An Interview with Blair Kralick of äkta & Hava Gardens

Introduction

We got the opportunity to sit down with Blair Kralick, COO and Co-founder of äkta creations and Hava gardens for a Q&A along with a solventless review of äkta’s live rosin gummies. Read the interview to learn about the brands and products that Blair has helped develop.

Q&A

Are you just in Colorado right now? What are your brand philosophies?

We are currently just in Colorado. The philosophy was to create a product and a company that lived out what it preached. Transparency and quality, not only from our products, are factors that were important to us. We chose solventless products because we believe that’s where we could truly build trust with our consumer base.

What went into these brands and what makes them special?

Building this brand took a lot of conversations, meetings, and designs. We went through probably 20-30 different logos for äkta. Our main driving force was to make solventless approachable. We felt that a lot of brands in the space are a little more edgy and intimidating. There’s a lot of blacks and deep colors, it’s a little more masculine facing, which makes sense if you look at the majority of people who consume these products.

We felt that this brand needed to appeal to every age group and every type of consumer because we feel like everyone has a right to quality products. For us, it wasn’t just based on price point or making these “connoisseur” grade products. For us, solventless is a connoisseur grade product but it’s also a clean product. We wanted to put the clean aspect a priority. With that we wanted to create a brand that is bright, colorful, accessible to everyone, and approachable to non-connoisseurs.

Walk us through your products, you guys are just doing solventless processing right?

Yes, everything under the Äkta brand is and will be completely solventless.

Vape Cartridges - The first product that we launched under the brand were our solventless vape cartridges. They are entirely fresh frozen, live rosin cartridges with nothing added and nothing taken away. These are a little different than other

cartridges on the market, they are not mechanically separated which is pretty common in the industry. We figured out ways to keep everything intact and get the viscosity that we want with the cannabinoid and terpene levels that we want, that work well in a cartridge.

We are seeing high CBG levels and high terpene ratios in our cartridges. Terpenes have been testing on average at 4-6%, sometimes we’ll get upwards of 8-10% depending on the strain. These give you a very flavorful experience and they last a while, making them a great bang for your buck. This is a flagship product for us and it’s been a very easy, accessible way for people to get into solventless.

Live Rosin Gummies - The next product we rolled out was our live rosin gummies.

What flavors do the äkta live rosin gummies come in?

Right now we have 7 flavors and varieties of sativa, indica, and hybrid with our passionfruit being a 1:1(5 mg THC and 5 mg CBD) blend.

• Guava (sativa)
• White Peach (hybrid)
• Blueberry Lemonade (indica)
• Papaya (indica)
• Prickly Pear (hybrid)
• Hibiscus (sativa)
• Passionfruit (1:1 THC:CBD)

There really is a flavor for everyone, don’t be afraid of the exotics because they are some of our favorite flavors.

Did any of your products get launched at the same time?

We decided to go carts first, edibles, then live rosin.

Live Hash Rosin - We wanted to save the launch of our hash rosin to make sure that we were completely single source before we went to market. We also spent a long time building out a really nice inventory before launching. We came out with 25 different varieties at launch as we wanted to create the most diverse menu on the market.

äkta Sol Food live rosin wet batter 

What stage during production do you guys blend strains? Do you have any tips for people looking to blend strains?

The strains that are blended are actually washed together. Blends for us were a way to implement strains and terpene profiles that normally couldn’t wash by themselves. Lilac Diesel for example, it’s not a washer by any means but we use it for the flavor. Some of our best batches have had that strain, like the Lilac Pisco or the Wedding Bouquet. Adding that Lilac Diesel into some of our strains also introduces new terpenes that give us that “sativa” effect.

This allows us to bring a terpene profile to the market that you would normally never see.

What goes into making products and selecting strains?

We are creating products with intention. The entire team has bought into the brand and believes in what we are trying to do. I let my team guide me on a lot of things and I use a lot of their feedback to keep progressing the company forward. Everything that you see and try is all stemmed from people that love what we are doing. From the top down and through everything we do we make well thought out decisions and do everything with purpose. We are led by a team of people who decided to build this company based on the ways NOT to do this.

For us it’s really about putting people first and the intention of who we want to be. äkta means genuine, real, and authentic and that is who we wanted to be as a company.

äkta cold cure live rosin batter

Conclusion

You can watch the full interview and solventless review on our YouTube channel. 

Looking for äkta solventless products? Visit the äkta and Hava Gardens websites to find products near you and more information on the brands. Don't forget to follow äkta and Hava Gardens on Instagram at @aktacreations and @havagardens.

Lastly, we want to give a big thank you to Blair for taking the time to talk with us and for sharing so many great products for us to try.