Epika Earth / Celebration of Life (stick), Gentle Beast, Sacred Amber, Stormfire Tea, and some thoughts on a few backflow cones

February 23, 2024 at 10:30 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Amber, Benzoin (Loban), Bergamot, Birch, Calendula, Cedar, Cistus (Rock Rose), Coconut, Cones, Copal, Cypress, Dragon's Blood, Epika Earth, Frankincense, Helichrysum, Incense, Jasmine, Juniper, Lavender, Mike, Musk, Myrrh, Oakmoss (Lichen), Palo Santo, Patchouli, Pepper, Pink Pepper, Rhubarb, Rose, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Tea, Tonka, United States, Vetivert / Khus)

Epika Earth / Rare Terra
Epika Earth / Artisan

This is the final installment for the most recent batch of Epika Earth incenses I received in my most recent Etsy order. They have so, so many more sticks and other goodies at their actual website and I am absolutely sure I liked most of their offerings enough to go for another order again in the future. There is something really warm and comforting about a lot of them. Perhaps its because so many of their incenses are essential oil mixes, but I like how these often create almost mythical libations, like you’re holding some amazing drink in your hand. The last group of these incenses are a couple that look like they are part of a Sacred line, a couple that are not part of any line and look like standards, and then a few backflow cones were also sent which are a bit more difficult to talk about as I don’t like the format while on the other hand these would likely be tremendously good cones if they weren’t.

So first of all we have the Celebration of Life stick (part of the Sacred line), which is different but obviously related in an aromatic way to the Celebration of Life dhoop that I discussed in the previous installment. The stick, naturally, is a much simpler blend but what I really love about it is it’s almost like some sort of mystical root beer or sarsaparilla in scent. Or add in cream soda, ginger ale or a plain old “suicide.” It’s a concoction reminiscent of all these things and maybe none of them. So maybe just mystical soda. However, when I looked this up to link on the Etsy site it was gone, and seemingly “replaced” by a 1 year aged version of the same blend. So while I don’t have the ingredients list on the original, I would imagine they would be like the aged version: frankincense, myrrh, cistus, benzoin resinoid, styrax resinoid, cinnamon, rose petals, helichrysum flowers, golden copal, white copal, Rose Bulgaria, agarwood, and sandalwood. And like in previous incenses you can see the styrax and copal which have often helped to give Epika Earth incenses this concoction like feel. I would imagine aging this would work in a similar way to the Cocoa Pods incense in the line, which certainly broadens the complexity of their incense, so it’s not hard to imagine this would improve and it’s already good thing. In the original I also got touches of chocolate, the rose and some apricot (which had me leaning more towards jasmine until I look at the contents). It wasn’t as spicy as the dhoop but they both share the wonderful brown sugar note that helps sweeten up the “soda.”

Gentle Beast appears to be one of Epika Earth’s standard line (or perhaps Artisan) and an incense a bit closer to those I usually associate with the dipped style, although we’re still not in territory where inferior or synthetic oils are used thankfully. However, this does appear to be a mix of a lot of different things, it’s both somewhat amber-like, herbal and having a noticeable vanilla note (see the tonka bean below), all of which is blended with a strong fruity mix that at different times smells like berries, apples, pineapple, mango or pears (seriously, all in my notes!) Among this mix are somewhat combinate reminders of anything from sage to patchouli and agave cactus. One of the reasons I mention all of these things is that the ingredients list looks a lot different (the incense was sent as an addition to my order from the company). Those are listed as: organic calendula, organic lavender, white copal, styrax resin, golden copal, dragon’s blood, sweet coconut milk, bergamot, pink pepper, cinnamon leaf, jasmine, tonka bean, blue cypress, cedarwood atlas and musk. I was considering a different incense the morning I typed this, in the sense that lavender can often be a bit of a sneak ingredient in all sorts of sticks as it can vary in intensity or style, but fronting resins isn’t an unknown method to get a fruity effect. I’d imagine the bergamot and other resins probably don’t hurt (I’m reminded of the apple in dragon’s blood sticks as well) either. Anyway, as you might imagine you might have a bit of fun trying to pick things out from what is basically an herbal-laced fruit concoction. And this is better than a lot of those, if perhaps as lacking in distinction as other fruity dipped mixes, although the herbal feel prevents that from going too far. [Note that the page I linked to describes this as a Rare Terra incense, so this may a case similar to the Celebration of Life where there’s a formula upgrade, but I ended up with an original. So keep this in mind with the link.]

The Sacred Amber is a quiet but familiar amber incense. It still has the concoction-like mix of most of the incenses in the Epika Earth catalog I have tried. The issue of course is that I would not normally describe amber in the context of essential oils in at least that so many amber incenses or notes often could be considered dry, powdery or otherwise (often even if perfumes are reaching for this). But with that said this does have a noticeable amber note. I wondered if this might have been an older stock as there is a slight charcoal note that peaks through that must be from the base. And hey when you look at the ingredients (rock rose extract, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, frankincense, myrrh, liquidamber, cedarwood, amber resin, black pepper) you can see that the amber scents do lean in the concoction direction. The positives of this one is that it’s a very gentle scent but I think that allows some of the ingredients to maybe push away from the amber a bit. All of that is OK, it’s more saying that while this is a nice incense, I’d describe it more as an amber variant, than something purer than that. But we’re still talking about a scent pretty close to familiar dipped incenses rather than the more breathtaking experiments we’ve discussed previously.

Stormfire Tea has the concoction idea right at the forefront. It is sort of in the same direction as the Shoyeido Xiang-Do (red) Tea, although this does not have the same sort of tea leaf resolution that the Shoyeido stick has. In some ways it’s not all that far from the Sacred Amber. The reddish color hints more at an herbal spiced tea and like the Sacred Amber it has a mild spicy middle to it. Interestingly, the ingredients include organic lavender flowers, organic white tea, cedar, birch tar resinoid, golden copal, styrax and sandalwood, and so the incense’s spicy notes don’t seem to come from the usual suspects as much, although I’d guess the woods probably provide some of these things. The cedar is pretty obvious in the mix, providing something of a southwestern note to the incense and the copal and styrax obviously help with pushing this over to an actual tea scent. It’s probably not my favorite of the Epika Earth incenses that remind me of drinks, but they still always do a good job with them and this will likely be found comforting and warming.

