What are Liquid Diamonds? Live Resin - Which is Better
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What are Liquid Diamonds?
As this unique concentrate’s name suggests, liquid diamonds are a potent (and flavorful) combination of live resin sauce and THCa Diamonds. With both solid and liquid properties, it’s just as stunning to look at as it is enjoyable to consume.
HOW ARE LIQUID Diamonds Made
To understand how liquid diamonds are made, you must first understand how live resin is made:
Live resin is a cannabis concentrate created with fresh, frozen plants. Because the plants are processed during their living state, they have not been cured or treated with any heat, and also contain more realistic expressions of the plant’s natural essence. That means flavor, smell, and the strain’s unique entourage experience are even more enhanced by the bright, bold terpene expression. Two methods for freezing these trichomes while the plant is still living are via flash freezing using liquid nitrogen or dry ice.
Live resin undergoes a similar process to cannabis oil, where a solvent, generally butane, is responsible for extracting the cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids, but it’s done after flash-freezing the plant in its living state, rather than working with it once it’s been dried and cured. The living plants can be frozen and must remain frozen, through the extraction process.
The crystallization process immediately after butane extraction is responsible for the growth of the diamonds. A small amount of solvent is left in the extract and is allowed to purge out for at least 48 hours, producing a supersaturated sauce fraction that causes spontaneous crystallization of the THCa.
The live resin consists of two components, the aromatic terpene-rich “sauce” fraction and the THCa Diamond fraction. Diamonds are typically composed of 95-99% pure THCa while the sauce fraction consists of a strain-specific blend of terpenes and 30-40% dissolved THCa. To separate the diamonds from the sauce, the sauce is poured off from the diamonds.
Once the diamonds have been harvested from the live resin, they need to be decarboxylated to convert the THCa into its active form, THC. This is accomplished by heating the diamonds. Once decarbed, the diamonds are now in liquid form and can be reintroduced to the live resin sauce to produce the purest possible vape oil for packaging.
COMPARING LIQUID DIAMONDS WITH LIVE RESIN AND DISTILLATE
In appearance, the live resin has a saucy texture with some crystallized residue present. Because the process uses fresh frozen plants, the concentrate retains a ton of terpenes and is quite flavorful. Live resin also contains fewer cannabinoids but more terpenes than distillate.
Distillate, on the other hand, ranges in color from transparent to yellow gold and is free of crystals and other visible impurities. Unlike live resin, distillate is odorless and flavorless because it undergoes a process called fractional short-path distillation, which isolates each compound separately (due to each compound’s individual boiling points.) Distillate lacks terpenes entirely but is high in THC, which is why it’s often blended with botanical or reintroduced strain-specific terpenes when it’s being manufactured for vaping.
Liquid diamonds can be thought of as a higher purity and more premium form of THC distillate that is produced without the use of distillation. Liquid diamond vapes contain the terpene-rich properties of live resin and pair it with the potency and visual appeal, and high purity of THCa diamonds for a flavorful and powerful experience with a multitude of possibilities.