Kush Mints rosin is a solventless concentrate from Punch Extracts, the Los Angeles company that started out in 2013 making PunchBar chocolate. The input is Kush Mints, the Seed Junky Genetics hybrid of Bubba Kush and Animal Mints.
The detail that sets this rosin apart is the cut behind it. Kush Mints was never released as seed. It moves between gardens only as a clone, so every Kush Mints press traces back to Seed Junky's original plant.
A clone-only cut from Seed Junky
Seed Junky Genetics, the breeding outfit founded by Anthony Hart, better known as Jbeezy, crossed Bubba Kush with Animal Mints to make Kush Mints. The breeder has said the cultivar is hardly a household name worldwide, yet it left a big mark on the small circle of growers who got to run it.
Bubba Kush dates to around 1996, when an OG Kush male pollinated an indica, with Northern Lights the suspected mother. Animal Mints comes from Animal Cookies × SinMint Cookies, which puts Girl Scout Cookies, Fire OG and Blue Power in the background.
In the garden the cross grows stocky and medium height, with bushy lateral branching and dense colas. It has a high calyx-to-leaf ratio that makes trimming easier, plus round, frosted calyces and dark orange pistils.
How Punch turns flower into rosin
Punch works from fresh-frozen flower rather than cured buds. The frozen material is washed into hash with ultra-purified ice and water, and that hash is then pressed through fine mesh to strip out plant matter. Every step runs in a climate-controlled room in Canoga Park.
The finished rosin ships in two styles. Fresh press is packed straight off the press, while cold cure badder is left to set into a whipped texture. Punch sorts its live rosin into four tiers, and the same cultivar can land in different tiers from one run to the next.
Hash Writer, the solventless review blog, called Punch one of only two or three legal brands able to pull off fresh press live rosin. One sample it tested stayed translucent for days before slow white badder lines formed.
Kush Mints #69 and the Punch menu
Weedmaps lists a Punch release named Kush Mints #69, a Tier 3 live rosin cold cure badder sold in 1g jars. The same catalog carries a Kush Mints Silver Tier live rosin cold cure badder, also in 1g jars.
The Kush Mints #69 listing repeats Punch's process in short form. It is made in a climate-controlled environment with ultra-purified ice and water, which Punch says leaves a contaminant-free product.
The Kush Mints family tree
Jungle Boys credits Kush Mints as the parent of the strain it made famous, L.A. Kush Cake. That cross carried the Seed Junky cut to a much wider audience and kept Kush Mints in steady demand as breeding stock.
Punch has also pressed Kush Mints as a parent. Its Ice Cream Mints rosin pairs Emerald Queen Farms' Ice Cream Cake with Kush Mints grown on a California light-dep farm, and Hash Writer described the result as doughy vanilla sitting on OG gas.
Seedfinder puts Kush Mints flower as high as 28% THC. The effect it describes starts cerebral and euphoric, then settles into a heavier, stoned afterglow, which fits a cross that pairs a Kush with a Cookies line.