How was your CBD oil made? It matters. The best CBD extract methods produce better, purer, stronger CBD tinctures or gummies.
But there’s a problem. Most CBD products today in Australia (and elsewhere) don’t use these techniques. It’s more common to see cornercutting.
Cheap, unsafe CBD extraction methods involving dangerous chemicals are commonplace.
There are significant differences between manufacturers in their approaches to:
- Sourcing quality hemp
- Processing it into resin
- Extracting and refining CBD oil
- Filtering and purifying the extract
- Formulating a final product
You must understand the best extraction methods if you want to choose the highest quality CBD products.
What are these ‘methods’?
The most common include:
- Supercritical CO2 extraction
- Solvent extraction
- Oil infusion
- Hydrocarbon extraction
Other techniques used during CBD oil production are equally essential to review. For instance, are you sure your product was:
- Tested for purity and potency pre and post-extraction?
- Lab tested by a third party to validate its safety?
- Made with manufacturing quality controls?
You may want to reconsider using your extract if you are unsure about these questions. There is no guarantee that it is safe or contains what it says.
Our guide here will teach you:
- How CBD oil is made
- What the best CBD extraction method is
- Why these factors matter for your product
This will help you identify the highest-quality CBD extracts and products the next time you shop.
How is CBD Oil Made?
Hemp is the source or origin of all CBD extracts.
This applies whether you’re talking about:
- CBD tinctures or edibles
- CBD gummies
- CBD creams and topicals
Each product’s life must start with the humble hemp plant.
Obtaining pure CBD from the plant is challenging and requires time, effort, and expertise.
However, doing so is essential. Why? Once a producer has extracted CBD in a pure form, they can add it to other mediums. This is how you get the CBD ‘end products’ we all love.
Producers often infuse CBD:
- With carrier oils for CBD tinctures
- Gelatin for CBD gummies
- Moisturising balms for CBD creams
- Baked goods for CBD edibles
All of these fantastic products start with creating the initial CBD extract. We’ll explain how producers make CBD tinctures here to keep it simple.
Production Stages
How’s CBD oil made? The overall process will follow a few key stages.
What are these?
Cultivating, Harvesting and Processing Hemp
- Hemp Cultivation: Hemp excretes the CBD cannabinoid from special glands in the plant’s buds. Cultivators of quality hemp focus on yielding and maximising this cannabinoid content. How? Growing healthy, vigorous plants. Growers nurture each plant with optimal soil, sun, water and nutrients. In turn, the quantity and variety of cannabinoids, terpenes, plus phytonutrients produced by each is magnified.
- Harvesting and Drying: hemp reaches its ‘optimal’ cannabinoid concentrations (maturity) after several months of growth. Correspondingly, this is the best time to harvest plants for CBD extraction. Growers collect each plant with specialised machinery. Drying and airing come next. Cultivators hang up harvested hemp plants in dry rooms. These rooms are temperature, humidity and moisture controlled. Drying accentuates concentrations of cannabinoids, terpenes, and phytonutrients.
- Separation and Compression: Machinery breaks up the hemp plants once dried. These machines also separate different parts of the plant for processing. During separation, the machines remove all hemp stalks, seeds and roots. Buds and leaves remain. Machine presses crush the buds and leaves into dense cannabis resin. Decarboxylation (gently heating the resin) follows. It’s a vital step to amplify the resin’s cannabinoid content and prepare it for CBD extraction.
CBD Extraction and Formulation
- CBD Extraction: Manufacturers will use either solvents, heated gases (supercritical gas) or oil infusion to extract pure CBD oil from cannabis resin. Depending on the extract produced, additional filtering, purification, or distillation might be necessary. Full-spectrum CBD oil is typically unfiltered. Other CBD Oil types (such as isolates) require substantial filtration.
- Filtration and distillation: Producers making isolate or broad-spectrum CBD oil will apply fine-grained filtering to raw CBD extracts. This process removes the remaining solid hemp plant mass. However, doing so reduces the remaining oil’s overall phytonutrients and antioxidant content.
- Formulation is the last stage of making CBD oil. It ensures each product is palatable, digestible, and accurately dosed. Pure CBD extract is mixed with ‘carriers’ like MCT or coconut oil. A carrier oil ‘carries’ CBD molecules to disperse and suspend them. They’re vital for even, consistent CBD dosages when using products.
Post Production: Lab Testing and Bottling
What separates the ‘best’ CBD oils from poorly made ones?
Manufacturers test, assess and assure high-quality CBD products. They don’t leave room for ‘guessing’ how potent, pure or phytonutrient-dense their product is. Top CBD producers will discard batches of products that aren’t up to standard.
How do they know whether their extracted CBD oil is good enough? Lab testing.
Third-party laboratories stringently test every new batch of CBD oil. Manufacturers will send samples from each CBD oil batch to these labs post-extraction. The labs produce final testing reports with batch numbers listed on each one.
