Ever since the legalization of Cannabis in the U.S, companies have been trying hard to make better cannabis concentrates that have the potential to be great. This created in people curiosity about what the new product was like. Was it better or worse and what not?
But the confusion did not prevail that long! people started writing about live resin resulting in more people reading about them.
Today, live resin is one of the cannabis concentrates that most people in the United States prefer because of the quality of the aroma and freshness it provides. It can also be titled as the most favorite cannabis concentrate of vapers and dabbers.
But what exactly is Live Resin? Let’s go through the details step by step starting with…
What Is Life Resin
Live resin is a popular cannabis concentrate. What makes it different from the usual cannabis products is that it’s made from fresh flowers instead of dried flowers. It also retains all the terpenes unlike the other cannabis products and has a lower concentration owing to the presence of essential oils.
History of Live Resin
It all started when in 2010, William Finger started a legal cannabis grow operation in his home state, Colorado. This private operation was dedicated and focused to produce some of the best cannabis concentrates he had ever tried. The thing he never knew was the fact that he was going to create something different and glorious like Live Resin.
One day, during a harvest, he found that the aromas coming from the freshly harvested cannabis plants were far from better than the other cannabis concentrates. The aroma was much stronger and appealing than the dried or cured produce. This was a wake-up call.
He started to think of ways he would extract the terpenes of the plant when the flavor was at its peak. The plant would be at the peak of the pungent fresh fragrance when they are freshly harvested and not dried or cured. The drying and curing process of the plant would result in a change in the initial flavor. 60% of the natural terpene profile of the plant is destroyed with the drying and curing of the plant. This is not a step in the process of making Live Resin. And this made Live Resin more desirable to Finger also known as ‘Kind Bill’ Finger.
To be more precise, he desired the good stuff!
He attempted to make the initial batch of Live Resin with Original Diesel cultivator, also known as Day wrecker Diesel. The production was successful but the yield was lesser in number. Although the product was of the best quality and best-tasting BHO he had had, it looked undesirable or unappealing. The risk that he took up to create the extract was high because of how dangerous the whole process was.
This vision made him create his product with lots of hard work and struggle. But he did not have the machinery or technology that would improve the production and yield of the plant.
But here is where we see the heroic entry of Jason also known as Jason ‘Giddy Up’ Emo, cannabis entrepreneur and founder of EmoTek Labs.
In 2013, EmoTek Labs installed a closed-loop extraction device at the production facility in Colorado which was designed to produce high-quality wax and shatter.
Meeting Jason was the turning point that Fenger waited for the three years he researched about the product.
This killer team, after a long extraction process, finally produced a successful batch of the concentrates which was abundant in the required aroma and flavour that Fenger desired all these years. He named this final product Live Resin.
This is how Live Resin came into being.
The Making of Live Resin
Now moving on to the process of making live resin. This is a complex process of freezing the plant material and extracting the component from it.
When you hear the word freezing, you may go directly to your normal household freezers but you need to stop that thought right there because it is not as easy as it sounds.
The plant material can be flash-frozen by two different methods. The first one is to slowly dip it into an insulated cylinder filled with liquid nitrogen. The second method is to freeze it in a cooler with dry ice, also known as frozen carbon dioxide.
Now the cannabis is packed by the extractors into a tank inside a closed-loop system. This system is committed to holding it throughout the process. The tank must get rid of any oxygen that may be present during the process. This should be done before the solvent is through. This is to ensure that there is no danger and unnecessary hazard or explosion.
One of the things we need to remember is the fact that to make live resin, the solvent used in the process is liquified petroleum gas. To be more precise, we can use either butane or propane as the solvent.
This process is the reason why many believe live resin to be a form of BHO or butane hash oil. Some other alternatives that can be used for extraction are ethanol or carbon dioxide but these alternatives are not commonly used but to a lesser extent.
To release the trichomes from the plant material, the solvent is chilled and passed through the starting material. After this process, the solvent is removed by applying heat which results in the evaporation of the solvent into the solvent column. In the solvent column, the solvent gets cooled again and compressed into a liquid form.
One of the key factors that the extractor needs to remember throughout the process is to give attention to the temperature of the whole process. If at all there is too much heat during the process it could damage the final live resin product.
Too much heat could cause the evaporation of terpenes (one of the most important things that should be preserved for the preparation of live resin). It will also result in decarboxylation which will get rid of the semi-transparent type appearance and turn the product into a much darker oil. We definitely do not need to lose the good stuff!
This is certainly one way to do it. But some other concentrate makers have been experimenting with new methods or modified methods that give unique products.
Although the whole process may sound doable, you need to keep in mind that this cannot be imitated in normal conditions. These processes can be done only by professionals due to safety and health concerns. The technology with which these processes are undergone is also not applicable to be used on a household level. In short, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
Final Thoughts- Unraveling the Flavor
Some users and concentrate makers claim that these products are very tasty. But is this statement true?
Absolutely Yes! If you go through the whole article you can see that we have talked about terpenes. But do you know what that is? If you do not, don’t worry! I’m here to cover that for you.
Terpenes are those organic compounds that give the live resin or any cannabis product the aroma and flavor that it initially has in itself. And if you have gone through this article clearly, you will understand clearly that the processes which the plant undergoes are mainly focusing on preserving the terpene.
This is the reason why these translucent live resin concentrates are tasty and preferred by everyone.