Looking back, it’s clear that the cannabis industry and market is one of innovation. In years past, the main ways to consume cannabis were smoking flower or eating edibles (often made at home with few ways to properly dose or measure consistency over time).
The cannabis space today is full of all kinds of products for consumers to try, including a wide array of cannabis concentrates. Concentrate is a broad term referring to products that have been extracted from the cannabis or hemp plant and can take a number of forms. Concentrates have some of the highest cannabinoid potencies you’ll find on the market, making it even easier to quickly enjoy the effects of a given strain.
Among the growing selection is live resin, which has steadily become one of the most popular concentrate products. New consumers or those who generally stick to flower or edibles may have heard of live resin, though it’s often intimidating to jump on board with an entirely new product.
If you’ve ever been curious about trying live resin, we’ve got the answers. Keep reading to learn more about the innovative cannabis concentrate and how to smoke it!
Key Takeaways
- Live resin is a relatively new and popular concentrate known for its quality flavor profile.
- The process of making live resin helps to maintain all terpenes, flavonoids, and other essential compounds for an optimal experience.
- There are a number of ways for users to enjoy live resin, including dabbing, pens, and more.
What is Live Resin?
Many cannabis concentrates are produced using heat, combined with other solvents. However, a number of these processes can result in a final product stripped of many of the cannabis compounds that work together to promote the best effects.
Enter live resin, a fairly new cannabis concentrate produced using a unique technique that works to preserve all of the precious, flavorful terpenes to amp up a consumer’s overall experience.
Live resin isn’t heated. Rather, it’s made from the fresh flower of the cannabis plant. To produce live resin, flowers are cut and frozen, which works to preserve its valuable trichomes, which produce terpenes, cannabinoids, and other valuable cannabis compounds. From there, the essential compounds are extracted using a solvent like butane or carbon dioxide.
The end result is a flavorful, potent, and fast-acting concentrate that has gradually grown in popularity over the past decade to become one of the most highly sought after cannabis extracts.
How to Smoke Live Resin
As extracted plant material, concentrates like live resin look far different than cannabis flower. Live Resin has a heavy, honey-like appearance, and a gram is generally sold as a plump blob in a small glass container. Needless to say, you can’t simply pop live resin into a pipe or joint and get to smoking.
Dabbing
One of the most common consumption methods for concentrate users is dabbing. It’s a great way to truly take in the flavor of the product, but as similar as a dab rig may look to a bong or water pipe, the process of using one is definitely distinct.
Like bongs, dab rigs have water in their base and a mouthpiece at the top. They also have a glass “nail,” a small reservoir to drop your concentrate in, rather than a bowl. Users heat up the nail with a torch until it is red hot, wait a bit for it to cool (to avoid burning the concentrate), cover it with a glass carb cap, and inhale the vapor from the mouthpiece.
Dab rigs are widely available, though the process does take some time to get used to and involves additional tools like a torch and fuel, which can be intimidating to some users.
Nectar Collector
Using a nectar collector involves a similar process as a dab rig, with a few differences. Nectar collectors have a long straw-like shape to inhale the concentrate vapor directly.
Using a torch, users heat the tip of the nectar collector until it reaches ideal temperature, touch the device to their live resin (even directly in the glass container), inhale, and enjoy a nice helping of live resin vapor.
Live Resin Cartridges
If you’re looking to try out some live resin without stocking up on new tools, a live resin cartridge is a good solution. These are pre-filled cartridges containing live resin, which then screw into a chargeable battery. The mechanisms can vary, with some batteries simply requiring an inhale to release vapor and others with various heat settings and buttons to prompt the action.
Cartridges are great for folks who are on the go, are generally incredibly simple to use, and fairly accessible.
Vaping With A Dab Pen
Using a dab pen to vape live resin is very similar to using a live resin cartridge. Rather than using a prefilled cartridge, vape pens compatible with concentrates have a coil to stick live resin or other concentrates in directly.
Users can simply use a dab tool to round up a bit of live resin, drop it into the coil, click the button on the dab pen, and enjoy. A dab pen is often more expensive than a standard cartridge-compatible battery, but it allows consumers to experiment with concentrates sold in raw form by the gram.
Combine With Flower
If you’re generally more of a flower user, you can elevate your experience by sprinkling some live resin onto a bowl or wrapping it around or inside a joint. Generally, you want to avoid putting your lighter directly to the concentrate, allowing it to burn as you continue to smoke, but this can be a great way to enjoy the perks of both flower and concentrates!
Conclusion
Live resin is a relatively new and exciting way that many folks are consuming cannabis today. Fortunately, even as a brand new concentrate consumer, there are a number of ways to try out the highly sought after product, embracing the higher potency, plentiful terpenes, and overall distinct experience live resin can offer!