Epika Earth were also kind enough to send no less than three different kinds of backflow cones. As I offered to review their incenses prior to their seeing the information on our website, I thought I’d use this opportunity to talk about these types of cones first as they’ve grown in popularity since they started showing up however many years back. The simple idea for a backflow cone is a hole is drilled down the center and “something” is added to the mix in order to make the smoke heavy enough to come down through the hole and drift slowly down any number of artistically designed backflow holders. It’s absolutely understandable why people would think this is cool, as smoke pouring from a ceramic chimney or dragon’s mouth is a neat effect. I even bought a cool dragon backflow holder which I managed to break in the middle of these reviews, chipping off just the right spot (one of the dragon wings) that should have held the smoke in. But the thing is, even in practice you have to do a lot of shifting and have a lot of patience for the smoke of a burning backflow cone to make it all the way down to the bottom of a cascade. For me the smoke never got farther than the first slide after the dragon’s mouth and I think I got one cone to get all the way down to the bottom once.

Whatever is the case, information on backflow cones seems pretty confusing on the internet. There are lots of claims of these types of cones that they don’t use any chemicals and yet there has to be a difference between smoke that rises and smoke that sinks (and usually stinks). I would imagine this is just chemistry and physics. There also has to be some sort of reasoning for the abominable smells during and left after the burning of some of these cones on a backflow burner. The ones that came with my burner were absolutely awful and I even tried a Tibetan backflow cone which had the exact same issue. And then you can read on internet, recipes for these cones that are made no differently from a regular cone, at least as far as I can tell. My experience with backflow cones is not widespread but I can tell you I’ve never smelled one that didn’t have some sort of additive, whatever it may be.

And that’s no different for these three Epika Earth cones, although I will say I didn’t notice the same sort of foulness left from them that I did with the burner samples or the Tibetan incense I mentioned above. What I felt was disappointed simply because the mixes were actually really nice on these, but there seemed to be something in the mix that I associated with the sort of alcohol scent you can get with some of the oils except quite a bit stronger. For like the tip of the cone you’re good but then once it gets, I assume, to where the drilled hole goes down each cone, it started to get a bit too much for my tastes. Now I’ll be fair I’ve had this happen with a lot of non-backflow cones as well. I’ve never thought the cone was a satisfying format for an incense and it often felt this way perhaps because you need more makko or binder so the cone keeps its shape, or at least nearly every cone I’ve used gets irritating by the time it’s wide and down to the base. So I am probably not a cone’s intended audience.

And so reviewing three or four cones of these is not fully possible, both because there is a strength here that overwhelms any subtleties but also because that strength overwhelms me as well (and let me remind you I am usually OK with some of the loudest Indian incenses on the market). It is a strange experience going from wow that’s a really lovely scent to throat irritation and stinging eyes all in one cone burn, but that’s what each one of these does. The Angel Blood (dragon’s blood, styrax and patchouli) cones were first and I honestly absolutely loved the sort of dragon’s blood and styrax sweet “candy” mixed with some earthier patchouli. At first I was like wow someone made a backflow cone I really like, but then it ended at the first dragon slide and I got overwhelmed. I then broke the burner and had to sample the Rhubarb Berry and Oakmoss cone on one of my ash burners. Again at first I was really impressed, as all three (?) scents (the aroma profile is described as agave covered berries, rhubarb and black plum with highlights of fir needle and oakmoss) in a wonderful mix were really clear. Perhaps burning it away from a backflow burner helped mitigate the strength as it wound down but I was still sensing a lot of heavy alcohol and some sort of unknown scent towards the end that wasn’t agreeing with me. Saved for last since I don’t normally go for palo santo was the Winter Juniper & Palo Santo cone. This aroma profile is described as palo santo wood and juniper berries freshly thawed after a winter freeze. Triple coated with palo santo wood powder, sandalwood powder, golden copal resin and sweet myrrh. Strangely though on this one I don’t really get juniper or palo santo at all, which struck me as odd as the ingredients list on an Epika Earth incense can usually easily be identified. But again it started quite pleasant and was literally stinging my eyes by the end of it.

So to sum this up, these last three cones are obviously for people who love backflow cones and in that context they’re certainly better than nearly every other cone I’ve tried in the style, they’re clearly artisan and made with love. And of course I’d reiterate that I really enjoyed nearly every stick and dhoop I reviewed in all three installments, enough that I made an exception to my no dipped incense reviews rule. Epika Earth have certainly carved out a unique space in the incense community and I look forward to trying more of their scents. If you have tried any other of their incenses and wish to contribute, please post in the thread below!

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Epika Earth / Rare Terra / Bacchus, Blue Ice Pine, Cocoa Pods, Inspirecense, Maui Coconut and Sandalwood

January 27, 2024 at 11:17 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Amyris, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Blueberry, Cedar, Chocolate, Coconut, Copal, Dragon's Blood, Epika Earth, Incense, Labdanum, Lavender, Mike, Myrrh, Pine / Pinon, Quassia, Sandalwood, Shatavari Root, Styrax Liquidambar, United States, Vanilla)

I spent some time early in the year searching through Etsy shops for new incense. I had the usual filters on, avoiding the usual things we don’t tend to review at ORS, the commercial level charcoals like Hem and Gonesh, many sticks dyed in color, most cones, and dipped incense. But it’s in the doing of this that sometimes you’re met with the conundrum that some of these styles occasionally break the rules in an interesting fashion. Epika Earth (Etsy shop) is one of those companies, an Akron, Ohio-based small business with an imprint that is quite original and unique, a company that seems to have invigorated a dipped, largely essential oil-based incense style. What I noticed first was that a lot of their visuals were arresting, second that their naming conventions were both familiar and a little different and third that occasionally in the catalog you’d turn up a completely different style of small batch incense such as dhoops. While I realized that many of their stick incenses must be dipped, it was the descriptions and ingredients that reeled me in, they were often mixes that sounded interesting and not just dialed in. So I made an order on Etsy for about seven items and then invited the company to send anything they’d like to see reviewed and they sent quite a few extra packages, most of which I was really glad they did as there were some really unique and wonderful blends in there that I might not have instinctively picked. Every incense was a new voyage, often I would have to reorient just to experience very new styles or combinations in incense that I have never tried before. So I’m going to break these down into roughly three different installments, mostly by what seem like the name of series, in the first installment’s case the Rare Terra series.

