How Much CBD Oil Can One Plant Produce?

Growing your own hemp and debating whether you should try turning it into CBD oil? We cover the best ways to do so and explore how much CBD oil you can expect to have at the end of your hard work.

Key Takeaways

• CBD is produced by hemp plants, which can be grown at home and converted into CBD oil.
• Producing crude CBD oil is simple, and can be done with nothing more than hemp biomass and water.
• However, the most common methods of extraction suitable for the home are usually quite inefficient, meaning you could waste most of your hemp biomass.
• Some methods, like steam distillation or heating in coconut oil, provide a reasonable balance of simplicity, cost, and effectiveness.
• The concentration of CBD in a specific hemp plant varies widely depending on several factors, including genetics and growing conditions, making it difficult to estimate how much CBD oil you'll get from a single plant.
• You might prefer to enjoy your hemp in its flower form, and turn to professional manufacturers (like us) for your CBD oil needs.

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How is CBD Produced?

Cannabidiol, or CBD, is naturally produced by the cannabis plant. However, under federal law, only plants with less than 0.3% THC content may be grown to be considered federally legal. These plants are known as hemp plants. 

Hemp plants generally contain much more CBD than cannabis plants. And, of course, they contain much less THC.

The CBD Extraction Process

Unless you plan on smoking your hemp flower, you'll need to extract the CBD. There are a few different ways to do this.

The gold-standard extraction method uses pressurized CO2 to extract CBD and other compounds from hemp. This extraction process is expensive, but is generally considered the safest and most efficient of all CBD extraction methods.

That's why we use it to produce our CBD products.

Other methods use ethanol, hydrocarbons, or steam to extract CBD. These methods might be cheaper, but they're more dangerous, both to the manufacturers and to the consumer. That's because they sometimes produce residual solvents, which, if not properly removed, can contaminate the end product.

So it's best to stick with products created via the CO2 extraction method!

However, all these methods are usually done at scale. It's not feasible to set up a CO2 extraction process at home unless you have a lot of time, money, and space on your hands. 

Fortunately, there are a few simple methods for extracting CBD oil from hemp. We'll get to them in a minute. First, we need to cover how much CBD is actually there waiting to be extracted. 

Bonus: How Many CBD Gummies Should I Take to Relax?

CBD Concentration in Hemp Plants

Hemp plants are far from uniform. In fact, there are hundreds of different strains. As you might expect, different strains often have different concentrations of CBD. The concentration of CBD can also vary depending on the hemp's growing conditions.

Average CBD Content in Raw Plant Material

That makes it very difficult to estimate how much CBD you might extract from a "typical" hemp plant. 

The industry average, for example, is about 10%. What does that mean? It means 10% of the dry weight of hemp is CBD. 

So if you had 10 pounds of dry plant material, you might expect to produce 1 pound of CBD.

However, even within the industry, this figure varies. Some strains can have CBD concentrations of 15% or even 20%. And others can have concentrations in the single digits.

What the Research Says

Concentrations of CBD also vary in scientific studies. For example, one study from 2022 analyzed the concentration of multiple cannabinoids, including CBD, in various CBD products and found that the concentration of cannabinoids varied widely. 

Another study from 2020 compared the content of various cannabinoids in the essential oils of three types of hemp: Industrial hemp, wild hemp, and CBD hemp. 

Oil from the wild hemp had CBD concentrations of 6.9% to 52.4%. The industrial hemp produced oil with CBD concentrations of 7.1% to 25%. And oil from the CBD hemp had CBD concentrations of 7.4% to 8.8%.

As you can see, the amount of CBD in hemp can range widely!

CBD Oil Production

Extracting CBD from raw hemp at home is pretty simple. There are a few different methods from which you can choose.

The first step to each method involves decarboxylating your hemp. Anyone who's made marijuana edibles will likely recognize this.

Much of the CBD in your raw hemp plant is actually stored as CBDA, or cannabidiolic acid. We want to convert that to CBD to maximize bioavailability and therefore effectiveness.

Converting CBDA to CBD is easy. All you need is heat. 

When you smoke hemp flower, the heat from the fire is what converts the CBDA to CBD. (The same principle applies to THCa flower, which we sell in three different strains of THCa.)

However, we're not smoking hemp here. We want CBD oil. So we need a different heat source. Like an oven.

All you need to do is grind up your hemp flower, spread it onto a baking tray, and put it in an oven that's been preheated to about 230ºF (110ºC). Leave it there for between 30 and 60 minutes.

Be careful not to overheat your hemp. That can degrade the CBD.

If you don't have access to an oven, you can use a microwave, an instant pot, or a similar appliance to achieve a similar effect. Remember, it's the heat that's key.

