream in thirty seconds and need no soaking and no straining. If that is what you have, the method below is easier than written.
Whole hemp seeds still have the shell on. The shell is where the crunch lives and where most of the fibre lives, and it does not break down in a domestic blender the way the kernel does. Whole seeds need soaking, and they will leave grit unless you strain.
The two are not nutritionally interchangeable either, which is why the numbers you read online often do not match the pack in your hand.
| Per 100 g | Hulled hearts (USDA) | Whole seeds (Kushiva pack) |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | 31.6 g | 23.3 g |
| Fibre | 4.0 g | 14.6 g |
| Form | Shell removed, soft | Shell on, crunchy |
| Soaking for milk | Not needed | Four hours |
| Straining for milk | Optional | Expect to, or accept grit |
Hearts look better on a protein label because the shell has been taken off, and the shell is mostly fibre. Remove it and everything else concentrates. Neither number is wrong; they are measurements of two different things. Hulled hemp seed values are from the USDA food database; the whole-seed values are those declared on the Kushiva 250 g pack.
What is actually in a glass
Here is the arithmetic, because "protein drink" is a phrase that does a lot of unearned work.
Forty grams of whole hemp seeds, at 23.3 g of protein per 100 g, is about 9.3 g of protein. Blend that into 250 ml of water and drink all of it, and that is what the glass holds. For comparison, a cup of cow's milk is around 8 g, and homemade oat milk typically lands between 2 and 4 g.
| One glass | Protein |
|---|---|
| Hemp thandai, 40 g whole seeds, unstrained | about 9 g |
| Cow's milk, one cup | about 8 g |
| Homemade oat milk, one cup | 2 to 4 g |
| A standard whey scoop | 20 to 25 g |
So: a glass of hemp thandai is a glass of milk, give or take. It is a genuinely useful amount of protein in a drink that would otherwise be sugar and spice, and it is a plant drink that holds its own against dairy, which oat and rice drinks do not. It is not a replacement for a protein shake, and a recipe that calls it one is counting on you not doing the sum.
Hemp seed protein does have one property worth naming: it contains all nine essential amino acids, which is uncommon among seeds. That is a statement about the protein's composition, not about what it will do for you.
The recipe
This makes two glasses.
What you need
- 80 g whole hemp seeds - about 5 to 6 tablespoons
- 500 ml water, plus more for soaking
- 8 to 10 almonds, soaked alongside - traditional, and they help the body of the drink
- 1 tsp fennel seeds (saunf)
- 4 green cardamom pods, seeds only
- 4 to 5 black peppercorns
- 1 tbsp melon seeds (magaz), if you have them
- A pinch of saffron, soaked in a spoon of warm water
- 1 tsp dried rose petals, or half a teaspoon of gulkand
- Sweetener to taste - sugar, jaggery or honey
Method
- Soak the seeds for four hours. Cover the hemp seeds and almonds with water and leave them. Overnight in the fridge is fine. This softens the kernel so the blender can reach it - whole seeds blended dry stay gritty no matter how long you run the machine.
- Toast and grind the spices. Warm the fennel, cardamom seeds and peppercorns in a dry pan for under a minute, until you can smell them, then grind to a powder. This is the step that separates thandai from flavoured milk, and it takes two minutes.
- Drain and blend. Discard the soaking water. Put the seeds, almonds, melon seeds and 250 ml of fresh water in a blender and run it for a full two minutes. Longer than feels necessary. You are trying to break a shell.
- Add the rest. Pour in the remaining 250 ml of water, the ground spices, the saffron with its soaking water, the rose and the sweetener. Blend again, briefly.
- Decide about straining. See below - this is the real choice in the recipe.
- Chill properly. At least two hours. Thandai is called thandai because it is cold; served at room temperature the spices turn sharp and dusty.
The straining trade-off
This is the step every hemp milk recipe glosses over, and it is the one that decides whether you made a protein drink or a flavoured water.
When you pour the blend through a nut milk bag or muslin, what stays behind in the cloth is pulp - shell, fibre and a meaningful share of the protein, which does not all dissolve into the liquid. Straining is exactly the process of separating the solids out, and protein is a solid. No published figure quantifies the loss for hemp specifically, so treat the direction as reliable and any precise percentage you see online as invented.
