Cured resin is a concentrate extracted with solvents from material that has been dried and cured, the way flower is prepared for smoking. Drying and curing change aroma chemistry, mainly by losing monoterpenes and oxidising some compounds, so cured resin tends to smell more like cured flower and less like the living plant. Most traditional solvent concentrates, such as shatter and many waxes, were made from cured material.
In practice
On a menu, "cured" versus "live" mainly signals the starting material and aroma style; it doesn't on its own say anything about potency or safety. Cured material is easier to store and process than fresh frozen, so cured resin is usually cheaper. Solvent extraction is an industrial process for licensed facilities only; never attempt it at home. GenetixBay provides definitions only.
Don't confuse with
- Live resin: from fresh frozen material.
- Curing (flower): the post-harvest moisture-decline process; cured resin simply starts from cured flower.
- Hash rosin: solventless, from hash.
Holding dried cannabis in sealed containers so its moisture declines slowly and evenly over weeks, improving smoothness and aroma.A monoterpene is a ten-carbon terpene made from geranyl pyrophosphate, such as myrcene, limonene, pinene or terpinolene; they are the most volatile terpenes and the first lost in drying.Fresh frozen is cannabis frozen immediately after harvest without drying or curing, used as starting material for live resin and live rosin to keep more volatile aroma.Live resin is a solvent-based cannabis extract made from fresh frozen plant material instead of dried and cured flower, to retain more volatile aroma compounds.Hash rosin is rosin pressed from hash, usually ice water hash, rather than from flower; it is cleaner and typically higher in quality than flower rosin.Solventless describes cannabis concentrates made only by mechanical or physical separation, using screens, ice water, heat or pressure, without chemical solvents.Hash is any concentrate made by separating trichome heads from cannabis and collecting or pressing them, from dry sift and ice water hash to hand-rubbed charas.Shatter is a glassy, translucent solvent-based concentrate that snaps when cold, formed when an extract stays in a stable, non-crystallised state.Wax is an opaque, soft-to-crumbly solvent-based concentrate whose texture comes from cannabinoids partly crystallising; budder and crumble are its creamy and dry variants.A concentrate is any cannabis product in which the trichome resin has been separated from plant material, giving far higher cannabinoid and terpene content than flower.
