The CBD bud listed here is hemp. Despite looking identical to marijuana, it’s not that kind of reefer. Legally purchased online, these products contain above-average amounts of CBD, from 15-25 percent. Each tested to be within the federal limit of 0.3 percent THC.
After the 2018 Farm Bill legalized the cultivation of low-THC hemp, the demand for CBD bud was borne out of the CBD craze and the rising popularity of cannabis. Google search results are almost endless when you go to buy some.
But the marketplace is largely dominated by industrial hemp. Low to mid-grade bud, with or without high CBD.
We didn’t choose from any industrial hemp, so the prices aren’t dirt cheap. Our top picks were judged on the bud quality in addition to CBD content. The pictures presented are true to the flower. You won’t be disappointed.
Best high CBD bud
Creme De La Creme
Creme De La Creme is one of the highest quality strains offered to date by Arete. It’s grown organically indoors in soil and contains up to 18.3% total cannabinoid content. Also known as Alpine Genetics Cherry Creme Brulee, this strain provides notes of fruity diesel and cheese paired with potent indica effects.
Super Suver Haze
Super Suver Haze is a hard-hitting CBD strain even stoners can appreciate. It’s a 50/50 hybrid giving a tranquil body buzz without sedation. A dank aroma elevates the flavor of both sweet and sour fruit while the bright green with orange hairs are so caked in trichomes, you might think it started out as a moon rock.
Northern Lights
Northern Lights is one of the most well-known cannabis strains. This top shelf indica dominant strain contains over 20% CBD. It features bright orange hairs, lime green leaves and has a strong sweet and spicy aroma with a strong earthy flavor. All of Cheef Botanicals’ flower is non-GMO and independently lab tested.
Papaya Nights
Papaya Nights is a sativa strain with uplifting effects. The flavor profile is an incredible mix of invigorating, bright notes of stone fruit over earthy tones. The trichome coverage is dense and caked atop fluorescent green buds with a high amount of orange hairs. The CBD content is 19.7 with 21.5% total cannabinoids.
Citron
This flavorful citrus sativa strain is great for getting relief in the morning without putting you back on your back. Expect an energy boost with a bit of daydreaming, but with little grogginess or come-down. Containing about 18.5% CBD, these fluorescent green buds with bright orange hairs are lively and fragrant.
Space Invader
Explore the heavens with a stellar indica strain. Space Invader is an indica-dominant hybrid that will elevate you into cosmic bliss. It has a hoppy aroma with hints of cloves and gas. It’s rich in terpenes like linalool and limonene, making it a balanced nighttime strain, with over 17% CBDa and 20% cannabinoids in total.
Apple Pie
Enjoy soothing relief and potent effects from this strain. Apple Pie combines sweet and savory notes of citrus and a wide plethora of terpenes. It’s frosted with trichomes and decked out with orange hairs. Apple Pie contains 14.4% total cannabinoids and 13% CBDA. A top-shelf strain grown indoors in natural soil.
How to buy CBD bud
Even though hemp is consumed in the same ways as weed, and smells and looks just like weed, the purpose is not to get stoned. How CBD makes you feel is relaxing and sedating, but not intoxicating. Research suggests that most people consume CBD for medical and therapeutic relief from a host of physical and mental ailments like chronic pain, seizures, insomnia, anxiety disorders, PTSD, and the list goes on.
Online shops have the full spectrum of types from outdoor and greenhouse, to indoor and even hydroponic. There are basically three tiers: bottom, middle, and top-shelf. Practically just like in dispensaries.
- High-grade (top shelf or premium): Some of the CBD bud you can get will blow your mind! Gorgeous buds with rich and pungent aromas, all under a dense coating of resinous trichomes. It’s not uncommon to see a cannabidiol flower able to compete with top-shelf weed found in dispensaries for bag appeal.
