Professor Herb H4CBD Solid Extract 2.0g

Two ranges, one name, and how to tell them apart

This is the most important thing on the page, so it goes first.

Professor Herb makes two separate 2g solid extract ranges. One is the Hemp Solid Extract range, which is cannabidiol, extracted in Italy from indoor-grown hemp, and sold in types including Moroccan Hash, Bubble Hash, Olandese Hash and Banana Pollen Hash. Every one of those carries a published percentage, and the Moroccan is stated at 22 per cent, which the brand itself converts to 440mg in the pouch.

The other is this one, the H4CBD Solid Extract range, sold in Gold Press, Moroccan, Squidgy Black and Red Lebanon. It contains a laboratory-made cannabinoid rather than a plant extract, and it publishes no percentage and no milligram figure anywhere. The strength descriptor is the phrase extreme high strength.

Read those two lists again and you will see the problem. Both ranges contain a Moroccan. Same brand, same 2g format, same word printed on the front, and a completely different substance inside.

The only thing on the front of the pack that separates them is a small H4CBD flash in a green box near the bottom of the hanging card. It is not large and it is easy to miss on a shelf or in a thumbnail. If you take one thing from this page, make it that: on any Professor Herb solid extract, look for that flash before you assume you know what is in it. The image below shows exactly where it sits.

We stock both ranges, which is the only reason we are able to put them side by side like this. A brand site has no reason to draw the contrast and a shop carrying only one of them cannot.

What H4CBD is, and the clearest way to picture it

H4CBD is hydrogenated cannabidiol. Chemists start with CBD, which the hemp plant does make, and add four hydrogen atoms to the molecule in a laboratory. The result is a compound the plant does not produce.

The most useful comparison, and one that comes from the chemistry literature rather than from marketing, is margarine. Hydrogenation is the same class of process used to turn liquid vegetable oil into a solid spread. You begin with something natural, run it through a chemical reaction, and end up with a substance that behaves differently and does not occur that way in nature. That is exactly what semi-synthetic means: a plant-derived starting material, deliberately altered.

Which is why the word natural does a lot of quiet work in this category. The hemp the CBD came from was grown in a field. What is in this pack was made in a reactor.

We have written the longer account in our guide to what H4CBD is, including its contested legal position and where the widely repeated claim about it being a hundred times stronger than CBD actually comes from. It is worth reading before you buy anything in this part of the range.

Why this is not hash, and why that changes the question

It is sold in a hash format, it looks like hash, and shops describe it as hash. It is not hash in the sense the word normally carries, and the difference is not pedantry.

Traditional hash is separated resin. The sticky material on the surface of the flowers is collected and pressed, so what you end up with came off a plant and nothing was added to it. That is what makes hash hash, and it is also what puts it squarely inside a specific piece of UK law, which we set out in full on the briquette hash page.

This is a different object entirely. The cannabinoid was manufactured from isolated CBD, then combined with terpenes and pressed into a block. Nothing was separated from a plant. It is a made compound in a hash shape.

So the legal question changes with it. The resin analysis that applies to a genuine pressed hemp hash does not straightforwardly apply to a manufactured cannabinoid, because there is no separated plant resin to analyse. What applies instead is the question that hangs over every H4CBD product: whether a laboratory-made cannabinoid sold for its effect falls within the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. That position is genuinely contested and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is reviewing it.

For completeness, since it appears on both ranges: Novel Foods governs what you eat and drink, and this is not a food, so that regime is not the live test here either. H4CBD holds no Novel Foods authorisation, and that matters for the H4CBD products you swallow rather than for this one.

We are not telling you this product is unlawful. We are telling you the reassurance printed on it addresses a different question from the one it raises.

The strength figure that is not there

Here is a pattern worth noticing across this brand's own shelves.

The CBD solid extracts carry a percentage on every type, and the brand converts it into milligrams for you. The H4CBD extracts carry no percentage, no milligram figure and no total. What they carry instead is the phrase extreme high strength.

So the substance with decades of research behind it is sold with a number, and the substance introduced to the market recently, with far less known about it, is sold with an adjective. That is the wrong way round, and no page selling it remarks on it.

The same asymmetry runs through the effect claims. Professor Herb describes its CBD solid extract as a non-psychoactive substance offering no psychoactive effects. On its H4CBD collection page the same company describes the range as delivering a noticeably stronger effect for most users. Both statements come from the same brand about products sitting next to each other, and they point in opposite directions.

Our position follows from that. We are not going to publish a strength figure for this product, because the manufacturer does not publish one and we are not going to invent or estimate one. If the quantity matters to your purchase, ask us and we will tell you exactly what documentation we hold from our distributor.

The three types we list here, and the fourth

The range runs to four types. Three of them are options on this page, and Red Lebanon sits as a separate listing on our site, which is an artefact of how the range imports from our distributor rather than a difference in the product.

One thing to be clear about before the descriptions: these names describe the traditional hash styles the terpene profile and appearance are modelled on. They do not describe an origin, because the cannabinoid was not produced anywhere near Morocco or Lebanon. They tell you what it smells like and roughly what it looks like.

How a solid extract is handled

No page selling this gives any guidance at all, and it is not self-evident from a pressed block.

The handling is the same in principle as the brand's hemp briquette, which we cover in detail on its own page: warm it in a closed palm rather than crumbling it cold, use a brief indirect flame at most, and aim for even grains rather than powder. Do not put it through a grinder, which mostly leaves it stuck to the teeth.

The difference is quantity, and it is a large difference. A briquette is a mild pressed pollen and you use it accordingly. This is a concentrated preparation of a cannabinoid the brand itself describes as noticeably stronger, with no published figure telling you how much of it is in there. Whatever you would use of a hemp briquette, considerably less is the sensible starting point here, and starting smaller and adjusting is the only reasonable approach when the strength is unstated.

We are not going to give you an amount, because we do not have a figure to base one on and inventing guidance would be worse than saying so.

Who should not buy this

If you wanted CBD hash, this is not it, and the brand makes one. Its Hemp Solid Extract range is a genuine plant extract with a published percentage and milligram figure on every type. Check for the H4CBD flash and buy the other one.

If you are new to solid extracts, start with the CBD range or the hemp briquette. Learning how to handle a pressed block and meeting an unquantified semi-synthetic at the same time is two unknowns at once.

If you need a strength figure before you buy, this product does not have one. That is not us withholding it; nobody publishes it.

If you are subject to workplace testing, or drive for a living, or need to be certain how you will feel, avoid it. Reported accounts of H4CBD vary widely, which is exactly the reason not to find out in those circumstances.

If regulatory certainty matters, this is the most contested corner of our range. The position is under active review and could change.

18+ only.