Soiku Bano Winter Sunset Live Rosin Review

If you’re craving a live hash rosin that’s rich with tart notes and expertly cold cured, you’ll want to grab a gram of Soiku Bano’s Winter Sunset Live Rosin, powered by Humble Farms. Just unscrewing the cap releases an intense sour, candy-sweet wave with a ripe hashiness that would intrigue pretty much anyone, connoisseur or not. Notably, the Chimera x Sugar Cane cross that makes Winter Sunset has some delicious berry pie notes that you don’t always find. While the name might indicate a cold season use case, don’t be mistaken, this unique treat is to be enjoyed during any time of year.

Soiku Bano grams their live rosin into a perfectly round ball (unless it is their Soi Sauce SKU) that is housed inside of a black square shaped jar. This batch of Winter Sunset really stands out against the black glass with a hue that reminds me of a yellowish beige pearl, which is emphasized with its shape and the glistening terpene layer. The jar itself has a lid and bottom label, but the main purple and green, circular-patterned Soiku Bano branding is on the paper sleeve that fits around the jar perfectly.

Now for the hash itself—I’ve got to hand it to the Soiku team, this rosin is cured to the nines and falls in the ideal cold cure textures category, in my opinion. That statement is just from visually assessing the untouched ball though. The true texture test was when we crushed the hash ball with a dab tool, its soft mass squished into a baddery dollop with a thin, greasy layer. I was especially impressed with how well the aroma was locked in, which is of course thanks to the starting plant, but also the sphere they roll it into seems to keep all the best stuff contained.

The first time I cracked this jar open again after breaking apart the rosin ball, the scent blustered out and filled the entire room with a pungence that was 10X amplified compared to before the sphere was squished. The aroma I picked up on this round of Winter Sunset live rosin is dominantly fruit-candy and sour-sweet with a secondary earthy-spiciness. Its Pixy Stix tartness punches the nostrils almost instantly with a sharp zest that doesn’t linger very long. I found myself taking 4-5 deep sniffs, back-to-back to detect and capture the scent.

This gram went pretty quick using my go-to Leisure glass rig and stock quartz banger. I cleaned my setup well before digging into the gram and used fresh cold water in my incycler. As I normally do, I dropped the 5X larger than Colorado recommends-sized dab in my heated banger when it was around 515°F. The oil melted into a clean golden pool and provided thick white vapor that was incredibly smooth. In the interest of flavor, I also dropped a scoop of the Winter Sunset into my Puffco Peak Pro 3D Chamber and heated it to 500°F paired with the ‘max’ vapor setting. This was the ticket to unlocking the most delicate and delicious notes this rosin had to offer, just at the expense of not maximizing its effects like it would at a higher temperature.

There’s no doubt this one is fruity-sweet forward, but it took me a few dabs and several long smells in between to nail down some distinct parallel notes. I landed on a tart berry pie with a buttery, flaky crust which may sound ridiculous but when you dab something four to five times back to back within an evening, you start to pick up on things you may not have noticed if you only take one or two dabs. Accompanying some of those tangy pie notes is a spiciness, like cinnamon or clove. I noticed that the lower temperature dabs amplified the fruited nature of this hash whereas the dabs above 515°F still carried some fruit notes but were more spice cabinet leaning.