How to Dose Edibles: THC per Serving, Explained

Tue Jul 14 2026

Edibles are the most misunderstood way to use cannabis. They come on slowly, hit harder than inhaling, and last for hours. The single most useful skill for cooking with cannabis is knowing how much THC ends up in one serving — not the whole batch.

Why edibles feel stronger

When you eat cannabis, your liver converts THC into a compound called 11-hydroxy-THC, which is more potent and longer-lasting than the THC you get from smoking. That is why a 10 mg brownie can feel far stronger than a couple of puffs — and why patience matters.

Start low, go slow. A gentle edible is 2.5–5 mg of THC. Wait at least 2 hours before taking more — the effects are still building.

The simple dosing math

Every infused recipe follows the same chain:

Flower potency — grams of flower × THC% gives the raw THC.
Losses — decarbing and infusing are not perfectly efficient, so only ~70% of the label THC typically reaches your infused fat.
Strength — that active THC divided by the volume of butter or oil gives a strength per millilitre.
Per serving — the infused fat the recipe uses, divided by the number of servings.

You do not have to do this by hand. Our Dosing Terminal runs the exact same calculation live — slide the inputs and watch the milligrams per serving update, or work backwards from a target dose to the grams of flower you need.

Key takeaway: dose the serving, not the batch. The easiest way to keep an edible gentle is to use a small amount of infused fat blended with regular butter or oil, so the dose spreads evenly.

Put it into practice

Start with a low-dose recipe like our low-dose peanut butter cookies (~10 mg) or a microdose smoothie (~3 mg). Not sure which strain to grow for your infusion? The AI Budtender can point you at one, and SeedYouLike has the seeds.

This is educational information, not medical advice. Talk to a healthcare professional before using cannabis for any health reason, and follow the laws where you live.