Orange County CBD Oil 500mg 30ml

Five hundred milligrams, two completely different oils

There are two 500mg bottles in this range and they are not the same product in different sizes. They are different strengths that happen to contain the same total.

This one puts 500mg into 30ml, which is about 1.7 per cent and roughly 0.85mg a drop. The other puts the same 500mg into 10ml, which is 5 per cent and 2.5mg a drop. Three times the concentration, from an identical number on the front of the bottle.

The lesson generalises across the whole range. A milligram figure on a CBD oil tells you how much is in the bottle and nothing whatsoever about how strong a drop is. You need the millilitres next to it before the number means anything, and Orange County's range is an unusually clear demonstration of why.

So if you came looking for the 500mg and you want the gentler one, this 30ml bottle is it. If you wanted 5 per cent, the 10ml is the one you are after.

About 600 drops, and why that is the point of this bottle

A 1ml pipette holds around twenty drops, and a 30ml bottle holds thirty pipettes, so there are roughly 600 drops in here. Orange County works this out in a blog post on its own site and then never carries the figure across to any of its product pages, which is a shame because it is the single most useful number for this particular bottle.

Six hundred drops at 0.85mg each is what makes this the fine adjustment bottle of the range. You can move up or down by well under a milligram at a time, which is not possible with anything else Orange County makes. The 6000mg 30ml carries roughly 10mg in a single drop, so the smallest step it can take is twelve times larger than the smallest step here.

Against the FSA's advisory figure, which suggests healthy adults keep CBD from food supplements to no more than 10mg a day, this bottle puts that at around twelve drops. That is a comfortable number to count out, and it means you can sit some way under the figure without trying to split a drop.

None of that is a recommendation about how much anyone should take. It is a statement about what this bottle physically allows, which is more control than any other oil on the shelf.

Three strengths in, the labelling has two camps

We have now looked closely at three Orange County oils and found the same disagreement about extract grade on every one. Set out together, it stops looking like a stray error.

Orange County's own pages describe its oils as full spectrum, with trace amounts of THC. One specialist retailer follows the brand and sells this bottle as a 500mg Full Spectrum Oil. Boots sells it as broad spectrum. A trade wholesaler sells it as broad spectrum. Our own catalogue records this one as broad spectrum, while recording the 1000mg 30ml as full.

So it is two consistent camps rather than random noise, and the camps do not sort by size or by strength. It is also worth admitting that our own data is not consistent with itself across the range, which is why we are not going to lean on it.

Broad spectrum means the THC has been removed in processing. Full spectrum means it has been kept deliberately. Because we cannot tell you with confidence which of those describes this bottle, we do not publish a THC figure for it and we do not tell you it contains none. The UK test is no more than 1mg of controlled cannabinoids, counting THC, THCV and CBN, in the whole container, and that applies whatever the bottle size.

Four options, and what a very dilute oil tastes like

Apple, Cherry, Mint and Natural, all currently available. The trade generally sells the flavoured three and Orange County's own page lists none, describing the oil without variants.

One genuine advantage of a dilute oil is that it tastes of less. There is simply not much extract in a 1.7 per cent oil, so the earthy hemp note that dominates a 20 per cent bottle is mild here. Natural is perfectly drinkable in a way that the same flavour is not at higher strengths.

Mint is still the cleanest if you want the base covered entirely. Apple and Cherry sweeten it, and at this concentration they come closer to actually tasting like fruit than they do further up the range, where the hemp underneath tends to win.

The published method is sublingual: hold the drops under your tongue for around 30 to 60 seconds before swallowing. A larger volume of a weaker oil means holding rather more liquid in your mouth than a concentrated bottle would need, which is worth knowing if that is something you find unpleasant.

Where the gentlest oil belongs

Every other page about a CBD oil pushes upwards, so it is worth making the case for the bottom of a range once.

A dilute oil in a large bottle is the right choice in three situations. If you have not taken CBD before and want to find out what suits you without large jumps. If you want to sit deliberately below the FSA's advisory figure and need the precision to do it. And if you dislike the taste, because there is less of it to dislike.

It is the wrong choice if you already know you want a substantial amount, because you will be counting out a great many drops to get there and a 30ml bottle of a weak oil will empty faster than a 30ml of a strong one used sparingly.

Within the range this sits at the bottom of the 30ml shelf. Everything above it, from 1000mg upwards, is recorded by us as full spectrum. That makes this bottle and the 10ml isolates the parts of the range where the THC question is either absent or, in this case, at least at its smallest scale.

Who should not buy this one

If you already take CBD regularly and know roughly what amount suits you, this will be tedious. Getting to a moderate amount from 0.85mg a drop means a lot of counting, and one of the stronger bottles does the same job in a fraction of the drops.

If you want certainty about THC, we cannot give it to you for this bottle while the brand and the trade describe it differently. The 1000mg 10ml isolate is the option in this range where that question genuinely does not arise.

If you want the strongest thing available, this is the opposite end of the shelf by a factor of twelve. And if a large volume of liquid under your tongue is unpleasant, a dilute oil requires more of it, which is a small but real drawback nobody mentions.