Live resin cartridges are a dream come true. They’re the only convenient and easy way to use live resin. If you don’t want to deal with a dab rig and an eNail or torch, vape carts help you get from point A to point B substantially faster.
The only problem with vape carts is that it can be hard to find a decent one. Subpar vape cartridges can malfunction, leaving you with half of your live resin trapped inside. They can take on a burnt taste or turn dark amber in color after just a few uses. Worst of all, they could be completely fake and contain no live resin at all.
If you’re shopping for a quick and simple live resin solution, we’ve got you covered.
What is live resin?
Live resin is resin produced from cannabis flowers that have been preserved in their live state. Rather than being harvested, dried, and cured like other cannabis flowers, flowers for live resin are frozen as soon as they’re delicately plucked from the branch. They’re put on dry ice or dropped in liquid nitrogen, sealing them in the same state they were in while they were still attached to the plant and thriving.
Live resin flowers are kept cold throughout the extraction process, preserving all of their beneficial compounds and terpenes. The end result is a resin as fresh as resin can get.
Is live resin better than other resins or concentrates?
Other resins are made from flowers that have already been dried and cured. During the drying and curing process, the plant loses more than half of its aromatic terpenes. The end result is a weed product that’s still potent, but it doesn’t smell or taste anything like fresh cannabis.
In fact, live resin is the only cannabis product that retains all of its natural flavor and aroma, because it’s the only cannabis product that doesn’t need to be dried before it’s used.
Live resin is an experience. If you’ve never tried a live resin of your favorite strain, you don’t know what that strain really tastes like. You’re getting a heavily throttled version of its flavor and fragrance when you vape it as a normal concentrate or smoke it as flower. You’ll only really know how tasty it’s supposed to be when you use its live resin.
Why vape live resin?
Attempting to smoke live resin or applying heat directly to live resin defeats the whole purpose. A lighter is going to burn off all the terpenes before you have a chance to taste them. You paid a premium to receive your cannabis with the terpenes intact. Don’t undo all that hard work by putting live resin in a joint and torching it up.
Most people use live resin as a low temp dab. This fetches great results and provides optimal temperature control, but it’s a lot more of a hassle. Dab rigs are much more difficult to use and maintain than bongs. If you don’t have to set up an eNail, you’re going back and forth with a butane torch and an infrared thermometer and waiting until you get things right. Vape carts are so much simpler. All you need to do is hook your cart up to your battery and dial down your vape pen to prevent burning the live resin. Every hit will be perfect and you don’t have to put a wealth of thought into it. Your live resin is always waiting for you when you want another hit – no complicated equipment is required. It’s pure and tasty instant gratification.
Are there fake live resin carts?
Fake carts pop up all the time. Carts are easy to fake. It’s easy to identify dried cannabis flower visually and by scent. With a vape cart, all you know is the color of the liquid inside. That liquid can be anything. Black market vape carts and those sold through unreliable dispensaries may not be what they seem.
Counterfeiters have more of an incentive to fake something like a live resin cart because live resin is generally more expensive. They spend pennies cutting a small amount of normal cannabis concentrate with harmful ingredients like vitamin E acetate and print out a label. You unknowingly buy it, and you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.
Counterfeit carts are often full of mold, bacteria, and microbes. They’re not held to the same safety standard as legitimate companies because they’re produced in shady warehouses overseas. Never assume you’re getting a deal. If you see a vape cartridge in unusually cheap packaging and you’re not familiar with the place you’re buying it from, it’s probably harmful.
Finding legitimate live resin carts
The first step in finding the best live resin cartridge is to assure the cartridges you’re looking at are legitimate. Legitimate vape cartridges will contain a number of things on the packaging. The first is the California symbol indicator for cannabis. That’s the triangle with the cannabis leaf and exclamation point on the inside, with “CA” on the bottom outside of the triangle.
The packaging should also contain something called a UID or Track and Trace number, a batch number, a manufacture date, a cannabis product warning, the manufacturer’s name, and contact information, the cannabinoid content, the weight of the product in the cart, and every ingredient used in manufacturing the cart.
It goes without saying that you should only be purchasing carts from a registered dispensary, and from legitimate brands. When you see a cart you like that contains all of the necessary information, investigate the company. If they’re well established and have a large following, that’s generally a good sign.
What you should really be looking for are lab reports. Companies with legitimate products will send a sample from every batch to be tested by an independent third-party lab. Their tests will check for contaminants and pesticides, along with verifying the cannabinoid and terpene content of every batch of carts.
How to choose the best live resin carts
The best way to find a great live resin cart is to choose a cart made by a brand that primarily focuses on live resin. All-encompassing cannabis brands may have fairly decent live resin cartridges, but a specialty is always better than a supplement. The salad from your favorite pizza place probably isn’t all that great. The live resin from your favorite dried flower company might leave you wanting more.
Bloom
Bloom’s specialty is fresh, never frozen live resin. Their flowers go directly from the plant to the resin extractor with no freezing step. This arguably makes them the freshest of the fresh. They pledge that their cartridges are 100% pure live extracted cannabis with no additives or remnants.
Bloom focuses on the most popular tasty strains. They’re focused on the quality and flavor experience of their products, and this becomes apparent at the first puff. Their Apple Jack, Clementine and Guava Cake strains taste so much like their namesake that the pure flavor magic will make you surprised that an Oompa Loompa doesn’t jump out of every package. It’s a world of pure imagination.
Raw garden
Raw Garden cryogenically flash freezes their flowers before they make their access. They also work with over 800 strains of cannabis, giving the widest array of options out of any live resin company. They’re a certified Clean Green farm that focuses on farm-to-cart production. They’re very proud of their hand-raised plants, and they rightfully position themselves as leaders in the live resin industry.
Best of all, they’re eager to show off their lab reports. They may have a minimalist approach in their marketing, but they don’t need to work hard to sell their customers on something that their lab results demonstrate in plain English. They’re a very “proof is in the pudding” company.
Timeless
Timeless focuses on high-quality cannabis, and they refer to the use of their products as “medicating”. They approach cannabis from a medical standpoint but market it with a luxury edge. You’ll see and feel the luxury vibe in their “Noir” line of carts.
They’ve made, “Taste the Terps” their official slogan, and they’ve chosen strains known to be highly flavorful for their core offerings. If you’re looking for that exclusive feel, you’ll get it with Timeless.
The takeaway
Always buy your live resin carts from a reputable dispensary and choose transparent, well-established brands. Emjay makes it easy to buy the best live resin carts. We have a wide selection of tasty and aromatic live resin products, and we can deliver them to your door in as little as half an hour. Charge up your vape battery. We’re on our way.