So the first two in this list were samples from the company. And the first of these, Bacchus, is actually a good indication of the direction some of the Epika Earth incenses go in. The essential oil mixes of these scents are not at all obvious and often smell like aged wines or other libations. The listed materials include styrax resinoid, labdanum resinoid, dragon’s blood, golden copal, and agarwood. So it’s probably not a surprise that this is an aroma roughly in the vicinity of some of Mermade’s heat-ables except in stick form, especially those with summer to fall themes. The mix is described as “Fruit Orchards at midnight in the fall with fresh fallen leaves and musk in the winds. Musky and sweet.” It feels like a vintage wine, a heady mix that really goes in a mythological, dreamy direction. This appears to largely be from the mix of laudanum, styrax and copal, all of which give it something of a liquid feel and, perhaps, a touch of alcohol. But on top the agarwood (dusting? oil?) provides something of a contrast to the Dionysian wine and a bit of balancing dryness. Any incense like this often comes with subnotes that are like the harvest or grapes or even raisins, all of which also overlap kyphi sorts of subscents. So it is indeed a heady and appropriately named brew and a fascinating, and a quality one at that. My only slight caveat is that many of the stick incenses appear to use a similar base, they have a similar aroma and often when you first light them you will only get this for 20-30 seconds before the actual aroma kicks in in force.

Really surprising was the Blue Ice Pine because in an American incense you expect this to be something heavy in piñon pine, like, say, Fred Soll’s incenses, but this one has a remarkably Japanese-like profile. It’s not a deep, resinous incense so much as it has a gentle and refined top end that has an almost langorous resolution to it. It actually reminds me more of like some more nebulous conifer incense than pine itself (both Nippon Kodo Mori-no-koh Conifer and Shoyeido Xiang-Do Forest come to mind for different reasons), but this might also be because there’s a secondary layer of spice that is even more subtle than the resins. This sort of mellow scent in the mix is probably why there are some tea comparisons as it’s similar to a spiced herbal tea in a way. It’s a really beautifully designed incense. I’m so used to dipped incenses often being loud and glaring that to try one with this sort of subtlety really changed my opinion on the possibilities here, and I can’t think of higher praise than that. And in the morning, it’s almost a perfect burn. The final three items were those I chose to order…

Cocoa Pods is also very impressive, in fact more so with every stick. On my first stick I didn’t automatically get chocolate, and I thought the creator was going for something a lot more distinctive, perhaps. However, on my second stick I moved it to my upstairs burning station where it really opened up including a rather refined and original chocolate subnote. Chocolate isn’t always accurate in incense, it’s usually approximated by other ingredients and can often feel a bit synthetic or off. Third stick, you really start to notice what a beautiful job is being done here. If your expectations for chocolate have been set low from other incenses, you probably would just be happy to get the aroma alone, but this is even better than that. If Bacchus was a wine, and Blue Ice Pine a tea, then Cocoa Pods is obviously a very decadent cup of hot chocolate if a bit of some expensive spirit was added. This is described as a lighter version of their Ridiculously Sinful incense, which I have not tried but now absolutely want to. However they have put this together it really feels high quality and unique and it was hard not to keep waving the entire stick over to experience ever millimeter of it. It’s an absolute must for a shopping trip.

Inspirecense was a bit of a challenge at first. It’s a dhoop incense and it sets a record in that it’s the first incense that has set off my smoke detector in at least ten years (two beeps though and that was it). So it’s obviously self-lighting and pours out enough smoke that I was thinking it might be better used outside. However, I could tell there was something really yummy going on with it, but it was also overwhelming to burn. But after putting out the dhoop and saving half of it, I put that second half on a Shoyeido heater on a low enough heat not to ignite and oh yeah that was right adjustment for sure, it turned from overwhelming to extraordinary. It’s got a pretty lengthy ingredient list: sandalwood, shatavari root, quassia wood, golden copal, benzoin, organic blueberries, atlas cedar, and organic lavender and lives up to the complexity that it implies. I’m not even sure how to describe it because the orchestra of ingredients plays quite an amazing symphony with different “instruments” playing at different moments in the mix. At first I was thinking confectionary, like a chocolate cake or wait maybe that’s more like a chocolate meets a fruity sort of mix. Then the fruity note really grabs your attention until you realize it’s a perfect blueberry note, utterly splendid in the mix (seriously, just jaw-droppingly yummy). Later it feels more like the sandalwood and other woods come out as the dhoop heats a little more. I’m not sure this incense was intended to be heated given it can be lit, but it is a magnificent bit of art heated and the dhoop also goes much longer, I’d imagine you could get at least six could heats out of a piece that last hours (I also crumbled it as it got hotter). This was one of the two incenses that really caught my eye in the catalog, I’m generally drawn to the unique and deeply artisan and the description was more than I could overcome. Maybe I have a fifth sense about these things, but if anyone is interested I’d jump on this one immediately – make it the centerpiece of an order! Or maybe the second! It is inspiring indeed.

Maui Coconut and Sandalwood is probably the one incense in this bunch similar to the dipped incenses I have tried in the past. Coconut is one of those scents that can be done pretty poorly, but fortunately Epika Earth have managed to make sure the scent isn’t too sweet or cloying. For a two-note incense it has an impressive list of ingredients: coconut, vanilla planifolia extract, santalum spicatum (sandalwood) oil, santalum austrocaledonicum (sandalwood) oil, cedrus deodora (himalayan cedarwood) oil, amyris balsamifera (amyris) oil, commiphora myrrha (myrrh) extract, myroxylon pereirae (balsam of Peru) oil, abies balsamea (fir balsam) extract, and caprylic/capric triglyceride (this also originates from coconut oil). The cedarwood oil is pretty noticeable in the sandalwood mix, but these types of oils seem like a fair mix in the modern age and while I wouldn’t expect Mysore level notes, it clearly does smell like reasonably sandalwood thankfully (both oils appear to be Australian sourced). So the question is really whether or not you’re going to enjoy the combination. For one thing the overall incense is surprisingly dry, it’s not the sort of coconut found in charcoals or even the sort of coconut creme pie scent of the Temple of Incense stick. The matching sandalwood is similarly dry, somewhat surprising given so much of the scents come from oils. Overall, it feels carefully crafted and put together, but as of the writing of this I haven’t quite decided if I enjoy the mix or not and that’s not all a criticism of the formula. Coconut is usually what I consider a “food incense” which tends to be more of a mood thing, but sandalwood sort of pushes that half way out if that makes sense. Definitely one of those your mileage may vary type of scent.

