Some of the CBD oils on the market are, genuinely, very strong. Twice as concentrated as anything we make. If you've searched for the strongest CBD oil in the UK you'll have found them, and I understand the appeal.
But "strong" is a slippery word to shop by. Ask for a strong coffee and you might mean 2 different things. Most people mean the taste: a dark roast, bitter, the kind that stands up to milk. A few mean the caffeine, which is an actual amount. And the 2 don't always go together, as anyone who takes coffee seriously will tell you at length.
Cheese is simpler. A strong cheddar just tastes of more. The chemistry is different, which is why it tastes different, but there's no more of a specific active ingredient in it. It's a flavour, not an amount.
CBD oil is more like the coffee example. Strong can mean it tastes strong, or it can mean there's more of the active ingredient, CBD. When the industry uses the word, or someone searches for it, they mean the second one: how much CBD is in the bottle.
What does "strong" actually mean for a CBD oil?
Strength is the amount of cannabidiol (CBD) in the bottle, measured in milligrams, and, if it's a broad- or full-spectrum oil, the other cannabinoids that come with it. That number is on the label. It's on the lab certificate. You can check it and nobody's opinion comes into it.
Taste is a separate question and it trips people up. An oil that "tastes strong" usually just hasn't been flavoured. Ours is 2 ingredients, hemp seed oil and broad-spectrum hemp extract, so it tastes of hemp: earthy and full. Nothing is masking it. Our Super Strong has twice the extract in the same 30ml, so there's more of it to taste.
Earthy isn't the same as bad, though. Some CBD oil tastes genuinely bad. A raw, spirit-like edge is leftover solvent from a badly finished extraction, a harsh bitterness is chlorophyll and plant wax that a cheap process pulled through with the CBD, and a stale, paint-like aftertaste is the carrier oil going off in the bottle. You won't find that solvent edge or the chlorophyll bitterness in ours. The extract is made with supercritical CO2, the industry's gold standard for a clean extract, so no harsh solvent ever touches it.
A mild-tasting oil has usually had mint or citrus added, or is made with CBD isolate, which has almost no flavour of its own. TRIP, the CBD brand you'll see in Waitrose and Boots, does both: an isolate oil with orange blossom or wild mint added on top. Isolate is CBD and nothing else, none of the other cannabinoids that come along in a broad-spectrum extract, and the flavour goes in separately, as an ingredient.
Strong cheese is an opinion. Strong CBD oil is a number.
We made the other choice with the oil: fewer ingredients, nothing added and more of the hemp to taste.
What strengths do CBD oils come in?
The brands you'd recognise mostly sit somewhere between 2% and 15% CBD. Holland & Barrett, which stocks a whole shelf of them, runs across exactly that range. Orange County, a low-cost Liverpool brand, sells its everyday oils at 500mg, 1000mg and 1500mg in 30ml, which is under 2% to 5%.
The bigger numbers that top a "strongest" search get there in 2 ways: volume and concentration. Some are just a bigger bottle: a 12,000mg oil sold in 100ml is 12%, about the same concentration as 3000mg in 30ml. Some are genuinely more concentrated, and those tend to be sold as the exception. Holland & Barrett carries 1 oil at 20% and sells it as being for people with experience of CBD oil. Nobody regulates "strong" or "high strength", which is rather the point. Milligrams against millilitres is the bit you can trust.
Our 3 strengths sit within the typical range: 500mg and 1500mg at 5% and 3000mg at 10%. We're not alone in drawing the line there. EIR Health, who grow their own organic hemp in Poland and sit at the upper end of the market, make a broad-spectrum oil in 600mg, 1500mg and 3000mg, all in 30ml. Their top strength is 10%. So is ours.
Why don't we measure CBD in drops?
Drops aren't a unit. A drop depends on the pipette, how thick the oil is, and how steady your hand is. The same person can get a different amount from the same bottle twice. It sounds like a measurement. It isn't one.
Millilitres are real. Divide the milligrams by the millilitres. Our Strong and Mini are the same oil, 50mg per millilitre: 1500mg in a 30ml bottle, or the same strength in a 10ml bottle for the Mini. Our Super Strong is twice that, 3000mg in 30ml, 100mg per millilitre.
That's why every pipette we sell is graduated in millilitres, not drops. It sounds small. It's the difference between guessing and knowing what you're taking. I went into this properly in how to read a CBD label.
How much CBD is a normal amount to take?
It depends who you ask, and the answers are further apart than you'd expect. The UK regulator's figure is unusually low. The research has looked at amounts many times higher. I'd rather show you both than pick one for you.
The Food Standards Agency's current position is that the maximum acceptable daily intake of CBD for an adult is 10mg per day, and that you should stick to 1 CBD product a day so you don't go over it. It calls the figure provisional. It's also the most cautious number I'm aware of, and the guidance has grown more cautious over time, not less. I wrote about how the FSA arrived at it in our piece on the guidance.
The research sits somewhere else. A 2011 review of the safety studies reported that doses up to 1,500mg a day were well tolerated in humans, and the World Health Organization's 2018 review concluded that CBD is "generally well tolerated with a good safety profile". Neither of those is a recommendation. They're the reason the gap looks so odd.
I'm not going to pretend the gap isn't there. Our own label calls a serving 25mg and most oils I've seen have a serving above 10mg. That's not a loophole. It's a very cautious regulator on one side and a body of research on the other. If you take any medication, or you're pregnant or breastfeeding, the FSA says to speak to a doctor first, and so do I. If you want to see what any amount looks like in millilitres for your body weight, the dosage calculator does the arithmetic.
Which strength should I choose?
Here's how I think about it, and it's about how often you'll use it, not what for. The amount you settle on will be much the same whichever bottle you buy, so a stronger oil is the same dose from less liquid, not a bigger one. Every day, as part of the routine: Super Strong. Now and then, but you already know you like it: Strong. Trying it out, giving it or keeping one in more than one place: the Mini.
Super Strong, 3000mg, is for someone who takes it daily. Same time, same amount, and the bottle lasts for months. It's the best value per milligram we make. It's also £108 to find out whether you get on with the oil, so I wouldn't point a first-timer at it.
Strong, 1500mg, is for someone who uses it now and then but has already decided it's for them. It's the strength we default the product page to.
The Mini, 500mg, is the same 5% oil in a 10ml bottle. It's for trying it out, for giving as a present or for keeping in a few places at once. That last one is me. I keep a Mini in my bag, one by the bed and one at work, and I'm never hunting for the bottle. Small doesn't mean weak.
That's the whole answer. Strength is a number. Pick the number that fits how often you'll actually use it, not the biggest one on the shelf.
P.S. If there's a question about strength I haven't answered, email me. joe@beunspun.co.uk. I read them all.
CBD is a food supplement, not a medicine. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you're taking medication, or you're pregnant or breastfeeding, consult your GP before using CBD.
Sources
Food Standards Agency (2026). Cannabidiol (CBD) guidance. gov.uk, updated 28 August 2026.
Bergamaschi, M. M., Queiroz, R. H. C., Zuardi, A. W. and Crippa, J. A. S. (2011). Safety and side effects of cannabidiol, a Cannabis sativa constituent. Current Drug Safety, 6(4), 237–249.
World Health Organization (2018). Cannabidiol (CBD) Critical Review Report. Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, fortieth meeting, Geneva.