Fresh frozen describes harvested cannabis, typically whole flowers or whole plants with large fan leaves removed, that is frozen promptly and kept frozen until processing. Skipping the drying and curing stage preserves a larger share of the volatile monoterpenes, which Ross and ElSohly (1996) showed are lost in significant amounts during air-drying. "Live" products are made from fresh frozen material.
In practice
Fresh frozen is sold or processed by wet weight, which is much heavier than dried weight because it's still mostly water; a fresh plant loses most of its mass on drying. Material must stay frozen; thawing and refreezing damages trichome heads and invites microbial problems. For hash makers, cold makes heads brittle and easier to separate in ice water. Russo et al. (2021) examined a fresh-frozen solventless process and reported good preservation of the chemical profile. GenetixBay gives no processing procedures.
Don't confuse with
- Freeze-dried flower: frozen then dried under vacuum; a different, contested curing alternative.
- Wet trim: trimming before drying, not freezing.
- Cured material: dried and cured before processing.
A large palmate cannabis leaf with several long leaflets on a long petiole; fan leaves do most of the plant's photosynthesis and carry few trichomes.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.The weight of cannabis freshly cut, before drying; buds typically lose about 70-80% of it, so dry weight is roughly a quarter of wet.The weight of cannabis after drying (and usually trimming), the basis growers use for yield; it is typically about 20-25% of trimmed wet weight.Trichome heads are the bulbous resin-filled tops of capitate glandular trichomes, where cannabis makes and stores nearly all its cannabinoids and terpenes; they are the raw material of hash.Drying fresh cannabis by freezing it and then removing ice under vacuum (sublimation) in hours or days; GenetixBay labels it Contested and does not recommend it.Trimming sugar leaves from buds immediately after harvest, while the plant is still fresh, before drying.Holding dried cannabis in sealed containers so its moisture declines slowly and evenly over weeks, improving smoothness and aroma.Live rosin is rosin pressed from ice water hash made from fresh frozen plants, preserving more of the volatile aroma of the living plant; it is solventless.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.Bubble hash, or ice water hash, is a solventless concentrate made by separating trichome heads from cannabis in cold water and collecting them on graded mesh bags.Terpenes are volatile hydrocarbon compounds built from five-carbon isoprene units; in cannabis they are made in the trichome heads and are a major part of aroma and flavour.