Coming up in February, the next installment…

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Bhagwan Incense / Dragon’s Blood, Fragrant Amber, Lavender Bliss, Saffron Sandalwood, Spring Blossom + notes on other fragrances

November 25, 2023 at 9:28 am (Amber, Benzoin (Loban), Bhagwan Incense, Cherry, Dragon's Blood, Honey, India, Lavender, Mike, Musk, Opium, Pine / Pinon, Rose, Saffron, Sandalwood, Vanilla, Ylang Ylang)

The provenance of a few of this second quintet of incenses from Bhagwan Incense range from obviously Madhavadas-sourced to possibly. Just to reiterate in case you’re new or unfamiliar with Madhavdas, it is an Indian incense family and company that exports its incenses to a number of different companies across the world (it is possibly second to Satya I would imagine). It’s positive is wonderful top perfumes (some would be even described as premium), it’s negative is a very repetitive base made from vanilla, charcoal and sandalwood that tends to often outweigh its top notes and can become very fatiguing if used frequently (so like if you’re a guy who has had an incense blog since the 00s you may be a bit biased against it). Some of these with a Bhagwan label may have dialed down some of the base (or conversely upped the perfumes/oils) in a balanced way, but I’ve provided some notes on extra incenses that seemed definitively Madhavadas and how I think they fared. Both the Amber and the Lavender here in particular are likely to be familiar to those who have traveled through companies like Primo or Triloka, but they also feel a bit different, and it often can be hard to tell if it’s just the same incenses or new formulas attempting to create similar incenses. In these cases it might be best to consider them just part of classic incense “families,” variations, perhaps, but still attempting to attain the same goals.

Dragon’s Blood looks very much like the same stick (if a bit thinner and shorter) that used to be available in the Absolute Bliss catalog, a charcoal with some light red powdering, but it smells quite different to my nose. I’ve probably gone on record saying that dragon’s blood resin is probably too exciting of a name for the aroma you’re getting just from the resin, so I’m all for gussying it up with other things when it comes to sticks. And in the description, ylang ylang and vanilla are listed. It feels very possible for the base that this is a Madhavadas sourced incense, but in this case the oils on top have largely mitigated the vanilla, although not entirely. Now this doesn’t really scream to me as having a strong actual dragon’s blood oil or resin note on top but it does feel like there was an attempt to capture or maybe improve on it for an incense. It does feel a bit confused and maybe not entirely coherent, but that’s not at all to say it’s unpleasant. Maybe the ylang ylang is cutting into the spicier/hotter element you’d expect from a name like this, but ultimately I kind of dig the complexity of it, it almost feels like if you’re paying attention you’re sort of mentally running around trying to pick the combinations out. If you do like dragon’s blood I’d definitely take a shot at it.

The Fragrant Amber is the common red stick variation that I have seen for decades in various places and which tends to show up in more mainstream lines (I used to contrast this with the so-called “Royal Amber” which was a black charcoal and had a more powdery scent). I do seem to remember the “reds” being a bit more (dry) masala-like, this one seems to be a charcoal stick with some red powder, but it is of a definitely deeper red color that wouldn’t be matched up with the pinker variations that are usually rose or some other floral (like the Spring Blossom at the end of this article). The description is “amber wood with notes of musk and vanilla, honey and benzoin.” I’d keep in mind that amber is often a thing made from other things (thus the honey and benzoin) and amber wood is usually a perfume mix as opposed to a wood, but with those things in mind it’s probably not an inaccurate description. The vanilla, of course, does imply a Madhavadas provenance, although like the Dragon’s Blood, the Fragrant Amber feels new to my nose and not a repeat of something ORS has reviewed previously. But it also doesn’t smell like the red ambers I remember, it’s formulated both similarly and differently and yet ends up in roughly the same space. All of the incenses in this lineage, while often not the most premium scents, are still aromas I enjoy and appreciate and you do find your way through the combination to something you might take away as being an “amber” in the aromatic sense, so I’m glad to see this has not been lost. Frankincense & Amber, however, is straight up Madhavadas in the sense that whatever is on top doesn’t outweigh the base and it’s very difficult to pick out both ingredients in what ends up being a sort of confusing conglomerate. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a little bit of both in there, but it hardly behooves one to use, supposedly, high grade ingredients if they aren’t overpowering this sort of base. And once again the red color at the picture on the Bhagavan site isn’t particularly strong in my samples, so there may be variations depending on the amount of dusting lost.

In a similar way much of the same can be said for Lavender Bliss, except in recent years we’ve seen what I’d call vedic lavenders that largely leave incenses like this one superfluous. Lavender is just one of those herbs that can present quite different from one incense to another, but this incense actually doesn’t strike me as being all that on the nose. It’s possible that there just isn’t enough perfume to get above what smells like the usual Madhavadas base and so it’s hard to accept this as a lavender-fronted incense. It reminds me very much of the last time I tried the Triloka Lavender. There was a similar issue with a Madhavadas-sourced Lemongrass, but I was told there was a d decision was made by Bhagwan not to carry it. I imagine this was a bit of disappointment as the fresh stick actually had a really wonderful lemongrass top note, but it was almost completely submerged in the burn. The Orange Blossom has similar issues in that gentle oils fronting a powerful base doesn’t usually work out too well, but at least in this case the oil is detectable in the burn. I’ve occasionally seen incenses that marry orange with vanilla and end up smelling like an orange creme popsicle, but that doesn’t happen here. On the other hand, sometimes the Madhavadas incense is exactly the one you want to show up and Bhagwan definitely carry their really excellent Opium. I’ve previously reviewed a similar batch here and my initial impression was that they were both fairly identical. I would have compared them but I think my PI stock will likely have lost some of the oil strength two years later, so it wouldn’t be accurate or fair to do so. Needless to say whoever you source this one from, it’s highly recommended (and cheers to the reader who sent me samples of this a while back!). I don’t want anyone to forget that Madhavadas-sourced incenses can be wonderful too.

