Would love the community insight on something I’ve been pondering lately.
As many of you know, the word Live Resin has been bastardized and leveraged to generate fraudulent claims to consumers. A large majority of products making claims of Live Resin contain actually no Live Resin at all. So my question is, what is Live Resin?
I think the cut early, flash frozen and never thawed from that point til extraction with no further processing beyond purging extraction solvent is the best fit definition.
I think your first point is implied by the second point (except for the hydrocarbon solvent point).
Terps can’t be live by that definition. I guess you could say live derived terps??
Edit:
Just to rock the boat - couldn’t one make a r134-a live resin? Would it still be live resin if you swapped hydrocarbon for fluorocarbons?
I agree. I’ve always denoted the term “live” to mean with the same cannabinoid & terpene profile as if it were alive and still growing. So either extracting right away at harvest or halting the degradation process by flash freezing and then extracting at the processors’ convenience.
It should have absolutely nothing to do with the processing solvents or technology. Obviously with a high water content in “live” plants, some ways to extract won’t work well. Hydrocarbons aren’t the only way to a live extract, and water hash can be just as “living” but without the extra solvents that are a pain to purge from the volatile terps.
I dont know if rso implies decarbed. I am a bit ignorant when it comes to RSO but I always thought RSO was the widest spectrum, unadultered extract possible. Like being as close to the plant medicine profile idk. Including plant sugars and everything that comes with long extraction times.
I think live should signify there is something in the extract that is lost in the drying process. That would mean two requirements
Source material that gives the flavor is fresh frozen
The extract made contains the volatiles that would be lost during the drying.
I don’t believe thca isolate can be live nor distillate even if it from fresh frozen material. This is because it’s lacks what makes live unique.
Both live and cured extracts can be almost entirely acidic cannabinoids so I don’t think that matters.
By this logic cannabinoids could come from any source as there is nothing special about cannabinoids from live vs cured they are identical.
Cannabinoids (don’t care where they are from) + live resin HTE = live resin
Thca from live material + cured HTE = not live resin
Live is in the volatiles, outside of that I don’t care if it’s got distillate, decarbed cured sugar or decarbed diamonds from fresh frozen. They are all just cannabinoids with source being irrelevant.
I agree with the solvent methodology not being part of the definition, valid points. One could do a water extraction and also pull an acid-dominant extract.
Why would acidic cannabinoids have anything to do with product being live? 6 month old trim is gonna be near the same amount of acidic cannabinoids as fresh frozen material if it was stored properly.
And vice versa. How would decarbing the thca portion of live resin diamonds and sauce and mixing it back together make it any less “live”
So herein lies the question, what is Live Resin then?
To your point though, I do agree the most notable difference between a Cured resin (6-month-old dry trim) and a Live Resin(Fresh Frozen) is going to be the terpene profile. You’re simply not going to get the same terpene profile on the Cured Resin as you would the Live Resin.
In the theoretical universe where the trim was perfectly dried and stored so as to not significantly degrade or decarb, all that’s really left is the terpene/volatile profile difference.
Seems where most people stand is that"Live" implies maximum value constituent preservation through freezing the material.
Even with completely dialed-in Dry Storage, you’re losing volatiles until extracted.