The short answer is yes, it is completely normal for our products to vary in color batch to batch, and the reason is pretty cool.
We at Hempward Farms use the whole plant for our products. Each plant is a little different, therefore when we extract the CBD as well as all other cannabinoids and terpenes from our plants into the crude oil there is the same variation in the corresponding oil. It is amazing how plants grown in the same field will test differently, simply due to small variations in the sun, water, and soil.
Having variations in our Crude Oil is normal, but for our final products we need to have the correct strength. So we use a unique calculation for each mixture for the batch to end up with the target CBD. What that means is if the crude oil has a greater concentration of CBD we need to use more MCT coconut oil to balance it out, and the reverse for a crude with a slightly lower CBD percentage means we need it more concentrated relative to the MCT carrier oil to end up with the same target CBD level. The strength of each product also has an impact. Our Hempward Farms 50mg Equine Tincture is by nature more concentrated than our 25mg Human Tinctures, or our 10mg Canine.
What is Crude Oil and why does it affect the color?
When we harvest our hemp plants, that is what they are- plants. And the plants have stalks and stems and leaves as well as the flower that contains most of the cannabidiolic acid(CBDA). CBDA is a compound that does not interact with our endocannabinoid system, so we need to activate CBDA using heat, or decarboxylation , to transform it into our usable CBD. That process is called extraction, and the end result is a thick molasses-like product called Crude Oil. Crude oil is a dark greenish brown due to the chlorophyll remaining from the plant. That dark color is why our different mixtures of tincture oil become slightly different shades of color.
So yes, color variation is normal and expected with Hempward Farms products. I take pride in these small imperfections. It is an easily observed example of just how natural and simple our products are. We do not artificially add or strip the colors of our products, because the color is a direct result of nutrients from our Colorado sunshine and fresh water from the Rocky Mountains being fed to our hemp fields.
What could be better than that?