Live Resin vs. Cured Resin: What's the Difference?
The debate has been going on for years… is live or cured resin better? Is one more full spectrum than the other, or more potent, or flavorful? ONE major difference between the two is the starting material used for extraction - extractors utilize dried, cured buds for cured resin, or freshly harvested and frozen buds for live resin.
With so many different types of extracts available on the market, from sugar, budder, honeycomb, and shatter, all available in cured or live resin options, it can be incredibly difficult to choose what to smoke. Hopefully this informative guide can help you decide the right product for all of your needs!
Live resin
Once flowers are harvested, growers immediately chop up the plants and freeze them. Similar to freezing fruit and preserving nutrients, freezing buds immediately after harvest preserves the cannabis plants incredibly valuable trichomes, THC potency, valuable terpene profiles, flavor & aroma, and other cannabinoids like CBD, CBG, THC-A, and CBN. This results in live resin having a more natural, flowery, cannabis taste, as well as a more “full-spectrum” profile. Because harvesters can also just immediately chop and freeze fully matured flowers, this skips the entire process of drying and curing the buds that cured resin requires - this saves a whole lot of labor, money, and time.
Cured resin
Cured resin requires a bit of a more complex and time-consuming process. After harvesting plants, they must first be dried out. Cannabis requires temperatures of about 65-75 degrees and humidity levels of 0-55% in order to completely dry out, so cultivators leave these plants in climate-controlled, dark rooms. The complete drying process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks - depending on the starting moisture content in the plants, and the efficacy of the climate-controlled room. After drying, cultivators will trim the plants and jar the nugs. Curing the flower is the next, and arguably the most important, step in the extraction process. Curing affects potency, flavor, smell, terpene profiles, and cannabinoid levels, so it’s important to do it right. The nugs, packed in airtight jars, are stored in dark, climate-controlled spaces. The longer the cure, the better the product, usually. If an extractor rushes through the curing process, the cured resin could taste harsh or unfinished. Most sources say about a minimum of a few weeks to a maximum of 90 days, or three months, is recommended for a reliable curing process time. In this lengthy process, extractors will open the airtight jars a few times a day in order to let the buds breathe. The process, called “burping” by extractors, allows the moisture produced by the buds to escape and dissipate into the air. This process also breaks down the natural cannabinoids, terpenes, sugars, and chlorophyll in the flower. Once the buds are finally cured, extractors can then begin the extraction process. Sometimes extractors will add extra botanical terpenes (such as limonene, pinene, myrcene, etc.) to craft a strain’s terpene profile.
Some stoners swear by live resin - including some of our staff here at NuWu, but it really depends on personal preference. Live resin does usually taste a bit more like actual bud, since there is no introduction of any additional botanical terpenes - the extraction utilizes the freshest buds, retaining all of the good stuff, also ensuring live resin is a more full-spectrum product. Live resin is also often a lighter color compared to cured resins which are often darker. Cured resin often has better taste selections - as extractors craft each strain, sometimes adding botanical terpenes which do a great job at enhancing taste. These same botanical terpenes are found in cannabis - common ones being pinene, limonene, myrcene, linalool, etc.