Three ways to handle it, in order of how much protein you keep:
- Do not strain. Blend for a full two or three minutes and drink it as is. Grittiest, and you keep everything. Works better than people expect once it is properly cold, because cold mutes texture.
- Strain, then stir the pulp back in. Press the pulp well, then whisk a few spoonfuls back into the drink. You lose the worst of the shell fragments and keep most of the body.
- Strain and keep the pulp for something else. Cleanest drink, lowest protein in the glass - but nothing is thrown away. See below.
If you bought hemp seeds for the protein and then strained it all into a bin, the drink in your hand is spiced water with a good smell. That is a fine thing to drink. It is just not the thing you were making.
What to do with the pulp
The pulp is the fibrous part of the seed plus whatever protein came with it. It keeps three or four days in the fridge.
- Stir it into atta when kneading - a couple of spoonfuls per batch of dough, no other change needed.
- Fold it into parathas, thepla or chilla batter.
- Add it to porridge or oats, where the texture disappears entirely.
- Dry it low in the oven and blitz it into a coarse flour for baking.
Making it ahead, and keeping it
Hemp thandai keeps two to three days in a sealed bottle in the fridge. It separates - that is normal for a drink with no emulsifier in it, and a shake puts it back together.
The spice mix is the part worth batching. Grind a jar of the fennel, cardamom and pepper blend and it keeps for weeks, which turns a weekday glass into soak, blend, spoon, chill.
Hemp seeds themselves hold a lot of unsaturated fat, which means they go rancid faster than most pantry seeds once they are open. Keep the pouch sealed, somewhere cool and dark, and trust your nose: fresh hemp seeds smell faintly nutty and green, and old ones smell like old oil.
Variations
- With dairy. Nothing stops you blending the soaked seeds into milk instead of water, which is closer to traditional thandai and lands the glass somewhere near 16 to 17 g of protein.
- Unsweetened. The spice blend carries the drink without sugar better than most sweet drinks do. Worth trying once before you decide.
- Thicker. Drop to 400 ml of water for the same 80 g of seeds.
- Cardamom-forward. Double the cardamom and drop the pepper for a milder, more dessert-like glass.
Frequently asked questions
Will hemp seed thandai get me high?
No. Hemp seeds are a food. The intoxicating part of bhang thandai is bhang, which is made from the cannabis leaf, not the seed. Hemp seed thandai contains no leaf and has no intoxicating effect at any quantity.
Is this the same as bhang thandai?
No. Thandai is the spiced nut-and-seed milk. Bhang thandai is that drink with a cannabis leaf preparation added. This recipe is thandai made with hemp seeds in place of some of the nuts, and it is a food, not a milder bhang.
How much protein is in a glass?
About 9 g, using 40 g of whole hemp seeds per glass at 23.3 g of protein per 100 g, if you drink the blend unstrained. That is close to a cup of cow's milk at around 8 g. It is well below a whey scoop, which is 20 to 25 g.
Do I have to soak hemp seeds?
For milk, yes - whole shell-on seeds blend badly dry and the drink stays gritty. To eat them as seeds, no soaking is needed at all; they are ready from the pack.
Can I use hulled hemp hearts instead?
Yes, and it is easier: hearts need no soaking and usually no straining. Use the same weight. They carry more protein per 100 g and much less fibre, because the shell has been removed.
Why does my hemp milk taste bitter?
Usually over-blending, which heats the mix and can turn the fats bitter, or seeds that have gone rancid. Blend in bursts if your machine runs hot, and smell the seeds before you start.
How long does it keep?
Two to three days sealed in the fridge. It separates between pours, which is expected - shake before serving.
Nutrition figures for whole hemp seeds are those declared on the Kushiva 250 g pack. Hulled hemp seed figures are from the USDA food database. Hemp seeds are a food ingredient; nothing here is a claim that they treat, prevent or improve any condition. If you have a food allergy, a medical condition or you are pregnant, take dietary questions to a registered medical practitioner or dietitian. Spotted an error? Email kushiva487@gmail.com and we will correct it.