El Gallo Review

Written by Tyler Swell — Edited by Cathy Rozyczko on February 9, 2021

El Gallo wants to enhance life’s adventures with their CBD vape pens, tinctures, and balm. This small company out of Southern California certainly has the hip branding thing going for them, and they appear to be an honest vendor. We notice they do not provide ingredients lists for their CBD products, which could just be a simple oversight. But when it comes to ecommerce, ESPECIALLY wellness products people will ingest or apply to their skin, we have to know what’s inside. Overall, we think they’re off to a good start, but they’ll need a couple adjustments to get us in the hen house.

El Gallo gets their name from the Spanish ‘rooster’; it’s a nod to their operations just north of the Mexican border in Southern California. The word also happens to be Mexican slang for recreational cannabis, and the CBD brand has a hipster feel. We don’t know much about the team, except that they are apparently some of the brightest minds in the business, but the El Gallo mission is a solid one — to offer people a natural alternative for health solutions, especially pain.

This theme is common among CBD vendors looking to make the world a little better by offering pain relief without side effects or dependency issues. CBD oil is being hailed as the alternative to opiods, and El Gallo promises their products are strong and potent enough to do the trick.

They also promise that they carefully monitor the entire process, conducting multiple lab tests to ensure quality. We took a look at their Testing Data page, and they are very close to qualifying for the Safety Badge. They have cannabinoid profiles posted for each SKU which is great; we can see the advertised potency is accurate and the THC is below the legal level. The problem is, they currently only run tests for purity and pesticides on their CBD isolate and full spectrum CBD oil.

In order to qualify for the Safety Badge, they must also include testing for other contaminants, namely microbials, heavy metals, and residual solvents. Heavy metals are especially important to test for and have quickly become industry standard. We encourage El Gallo to expand contaminants testing on their oil, and we’d be happy to revisit.

We like the El Gallo product line which runs from $35 to $140. They promise all-natural, non-GMO ingredients, but the company provides zero ingredients lists on any of their CBD products to prove this. They may have nothing to hide, but consumers are entitled to see exactly what’s inside the packaging. Their offerings include:

• CBD Body Balm including both isolate and full spectrum CBD oil
• CBD Isolate Tinctures
• CBD Full Spectrum Tinctures in organic, cold-pressed olive oil
• Disposable CBD Vape Pens

We like the look of the disposable CBD vape pen called “Little Chicken.” It’s available in three flavors, supposedly from all-natural terpenes from lavender, peppermint, and grapefruit. They promise non-GMO ingredients, but again, we just don’t know what’s really inside. Hopefully, El Gallo doesn’t use propylene glycol (PG) but rather a cleaner option like MCT oil. More and more of the cleaner companies are abandoning PG as an ingredient, since there are contamination concerns depending on the way it is processed, or the ‘grade’ used, and some conflicting studies as to its safety. The more naturally prone CBD vendors are giving it the boot.

Bottom Line – El Gallo is off to a great start, but we first need them to provide ingredients lists for all their CBD products. Their testing protocols are better than most, but the company needs to include tests for heavy metals and other contaminants to qualify for the Safety Badge.