-Guest Post-
It’s not often that I come across new forms of cannabis I haven’t encountered, but recently, when I went to my local cannabis dispensary, I found “liquid live resin” on the menu and immediately felt like a naive teenager again. I learned that liquid live resin, or simply live resin, is a concentrate, just like wax or shatter.
Timing and technique separate live resin from other concentrates.
Instead of curing cannabis flower after it’s pruned from the plant, the extraction process begins as soon as the buds are clipped. That’s where the “live” in live resin comes from. This process creates a concentrate with more active terpenes, the pungent odors that give a strain it’s taste and smell. These terpenes play a big role in the effects and relief patients and enthusiasts alike receive from cannabis. Continue reading to learn why.
Live Resin contains more of a strain’s flavor profile than other forms of cannabis concentrates
Why Extract Early?
If you care about cannabis’ quality, your conscious of storage. Storage can help or hurt potency as well as taste and experience. even when handling cannabis many avoid touching or squeezing cannabis. Too much pressure and those precious THC trichomes fall off cannabis buds.
With that said, during the dry and cure process, cannabis flower loses up to 60% of it’s terpenes. It’s kinda incredible that almost all bud encountered has undergone this process. Without those terpenes, a particular strain loses a great bit of its flavor profile, as well as the many therapeutic effects that accompany terpenes.
By avoiding the curing process, live resin preserves theses terpenes.
So why are terpenes so important that cultivators will go through a long, complex process to extract live resin?
Terpenes don’t just provide cannabis’ taste and smell, they contribute to its therapeutic effects.
Terpene Entourage Effect
There are about 200 individually identified terpenes in cannabis, and about 60 identified cannabinoids. These work in tandem to provide cannabis’ many effects. How does this happen? When you inhale cannabis, it’s main components like THC, CBD and other cannabinoids attempt to bind to your brain’s endocannabinoid receptors. However, accompanying terpenes crash the receptor site, and bind to and block receptors from being binded too. These terpenes affect the way that cannabinoids act on your brain, which make up your overall cannabis experience, thus creating an entourage effect.
So while THC gets most of the fan fare, it’s more likely terpenes enable THC effects to take place, as well as the other cannabinoids. For instance, Myrcene has a very hoppy, musky aroma and taste, and is commonly associated with indica strains, and it is known to work in synergy to increase THC’s effects.
Terpenes contribute other therapeutic benefits. Limonene, a citrus smelling terpene, has strong cancer killing properties, it’s been found to reduce the destruction of the RAS gene, known to be a contributor to tumor growth. Pinene, often associated with skunky buds and its pine scent, is a known bronchodilator.
The curing process slashes a lot these amazing terpenes from cannabis flower. That’s where liquid live resin comes in.
Liquid Live Resin distills cannabis into a highly concentrated form while preserving terpene profiles
Liquid Live Resin: High Potency and Terpene Profile
To avoid the dry cure terpene drop, whole cannabis plants are frozen. While intuition may tell you that cold temperatures are never good for cannabis storage, for liquid live resin flash freezing is a must. Here’s why.
When cannabis flower dries and cures, the lighter terpenes, called monoterpenes, evaporate much faster than the heavier, sesquiterpenes. Among the lighter terpenes are important terpenes for synergy with THC, like myrcene, as well as cancer fighting limonene. Theis means that dried bud always skews toward the heavier, pungent skunky end of the terpene spectrum. It almost feels like you’ve been tasting cannabis all wrong!
Live resin can correct that. It preserves these crucial terpenes, creating a vastly more complete flavor profile. However, there is a tradeoff. Live resin does not have high THC content, and may be lower than other concentrates.
With that said, most of the terpenes preserved help emphasize THC effects anyways. The extraction process emphasizes a pure concentrate with high terpene content, and full flavor profile. Definitely something both the cannabis patient as well as enthusiast can appreciate. Have you tried liquid live resin? Please comment below!
Chris Matich is a professional writer, journalist, and editor living in Pittsburgh, PA. Chris blogs for Schenley.net. His writing interests include LGBT+ people/issues, sports writing, and blogging. Chris currently writes about web optimization, blogging practices, medical cannabis, and cannabis lifestyle. He writes fiction and creative nonfiction in his spare time. Linkedin, Twitter
Great article! It is really interesting to learn more about cannabis.
I prefer resin! It always gives me a much cleaner high.
I’m a Cancer patient and recently switched to Live Resin. Finally. A product that produces the right effects for me. While other distillates would contribute to some already bad effects of treatment, this gently eases my brain into a better place mentally. Now its time for me to further study the possibilities of different strains in these to perfect the results.