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Leaf Picks

California

Black Rainbow Piss Fresh Press

from Royal Key

When you hear the name you can’t help but wonder what exactly you’re about to dip your dab tool into.

Royal Key is a brand that’s always searching for the most unique offerings from its indoor, perpetual living soil garden. Based in Humboldt County, it’s known for dedicating space and time to pheno hunts that most brands would shy away from. This most recent batch of flavors is another stellar lineup with one outrageously named wildcard.

When you hear the name Black Rainbow Piss, you can’t help but wonder what exactly you’re about to dip your dab tool into. I spoke with Josh and Erin from Royal Key during SF Hash Week, and they told me the name has nothing to do with genetics but instead refers to the musty, acrid kind of smell that’s often referred to as “cat piss.” Popping the top on a warmed-up jar, you’ll understand the name when you get hit by a blast that smells like a public bathroom at the beach. 

Black Rainbow Piss combines the popular RS11 with Geistgrow and Humboldt Seed Organization’s Geist OG, which is a complicated formula of [(Fire OG Kush BX1 x Diamond OG) x Emerald OG] x Fire OG BX2. After a long and extensive pheno hunt, Royal Key released this strain in both cold cure and fresh press. Josh expressed how the latter holds “dank tropical notes” and how he was “taken aback by the loud funk and fuel that tends to dominate in cold cure and flower.”

Being a fan of the gassy, I went with the 70-149u cold cure, which has the color of manchego cheese and positively explodes out of the jar. At first, there’s this huge burst of something chemy, overpowering and musty that layers between a mild sweetness before coming back to a semi-offensive aroma. If you get in there and take a whiff while it’s starting to smoke, you may notice those tropical notes Royal Key mentioned starting to blossom before being overshadowed.

BRP has a flavor that settles fleeting sweet notes on the top of the tongue while heaping a crazy mustiness onto the salivary gland areas of the mouth before spraying everything down with a lightly gassy aftertaste.

I’m a big fan of the work Royal Key puts out, and this Black Rainbow Piss is another example of them swinging for the fences and hearing the crack of the bat. Though the name may be off-putting, it could help ensure the product doesn’t fly off the shelf too quickly, giving you a chance to go back for another.

royalkeyorganics.com | @royal_key_organics

This article was originally published in the October 2024 issue of California Leaf.

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