What does it take for a CBD oil to be considered “pure CBD oil”? CBD purity can mean different things to different people. But one thing is for sure: not all CBD products are created equally pure.¹

CBD terminology can be confusing. So we created this post to help you understand the concept of CBD purity. What kind of purity are you looking for in a CBD product? And is there such a thing as a bad kind of purity? We will answer these questions below in this post.

Two Types of Pure CBD Oil

How can there be different types of pure CBD oil? It depends on how you define “pure.” Because with CBD products, some purity is better than others.

The good kind of purity is CBD oil without any contaminants. This sounds simple, but it’s hard to come by. The only way to prove that a CBD product is free of contaminants is by looking for the USDA certified organic seal.²

The bad kind of purity is 99% pure CBD isolate crystals. CBD isolate lacks an entourage effect with other cannabinoids, terpenes, and other compounds found naturally in hemp.³ Studies prove that full-spectrum CBD oil surpasses CBD isolate in effectiveness.⁴

So when you see “99% pure CBD” used to describe CBD isolate, this is not as good as you might think. Without other cannabinoids, pure CBD isolate is not as effective.⁵

How to Find Pure CBD Oil

The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp on a federal level.⁶ This legislation improved US agriculture and permitted Americans to enjoy the benefits of CBD legally.

Unfortunately, the CBD industry has a long way to go, and this isn’t immediately clear to consumers. People are giving gas station CBD to their children and dangerous doses to their pets. And even worse, some are taking products that claim to be CBD but are actually dangerous synthetic cannabinoids.

The most important fact you should know is that not all CBD products are the same.⁷ Any two CBD products could have vastly different compounds, extraction methods, and ingredients that make a real difference when they go into your body. Let’s start with the basics.

Full Spectrum vs Pure CBD Isolate

The cannabis plant, of which hemp is a variety, contains at least 150 cannabinoids.⁸ These cannabinoids act on your Endocannabinoid System (or ECS), which is a biological system that appears to bring other bodily systems into balance.⁹

By introducing external cannabinoids (also known as phytocannabinoids), your ECS will return other systems into a state of homeostasis.¹⁰ Two of the most common phytocannabinoids are THC, which can make you feel “stoned,” and CBD, which is known for its therapeutic effects.

There’s a wide variety of stuff in those same dropper bottles — different colors, different flavors, different potency, different extraction methods, different everything. CBD oil just became legal a few years ago, so all this new terminology can be confusing. We are here to help you!

So what makes something a pure CBD oil, and what creates the difference in taste and look for each one? A lot of CBD tinctures have added fake flavors like mint. That’s because the underlying formulation doesn’t taste very good. Some taste grassy, others taste like a damp hayloft. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Two Purity Levels at FullBodyZen Hemp

To receive the full benefits of a full-spectrum CBD hemp oil tincture, we believe it’s important that it tastes good, too. And it should taste good without any added flavoring. To get there, we combined Kentucky bourbon-distilling methodology with the latest hemp extraction techniques to create a tincture that tastes as good as it works.

We offer our USDA certified organic CBD oils at two purity levels: Whole Plant and Distilled. Our Whole Plant formula is, in some ways, the opposite of “pure CBD” because it has the most robust full spectrum of cannabinoids, terpenes, and other beneficial plant compounds. Our Distilled formula is much more refined, 75% pure CBD. The remainder of the content is a full spectrum of cannabinoids.

How We Make Our Pure CBD Oil

Here’s a step-by-step guide to our CBD oil-making process. These are the decisions we made to create the best CBD tincture. Our secret is simple: we use only certified organic ingredients and processes to make the purest full-spectrum CBD oil possible.

Step 1: Extraction

There are two methods of extracting the oils from hemp biomass that have risen to the top of the industry: ethanol and supercritical CO2 extraction.

• Organic Ethanol is a safe solvent¹¹ used to separate the good stuff from the bad stuff. It’s a better solvent than hydrocarbons like butane because it comes from organic sugarcane plants. We use organic sugarcane ethanol at FullBodyZen Hemp to process our USDA organic CBD oils before blending them with organic coconut MCT oil.
• Supercritical CO2 extraction creates a solvent out of carbon-dioxide gas by pressurizing it into a supercritical liquid. Once the liquified CO2 extracts the oils from the biomass, it converts back into carbon-dioxide gas and floats away, leaving zero residues.¹² This is a fine method that other CBD brands use. But we find CO2 extract to have a harsh, bitter taste because of the process.