Since most of the incenses in this installment are a bit harder to determine if they are Madhavadas-sourced, my compass is basically to review those that I haven’t before and point to where I have. It’s difficult to tell if Saffron Sandalwood is Madhavadas sourced or from another company (there’s evidence that could go either way). Although I’ve reviewed both Pure Incense Sandalwood and Saffron, I don’t appear to have reviewed an incense with the ingredients together. While I am not sure that the sandalwood in this is really distinctive (it feels like it just falls short of this), it does mix nicely with the base and whatever is being used as the saffron, but there’s quite a bit more going on here. Saffron sandalwood mixes are often yellow-green colored masalas and don’t tend to be as sweet as this one, so this is at least a new variation to my nose. It’s almost like this has a bit of cookie spice in the middle you wouldn’t expect, a spice that floats pretty prominently on top. You would almost expect anything cookie to have the ubiquitous vanilla as well, and although I can feel it in there somewhere, it doesn’t really come across like it usually does in the Madhavadas stable. I should also mention here that the red coloring in my picture is not on the samples I received, similar to the two above, so based on my photo it could be a bit of where the light is. Ultimately this is quite nice even if it’s not the perfect match to the name, there’s a full-bodied feel to this that speaks of some strength in the oils. It’s one of those incenses that I might even need longer stock just to see how I fall with it later as I definitely enjoy it, while feeling somewhat hesitant to fully commit to a recommendation if that makes sense. You’d certainly want to sample it if the ingredients are those you gravitate towards.

There are infinite variations of the rose/floral, pink colored sticks that show up in numerous catalogs and so I wouldn’t even make a guess to the provenance of Spring Blossom except to say it fits nicely in this style. Part of me starts to think of 3D graphs where you can measure and compare the intensity of rose, cherry, bubble gum, and other aspects of sticks like this. So it’s not hard to recommend incenses in this range but if you’re really familiar with them and have many variations than it might be too close to what you already know. Like for me, I think of Bappa Morya (it’s probably easily and safe to say this is a Vedic Vaani mainstay, but it shows up in a lot more than one place in their catalog) as a favorite in this style, but I would think favorites would vary from person to person depending on whether you like the mix. So Spring Blossom? Well, this one is definitely surprisingly high with an actual gorgeous rose note and maybe the cherry is a little farther down in the bouquet. The description also gives musk, pine and vanilla and they’re all much more noticeable than in other pink sticks I’ve tried, giving this a bit of extra breadth. So I think most will find this to be a really beautiful incense and certainly if you’ve never tried one of these pink sticks it’s easy to recommend this one.

So in the next installment I will be moving to Eugene’s other line at goodincense.eu. Unlike the Bhagwan line, these come in wrappers, but I wouldn’t take that to be a corresponding drop in incense quality at all, there’s still quite a few goodies to be found, some of which appear to have the same provenance as the wonderful Balsamic Amber in the previous installment. Until then, I hope everyone who had one had a good Thanksgiving!

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Baigu Temple / Medicine Buddha Backflow Cones

October 15, 2021 at 7:45 am (Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Baigu Monastery, Incense, Lavender, Mike, Sandalwood, Tibet Autonomous Region)

The Baigu Temple Medicine Buddha Backflow Cones come in a nice little stylish pouch. Unlike the last two cones I covered (Ba’er Qude and Ganden), these are not red but a tan color and have a very different profile. The cones have the same listed ingredients as the stick incense: lavender, wormwood and sandalwood. So I think one can assume that the idea is to have two formats of the same incense, the biggest difference is that these make the waterfalls in the neat little backflow burners. However to my nose the cone format does change things around a bit. The wormwood isn’t really as present in this format and the sandalwood is a lot more intense, which may say something about how the base of the incense has been altered to support the cone format. I wrote that the Baigu stick has a bit of a funky note, but you really don’t find it in the cone. I’m not sure how much the whole backflow cone trend is really a western thing because when I search for these types of cones on, say, Amazon, they flare up a bunch of warning signs for me. But if it is and the monasteries are just reacting to this trend then making a friendlier blend for the cone seems like it’s probably a smart idea. It’s a bit of a simpler incense, has some level of spice to it that I don’t remember so much from the stick, and if you mix all that in with the sandalwood (and other wood) base with light herbal touches from the wormwood and lavender, you’ve got yourself a pleasant cone here. You might even want to start with this one before the stick at least if you’re trying to get your toes wet, although normally I still find this format to be generally weaker than a stick. They burn quick and they’re rough towards the end, where a stick would still be lit for another 20-30 minutes.

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Incense Works / Rare Essence Incense Collection / Frankincense Deluxe, Lavender Fields, Moon Goddess, Patchouli Supreme, Rose Absolute, White Lotus

October 13, 2021 at 6:17 am (Frankincense, Incense, Incense Works, India, Lavender, Lotus, Patchouli, Rose)

Incense Works is an incense company in Salt Lake City that has a banner “celebrating 50 years in the world of fragrance,” but strangely if you look at any of the individual incenses sold on the site there doesn’t appear to be a shopping cart system anymore, nor any indication of whether it still survives. Rare Essence is also sold via Sensia and Incense Warehouse (I’m including Sensia links, but if any are unavailable I’d check Incense Warehouse or even start there if you’re inclined, both have always been reliable), so perhaps Incense Works has gone purely distributor. Way back in 2008, I reviewed four of Incense Works’ own Rare Essence Incense Collection here. Before I reopened ORS earlier this year, I made a couple orders to grab some Indian sticks and managed to get most of these again, including some of the ones I previously reviewed and I honestly notice no substantial differences from what I remember last, except for one in this bunch. Even when I first started with the Incense Works incenses I felt that they had some reminiscence to incenses I liked in other lines, although even by 2008 any semblance to the old school composition was gone and what you end up here is something like a Bangalore masala lineage a la Satya but maybe slightly higher quality. This has always made me feel there is a Satya factory or something similar that contracts with US companies to create incenses that are a little higher quality than they offer in the usual boxes. When I wasn’t sure what was left on the market, these still felt like old standbys, maybe not the best Indian incense you can buy but certainly not unpleasant (I actually might start with the incenses in the first review over these). I only include a picture of the boxes because quite frankly if you’ve seen one Bangalore provenance masala you’ve practically seen them all except for some thickness or shading changes.

