What is Live Resin and Why is it Important?
By: Ry Prichard, Senior Talent/Brand Ambassador at Acreage Holdings
Concentrates increasingly are the dominant market force in cannabis. Often used as the main cannabinoid ingredient in many other downstream products such as edibles, drinks, and topicals, concentrates unlock a different level of dosing precision and repeatability compared to raw flower. This type of product-minded concentrate use is dominated by distillate, a highly refined, mostly flavorless concentrate composed of only THC or CBD. The other side of the burgeoning concentrate industry is focused on products that capture the “full spectrum” of compounds in the cannabis plant, including major and minor cannabinoids, as well as aroma/flavor compounds such as terpenoids, flavonoids, and phenols.
One of Acreage Holdings’ lead product brands is Live Resin Project, a concentrate brand helmed by the very team who created and first commercialized this product category all the way back in 2013. Live resin is perhaps the best example of the flavor-forward side of the concentrate industry. The hunt for flavor and uniqueness, as well as the Epicurean nature growing in society, is fueling a desire for these high-terpene products. Made from fresh frozen whole cannabis plants, live resin offers a much more aromatic and flavorful concentrate experience than comparable products made from dried plant material. Live resin is consumed much the same way as other concentrates (primarily by vaporization through either a dab rig, electronic dab device, or vape pen), but the reasons for users to consume it are quite a bit different than most products on the market. Similar to connoisseurs in the wine and craft beer industries, the most ravenous concentrate customers seek out products almost entirely because of aroma, flavor, provenance, terroir, or rarity rather than just THC/CBD content.
This hunt for new flavors quickly is becoming the norm rather than the exception, and live resin can be seen as the primary reason for that shift in the modern cannabis consumer. Live Resin Project, launched in California and with plans to expand to other states in the Acreage footprint, currently produces raw concentrate products in various textures, as well as an upcoming 100% live resin vape cartridge. These products offer customers a peek into Acreage’s industry-leading cultivation facilities by showcasing the incredible genetics we have available, allowing customers to truly taste the uniqueness and care that goes into every product. LRP is Acreage’s lever into the connoisseur concentrate marketplace, where the top products can fetch as much as $150 per gram. In the truest sense, Live Resin Project also gives Acreage an authentic and important story to tell, one that already has transformed the industry, but is truly just beginning to be told.
Concentrate History: From Dead to Alive
Traditionally, going back to the earliest hash-making practices on Earth, cannabis concentrates were made from dried plant material. Traditional hash cultures in places like Afghanistan and Morocco often used whole (sometimes fresh) plants for this purpose. In the production cannabis world, starting in the 1990s and continuing throughout the 2000s, concentrates were seen primarily as a way to “turn your trash into stash” by utilizing trim and other waste product from the cultivation and harvest processes. Concentrates provided cultivators another revenue stream and a selection of various high-potency products to sell. However, as the market and processes matured into the late 2000s, customers began to look for the most flavorful, authentic concentrates — and started consuming them via “dabbing,” vaporizing potent and flavorful concentrated marijuana utilizing a water pipe and a heated surface. This direct method of consumption started the concentrate craze proper and created a hunger for highly flavorful oils that reflected the qualities of the strains from which they were made.
Fast forward a couple years to 2013 in Colorado, where a lifelong cannabis grower and extractor named William “Kind Bill” Fenger was introduced to a new type of extraction machine. These “closed loop” machines were not only much safer, but also allowed for a higher quality end product than the then-industry standard of “open blasting,” where butane was forced through glass, steel, or (shamefully) PVC tubes packed with cannabis. Bill and others experimented with open blasting frozen plant material, producing a very high-quality oil. But it simply was not a safe process, nor was it efficient nor scalable from a production standpoint. Instead, Bill continued his fresh frozen experiments using the new closed loop process, ultimately resulting in the product that was dubbed “live resin.”
In the following years, live resin proceeded to flip the cannabis industry on its head, winning every major award and replacing dried concentrates as the clear choice of cannabis connoisseurs. Today, the Acreage live resin team consists of Bill, now Acreage’s Director of Product Design and Innovation, Phillip Hague, Director of Cultivation, Ryan Clendenin, Director of Manufacturing Process and Systems, who was the first to package, market, and sell live resin commercially, and myself, who popularized live resin and its creators in popular media with articles in High Times and content featuring live resin including Viceland’s Bong Appetít.
Why Live Resin?
The name “live resin” was applied to this product because the oil tastes and smells like the living cannabis plant rather than the dead, dried plant material that is used for most concentrates. As a lifelong cultivator, Bill always wanted to share the daily experience of working with living plants, a privilege that only a relative handful of people ever have. One thing that cannot be overstated is that living cannabis plants possess a unique, pungent aroma categorically different than just about any other plant on Earth when well-grown. Nearly every scent and flavor experienced in the world (as well as many that would best be described as “otherworldly”) can be found in cannabis because of its unique ability to produce a staggering range of aromatic compounds, primarily terpenes. When a plant is harvested and dried, it loses water, of course… but it also loses approximately 90% of the water-soluble and very volatile aroma compounds from the living plant. This means those unique smells and flavors are reduced, changed, or completely eliminated during the drying and curing process. Simply put, live resin eliminates all of that, offering a stronger and more nuanced aroma and flavor experience, which speaks authentically to the cannabis plant and its incredible genetic diversity, easily surpassing products like wine in variety and levels of complexity.
Beyond the Epicurean scent and flavor qualities, live resin also negates drying and curing processes, both of which take quite a lot of space, skill, and (most importantly) time in a production environment. By harvesting and cryogenically freezing plants, cultivators save labor and costs while preserving their product almost perfectly, rather than constantly worrying whether the drying and curing processes were handled correctly. The pitfalls of drying and curing are many: one mistake in curing can completely rob a harvest of its scent; overly dried cannabis can burn harshly and fall apart into dust at retail; wet cannabis harbors mold and causes crop loss. All of this is prevented by utilizing fresh frozen harvest methods and live resin extraction processes.
The other important aspect of live resin (and high terpene concentrates in general) is that they may in fact be providing a more “strain specific” experience to users than many other concentrates, flowers, and edibles. THC and the other cannabinoids are responsible for providing much of the effects felt when consuming cannabis, but research increasingly is showing that terpenes may also be contributing to many of the unique and curative effects we know and love from our favorite strains. The complex biochemical reaction that takes place when cannabinoids and high levels of these aroma compounds are inhaled or vaporized is just now being studied fully but based on practices such as aromatherapy and Ayurvedic medicine, they can certainly hold powerful benefits. Finding the right cannabinoid ratio and terpene profile increasingly is the way that both medical and recreational customers shop, and something like live resin can truly provide more of everything customers are looking for.
