Hempthy CBD Cola Bottles 900mg (30 Pack)

The brand's own ingredient lists do not agree with each other

Hempthy makes three bottle flavours: cola, cherry cola and bubblegum. Same mould, same nine hundred milligrams, same thirty pieces at thirty milligrams each.

The declaration the brand publishes for these cola bottles gives four colours: E102, E129, E133 and E132.

The declaration it publishes for the bubblegum bottles gives two: E129 and E133.

Both cannot be a description of the same recipe, and there is no way to tell from outside which one is right. There are two plausible explanations and we can argue either. A bubblegum sweet has no obvious use for a yellow, so a shorter list is believable. On the other hand, the four-colour string on this page is identical, character for character, to the one the brand publishes on its fizzy gummy bears and on its pick and mix, which makes it look very much like a house boilerplate that has been applied without being checked.

We are not going to pick one and present it as fact. What we will say is the useful part: at the moment a Hempthy ingredient declaration cannot be relied on to tell you what is in one particular flavour. If you are avoiding tartrazine specifically, do not read one of these pages and assume. Ask us, and we will get an answer from the supplier before anything ships.

That is a bigger statement than it looks, so here is the context for it. Across this brand we have already found three separate cases of one UK shop publishing another product's ingredients, and we found the brand itself showing its Lemon and Ginger declaration on its Peppermint tea page. This is the next step along: the brand's own pages disagreeing with each other inside a single three-flavour range. Additive declarations are a legal requirement rather than marketing copy, and E102 is one of the six colours that carries a statutory statement about children's activity and attention.

Is there caffeine in a cola sweet

No, and the reason is more interesting than the answer.

Cola flavouring is not made from the kola nut. It is a citrus and spice blend, built from orange, lemon or lime, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and often neroli. That combination is what your palate reads as cola, and it has been made that way since long before anyone thought to put CBD in it.

The declaration bears it out. Beyond the CBD isolate there is glucose syrup, sugar, corn starch, water, citric and malic acid, an acidity regulator, flavourings and colours. No cola extract, no kola nut, nothing caffeinated.

It is a fair question to have asked, and it is one worth asking generally rather than assuming. Elsewhere in this brand there is a tea whose published ingredients, on one of the two lists in circulation for it, include green mate, which is caffeinated. We set that out on the tea listing. The lesson is the same in both directions: read the declaration rather than the name of the product, when you can trust the declaration.

What is in the tub and what it is like

Thirty gummies at thirty milligrams of CBD isolate each, nine hundred milligrams across the tub. The isolate is stated at ninety nine point nine per cent and American sourced, made up in the UK, and THC free. The brand describes the sweets as vegan and made with no animal products.

Sulphites are declared, in the glucose syrup. This is the thirteenth Hempthy product we have written up and the thirteenth time no UK shop ranking for it mentions them.

The cola-bottle mould is the thing that makes this range eat differently from the rest of the brand. It is thick through the middle and properly chewy, so it takes noticeably longer to finish than a soft bear or a flat ring carrying the same thirty milligrams. That is worth knowing at this strength, and we have made the same point on the fizzy bears tub, from the other end of it.

There is no sour dusting on these. The acids in the ingredient list are in the sweet rather than on it, which is a different thing from the acid coating the fizzy range carries. The brand calls these fizzy cola bottles in the fizzy-drink sense of the word rather than the sour-coated sense it uses elsewhere, which is confusing but is the brand's own usage.

Flavour-wise it is a straightforward, sweet, slightly acidic cola. The CBD contributes nothing at all, because isolate has no terpenes left in it to contribute.

One note on the serving suggestion, which appears on the brand's page and on at least one large UK retailer's. Both say to take one to two gummies and recommend a maximum of seventy milligrams a day. That seventy milligram figure was the FSA's until 12 October 2023, when it was replaced by ten milligrams a day. This is the fourth time we have found it still in circulation on this brand, and the first on the brand's own site. The correction is set out in full on the pick and mix listing.

Choosing between the three bottles

They are the same sweet in three flavours, so the choice is genuinely just taste.

Plain cola is the traditional one and the least sweet-tasting of the three, because the spice and citrus in the flavouring cut through the sugar. Cherry cola adds a distinct cherry note over the top of that and reads as sweeter for it. Bubblegum is the outlier, straightforwardly sweet with none of the cola spice, and it is also the one with the shorter published colour list.

If you want the same thirty milligrams in something faster to eat, the fizzy bears tub is the one, and we have been explicit on that listing about why a soft sour bear at this strength deserves a caution that a chewy bottle does not.

If you want the same flavour family at a lower strength, there is nothing in this brand that does it. The bottles exist only at thirty milligrams a piece. The entry tier of the range is ten milligrams and it comes as hard gums, fizzy bears, sour peaches, imperial mints or a pick and mix, but not as a cola bottle.

Who should skip this tub

Anyone avoiding a specific colour. Until the brand resolves the contradiction between its own declarations, we cannot tell you with confidence which colours are in this tub, and we would rather say that than let you find out afterwards.

Anyone new to CBD. Thirty milligrams a piece is three times the daily figure the FSA advises, and there is no smaller cola bottle in the range. The three hundred milligram pouches at ten milligrams a piece are where to start.

Anyone avoiding sulphites, which are declared right across the Hempthy sweet range apart from the imperial mints.

Anyone who wants a sour sweet. These have no coating. The fizzy bears and sour peaches do.

And anyone who dislikes the medicinal edge that cola flavouring has for some people. It comes from the cinnamon and neroli side of the blend, and it is the reason cola sweets divide opinion in a way that fruit ones do not.