Orange County CBD Balm 2000mg 100ml

Twice the pot, exactly the same strength

Two thousand milligrams in 100ml is 20mg of CBD per millilitre. One thousand milligrams in 50ml is also 20mg per millilitre. The two pots are the same formulation in different quantities, and choosing between them is a question of how much you want rather than how strong you want it.

This is a genuinely useful thing to be able to say, because it is not true of the rest of the brand. Across Orange County's oils the milligram figure and the bottle size move independently, so a 500mg bottle appears at two completely different strengths depending on whether it is 10ml or 30ml, and the 1000mg 30ml is a third the strength per drop of the 1000mg 10ml.

The balms do not behave that way. Both pots run at 20mg per millilitre, and if you like the 50ml you already know what the 100ml is.

One practical consequence. A topical is applied to an area rather than measured out, so per millilitre is the only comparison that means anything. A pot holding twice as much of an identical formulation will last roughly twice as long and behave identically while it does.

The ingredient order runs opposite to the names

Cosmetic ingredients are listed in descending order of quantity down to one per cent, which means the order itself carries information. Comparing the manufacturer's own two lists produces something odd.

In Active Heat, menthol is the second ingredient and wintergreen comes after it. In Deep Freeze, wintergreen is the second ingredient and menthol comes after it.

Menthol is the cooling agent. Wintergreen is a warming one. So the balm named Deep Freeze contains more wintergreen than menthol, and the balm named Active Heat contains more menthol than wintergreen. Both contain both, and this is an observation about proportions rather than a claim that either product fails to do what its name suggests.

It is the sort of thing that is only visible if you read two ingredient lists side by side, which is not something a shop selling each variant on its own separate page will ever do for you.

The methyl salicylate question, answered

On our page for the 50ml pot we flagged something we could not resolve: retailers describe Deep Freeze as containing methyl salicylate, while the formal ingredient lists do not name it. We said so rather than guessing.

Reading the manufacturer's 2000mg list resolves it. Deep Freeze contains Gaultheria Procumbens, which is wintergreen oil, and wintergreen oil is largely methyl salicylate by composition. Retailers naming methyl salicylate are describing the wintergreen that was listed all along. The two statements were never in conflict.

That matters for one practical reason. Methyl salicylate is a salicylate, chemically related to aspirin, and in Deep Freeze the wintergreen is the second ingredient, so there is a meaningful amount of it. Anyone who avoids salicylates as a matter of course should know that before buying, and no page selling this balm mentions it.

It is also worth noting that this is a plain statement about what is in the pot. We are not telling you what it will or will not do, only what it is.

What else changes between the two formulations

The full Deep Freeze list, as the manufacturer publishes it: Aqua, Gaultheria Procumbens, Menthol, Caprylic and Capric Triglyceride, Hamamelis Water, Isopropyl Myristate, Isopropyl Alcohol, Eucalyptus Globulus Leaf Oil, Cannabidiol Isolate, Cinnamomum Camphora Bark Oil, Piper Nigrum Fruit Oil, Polysorbate 20, Carbomer, Sodium Hydroxide, Phenoxyethanol, Cinnamomum Zeylanicum Bark Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Extract, Lavendula Angustifolia, Panax Ginseng Root Extract and Imidazolidinyl Urea.

Set against Active Heat, Deep Freeze adds two things and drops one. It adds Piper Nigrum, which is black pepper oil, and Cinnamomum Zeylanicum, which is cinnamon bark oil. It drops rosemary oil.

Black pepper and cinnamon are warming aromatics, which is a curious pair of additions to the product named for cold, and it is consistent with the wintergreen finding above. Hamamelis Water, which is witch hazel, appears in both.

Two things carry across from the smaller pot and are worth repeating. The CBD is declared as Cannabidiol Isolate on both, and unlike Orange County's oils the topicals are internally consistent about that. And imidazolidinyl urea, a formaldehyde-releasing preservative, sits at the end of both lists.

How to use it, and the instruction the brand leaves out

Retail copy for the 100ml publishes a proper instruction and a frequency cap: apply a thin layer, no more than three or four times daily, rub in gently, and wash your hands afterwards so you do not transfer it to your eyes.

That last part is not incidental. Menthol, wintergreen, camphor, eucalyptus, black pepper and cinnamon oils are all in this pot, and getting any of them near your eyes is genuinely unpleasant. It is the most useful safety line in the whole category and it appears on a reseller's page rather than the manufacturer's.

The brand's own page for this product runs to under three hundred words and gives no instruction at all. It is a shorter page than the one it publishes for the 50ml.

A frequency cap is also the right shape of guidance for a topical. Ingestible CBD gets talked about in milligrams a day, which is a measurement that makes sense when something is swallowed. For a balm, how often you apply it is the only thing you actually control.

Where the 100ml sits on our topicals shelf

The topicals shelf is the smallest on this site, and this is the largest pot on it.

Against its own 50ml sibling it is the same formulation in twice the quantity. Against Cannapower's cream, which carries 1,000mg, it holds twice the CBD though we have no volume published for the Cannapower to compare concentration. Vitality's muscle balm is a 50ml pot whose CBD content our data does not record at all.

Within Orange County, the choice between the three variants matters more than the choice between the two sizes, because the sizes are identical in strength and the variants are genuinely different formulations.

Who should skip this one

If you avoid salicylates, Deep Freeze is built on wintergreen oil and that is essentially methyl salicylate. It is the second ingredient in the list rather than a trace, so this is not a minor consideration.

If you have not used this balm before, buying the largest pot on the shelf is a substantial commitment to a formulation you have not tried. The 50ml is identical in strength, so nothing is lost by starting there.

If you avoid formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, imidazolidinyl urea appears at the end of both ingredient lists.

And if you are looking for a CBD product where you can measure what you are taking, a balm is not it in any size. A dropper oil gives a figure per drop. A 100ml pot gives you a pot.