How to Make CBD Gummies at Home

Step 1: Work Out the CBD Dose Per Gummy

Decide the milligrams before you cook

The formula is simple: the milligrams of CBD in the oil you add, divided by the number of gummies you pour. If a bottle lists 2,500mg of CBD in 30ml, each milliliter holds 2,500 divided by 30, or about 83mg.

Say your mold has 30 cavities. Add 3ml of that oil (3 times 83, about 250mg) and each gummy carries about 8mg. Add 6ml (about 500mg) and each gummy carries about 17mg. To work backward from a target per gummy, multiply it by the gummy count and divide by the mg per ml. These are worked examples, not a serving suggestion. Your product's label and your doctor or pharmacist decide what a serving is for you.

The math only holds if the label is right. In a 2017 research letter in JAMA, Bonn-Miller and colleagues bought 84 CBD extracts online from 31 companies in late 2016 and had them lab tested: 42.85 percent contained more CBD than labeled, 26.19 percent less, and only 30.95 percent were within 10 percent of the label. THC turned up in 18 of the 84. It was funded by a research nonprofit; several authors reported fees from cannabis companies. That is why every batch we make has a Certificate of Analysis on our Lab Results page. Use that number in your formula.

Step 2: Measure the Gummy Ingredients

One cup of juice makes about 30

This is a gelatin recipe because gelatin is forgiving: it sets in the refrigerator and needs no candy thermometer. Pectin makes a vegan gummy and sets differently. If you go that route, follow a tested pectin candy recipe and add the CBD as described in Step 4.

• 1 cup (240ml) of 100 percent fruit juice, split into 1/2 cup cold and 1/2 cup for the pan.
• 3 tablespoons of unflavored gelatin powder (about three 1/4 ounce packets), plus 2 to 3 tablespoons of honey or sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.
• The CBD oil you measured in Step 1 (3ml in our example), plus an optional 1/4 teaspoon of sunflower or soy lecithin.

Pick a 100 percent juice with some tartness, such as tart cherry, pomegranate or orange. Lecithin is optional and explained in Step 4. Measure the CBD oil last, with a marked dropper or an oral syringe, and write down exactly how many milliliters went in.

Count your mold cavities before you start. If your mold has 24 cavities instead of 30, the same 3ml of oil puts about 10mg in each gummy rather than 8mg.

Step 3: Bloom and Dissolve the Gelatin

Warm, never boiling

Pour the cold half cup of juice into a bowl and sprinkle the gelatin evenly over the top. Leave it for five minutes. It will swell and wrinkle, which cooks call blooming.

Put the other half cup of juice, the sweetener and the lemon juice in a small saucepan over low heat. Warm it until the sweetener dissolves and the liquid steams, then whisk in the bloomed gelatin until the mixture is clear. Keep it below a simmer: warm enough to dissolve the gelatin, nothing more. The next step gives a second reason to keep the pan cool.

If foam forms on top, skim it off. Then turn the burner off and let the pan sit for two or three minutes, until it is warm enough to pour but no longer steaming hard.

Step 4: Add the CBD Off the Heat and Mix It Well

Why mixing is the hard part

With the burner off, measure the CBD oil in and whisk hard for a full minute. Two things make this the hardest step. The first is heat. In a 2021 stability study in Pharmaceutics, Kosovic and colleagues at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, funded by a Czech government grant, dissolved 5mg of 99.9 percent pure CBD in a milliliter of sunflower oil and stored it at 40C and 75 percent humidity. In open vials the oil had lost 20.2 percent of its CBD by day 90, and after a year about 1 percent remained; closed vials kept about 24 percent. That is a storage study, not a stovetop study, but heat, air and time all work against CBD, so we add it last and keep the pan off the flame.

The second problem is that oil and water do not stay mixed. A standard CBD oil is hemp extract in a carrier such as MCT oil, and the gummy base is mostly juice, so the oil rises in the pan while you pour and the first gummies get more of it than the last. Lecithin helps. Under 21 CFR 184.1400 the FDA lists it as a generally recognized as safe food ingredient made from soy, safflower or corn oil, and a USDA technical report puts emulsification, keeping oil droplets dispersed in water, first among its food uses. Whisk the quarter teaspoon in with the oil.

The cleaner fix is to sidestep the oil and water problem. Our Partnered Proof Broad Spectrum Oil is water-soluble: it can be dropped in the mouth and swallowed, or added to a drink or food. It is made to disperse in a water-based liquid such as juice rather than float on it. We have not lab tested a kitchen batch made with it, so the dose per gummy is still the Step 1 estimate, with one less way to drift.

Step 5: Fill the Silicone Mold and Chill

Work quickly, whisk between pours

Set the mold on a baking sheet so it moves without sloshing. Transfer the mixture to a squeeze bottle, or use a dropper straight from the pan, and fill each cavity to the same level. Equal fills matter as much as the math: a half-filled cavity is a half dose.

Whisk the pan again every eight or ten cavities. Even with lecithin, oil drifts upward, and the last gummies poured are the most likely to differ from the first. If the mixture starts to thicken before you finish, return the pan to low heat for a few seconds, not longer, and keep whisking.

Tap the sheet on the counter to pop air bubbles, then refrigerate for at least an hour, until the gummies are firm and release cleanly when you flex the mold. Peel them out onto parchment. For a sugar coating like the photo above, toss them in a spoonful of sugar just before serving.

Step 6: Store and Label Homemade CBD Gummies

Fridge, airtight, labeled, locked away

Homemade gummies have no preservatives, so treat them like any other homemade food. Keep them in an airtight container in the refrigerator, which the FDA says should run at or below 40F, and do not leave food that needs refrigeration out for more than two hours, or one hour when the air is above 90F. There is no tested shelf life for a kitchen batch, so follow the same FDA page: throw out anything that looks or smells suspicious, and treat mold as spoilage.

Label the container with the date, the oil you used and the mg per gummy you calculated, and treat that number as an estimate. Then put it where a child cannot see or reach it. These look exactly like candy. The CDC notes that some cannabis edibles are packaged to mimic snacks and candy that appeal to children, that children who consume THC-containing products can become very sick, and it advises a locked, childproof container out of the sight and reach of children and pets.

A 2023 study in Pediatrics by Tweet and colleagues analyzed National Poison Data System reports of children under 6 who ate cannabis edibles: 7,043 exposures from 2017 through 2021, rising from 207 cases in 2017 to 3,054 in 2021, 97.7 percent at home, 22.7 percent admitted to a hospital. Yours add no THC, but the FDA lists the effect of CBD on the developing brain among its open questions, and a full spectrum oil carries trace THC. Lock them up anyway.