Now it's time to extract the CBD from our cured hemp.

CBD Oil Extraction Method 1: Maceration

The first (and simplest) method uses oil, alcohol, or water to pull out the CBD from hemp. The process is extremely easy. All you have to do is submerge your cured plant material in your chosen liquid.

Over time, the cannabinoids in your hemp, including CBD, will dissolve into the liquid. You'll be left with CBD oil or CBD tincture. 

However, as we alluded to earlier, this method comes with a cost. It's very inefficient. If you want more concentrated CBD oil, you'll need to try something a little more involved.

Extraction Method 2: Percolation

We can increase the CBD oil yield from this method with one slight change. Instead of letting the hemp soak in the liquid, we continuously flow the liquid through the plant material. 

One way to do this is steam distillation. You'll need a specialized setup to do this. Steam will pass through your hemp, extracting compounds like CBD, and then condense into water to be collected at the end.

As you can likely guess, percolation is a lot more involved than maceration. But it could be worth it. 

One study found that maceration recovered 63.52% of CBD from plant material, while percolation recovered over 80%. That's a pretty significant difference!

Extraction Method 3: Apply Heat

The third and final extraction method requires... oil. Not CBD oil, but carrier oil. Your best bet is coconut oil, but most high-fat oils should work.

Add your decarboxylated hemp to your carrier oil and apply low heat. You can do this by creating a makeshift double boiler or with a slow cooker. Then just stir and wait.

Again, be careful not to overheat your oil. Doing so can degrade your CBD. Try to keep things under 150ºF (65ºC). 

Wait for at least an hour. When you're ready, filter out your hemp using a cheesecloth, muslin, or strainer. 

Voila! You now have your very own, homemade CBD oil.

Theoretical Yield From One Hemp Plant

So, we've covered a few different extraction methods and noted the variation in CBD concentrations. 

But how much CBD oil could you hypothetically extract from a single hemp plant?

That depends on many factors, including your strain and growing conditions. Lighting, soil quality, climate, maintenance... all of these factors can and will impact your yield.

If you grow your plant indoors, it might produce 14 ounces of flower. Keep it outdoors in good conditions, and you might get 26 ounces.

Depending on where you purchase your hemp plants, you might be provided with an estimate for how much you can expect. 

Remember, your raw plant yield isn't the same as your CBD oil yield.

Consider the following hypothetical situation. You decide to grow hemp indoors and invest in a single hemp plant. Thanks to your handy application of the proper farming methods, that single plant successfully produces flowers.

If you have 10 ounces of flower, with a CBD concentration of 10%, you might be able to extract 1 ounce of CBD.

But your extraction method probably won't be totally efficient. Recall the study that found both maceration and percolation failed to recover 100% of CBD from hemp.

Using a conservative estimate of 66% recovery, based on the figures from that study, you therefore might actually get 0.67 ounces of CBD from your 10 ounces of hemp flower.

That final yield might seem small, but let's put it in perspective. It's roughly equivalent to 19 grams. 

Any CBD oil containing 19 grams of CBD would be considered to have a ridiculously high CBD content.

One of our largest bottles of CBD Extract, for example, contains a total of 3,000 mg CBD, or 3 grams. And that's 120 servings! Each serving is just 25mg.

So your extracted oil might actually be the equivalent of 760 servings. Not bad!

Alternative: Where to Buy CBD Products

If that all sounds like too much work, we've got you covered. Our online store offers dozens of CBD and THC products, from a hemp-derived THC oil to various CBD Gummies with THC and much more.

Plus, you can check the CBD content of any product you buy. They're all tested by a third-party lab, and you can see the results by checking the Certificate of Analysis on our website.

Professional Extraction

If you're committed to making your own CBD oil but don't want to do the actual extraction, you can send your flower to a manufacturer who will extract the oil for you.

Conclusion

CBD production can be a fun and rewarding practice. But when it comes to predicting how much oil you can expect to extract from your hemp, things start to get tricky.

No two hemp plants are created equal. Various factors, including strain selection, soil nutrient balance, and growing conditions, all affect how much CBD a hemp plant produces.

CBD oil production can also be a lot of work, especially if you want a reasonably high yield. It can also be dangerous, depending on which method you choose to use.

That's why most people, including many home growers, stick to purchasing CBD oil from professional manufacturers — like us.

Keep Reading: Does CBD Smell Like Weed? What You Should Know

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Clean Remedies is a woman-owned, independent family business that uses clean and natural hemp extract to create products that are free from harmful chemicals, cruelty-free, and made in the USA, meant to benefit your well-being and meet our own high standards of efficacy. For CBD facts, product discounts, and more, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.