Step 2: Refinement

The step #1 extraction results in crude oil, sometimes referred to as “mud.” As its name suggests, it’s a thick, gooey oil containing plant waxes, chlorophyll, and other plant matter that affects color and flavor. Some brands are selling crude oil mixed with a carrier as their tincture formula, but at FullBodyZen, we give you the option for either Whole Plant CBD oil or Distilled CBD oil, one of the only CBD companies in the country to offer two purity levels.

These are the next steps in the tincture-making process that refine the crude into something closer to a finished product that could go into something like CBD capsules or a CBD tincture:

• Decarboxylated — In order for cannabinoids to become bioavailable, they must first be decarboxylated.¹³ The most common method of decarboxylating cannabinoids is with fire to create smoke, which is then inhaled.¹⁴ If you want to get nerdy about it, the word literally means to get rid of a carboxyl chain, COOH, by turning it into water and carbon dioxide.¹⁵ For CBD tinctures, decarboxylation is important to transform the CBD-A into CBD,¹⁶ to make it bioavailable.
• Winterized — Some processors take the crude, suspend it in alcohol, and flash freeze it — hence the term “winterized.” This process does a decent job of separating cannabinoids from unnecessary plant compounds to give a CBD potency up to 65 percent. But that’s not good enough for FullBodyZen.
• Distilled — Chemistry nerds call this process “short path distillation,” but in Kentucky, we call it a pot still — a simple but proven method of refining a crude product into something purer. The shorter the path between evaporation and condensation, the better the distillate. This is the method FullBodyZen uses to refine our CBD hemp oil.

FullBodyZen Hemp’s Pure Organic CBD Oil

We use a decarboxylated extract for our USDA certified organic Whole Plant CBD oil. And we use full-spectrum distillate for our USDA certified organic Distilled CBD oil. To highlight its purity and flavor, we blend both extracts in certified organic coconut MCT oil.

For our CBD topicals, we also use our full spectrum CBD distillate. We offer some of the few full-spectrum CBD lotions available. This is why FullBodyZenHemp doesn’t offer oil-based CBD balms or CBD salves. We only sell the highest quality full-spectrum CBD oil creams and lotions for maximum and comfort.

Different Types of Pure CBD Oil

The purity level of your CBD simply means how much of the CBD content is in the extract versus how much of the extract is organic hemp plant content like wax, chlorophyll, and sterols. At FullBodyZen Hemp, we offer organic CBD oils at two different purity levels: Whole Plant at 50% pure CBD; and Distilled at 75% pure CBD. What’s the difference? Allow us to explain.

There are normally three different types of CBD oil on the market. The first and most common is full-spectrum CBD oil. This consists of a hemp plant extract that is below 0.3% THC and contains a full spectrum of minor cannabinoids including CBD.¹⁷ The second most popular type of CBD oil is broad-spectrum CBD oil. This CBD extract is just like full-spectrum CBD with the THC removed.

So does that mean that full-spectrum CBD products containing trace amounts of THC could get you high? No, that’s not the case! Full-spectrum CBD products have to be below 0.3% THC according to the Farm Bill of 2018.¹⁸ That’s not enough THC than it would take to get a person high.

The third and final type of CBD oil that is produced in the United States is pure CBD isolate. This form of CBD contains only CBD and no minor cannabinoids.¹⁹ Studies show that full-spectrum CBD extracts produce a more profound entourage effect in the human body.²⁰ That is why FullBodyZen Hemp chooses to produce our Kentucky-grown hemp CBD products with only organic full-spectrum hemp extracts.

How is Pure CBD Oil Made?

At FullBodyZen Hemp, we start our process by stripping the hemp flowers from the stalks. This flower-only extraction process uses the most CBD rich hemp buds to make our amazing CBD oils. This is a huge reason why our CBD oils work better and taste better than our competitors.

Because we don’t use the stalk of the plant in our organic sugarcane ethanol extraction process, we end up with a higher quality CBD oil that does not contain added cellulose and wax from the stalk. This means more cannabinoids and less junk, and it also means that you or your pet that takes CBD will notice the effects of CBD that much quicker.

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