Latest / Bite Me The Show About Edibles / How to Read a COA (Without Wanting to Throw the Jar Across the Room)

Transcript

How to Read a COA (Without Wanting to Throw the Jar Across the Room) · Bite Me The Show About Edibles

• 1:16
  Margaret: Hey friends, have you ever picked up a jar at the dispensary, flipped over to check the fine print, and found a certificate of analysis packed with numbers you had no idea how to read?
• 1:26
  Margaret: Percentages next to letters you don't recognize, a pass or fail column, a QR code you're supposed to trust blindly.
• 1:33
  Margaret: Maybe you glanced at the THC number, nodded, and moved on.
• 1:37
  Margaret: Maybe you didn't look at all.
• 1:40
  Margaret: Most people who buy cannabis, grow cannabis, or cook with cannabis have looked at a COA and understood maybe 20% of it.
• 1:46
  Margaret: Not because they're not smart enough, but because nobody ever sat down and explained what the other 80% actually means.
• 1:54
  Margaret: And that's what we're doing today.
• 1:56
  Margaret: By the end of this episode, you're going to look at a COA, a certificate of analysis, and see a story instead of a wall of numbers.
• 2:04
  Margaret: Welcome, friends, to episode 367.
• 2:08
  Margaret: I'm your host, Margaret, a certified gangier and TCI certified cannabis educator.
• 2:14
  Margaret: And I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary you'll ever have.
• 2:18
  Margaret: Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles.
• 2:21
  Margaret: Grab a snack and let's dive in.
• 2:29
  Speaker: So, what is a COA actually?
• 2:32
  Speaker: A certificate of analysis is a third-party lab's report on what actually is in your product.
• 2:38
  Speaker: Not what the label says, not what the grower hopes, what an independent lab with no financial stake in your purchase actually measured.
• 2:47
  Speaker: That distinction matters more than people think.
• 2:50
  Speaker: A label is marketing.
• 2:52
  Speaker: A COA is closer to the truth, or at least it's supposed to be.
• 2:55
  Speaker: And if a product doesn't have one at all, that's not a small omission.
• 2:59
  Speaker: That product hasn't been checked by anyone but the company selling it to you.
• 3:03
  Speaker: I asked Kelly, a certified gangier out of California, why COAs exist in the first place.
• 3:10
  Speaker: And here's what she had to say.
• 3:12
  Speaker: COAs are designed to test for pesticides and heavy metals to verify that Canvas products are clean and smokable.
• 3:21
  Speaker: They also show the potency of the product and may include terpenes as well.
• 3:25
  Speaker: This gives the consumer insight as a way to verify what they are using is safe.
• 3:31
  Speaker: Although most consumers definitely don't know or think to check COAs for the products they're purchasing.
• 3:36
  Speaker: The more education around COAs and understanding the importance of them can help consumers consider it a factor in their purchasing decision.
• 3:45
  Speaker: And that last part that Kelly brings up is really the whole point of this episode.
• 3:50
  Speaker: A COA only protects you if you really understand how to read it.
• 3:54
  Speaker: So let's start where most people's eyes glaze over first the potency panel.
• 4:00
  Speaker: You look at a jar, it says 20% THC.
• 4:03
  Speaker: You buy it expecting 20% THC.
• 4:06
  Speaker: Turns out that that number has some give in it.
• 4:09
  Speaker: Testing labs work within an acceptable variance range, which means the number on your package and the number in your actual jar can be closed without being identical.
• 4:18
  Speaker: There's also the raw versus active question.
• 4:21
  Speaker: Flour gets tested for THCA, the raw acidic form, which converts to THC when you apply heat.
• 4:27
  Speaker: That's decarboxylation.
• 4:29
  Speaker: And you already know that that process changes more than just the cannabinoid.
• 4:33
  Speaker: It shifts the whole chemical picture.
• 4:35
  Speaker: The number on a raw flour COA is not the number you'll actually get once it's baked into your batch.
• 4:41
  Speaker: Then there are other minor cannabinoids worth a second look.
