The Dos & Don’ts of Making CBD Edibles

Key Takeaways:

1. Use a free online edible dosage calculator to make your own CBD edibles.
2. Your homemade CBD edibles will only be as great as the quality of your ingredients!
3. Remember to decarboxylate your raw hemp flower material before you start your infusion.

Let me preface this post by saying that I’m biased when it comes to CBD edibles. This author’s favorite way of consuming CBD is a good edible for several reasons. CBD edibles are:

• More accessible than other ingestion methods.
• Longer lasting than any other ingestion method.
• Exceptionally tasty (when they’re prepared properly).  

As someone who’s been experimenting and tweaking edible recipes for years, I wanted to share some insight from mistakes that I’ve made over the years. While it’s not an exhaustive list, the following list of dos and don’ts can help you make effective and tasty CBD edibles. But first, let’s cover some of the basics.

What Are CBD Edibles? 

CBD edibles are baked goods, candies, sugars, beverages, or anything edible infused with CBD. Because of advances in cannabis food science, we can formulate edibles differently based on the experience we’re trying to offer.

For example, Sunset Lake CBD offers CBD-infused coffee beans. The CBD is supposed to curb the morning jitters common with caffeine consumption. We also offer a full-spectrum Goodnight Gummy infused with CBD and elevated levels of CBN, making it a great before-bed treat.

CBD edibles are different than your average recreational cannabis edibles because they don’t contain significant amounts of edible THC. To be compliant with the 2018 Farm Bill, CBD edibles must contain less than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weighted basis.  

Make Your Own CBD Edibles

The beauty of making CBD edibles at home is that with a bit of practice and patience, you can make them as strong or gentle as you prefer. 

You also don’t have to use candies or chocolates to consume your dose. Once you’re familiar with proper dosings, decarboxylation, and lipid infusions, you can turn just about any food you like into an edible. Without further adieu, let’s get on with the tips.

Don’t: Fly Blind

Before you make edibles, you’ll need to purchase either CBD-rich hemp flower, or a ready-made extract. The former is, in this author’s opinion, a little more cumbersome to work with, but the effects are a bit better. Either is fine, though, and both will yield relaxing results.

Once you have your hemp flower or CBD concentrate, you need to determine how much you’re going to infuse into your food. Because your body processes cannabinoids differently when you eat them than when you inhale them, we recommend being as precise with your dosage as possible. Don’t fly blind. Use a dosing calculator.

Do: Use a Dosing Calculator

Making accurately dosed CBD edibles takes a bit of math and plugging in numbers. Luckily, the good folks over at Veriheal have created this free-to-use edible dosage calculator that can do most of the heavy lifting for us.

You’ll need a few things: 

• A kitchen scale
• A conversion calculator for weights and measurements
• The certificate of analysis that came with your CBD hemp flower
• You may also want a regular calculator, too. Most smartphones come equipped with one.

Read more: How to Read Your Certificate of Analysis

Using your flower or concentrate’s certificate of analysis, you should be able to determine the potency numbers and plug them directly into your edible calculator. You’ll also need to know how much fat (butter, oil, hemp oil, etc.) you’ll use in your recipe.

Once you know how much fat is called for in your recipe and the number of servings it will yield, it’s up to you to determine how much CBD you want to use in your infusion. At Sunset Lake CBD, we recommend starting with 25mg CBD per serving. That stands for homemade CBD edibles, too. Play around with the dosing calculator until you find that sweet spot.

Don’t: Put Hemp Flower Directly into CBD Edibles

I’m not ashamed to admit that this was my rookie edible-making mistake. One might think you can treat your hemp flower like any other ingredient during cooking.

“A little shake in some brownies… what could go wrong?”

A lot. A lot can go wrong. Throwing hemp flower directly into your edibles isn’t the worst mistake, but your edibles will be less potent, taste bad, and have a grainy texture. Plus, if you don’t cook your edibles long enough, the cannabinoids in your flower won’t have enough time to activate. Something we’ll talk about in the next section.

Do: Decarboxylate Your Hemp

Decarboxylation is the secret to making great homemade CBD edibles with hemp flower. Decarboxylation, or “decarbing” for short, is when we use heat to strip CBDa (cannabidiolic acid) of a carboxyl acid ring group and turn it into CBD. This is the most important step when making CBD edibles. If we don’t decarb our CBD hemp flower before infusion, our edibles won’t have any effect. 

A Quick ‘How-to’ On Decarboxylation

Decarbing your hemp flower for CBD edibles: step by step. 

1. Preheat your oven to 230 degrees F (110 C).
2. Prepare a clean roasting pan or baking sheet. Line the bottom with parchment paper to make cleanup easier. 
3. Spread out your CBD flower evenly in the roasting pan. 
4. Cover the pan with tinfoil (not necessary, but it helps cut down on smell and keeps the good terpenes in)
5. Bake for one hour. (Warning: this step is quite pungent. Turn on your overhead exhaust— especially if you live in a shared space.)
6. Don’t uncover the pan until it’s cool. 
7. Remove your CBD flower from the pan and pulverize it until it is an even brown shake. This can be done with a traditional grinder or a mortar and pestle. 
8. Your hemp flower is now decarboxylated and ready for infusion.

Can you use a microwave for decarbing?

No. Please don’t do this. This author has lit hemp flower on fire before doing this, ruining the batch and wasting an afternoon.

Do: Use High-Quality Fats for Your Infusion

Using better ingredients means better food. The same is true for edibles. Use high-quality fats like avocado oil or unsalted butter from grass-fed cows if you want your CBD edibles to be effective and taste good. Not all fats are made the same. Some are better at “latching” on to CBD than others. 

The best fats to infuse with CBD are:

• Butter – 93% infusion rate
• Avocado oil- 92% 
• MCT (Medium-Chain Triglyceride) oil – 91% This stable and flavorless oil is what Sunset Lake makes CBD oil tinctures with
• Coconut oil (solid) – 82%

Some of the above oils taste better than others in certain dishes. Plan accordingly!

Don’t: Burn the CBD

This is another tip for the first-timers out there. Again, there is no judgment from this author. I’ve definitely done this before. After a by-the-book infusion, I tried to use my CBD-infused butter in a recipe that called for a 400F oven. I ended up burning most of the CBD away, and the end product had a distinct bitter, earthy flavor.

At temperatures over 356F, CBD breaks down. You’ll want to stick with recipes that call for temps at 350F or lower to protect the integrity of your CBD. Note that if you plan on making CBN edibles, keep your recipes below 365F.

Don’t: Eat On an Empty Stomach 

You may be tempted to dig into your CBD edibles once they’re done. And, by all means do. But make sure that you’re eating some non-infused food beforehand.

Edibles of all kinds will work better and are more pleasant when you eat them after a meal. If you don’t heed this tip, your edibles will still work but don’t be surprised if you get an upset stomach during the first few hours after consumption.

Do: Wait While Edibles Kick In

Because your body metabolizes edible CBD at a different pace than other ingestion methods, you will not notice any effects for the first 30 minutes. Generally, the average CBD edible will start to ‘work’ anywhere between 45 to 120 minutes after you eat it.

CBD edibles also don’t stop kicking in for quite some time. Unless you want to take a three-hour nap, it’s important to pace yourself.

Do: Share!

This isn’t much of a tip, but you should share the wealth. Your friends will appreciate it.

Time to make your own CBD edibles!

This post was originally published on Jan. 17, 2021, and was updated on Nov. 13, 2024, by the original author.