Lab-produced testing reports are called ‘certificates of analysis’ (or ‘COA’). Each provides an itemised list of compounds contained in an extract. Concentrations are provided in mg/mL readings.
Labs conduct several tests to produce a certificate of analysis, such as:
- Potency testing: performed via gas chromatography to determine concentrations of CBD and other cannabinoids (including THC).
- Purity testing: This ensures the CBD extract does not contain pollutants such as pesticides, heavy metals, bacteria, or residual solvents.
Good CBD oil manufacturers (and retailers) always share their COA reports with customers. If you want the best CBD oil, confirm that the seller offers this. Review it before buying to know your purchase is safe, effective, and authentic.
Let’s now review which CBD extract method produces optimum CBD oil.
What’s the Best CBD Extraction Method?
The extraction method used for a CBD product matters. It influences:
- Strength (cannabinoid concentrations)
- Purity (contents of undesirable plant matter or contaminants)
- Phytonutrient variety (for instance, terpenes or cannflavins)
- Overall safety (whether toxins are present in the extract)
So, what is the top CBD extract method to look out for in your next purchase?
There are a few extraction approaches, each varying in advantages and drawbacks. Let’s review them for comparison purposes.
Solvent Extraction
A ‘solvent’ is a liquid that can dissolve other substances through chemical reactions. Producers use butane solvents to dissolve cannabis resin, freeing pure CBD oil for extraction.
Manufacturers mix with the resin under heat to accelerate its reaction.
Producers also use heat for filtering. They’re applied to evaporate any remaining solvent post-extraction. Any residual solvent is then removed via vacuum filtration.
If consumed, solvent chemicals are very toxic and harmful. Careful filtration is critical at this point.
What are the pros and cons of extracting CBD oil with solvents?
- Advantages: Solvent extraction is low-cost, easy, and fast to do. That’s why solvent-extracted CBD oils are lower priced. If you’re on a budget, these products can be attractive. Each will retain substantial amounts of terpenes on average (despite degrading a significant proportion).
- Disadvantages: solvents degrade much of CBD oil’s delicate ‘volatile’ compounds. For instance, terpenes are easily destroyed by solvents. This reduces the overall nutrient breadth of solvent extracts. Another major downside is the compromised safety standards of solvent-extracted CBD oils. Even diligent post-extraction filtration can’t remove all residual traces of solvents from the final CBD extract.
Top CBD oil manufacturers won’t use solvent extraction. The risks of lowering the extract’s safety, efficacy and quality are too significant. We recommend avoiding solvent-extracted CBD products.
Oil Infusion
Oil infusion is a much less common way to produce CBD oil. DIY enthusiasts use this method to make small batches of CBD oil at home. This CBD extraction method can only create the ‘full-spectrum’ CBD oil type.
During an oil infusion, cannabis resin is first heated and decarboxylated. The resin is mixed with a carrier oil like MCT. This mixture gets “infused” with cannabinoids via gentle heating. The infusion process here can take up to a day to complete.
How does oil infusion stack up as a CBD extraction method?
- Advantages: Oil infusions are straightforward to perform. They’re also very safe. Why? The process doesn’t involve toxic chemicals. Infusions are great for producing raw, full-spectrum CBD oil. This method preserves terpenes and delicate phytocompounds.
- Disadvantages: CBD oil made via oil infusion will have lower strength and quality than other extraction methods. These extracts also expire more quickly, and heating carrier oils in an infusion reduces their perishability.
Although safe, low-cost, and natural, oil infusion extraction is inefficient. It can’t extract large volumes of CBD oil, so it is only viable for personal use in small-scale batches.
Supercritical CO2 Gas Extraction
The most advanced (and complicated) method of producing CBD oil is ‘supercritical’ CO2 gas extraction.
‘Supercritical’ refers to the CO2 gas medium converting into a semi-liquid state under extreme heat and pressure. This allows it to seamlessly pass through cannabis resin and separate its constituent plant matter.
The supercritical gas is pumped through the resin in several pressurised chambers. Each chamber pulls CBD from the resin under different pressure levels to maximise yield.
Importantly, harsh solvents are absent from this process. Very pure CBD oil results.
There are a few upsides and downsides to obtaining CBD via supercritical CO2 extraction.
- Advantages: This extraction method yields the highest CBD oil quality, purity, and phytonutrient variety. Supercritical CO2 extraction preserves terpenes, antioxidants, cannflavins, and other compounds from hemp. Solvents easily damage each of these compounds. Additionally, supercritical CO2 kills bacteria and microbes during extraction. Heat and pressure during extraction sterilise the extract. That’s why CO2-extracted CBD products have the highest overall safety.
- Disadvantages: Supercritical CO2 extraction is very costly because of its complexity and difficulty. The intricate machinery and the expertise required to manage the extraction process make it complex. This translates into higher-priced CBD oil. But remember, you’re also paying for superb quality, nutrient density, and safety.