• 4:44
  Speaker: THCV, CBG, CBN, their presence on a panel tells you something about the plant beyond to just how strong it is.
• 4:51
  Speaker: And if you're making edibles specifically, there's one more thing to care about that most buyers never even think about.
• 4:57
  Speaker: Homogeneity testing.
• 4:59
  Speaker: That's whether the potency is actually consistent throughout the batch, not just accurate on average.
• 5:05
  Speaker: An inconsistent batch isn't a theoretical risk.
• 5:08
  Speaker: It's the difference between one cookie doing nothing and the next one doing way too much.
• 5:12
  Speaker: So how much variance is actually normal here?
• 5:15
  Speaker: I asked Aiden from Unit 15, a craft licensed producer out of Ontario, growing under Health Canada's testing requirements.
• 5:24
  Speaker: And he said, Variance cannot be generalized across different genetics or even different phenotypes of the same strain.
• 5:32
  Speaker: Even with a dialed-in environment, every crop responds uniquely to environmental stressors.
• 5:38
  Speaker: We've observed this firsthand with our purple octane, which we've grown as a single phenotype since early 2025.
• 5:45
  Speaker: Despite that consistency, every run remains distinct.
• 5:49
  Speaker: Our average variance for purple octane is typically 3-4% for THC and 1-3% for terpenes.
• 5:56
  Speaker: We've even seen the dominant terpene shift between beta myrsine and osamine.
• 6:01
  Speaker: Ultimately, variance should not be an expected factor in cannabis cultivation.
• 6:05
  Speaker: That's coming from someone growing the exact same phenotype in the exact same facility, run after run.
• 6:11
  Speaker: If unit 15 still sees that kind of movement, you can let go of the idea that your jar is supposed to match the label down to the decimal.
• 6:19
  Speaker: Some movement is just what a living plant does.
• 6:23
  Speaker: So not every COA includes terpene testing.
• 6:30
  Speaker: If yours doesn't, that's worth noticing because terpenes are a big factor of what shapes your actual experience, not just the smell.
• 6:37
  Speaker: What I want to get into today is something newer, and honestly, it surprised me when Aidan brought it up.
• 6:42
  Speaker: Unit 15's whole growing philosophy leans into what's called the entourage effect, the idea that minor cannabinoids and terpenes work together rather than in isolation.
• 6:54
  Speaker: I want to be straight with you about where the science actually stands on that.
• 6:58
  Speaker: It's a promising idea.
• 6:59
  Speaker: It's not a settled one.
• 7:00
  Speaker: Researchers are still working on how much of it holds up under real study.
• 7:03
  Speaker: So when Aiden talks about chasing the entourage effect through their high CBG cultivars, here that is Unit 15's growing philosophy and their bet on where the science is heading.
• 7:12
  Speaker: What really caught my attention was the next part.
• 7:15
  Speaker: And here's Aiden again.
• 7:17
  Speaker: Lab testing is a great way to confirm compliance and product integrity, but it does have its limitations.
• 7:24
  Speaker: As we've learned from recent RD runs, despite the nose or expression on a cultivar being strong, that doesn't mean it tests statistically high on terpene percentage.
• 7:35
  Speaker: New research over the last several years has focused on two groups of compounds: flavonoids, which are polyphenols, proven to affect flavor, aroma, and color, anthocyanins being the best example.
• 7:48
  Speaker: And flavorins, hydrocarbon molecules present in the trichome head that contribute to a lot more pungent smells we associate with cannabis.
• 7:55
  Speaker: The biggest thing current testing can't answer is what else contributes to the flavor or smell of a given cultivar.
• 8:03
  Speaker: So let's just pause on that for a second.
• 8:05
  Speaker: A strain can smell incredible and taste incredible.
• 8:10
  Speaker: And the terpene percentage on a COA can be unremarkable because the compounds actually responsible for that smell and flavor aren't even part of standard testing yet.
• 8:22
  Speaker: Your nose-knows things, your lab report doesn't, my friends.
• 8:26
  Speaker: So what about contaminant testing?
• 8:28
  Speaker: And this is the section of the COA that a lot of people skip entirely, and honestly, it's probably the most important one.
