Formulating Live Resin Sauce for Vapes

Why do formulation chemists adjust live resin vape terpene percentages?

1) Live resin crops (unless grown indoors) vary widely in terpene yield when grown as outdoor field crops. In order to create a product with a consistent terpene percentage, it is necessary to add or remove ingredients.

2) Certain strains over produce terpenes that can lead to coughing – diluting the live resin mixture with pure D9 THC distillate produces a more desirable product by cutting down the relative percentage of the astringent terpenes. Although controversial in some circles, this practice is used in ALL wine making to adjust for a desirable end product.

Live resin, extracted from fresh-frozen flower, actually tests in the 60%-70% THC range – this is much lower than common distillate pens that are usually in the 90% range. The other 30%-40% of the material is “terp sauce,” which contains a highly complex mixture of terpenes, flavonoids and esters.

See the “LEMON OG” Certificate of Analysis (COA) below: Notice the Total Cannabinoid content is only 71.6% which means that 29% of the material is terp sauce.

LemonOG tends to have an astringent lemony taste and makes people cough when inhaled in large amounts – due to the large amount limonene(lemon/orange flavor) in the terp sauce mixture.

In this specific situation, to reduce the cough potential and to make more “live resin” vape mixture, you would add about 71.6% of pure distillate to the live resin mixture.

This would reduce the “terp sauce” mixture to about 17% of total weight. If you started with 1.00 kg of original live resin mix – you would now have 1.716 kg of live resin that actually smokes better with less cough and little discernible difference in taste.

Question: How do you separated terpene sauce layer from live resin THCA?
Answer: Crystalize the THCA layer and use a centrifuge to spin the terpenes off. The spun-off liquid is the live resin terp sauce layer. The solids are the pure THCA crystals.

Question: Can D9 distillate be separated from live resin terp sauce once mixed in?
Answer: No – once you mix in D9 distillate, the formulation is locked in. Formulate with small test amounts to sample flavor prior to committing large amounts.

Question: How do you formulate partially THCA saturated live resin terp sauce?
Answer: Subtract the percentage of liquid THCA still in the live resin solution and recalculate amount of D9 THC needed. D9 THC needs to be about 4:1 ratio with THCA to prevent THCA recrystallization in the final vape cartridge.

Question: Can remixing and dilution be applied to cured resin?
Answer: Yes but at a lower relative percentage – the curing process causes terpene aromatics to evaporate lowering total “terp sauce” yield

Question: How do you preserve the most terpenes from trim destined for live resin production?
Answer: After trimming, seal and freeze bags of trim even if it is from cured resin. This stabilizes the trim and will make for noticeably more terpene heavy extracts.

Good live resin / cured resin starts from good agricultural processes including selecting the correct phenotypes. If you don’t have access to fresh frozen or nicely cured smalls with trim, you cannot make good live or cured resin regardless of equipment, with a narrow exception from material that can survive partial CRC.

A) Select genetics and phenotypes that produces oil over bud structure – From a single cross there are multiple phenotypes with some producing terpenes and oil over bud structure and looks. For dedicated live resin crops, oil & terpene yield is a far greater importance than other properties.

B) Protect crop with shade cloth so it is not damaged by wind or heat during growth – growing in the desert will strip terps. Excess wind will strip trichomes.

C) On harvest, immediately freeze to fresh frozen or freeze dry (dry curing product will evaporate terpenes which will still make an excellent product but will have less terpenes to dilute)

D) BHO extraction process – use a modern BHO system like LUNA or Precision Extraction system with automated control of multiple variables including propane/butane mixture. Older manual system have the tendency to over cook in the collection pots.

E) Use proper vacuum ovens at low temperatures for removal of residual hydrocarbons without impacting terpenes. Automated vacuum ovens save a lot more terpenes than manual units that over apply vacuum. Over applying vacuum will turn hash into “shatter” like material consistency.

F) When centrifuging terp sauce use a refrigerated centrifuge as the speed and friction can get hot enough to boil light aromatics away

G) Store in sealed containers in cold or refrigerated environment. Hash slabs can store up to 3 years in a sealed subzero environment.

Question: What is the minimum amount of terp sauce without noticeable reduction in live resin strain flavor?

Answer: Depends on strain: LemonG above still retained good flavor down to about 12% terp sauce after which the “distillate” aromas started emerge. With Zkittles which had a 20% terp sauce – only 40% more distillate by weight (1.4kg) (14% terp sauce final mix) was added before the flavor started to become dilute.

Delicate fruit flavors like Zkittles, cannot be dilute as much due to the softer flavor notes and less “terp sauce” produced from the strain itself.