Fairly recently, I got a nice email from Adia at incenseburnerholder.com. I’m currently in what I call ORS down time so it starts to get a little difficult to keep up with things, but I discussed a few things with Adia about her shop. Part of what we discussed is something I’d like to see in an incense holder, which would be ideally a wider ceramic dish with a centerpiece that holds enough ash to seat anything as long as a Tibetan stick and wide enough to place several sticks, as over the years this is sort of where I’d ended up personally since I use an ash holder and no matter what I do more ash makes it outside the burner than inside it.
The second aspect we discussed, which I’ve thought about over the years is how could ORS actually review holders. From my perspective the primary aesthetic of a burner is the art in creating one and most of that work can be seen with a picture. So I told her I’d ask readers here if there’s anything at the site they might like to see reviewed? I would only mention that my foray into backflow cones is a non-starter, although I’d love to see the art made of those burners in others. So I’m opening this up to 1) any requests of burners you’d like to see a review of, or better yet 2) if you have already purchased a burner from this site, feel free to post in the comments about it and let us know what you love about it!
Olfactory Rescue Service 
Rauchfahne said,
June 22, 2024 at 5:38 am
I think, a main issue with purchasing incense holders is often, that the sellers (or even sometimes the people producing it) are kinda oblivious about the actual use of it.
If you are a seasoned incense person, you usually know what you want and what you need to watch out for, but for a newbie, this often causes issues which we then see on r/Incense when they look for help, usually assuming doing something wrong. 😦
Information on incense holders I would like to see aside from how messy they are:
— How wasteful is the holder? Is there just a little nub left, or is it like an inch of incense wasted?
— is the leftover nub easy to remove or will it annoy me with every use?
For incense burners, meant for charcoal, a strange reoccurring problem seems to be that there are ones sold that are simply to small, so that they suffocate the charcoal. They also get incredible hot.
Sometimes little bowls with a lit, that look like they are actually meant for cones are sold as sort of a censer for charcoal.
Burners with a lid often lack on providing enough airflow and will ultimately suffocate the incense or coal put into it.
Backflow burners seem to build up so much residue that the burner gets clogged but there have been people on r/Incense who bought a new one and never managed to make it work.
Those things seem to be purely designed for aesthetic, without any thought on how user-friendly they will be.
I like to keep an eye on a private sales site here in Germany, and the amount of backflow stuff that is sold is remarkable; especially after Christmas. 😐
karenryansympaticoca said,
June 21, 2024 at 3:09 pm
Hi Mike. I experimented with the Tun-da Village Master https://incense-traditions.ca/shop/tibet/tun-da-village-master-backflow-cones/ backflow cones and purchased an incense holder from Amazon that was a mere 3” high. It was a disaster! The smoke poured down, off across the table and climbed onto my meditation crystals. It left a thick resin on everything in its path. It took a lot of scrubbing with soapy water and towels to remove the offensive tar and tobacco residue. I read your review https://olfactoryrescueservice.wordpress.com/2021/06/22/tun-da-village-master-incense-drepung-monastery-incense/ of the sticks manufactured by the same creator. I have the Drepung Monastery sticks and they don’t even come close to the Tun-da cone that I burned. I was so disappointed and was also concerned for inhaling such toxicity.
Mike, I would appreciate knowing more about proper backflow incense holders – which ones work well, and don’t cause angst for the user. Aida has a wonderful website and I’m sure to find more suitable incense holders for my needs. As for the incense, the supplier helpfully suggested that l burn it outside. Would you be able to recommend a website for backflow incense? I’m hoping to find some cones made from natural materials and not from artificial scents. Thanks,
Karen
Mike said,
June 21, 2024 at 3:58 pm
Hi Karen, thanks for your comment. Personally, I can’t really do backflow cones, I find nearly all of them actively unpleasant. I had one holder that I accidentally (or maybe subconsciously) broke after a few attempts at using cones on it, but I couldn’t get any of the cones to pour down through all of the holder either. The chemical used in them in is supposed to make the smoke drop, so having an experience like that isn’t surprising, but in my experience, it also leaves the burner smelling awfully long after your burn a cone in them. So it’s really not so much if a cone is natural or not, it’s still going to have the chemical otherwise the smoke won’t sink. The last ones I reviewed were from Epika Earth (put this in the search engine in the top left and you should find the reviews) and I think I would have liked them a lot without the backflow chemical. So unfortunately, I won’t be reviewing any of the holders either, although I’d definitely encourage anyone reading this thread to recommend a holder if they had one that worked well.
Rauchfahne said,
June 22, 2024 at 5:00 am
Hi Mike.
I refuse anything backflow because, in my experiance, cones already smell less good than sticks usually and all the awefull storries about how backflow smells and the residue left behind is massively offputting to me.
From what I gathered, there is no chemical needed to make the smoke sink. However it seems to be the case that they add something do make the smoke thicker so the visual effect is stronger.
But pepole reported that one can drill a hole in the bottom of a regular cone and make them backflow.
It was also repeatedly said, that causing this effect alone makes the smell worse.
I also encountered some accidental backflow from homemade sticks that formed a cavity inside from rollenig.
You can also sometimes witness this with commercial sticks when there was an air pocket formed while rolling. Here’s a Pure Incense stick doing it:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CxiX1yLrHzp/
A huge part of the residue seems to be caused by the smoke, touching things and not being dissipated in the air, just like if you use a covered burner gathers residue on the lid.
I got one of these fancy incense stick boxes for Japanese incense, where you put the stick on a cermaic felt and the smoke wafts through ornamental holes on the lit. I can’t use it with a lot of sticks because I hate how the residue smells.
The only sticks I like to use it for are some home made Palo Santo ones.
BTW, I looked through their assortment of burners and a lot of what they sell (if not all) seems to be off of AliExpress. For example, those nice, simple brass holders in drop shape. I bought a set of 3 for 5€ off of Amazon and they’ve been surely drop-shiped from Ali. I’ve seen them there as well for 1-3€ a pice.
This shop sells them for $19.99.
The cubic stone incense holders go for about 2€ on Ali and are sold for 29,99€, same with those little ceramic flowers.
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005003585255080.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.115.4a48AvhaAvhaL7&algo_pvid=3b93ed5a-fadb-4b83-83e4-02922e876b3d&algo_exp_id=3b93ed5a-fadb-4b83-83e4-02922e876b3d-57&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21EUR%210.80%210.46%21%21%210.84%210.48%21%402103871e17190570012146238e4a37%2112000026382774413%21sea%21DE%214576289868%21&curPageLogUid=5T03qjmB4ZsD&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A
Even the same pictures.
I mean, nothing wrong with reselling, but this feels like quite a rip-off.
Incidentally, a friend of mine recently bought exactly that Bakhoor burner they sell, also from Ali but not terrible much cheaper. So far, he’s pretty satisfied with it.