- Mid-level quality (mids or regs): This grade can still be good quality with high CBD giving the desired effects. This grade includes a fairly wide range of available products. These buds might even be rich in aromatic terps with decent color and fair trichome coverage. But this is where the flowers start to get compressed and ultimately not very photogenic. There may be more leaves than normal, more sparse buds or bigger stems, and maybe even some seeds.
- Low quality (shwag or bammer): This is the ugly stuff. Likely biomass that was never intended to be sold for its flowers in the first place. A lot of it will look like ditch weed at best. Take strain names and genetics with a grain of salt in this situation. The product is usually dried out buds devoid of any real character or color, often with excessive seeds and leaves. Trust us here, that ain’t Sour Diesel! That’s more like Bio-Diesel.
With all that said, ugly does not always mean that you got robbed. As long as it was sold correctly. It’s one thing if you paid $30 for an eighth of some Sour Diesel that looked like downtown brown; that’s relatively easy to get over. But if you paid $100 or more for an ounce of it, then you should be Adam Sandler mad! There’s nothing wrong with buying cheap cannabis when you are intending to do so, just make sure you’re not paying primo prices for it.
Pricing of high-CBD strains
There’s practically no limit to the weight you can buy online. Presumably, most customers stick to common weights like grams to ounces. These ranges should give a good ball park of prices across a wide array of sites:
- Gram: $5-$10
- Eighth: $15-$40
- Quarter: $30-$60
- Half ounce: $50-$80
- Ounce: $70-$120
Of course, there are outliers on both ends of the spectrum: super cheap and super expensive. There’s also wholesaling, which happens on a lot of the retail sites. Those prices are outside the ranges presented. Many of them also offer pre-rolled CBD joints. Just know that CBD flower prices can range from dirt cheap to rivaling medical marijuana tags. Luckily, there’s no real financial barrier to entry like with many CBD oils. If you don’t have much, you can still get a lot.
Pro tips: buying CBD weed online
Buying cannabis online can be trippy. Proceed with some caution. You can’t see precisely what you’re buying. You can’t smell what you’re buying. All you have is a picture of some bud, descriptions from the seller (maybe), and test numbers. Site reviews help, but they can also be a slippery slope. Here are a few tips when purchasing online:
Contact customer service first: Shoot an email to the company you’re thinking about buying bud from. See if they respond or how long it takes them. It won’t tell you everything, but it’s a good start.
Find out about packaging: These strains look and SMELL like weed. Now imagine shipping an ounce of that. Check the site for information on how they package the bud for safe transit. The common methods are double-bagged, vacuum-sealed in smell-proof plastic, glass jars, etc. If they ship glass, also ask how they ensure that stays protected.
Get answers on the trim: The options you’ll find are untrimmed, machine trimmed, or hand-trimmed. Machine trimmed is often the least desirable because the process is aggressive to the flowers delicate trichomes—and it just looks bad. Hand trimmed is the most expensive and provides the best product. Untrimmed is the cheapest and looks the wildest, but you can trim it yourself if you need to save a buck.
Look closely at the pictures: If the pictures are hard to make out, proceed with caution. Unless you’re buying shake, you should be presented with a clear indication of the hemp flower you’re spending your money on. The best sites show a single bud with or without a complementary background. Organic products will vary some, but not so much that you should be disappointed and think you got the ol’ switcheroo.
Check for the effects profile: Although CBD is non-intoxicating, the other cannabinoids and terpenes together can produce an effect that’s greater than the individual parts, called the entourage effect. Basic info like whether the product is Indica, Sativa, or hybrid should be visible. Even better would be to get more specific details about other cannabinoids and terpenes.
Check the COA (certificate of analysis): It’s a third-party lab test of the strains’ biochemical make-up; sometimes with results for contaminants. These test results are frequently on the product page or on the product packaging in a QR code. In the COA, you’ll find the percentages of cannabinoids, like CBD, CBG, and THC; sometimes terpene content is available. Check to make sure the information matches up with what you expect.