Because it uses no solvents, supercritical CO2 extraction is the safest and most environmentally sustainable extraction approach. It’s also high-precision. Producers can carefully fine-tune concentrations of cannabinoids, terpenes, and phytocompounds they include in these extracts.
The degree of control that CO2 extraction enables means it can also produce any CBD oil type. It’s suitable for making isolate, broad-spectrum and full-spectrum CBD extracts.
Comparing Methods of Extraction
Which method of making CBD oil will deliver the highest quality extracts?
Today, the best way to produce CBD oil (or other CBD extracts) is by using the supercritical CO2 gas extraction method (by a country mile).
It doesn’t have the vast drawbacks and toxicity risks that solvent extraction imposes. Solvent residue in your CBD product will negate any health benefits it provides.
Yet, while oil infusions are safe, they don’t provide the strength or quality of CBD oil needed.
When shopping for CBD tinctures, look for those made via CO2 gas extraction. You’ll get a better, safer product that won’t compromise your well-being.
Conclusion
You now know how CBD oil is produced.
But better yet, you know the best CBD extraction method to look for the next time you shop. Let’s wrap up by reviewing the topics we covered here.
Making CBD oil is a process that has many stages. Each stage plays an essential role in converting hemp plants into pure, ready-to-consume CBD products.
CBD oil is made through these steps:
- Farmers cultivate hemp over several months
- At its peak maturity, each plant is harvested.
- After harvesting, producers dry out, separate and compress the plants into a dense resin
- Experts apply solvent or supercritical CO2-based techniques for extraction.
- Manufacturers filter, purify and distil the extracted CBD to remove any unwanted plant matter
- Laboratories test the purity, quality, and potency of CBD batch samples
- Produced then formulate consumable CBD tinctures by diffusing CBD into carrier oils like MCT
Making excellent CBD oil is challenging. This is why this unique health product is expensive in Australia.
Because of its steep costs, you should always purchase the highest quality CBD products extracted with supercritical CO2.
Why does this matter? Recall that:
- Oil infusion extracts are safe but ultimately low quality and lacking in potency
- Solvent extracts carry significant health risks because of the solvent residues they contain
In contrast, supercritical CO2 extracts maximise safety, potency and overall quality. They also deliver the most significant content of terpenes, cannflavins, minor cannabinoids, and phytonutrients from hemp. This means better health outcomes for your mind and body.
FAQs
Solvent-extracted CBD oils are unsafe, even when flawlessly made. Filtration and purification techniques can’t remove all solvent traces from the product. Toxic chemical residues will remain. Trace quantities of butane, propane or ethanol are poisonous. These chemicals are always detectable in solvent-extracted CBD oil. These products are risky to consume.
You can extract CBD oil at home using oil infusions. Solvent or supercritical CO2 extraction is too difficult to perform as a DIY project. To extract CBD oil via oil infusion, you must first decarboxylate hemp plant matter by heating it. Once decarboxylated, place the plant matter in a carrier like olive oil. Set the mixture over low heat until the hemp’s cannabinoids infuse into the oil. Wait a few hours at minimum. Prolonged infusions yield better results. Next, filter out any remaining plant matter. You’ll finish here with a full-spectrum CBD tincture.
Dried and compressed hemp plants are used to produce ‘real’ CBD oil. During the process of compressing hemp resin, decarboxylation is employed to “activate” cannabinoids such as cannabidiol (CBD) through heating. Subsequently, these activated cannabinoids can be extracted from the resin using various methods. Today’s best CBD extraction method involves applying supercritical CO2 gas under high pressure to produce purified CBD oil. This will also be the most ‘real’ or pure form of extract versus those made with solvents.
Hemp flowers, leaves, and buds contain the highest concentrations of cannabinoids like CBD. These plant parts are used for CBD oil or other cannabinoid products. However, hemp seeds, stalks, roots and stems contain little cannabinoids. Each is removed during CBD extraction.
Making full-spectrum CBD oil involves the same production and extraction steps as other oil types. The distinction between ‘full-spectrum’ extracts lies in their degree of filtration. Full-spectrum CBD oil is the least filtered. It possesses the most hemp plant matter, chlorophyll and ‘raw’ hemp phytocompounds. In contrast, these are partially or entirely removed in isolate or broad-spectrum CBD oil.
Author
Originally from Byron Bay (Australia), Steve Jacobs is a writer and expert on the world of hemp. His passion for hemp products developed from working with organic hemp cultivators and sustainable skincare brands in Byron. Inspired by these eco-friendly approaches to crafting superb products, Steve realised the opportunity at the intersection of aromatherapy, natural skincare and the magic of hemp. He founded Bondi Hemp to bring this dream to life, bringing rejuvenating hemp extracts, refreshing botanical hemp topicals and revitalising essential oils to everyday Aussies. True to his Byron roots, Steve infuses every drop of his responsibly produced hemp products with the rich terroir of the Byron Region, resulting in unsurpassed quality without harming the earth. Today, Steve continues to write and speak about hemp, skincare, and aromatherapy from his family’s home in Northern NSW.