• 8:34
  Speaker: I'm gonna be straight with you about where I'm coming from here because most of what I've cooked with over the years has been my own homegrown, my own plants.
• 8:42
  Speaker: And homegrown means no COA at all.
• 8:45
  Speaker: No lab, no panel, no pass or fail column.
• 8:48
  Speaker: Just me watching my own plants through a humid summer, checking buds by hand for anything soft or gray before they ever made it into a jar.
• 8:57
  Speaker: And that's not a substitute for real testing.
• 9:00
  Speaker: It's just the only check that I've had.
• 9:02
  Speaker: And that's exactly why this section matters so much for anyone buying instead of growing.
• 9:07
  Speaker: You don't get to walk into your own grow room and check for mold with your own hands.
• 9:10
  Speaker: This COA is the only version of that check you have access to.
• 9:14
  Speaker: So it's worth reading.
• 9:16
  Speaker: This is why weed from a good friend who knows what they're doing is also really valuable.
• 9:20
  Speaker: So here's what you're looking at: pesticides.
• 9:23
  Speaker: What's tested depends on your jurisdiction, and not every panel checks for everything you'd assume that it does.
• 9:29
  Speaker: Heavy metals, cannabis plants, pull metals straight out of the soil they're growing in.
• 9:35
  Speaker: And that matters more once you're cooking with it in volume because you're concentrating whatever's in the plant material into your infusion.
• 9:42
  Speaker: Microbials, meaning mold and yeast, are the ones I tell any of my home edible makers to care about the most.
• 9:48
  Speaker: It's invisible.
• 9:50
  Speaker: It can survive parts of the cooking process that people assume would get killed off.
• 9:54
  Speaker: And this is the category closest to what I was checking for by hand on my own grow.
• 9:58
  Speaker: Many home growers can check signs of mold and mildew using a very inexpensive scope.
• 10:04
  Speaker: Residual solvents and mycotoxins are most panels too, mostly relevant if you're working with concentrates or want to go deeper than the episode has room for today.
• 10:12
  Speaker: It's worth knowing that they're there, even if I won't unpack either one fully.
• 10:16
  Speaker: The short version, potency, gets all the attention, but this section of the COA is the one actually protecting your health, and it's doing a job I can't do myself just by looking at a bud.
• 10:27
  Speaker: So, what about reading the lab itself and spotting a red flag?
• 10:35
  Speaker: A couple of the practical things to check beyond the numbers themselves.
• 10:39
  Speaker: Batch and lot numbers should match exactly between the COA and the product packaging in your hand.
• 10:45
  Speaker: If they don't, that COA might not even be for the product that you're holding.
• 10:49
  Speaker: Check the test date against the package date.
• 10:52
  Speaker: An old COA sitting on a fresh product is worth questioning.
• 10:56
  Speaker: And there are some plain visual tells.
• 10:59
  Speaker: A COA that's clearly a stock template, numbers that look suspiciously rounded, a lab name that doesn't turn up anything when you search it.
• 11:06
  Speaker: None of those alone are proof of a problem, but together they're worth pausing over.
• 11:10
  Speaker: I asked Kelly, the certified Ganger from earlier in the episode, what red flag she'd actually run into, not hypothetically, but in real life.
• 11:18
  Speaker: And she says, I have been aware of some products that didn't pass testing but were still sold to people since the company still wanted to make a profit off of it.
• 11:28
  Speaker: Another red flag is the 10% variance for THC potency, which has been abused in the industry, at least in California, anyway.
• 11:35
  Speaker: Even though a product may be tested at a particular number, some folks leverage that variance to make it seem higher than it really is so they can make better sales.
• 11:43
  Speaker: It really pushes the whole buying decision toward potency instead of looking at the product holistically.
• 11:49
  Speaker: A couple of things worth naming out loud here.
• 11:52
  Speaker: And first, that's Kelly's direct experience in the California market specifically.
• 11:56
  Speaker: If you're listening from somewhere with a different regulatory system, like Ontario, where Unit 15 operates under Health Canada, that particular abuse of the variance range may not play out in the same way.