As an example of an incense that reminds me of the old days, Frankincense Deluxe is really the only remaining incense I know of on the market that resembles a stick that used to be called something like Frankincense Champa or Golden Frankincense back in the earlier Mystic Temple and Incense from India lines. Those had a sort of crystalline, resinous but somewhat peppery top aroma on the old halmaddi base and of course this is just a more modern shifted version of that stick, because it feels from touch that it’s still a heavily dusted charcoal or masala hybrid. As always the bases these days aren’t quite like they used to be, but this is aromatically way different from frankincense sticks in any other line. There’s about the same amount of real frankincense as any of these others, and while it may not be as true to the resin as Happy Hari’s King of Frankincense, I like it more because it’s also trying to be a bit of what passes for a champa these days and it doesn’t have the King’s more bitter tendencies. This aroma used to be a great incense and isn’t maybe quite that good anymore, but I still find the general aroma to be enough to my liking for this kind of style. And there’s enough for me to enjoy the nostalgia of it too.

Having the superb Temple of Incense Lavender Supreme on my mind lately, it’s going to be fairly unlikely to find one that beats it for a great lavender scent. I’m not sure if Rare Essence Lavender Fields is going for the same profile, because again it feels like its really going for a more lavender-fronted, champa-like scent. In comparison to the Lavender Supreme this doesn’t seem like it has as authentic a lavender scent, although saying that it’s possible this box is old enough to have lost some of the oil on top. Overall it feels less lavender themed and more of a muddier floral blend that is fairly typical of modern Bangalore-provenance champa-cum-charcoals, at least on top. In the middle there seems to still be a lot of spicier qualities you don’t often find matched with lavender that makes it slightly more intriguing. At least in terms of its lack of definition it’s not super unpleasant (it has a slight off note on it that’s mostly buried) and has a bit of tanginess I like, it’s just not really doing what it says on the box too much. It’s one of those sticks that makes me wonder if it would be more balanced in a halmaddi base.

Moon Goddess appears to be the only incense in the line that doesn’t really list a note of any kind. Given the sort of haziness of blends at this price point it’s actually fairly difficult to describe because like the Lavender Supreme this is sort of a mix of floral oils and spicy qualities. It feels a bit softer to the touch and more masala-like, and has some powdery and perhaps jasmine-like qualities to it. There’s the usual underlying woodiness to it as well, the usual bit of sandalwood sticks like this come with and overall it’s actually quite pleasant and you do feel on some level there’s an attempt to give this a bit of a nighttime feel to it. However, it has virtually no resolution when it comes to ingredients and I’d guess there is some use of synthetics in the perfumes. Overall this is one of those “decent enough” sticks in that the positives and negatives sort of balance themselves out.

I’m not sure if I’m misremembering this, but I seem to remember that the Patchouli Supreme used to be fairly old school and resembled sticks that were called Patchouli Champas except it wasn’t as sweet as this current stick. Once again I am wondering if there’s some old stock where the note has faded off the stick as this barely smells at all like patchouli to me, although it may be there in the background a bit (it’s more noticeable if you walk out and back in the room). It’s a reminder that expectations can often be the guiding hand at evaluation because if this was named something else I might think differently about it, but as a patchouli it’s just working in a completely opposite and muddier direction. There’s something a bit cloyingly sweet about the overall aroma that I’m not even sure would work on its own if it had a different name. Only a bit mind you as this isn’t entirely unpleasant, but again, it’s a good example of an incense that maybe doesn’t know what it wants to be.

It’s something of a truism that a $4 box of a rose incense is either going to attempt to imitate a rose and fail miserably or blend some minor rose note into a floral backdrop and if lucky come up with a pleasant incense. Rose Absolute probably leans a bit more to this latter option and relies on the base with its sweetness and bit of spice to come up with something approaching a fruitier rose. If you’re willing to spend a few dollars more and go for a Temple of Incense of Absolute Bliss/Happy Hari incense I’d just say stop reading and do that. But for a $4 box this isn’t a bad incense, but even for that there are still some edges that feel cloying or overly perfumed, just not overwhelmingly so.

Finally there’s the White Lotus which has a lot of the same issues the Rose Absolute does in terms of having very little in the way of an identifiable floral note. Like if you were to compare it to the AB White Lotus Oudh Saffron you just wouldn’t notice it had anything in common. Again, you do wonder if maybe the incense is just old and has lost its oils, but even so you’d still notice some stamp here. Instead what’s most notable is the masala base with the vanilla and sandalwood feautured most prominently. Now this doesn’t have any of the overly perfumed issues that the Rose Absolute does but where I can’t really notice a lot in the way that’s unattractive, I can’t think of much to say to promote it. In this sense it’s not unlike a lot of Satya incenses except without the fairly common off notes.

Anyway it’s hard to tell if this is just a line at the end of its stretch, given that you can still find these fairly easily still. But it feels like they largely rise or fall on the strengths of their top perfume and many of these feel a bit faint.

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Prabhuji’s Gifts / Chakra Series / Muladhara, Svadhisthana, Manipura, Anahata, Vishuddha, Ajna, Sahasrara

September 25, 2021 at 10:25 am (Amber, Basil / Tulasi / Tulsi, Geranium, Incense, India, Jasmine, Lavender, Lotus, Mike, Patchouli, Prabhuji's Gifts, Rose, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Vanilla, Vetivert / Khus, Woods)

The Western tendency to create correspondences with Eastern spiritual systems seems largely a side effect of systems like the Golden Dawn where everything from colors to astrology signs to elements to Hebrew letters to tarot cards were lined up with one another to link things up and create one sort of universal spiritual system. This has long permeated new age culture and you can see it here in this seven incense chakra line where all the packages have different colors and so forth and the scents have been created to match up with each chakra, as if working with chakras was a simple as burning incenses and holding the right crystal. But hey, marketing right? (There’s a new Facebook ad equating using their groups as a method for transcendence that is currently annoying me, but I digress.) For sure the packages are quite nice on these, and if we can reference the many gems of the Ramakrishnanda incense line (scroll a bit down after this review), then I was hoping there would be treasures to be found in these as well, as Prabhuji’s Gifts has created a lot of memorable and inexpensive incenses that have become favorites of mine. They have such a wide variety of scents and lines now that there should nearly be something for everyone. So anyway let’s start from the root chakra and bring the energy up, or at least see if these smell good.

