On their website, Canabidol proudly displays an adapted quote from US Marine and Medal of Honour winner William A. Foster; “Quality is never an accident; it’s always the result of intelligent actions.” I agree entirely, but it’s a strong statement and I’m keen to see if their products live up to it.
Canabidol stocks several capsules, oils, gel tabs, creams and highly concentrated extracts. I’ve been trying their premium 500mg CBD Cannabis oil. It comes in a 10ml bottle and I was delighted to find that you get both a dropper and an additional spray cap. It’s a full-spectrum, terpene-rich product that’s been registered as suitable for vegans by the Vegan Society.
When I first received the bottle, I was impressed by the golden coloured oil, which is perfectly displayed thanks to the minimalist transparent label. It’s a refined oil that’s been carefully filtered to enhance clarity and flavour.
From reading the information on the box, Canabidol seems to be saying that the carrier oil is made up of oils extracted from the hemp buds themselves. This isn’t something I’ve come across before and I wasn’t even aware it was possible. As a result, the bottle bears the label ‘100% cannabis oil’, which while it’s accurate could be misleading to people new to CBD; although it’s 100% cannabis oil, it’s only 5% CBD.
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Contents
Who is Canabidol?
Canabidol is a UK CBD company based in Brighton. They started with a select range of oils and capsules and have now expanded to include several water-based oral suspensions that blend CBD with other beneficial substances. They’re also a partner company to Access CBD, which claim to be among the UK’s cheapest brands and are an excellent place to purchase Canabidol products.
The hemp used in their products is grown using organic farming methods by one of the world’s largest suppliers. They use cannabis plants that are cannabinoid-rich and have been specifically bred for Canabidol. After that, they’re able to create precisely formulated oils with their state of the art extraction equipment. The result is a full-spectrum oil that’s packed with CBD, alongside other cannabinoids and terpenes.
To be sure that their products consistently meet high standards, they use several in house tests alongside additional checks by a third-party lab. The cannabinoid levels are analysed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and they also check the terpene profile screen for any contamination.
3rd Party Lab Tests
Canabidol provides an extensive database of third-party lab certificates that allows you to find the ones that relate directly to the batch your product came from. Each product has a label with a batch number that can be entered into the database search bar; mine was 0244077.
By typing in that number, I found several certificates, one with a cannabinoid profile and several copies of the same analysis of contaminants. This provides lots of evidence to demonstrate the standard and safety of the oil. Although Canabidol says that they conduct an analysis of terpenes, there wasn’t one available for my batch.
On the contaminant certificate, it shows that they screened for heavy metals, microbes, mycotoxins and pesticides and all were within safe levels. The cannabinoid profile showed that the third-party lab tested for ten cannabinoids, including THC, but only CBD was detected. As the information on the box says, it’s a full-spectrum product it’s surprising to see that nothing else was detected. However, it could be that other substances are present in such tiny amounts that they can’t be detected. It also showed that the sample tested contained 543mg of CBD, so was slightly stronger than advertised.
The full results showed:
- CBD = 543.5mg (in 10mls)
- CBDa < 1mg
- CBDV < 1mg
- CBG < 1mg
- CBGa < 1mg
- CBN < 1mg
- THCa < 1mg
- Δ9-THC < 1mg
- Δ8-THC < 1mg
- CBC < 1mg
Ease of Use
Both the dropper and the spray are easy to use and it’s an excellent touch to include both. The dropper is tapered and it’s simple to fill it to the recommended amount of half full, although it would be useful to have a mark on it to ensure you fill it exactly the same each day. The spray works really well and propels a jet of oil directly under your tongue. The only difficulty I had was if you hold the spray too close to your mouth the oil gets on your hands and collects on the top of the bottle, making it greasy.
The ‘suggested use’ encourages you to take half a dropper full, twice a day. Unfortunately, one spray only delivers the equivalent of about a third of a dropper, which makes it tricky to maintain the same daily amount if you switch between them regularly. I managed this by choosing to use one or the other for all the servings in one day. That way you can use the dropper twice and on days when you use the spray, take three pumps.
Canabidol CBD Oil Taste
Canabidol claims that this is designed to be “the best tasting most premium CBD cannabis oil ever created”. Whether it lives up to that claim will depend on your own taste buds, but I genuinely enjoyed it. On my first taste, I wasn’t particularly impressed, but it quickly grew on me. It has a mild hemp flavour and if you place it directly on your tongue, you may notice a hint of bitterness. However, the overriding flavour is more of a light buttery taste, similar to coconut oil.
It’s similar to other filtered oils like Bud and Tender and Cibdol, but although it’s equally as mild, it doesn’t share the same floral flavour that they do. If you don’t like the strong taste of hemp, Canabidol is an ideal choice.
Potency/ Effectiveness
I took the recommended half a dropper, twice a day. At that rate, the bottle lasted for nearly twelve days. I didn’t notice any effects during this time, but that didn’t surprise me as 5% oils aren’t usually very potent for me. Also as a full-spectrum product, the other cannabinoids are found in such low amounts that I didn’t expect it to compare to other 5% products like CBD Guru, Hempura and CBD Brothers Blue Edition. 25mg per day is a reasonably small amount.
Value for Money
For £39.99 you get 10mls of 5% oil which gives you a total of 500mg of CBD. It’s not quite as expensive as Bud and Tenders 5% oil which is £45, but it’s still at the top end of the market. Once you get the bottle out of its box, this looks like a premium oil and the extra spray nozzle adds to its value. The detailed lab results do a great job of demonstrating safety, but I would have preferred to see the cannabinoid profile verify that it is made with a full-spectrum extract.
Although this is an expensive oil, the flavour, crystal clear appearance and extra features make it well worth a try. I didn’t notice any effects so if a 5% oil is what you seek then there are better ones available at a lower cost.
Would I Buy Again?
No, I would not buy Canabidol CBD oil again. The price is higher than average and I did not get the effects I have from other similar priced oils.
There are much better and more cost-effective oils available and these can be found in our best UK CBD oils article. As the product only uses hemp grown without fertilisers and pesticides it cannot be included in our best organic CBD oil reviews either.
If what you seek is a high-strength oil, at 5% it is a long way off the threshold of 25% to be included in our list of the strongest CBD oils available in the UK.