Cannabis sauce: terpene-rich concentrate, HTFSE and live resin sauce

Sauce is a cannabis extract with a sticky, liquid consistency. Sauce extracts are known for their high levels of terpenes, which give them incredibly robust flavor profiles.

The sauce is usually produced using a unique process designed to create a two-component end product: cannabinoid-rich crystals with high levels of THC suspended in a terpene-rich oil.

Find out more about the sauce

Cannabis extracts are often named for their appearance, texture, color and malleability. That's why you'll see extracts with names like shatter, badder, crumble, sugar and oil.

The sauce is no different. The unique combination of crystals and terp sauce of this extract gives it a viscous, marmalade-like consistency.

Beyond consistency, the sauce is renowned for its isolated cannabinoids and high terpene content. Because terpenes and cannabinoids have been separated from each other, they may not be evenly distributed in the final product. Consequently, two different dabs from the same sauce may offer two very different levels of terpenes and cannabinoids, and therefore two different experiences.

Making sauce: the basics

The extraction process is much the same as for other solvent-based extracts. As with other concentrates, the solvents used to make the sauce are butane, the propane, theethanol and the supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2).

Sauce can be made from dried or freshly frozen flowers, harvested from any variety of cannabis. If the sauce is made from dried flowers, it generally contains fewer terpenes. And if the sauce is made from freshly frozen flowers, it's technically a type of «live resin» (live resin) and will generally have a stronger flavor profile.

How does making sauce differ from making other extracts?

The main purpose of preparing the sauce is to allow the main cannabinoids, particularly THC, to crystallize and separate from the terpenes. This makes the sauce very different from other extracts.

While extracts like shatter, budder or wax aim to keep the cannabinoids and terpenes fully integrated and uniform in color, texture and potency, sauce presents different levels of uniformity while fulfilling its purpose: high potency and flavor.

The solvent removal process takes much longer with sauce than with other extracts. Whereas shatter manufacture generally involves purging most of the solvent in a closed-loop system and immediately placing the extract in a vacuum oven for 24 to 72 hours to remove all residual solvents, the sauce-making process can take from a few days to a few weeks. Indeed, rather than eliminating all the solvents at once, sauce producers deliberately leave the solvent in the mixture for longer, to allow the compounds THCA or CBDA to crystallize.

In addition, extraction technicians manipulate the temperatures used throughout the process to control the time required for the residual solvents to create small or large crystals.

When the process is complete, and all the solvents have finally evaporated, extraction producers are left with the final product: a sauce containing a combination of cannabinoid-rich crystals and terp-rich oil.

What is a live resin sauce?

The live resin sauce is made from fresh plant material that has been frozen immediately after harvesting, rather than dried and cured flowers, which leaves higher levels of terpenes intact. This is why consumers who value terpenes and flavor tend to prefer this type of sauce to other concentrates.

What is rosin sauce?

The live rosin sauce is made from fresh frozen plants, in a two-part process that begins by sieving fresh frozen plants in liquid nitrogen to create a dry sieve, then pressing the resulting sieve at low temperature.

The terp-rich concentrate is placed in conditions that favor crystallization, allowing cannabinoids like THC to separate from the rest of the concentrate. The live rosin does not use solvents, but the end product is much the same as that of a solvent-based sauce.

Regular sauce products

Depending on the size of the cannabinoid crystals and the overall consistency of the sauce, the crystals, also called diamonds, can be completely separated from the terpene-rich sauce. This process is sometimes referred to as «diamond extraction».

The terp sauce is generally composed of more than 50 % terpenes, although all the minor compounds of the extracted plant are always present and contribute to its effects. The terp sauce is sometimes packaged in vaper cartridges. These cartridges are called sauce cartridges.

Since the distillation process used to produce the distillate for vape cartridges eliminates all of the plant's natural terpenes, some extractors blend the plant's terpenes into a distillate. terp sauce with the raw distillate to produce strain-specific vape cartridges. The aim of a strain-specific vape cartridge is to reintroduce the flavor and effects of the original strain into the final extract.

Is the whole sauce full spectrum?

Although its exact definition remains a hotly debated topic, the term «full spectrum» refers to a cannabis extract that retains the original composition of compounds present in the trichomes of the cannabis plant, without the fats, waxes and lipids that hold them together.

Since most extraction processes tend to eliminate or denature some of these compounds, the term «full spectrum» is used to designate extraction processes that leave all chemicals intact, and especially all the cannabinoids and terpenes.

Not all sauces succeed in retaining all the compounds in the final product, so not all sauces are full spectrum.

How to use the sauce

The sauce is mainly eaten as a dabbing - its liquid texture makes it particularly suitable for bangers with high rims (trough banger or flat top style) to retain free-flowing concentrates. The use of a carb cap is essential to optimize vaporization of the terpene-rich liquid part.

Low temp dab (300-380°C) is recommended to preserve the terp sauce's exceptional aromatic profile - overheating burns the very essence of the product.

The sauce is also packaged in cartridges for vape pen, sometimes mixed with distillate to homogenize consistency and standardize cannabinoid content.

What do HTFSE and HCFSE mean?

Full-spectrum sauce from treated plant material falls into one of two categories: HTFSE (high terpene full-spectrum extracts) or HCFSE (high cannabinoid full-spectrum extracts).

The HTFSE is the liquid part of the sauce, which always contains over 50 % of terpenes. The HCFSE part of the sauce consists mainly of cannabinoid crystals surrounded by a little terpene sauce.