• 12:07
  Speaker: Different rules, different pressure points, worth knowing where you live and what applies there.
• 12:12
  Speaker: But second, and I think this is the real takeaway, Kelly's point about potency first buying is exactly the trap I want you out of.
• 12:20
  Speaker: A COA that shows sky high THC and nothing else worth noting isn't actually telling you the product is good.
• 12:26
  Speaker: It's telling you one number.
• 12:27
  Speaker: And one number was never the whole story.
• 12:29
  Speaker: This high potency issue has been a problem, I think, since the legal market began.
• 12:35
  Speaker: When I was working in the legal dispensary, customers coming in and looking for high potency products and buying whatever was the highest potency in the store, regardless of brand, price, cultivar, terpen content, any of those things.
• 12:50
  Speaker: I saw that far too often.
• 12:52
  Speaker: And sadly, it's changing, but it's changing incredibly slowly.
• 12:57
  Speaker: I think the other thing that shouldn't be glossed over here is that there are companies who will sell products that didn't pass testing because they still wanted to make a profit off of it.
• 13:08
  Speaker: And this is not exclusive to California.
• 13:11
  Speaker: When I interviewed Mike DeVillier about his book, Buzz Killed the Corporatization of Cannabis, he brought up that very same issue here in Canada.
• 13:20
  Speaker: So we're gonna bring it into the kitchen.
• 13:25
  Speaker: Here's why all this matters even more once you're the one doing the cooking and not just the buying.
• 13:30
  Speaker: A COA gives you your starting potency.
• 13:33
  Speaker: That's real useful information.
• 13:36
  Speaker: What it doesn't do is your math for you.
• 13:38
  Speaker: Once that flour or that oil goes into your kitchen, you're the one converting a lab number into an actual dose, into an actual edible that someone is going to eat.
• 13:47
  Speaker: That's exactly why I built the Bite Me Dosage Calculator so you can take the number off your COA and actually turn it into something you can trust batch to batch.
• 13:56
  Speaker: And that's why I made the Bite Me Edibles Dose Diary.
• 13:59
  Speaker: So you can track what you made, what strain, what COA it came from, and what it actually did.
• 14:04
  Speaker: So next time it isn't just a guess.
• 14:07
  Speaker: The COA is where the information starts.
• 14:10
  Speaker: What you do with it in your kitchen is where it actually matters.
• 14:13
  Speaker: A certificate of analysis is a starting point and not a guarantee.
• 14:17
  Speaker: It's a real tool, and now you know how to actually use it instead of just glancing at the THC numbers and calling it a day.
• 14:23
  Speaker: Kelly said something that stuck with me since we talked about this.
• 14:27
  Speaker: She thinks the industry might eventually get to a place where quality outweighs potency and how people actually shop.
• 14:34
  Speaker: I hope she's right.
• 14:36
  Speaker: I think that's the direction this whole community is heading, one COA at a time.
• 14:40
  Speaker: And if you've got a confusing COA sitting in your kitchen right now and you want more eyes on it, bring it to the Bite Me Cannabis Club.
• 14:47
  Speaker: That's exactly the kind of thing that this community is here for.
• 14:50
  Speaker: So I'm curious, if there's any homegrowers listening, have you ever had your homegrown sent to a lab to have tested?
• 14:57
  Speaker: And if you did, what did you find?
• 15:00
  Speaker: Was it surprising?
• 15:01
  Speaker: Were there contaminants they weren't expecting?
• 15:03
  Speaker: I'm really curious.
• 15:04
  Speaker: I have been tempted to do it myself, but I've just never gotten around to it.
• 15:08
  Speaker: And I'm not even sure how much it would cost me to do.
• 15:11
  Speaker: But I would love to hear from you.
• 15:13
  Speaker: So that's it for this week, my friends.
• 15:15
  Speaker: I hope you enjoyed that episode.
• 15:17
  Speaker: There will be more over on the show notes.
• 15:19
  Speaker: With that, my friends, I'm your host, Margaret.
• 15:22
  Speaker: Until next time, stay hi.