420 All Month: Peach Rings

My dear readers, I very much wanted to share with you my thoughts on the Peach Rings Cold Cured Live Rosin from Firefly Organics and Helios, but I don’t have a story to go with it! Whatever am I to do!?! Just write about the thing itself? No additional context or anecdote? That would be too weird. So, as I am writing about a concentrate and not a flower, here’s a very brief primer on concentrate terminology. This is not a complete list, and I will admit it is a bit simplified, but I felt it an appropriate place to throw a few of the more common terms out there for the sake of clarification.

Rosin: A form of concentrate that uses a press and a very low level of heat to squeeze the goodness (the trichomes, where the compounds responsible for the effects live) off of the flower or sift or hash.

Resin: A form of concentrate that uses a solvent (like butane or CO₂) to strip the trichomes off of the plant material, which is evaporated, filtered, or otherwise reduced down to just the cannabinoids and terpenes.

Live or Cured: When used immediately before the “Rosin” or “Resin” in the name of a concentrate, this refers to the state of the flower before extraction. Live means that the flower was flash frozen immediately after harvesting (this is sometimes called cold curing) keeping the terpenes especially intact. Cured means that the flower was cured as normal, as it would be for smoking.

Rosin Curing: Rosin will frequently have an additional “Cured” in the name, this one at the very beginning, and is more frequently (at least around here) Cold Cured, though there is a Hot or Heat Cured as well. This refers to the gentle curing process after the rosin is pressed. Cold Cured seems to be the preferred method, but takes longer.

Hash Rosin: Rosin pressed from hash. You frequently see this as blends of strains, though it’s not the rule.

Bubble Hash: Hash made using ice water.

Diamonds: THCa can form into little rock candy-like chunks.

Sauce: The saucy part of an extraction, usually heavy in the stuff that isn’t the THCa.

Diamonds and Sauce: THCa diamonds… in Sauce.

Shatter: A specific preparation of Cured Resin that creates a more solid, hard candy-like or thick taffy-like texture.

Other consistencies of concentrates (most frequently forms of Resin, but you see some Rosins as well): Badder, Budder, Butter, Sugar, Crumble. There are others. There isn’t a universal standard for what makes one or the other, so it’s frequently left to the extractor to name it.

Microns (μ): The measurement of the holes in the screen through which Rosin is pressed. There are standard measurements, typically ranging from around 70 to the mid 100’s.

So, Peach Rings Cold Cured Live Rosin. This saucy rosin has an aroma worth dissecting. It’s peachy and citrusy, but beneath lingers something almost gassy and somewhat musky. It took me a while to really put my finger on it, and I reached out to others for their take. “Is this funky? Pungent? Musky? Something else in that area?” We landed on musky, but only after deliberation. There’s a sense of something old, or forgotten lingering in that aroma that does nothing to detract from the pleasant fruity overtones. It reminded us of a grandparent’s car, or a well-kept basement, or an indoor farmer’s market.

I usually prefer a little more viscosity in my concentrates, simply for ease of use, but this thick sauce was quite easy to manipulate. I gave my little dab spoon a gentle hit of heat, and when I scooped the rosin into my Proxy, it slid right off into the chamber. It vaped clean, leaving little to no darkened residue behind, at the second to lowest heat setting and several hits. The hits were fairly clean and easy, if a little spicy from that funky muskiness. The flavor carried over somewhat expectedly, with the fruity tones still present, but a piney and lightly diesel aftertaste lingered, taking the muskiness and giving it a bit more character.

The high was not unexpected, as I’ve had Peach Rings in a Live Resin vape cartridge before. It’s simultaneously engaging and relaxing. I felt very reflective and thoughtful, but when it was time to turn in, I was not hindered getting to sleep. It’s not a stony kind of high, but I kept coming back to that word. Perhaps it was lingering in my head from a conversation with a customer about exactly what we all mean by “stoned.” Everyone seems to interpret it differently, but at the same time, there’s a large amount of agreement on what strains get you there. All in all, Peach Rings was very enjoyable in this form, and I’m looking forward to going back to it soon.

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