The Muladhara Chakra incense lists sandalwood, khus, patchouli and clove. This looks to be of Bangalore pedigree with a heavily dusted, somewhat hybridized masala with charcoal, very similar to what you’ll find with Satya incenses. However, like most of the Prabhuji Gifts line the perfumes tend to be better. I think the idea here is that earthier herbs like patchouli and khus are meant to be grounding, but the mix of all four of these ingredients really tends to blend those types of earthier elements out. You end up with a sort of budget quality woodiness from the sandalwood with a bit of a cooling vibe, not at all what I’d expect from the “cover.” As the incense burns you realize it’s going for a sort of mild stabilizing effect and that you do get the clove and patchouli as milder notes in the background and so overall this is pleasant if not quite exciting. But that may very well be the point.

Svadhisthana Chakra is all about the sacral (aka tummy) chakra. It has a similar style to the Muladhara, but is perhaps a bit softer. The list here is vanilla, rose and vetiver. I’m always a bit skeptical of incenses with rose notes at this sort of inexpensive price range and the one here seems a bit odd in the mix. The company also tags this chakra with the water element where something like jasmine seems a better fit and it’s kind of odd to see something like vetivert here as well. So it’s a bit of an odd duck. Like most of these incenses there’s also an inherent woodiness to it that isn’t listed and you can certainly smell the vanilla, although it leans a bit to the less sweet. I can’t really identify anything too unpleasant or odd about the notes, but the mix of them doesn’t sit particularly comfortably for me. It ends up being close to a lot of incenses you find at this range where the perfumes didn’t quite make it.

So, up to the solar plexus level with the Manipura Chakra, this time with a more simple blend of lavender and sandalwood. The consistency here brings it back more in line with the Muladhara. The simplicity makes this a much more satisfying incense. It’s interesting after sampling the lavenders in the Happy Hari/Temple of Incense axis to sample this as the sandalwood presence gives this a much different feel that those, perhaps less obviously lavender but still soft and pleasant enough to not be offputting like in the Lavender Fields variant. It’s more that it just sort of moves the sandalwood over into a more pleasantly general floral range. So it ends up being probably the best incense in this line. But again I find this interesting on a correspondence level because lavender more often tends to be thought of as air element here and because of that it doesn’t feel like it matches with the fire correspondence listed in the back. For fire you’d likely want something spicier like cinnamon in the mix.

Anahata Chakra at least keeps the rose (and maybe geranium) associations of the heart chakra in place, although it does so with patchouli as the first note listed. It reminds me a little of the Temple of Incense Om Masala, although perhaps not quite as deluxe. For listing a couple of big floral notes, it feels like they’re dialed back in comparison to the earthy and spicy notes and there’s some level of halmaddi to it as well. But the price difference between this and the Om Masala is probably a bit telling in that this has less definition, especially in the perfume area, it is pleasant but in a somewhat muddier way. It’s the kind of incense that would have had a bit more presence in the “halmaddi era” but without the full recipe, it leaves it feeling pleasant but a bit generic.

The “oriental woods and amber” of Vishuddha Chakra create an incense not terribly different from the other sandalwood prominent incenses in this series. It’s quite dry with very little in the way of sweetness and doesn’t have as strong of an amber note as you’d like. Without any real definition of what woods are included, it actually matches the profile fairly well and doesn’t seem as sandalwood-heavy as the others, but this pushes it into a somewhat generic and somewhat personality-less area. I like that it’s a bit different and the cooling feel of it does seem to fit the color scheme here but again, this falls a bit more into the way Satya incenses can be kind of hazy in terms of what scent they’re trying to reach. It’s perhaps that feeling that this is reaching for levels of expense it couldn’t possibly reach at its price.

It’s hard to get enthusiastic about the jasmine and tulasi that matches up with the Ajna Chakra. Ideally when you’re moving up into rarified spheres you’d like the quality to bump up quite a bit, but after the Absolute Bliss/Temple of Incense Vintage Jasmine/Jasmine Blossom, this one falls quite flat. Whatever is going into this mix frankly isn’t cutting it and the perfume is off in a way that’s distinctly unpleasant. It could be that this is old stock and it has faded some but I’m not sure I’d risk another go with what’s left. This stick is more like something you’d expect out of Satya, either factory. And honestly I’ve tried one of Satya’s jasmines (I think it was the Bangalore “Jasmine”) that’s actually more defined than this one, so maybe part of the issue is the Tulasi? Hard to tell for sure, but simply nope.

And finally we get to the crown chakra with the Sahasrara Chakra and the lotus blossom that often signifies the mandala here. But just like with the previous incense, I’ve had Queen of Lotus/Lotus Flower, Floating Lotus Flower/Shiv and of course the devastating White Lotus Oudh Saffron out frequently of late, so I perhaps was not in the economy section when I sat down to review this. Fortunately it’s a bit nicer on its own than the Ajna, and there’s at least some level of attempt to get the floral notes right, but it’s not the same class, not by a long shot. It does have a bit of sweetness as a masala hybrid that helps it a bit, but it also verges a bit sour sometimes. Overall it’s really worth paying a few more bucks for something closer to the real deal, this is something I’d say is nearly always true when it comes to florals.

Now keep in mind as I close this that there are a few incenses in the Ramakrishnanda line I still like a lot, although one of their finest seemed to have been discontinued for a different recipe. But these days I’m fairly sensitive when I pick up a new line that doesn’t seem to be quite as up to the standard I remembered in terms of wondering if the original catalog might have shifted as well. While I might have put the Ramakrishnanda line ahead of say the Designs By Deekay line by a hair with some overlap, I’d put most of the chakra line a bit lower and maybe a step ahead of the Satays in most cases. We’re talking about the same sort of masala-charcoal hybrid style in the Satya family here, but for sure I’d stick to the Ramakrishnandas first. However, it’s worth checking out some of the enthusiastic reviews of these incenses at the specific incense’s web page, to get some different perspectives. After all at $3.38 a package there’s not a lot of risk here.

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Temple of Incense / Nag Champa Gold; Oudh Masala; Dhoop Cones / Absolute Sandalwood, Benzoin, Frankincense, Lavender, Oudh, Rose, Vetiver

September 22, 2021 at 6:46 am (Benzoin (Loban), Champa / Durbar, Champa Flower, Frankincense, Lavender, Magnolia, Oud, Rose, Sandalwood, Stephen, Temple of Incense, Vetivert / Khus)

Temple of Incense Part 13
Temple of Incense Part 14
The entire Temple of Incense review series can be found at the Incense Reviews Index

Wrapping up the Temple of Incense reviews is everything else I managed to get that was in stock. After these reviews, the only things missing are the Palo Santo cones, and the Bakhoor aloeswood chips which I may review at a later date. Also, want to note that both Mike and I figured we had covered Nag Champa Gold but I’ll insert that here as we both didn’t manage to review the ToI version of this famous stick.

Starting with Nag Champa Gold, one of the flagships of the HH line is also a flagship here. This is essentially the same stick. For those unfamiliar, this is a very dry and astringent version of the famous nag champa scent. It has gold flakes/dust that comes from mica. I was told that this is actual waste from statuary production and since mica doesn’t tend to add anything to a scent it is purely aesthetic, like eating gold leaf. The stick itself is a yellowish bamboo core with a extruded charcoal-based masala dusted in tan and gold dust. The oil of the magnolia in this is exquisite and scents the stick before you light it. After lighting, the saltiness of the sandalwood and a touch of halmaddi/vanilla to give it some sweetness. My understanding is that if you used to like this stick a decade ago that it has a touch less halmaddi in it which makes it drier and more astringent. Overall, this is still one of the better Nag Champas on the market.

Absolute Sandalwood Dhoop Cone is an all black charcoal cone with oils added. This should not be confused with incense sticks of the same name because this is not similar in any way. This has some of the same oils I think go into Sandalwood Extreme, as this is a fairly good representation of Mysore sandalwood in all it’s salted butter notes. There is a touch of something sweet like maybe a hint of benzoin in here as well but it only seems to come out and play briefly before it gets coated in santalum smells.

Benzoin Prayer Dhoop Cone has a different format for cones, this is more like a thick cylinder that might be as big as 3-4 of the other sized cones. My biggest complaint on this is that they are harder to light without a graduated tip, but they give off a bigger smoke/smell and burn a lot longer. If you like the Benzoin Absolute stick that they make, this is a great continuation of that scent. This is a less sweet version of benzoin, while I’m still not an expert on the resin localities, this one doesn’t have the vanilla mashmallow scent and instead is something more like baking marzipan cookies and gunpowder. This is possibly my favorite of the cones I’ve reviewed in terms of scent.

Another in the cylinder format, Frankincense Prayer Dhoop Cone is different in that instead of being an all-charcoal base, this looks like pressed sawdust. This is a good representation of the boswellia sacra resin, it has a clean, citrusy scent that is a bit crisper and cleaner than the Frankincense stick they offer. Great for any application where you need 20 minutes of constant frankincense aroma, this is a room filler because of the thickness, and it has been a favorite in the family when I light one because everyone in the house smells it.

Lavender Dhoop Cone returns to the cone-shaped charcoal format and does a good job of bringing out a few different formats of lavender. Opening the jar, it smells like my favorite version of lavender oil, the one that captures a bit of the ‘green’ note like you’re in a field of lavender. When you light this, it becomes apparent that this oil is pretty much the only ingredient as you’re met with a mixture of both the fresh lavender and the more ‘warm’ lavender that I associate more like with soap and dryer sheets, the smell of relaxation. This really has a very clean feel to it and the marketing copy on the jar says it will ‘balance all seven chakras’ and I do enjoy how this seemed to have brightened the room a little bit.

Oudh Dhoop Cone is another cone-shaped charcoal formatted cone. Essentially, this is a cone version of the Oudh Masala, or at least, this is what my initial impression is upon lighting this black cone. It has a strong ‘cologne’ presence of oud here, where they are using distillation techniques that compress the scent into a much thinner profile without all the extra bells and whistles of the nearby plants and animals mixed into the scent. This is oud. Oud oud oud. As the cone has burned a bit, I can tell now that this is a bit different than the oudh masala, and it has a lighter, sweeter note than the Oudh, which is earthy and strong. Either way, I love how this scent is coming out and I definitely want a lot more of this.

Oudh Masala comes in a 60g Miron glass jar and is a powder meant for a electric burner or charcoal. I picked this up because of the name conjuring the HH reference and because I’m a huge fan of the stick. This is hard to describe, but if you’ve experienced Oudh and Himalayan Spikenard, this is like combining the best aspects of both of those and cranking up the intensity and the resiny goodness as loud as you can handle. In fact, if I put too much on at once, it gets overpowering because the oudh cologne scent is right there in the middle. If you enjoy powder incense format, this is so oily that you can actually just make a little pile and light it on fire. You won’t consume 100% of the powder but it burns most of the way by itself it’s so dense and resinous.

With Rose Prayer Dhoop Cone, we have another cylinder format, but like the Frankincense Dhoop Cone, this one isn’t made of charcoal, instead it looks like crushed rose petals and something like makko. Infused with what must be a mixture of oils, we get a fresh rose scent with a slightly sweet undertone like the roses are central to a bouquet that also includes something sweet like candied rose as well. Overall, this is a really good cone and the size of it means it burns a bit longer than the conical ones. This is good for people who really like the rose to smell fresher. That candied rose is under the central rose scent, which really is very good and reflected in the price point. It smells like rose petals and confectioners sugar. Really nice.

At Last, the Vetiver Dhoop Cone. Vetiver is always a wonderful scent when it is done right. My husband and I love vetiver essential oil and for many years used the oil as a perfume and received many compliments. This is a sweeter version of khus. This black cone seems to be charcoal with oils and I’m guessing they’re using all the best. There is a touch of what I detect as sandalwood in here, or maybe it’s just another note of vetiver I’m unfamiliar with because so rarely in incense do you get vetiver by itself for a conversation, most of the time it’s in a chorus.

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Temple of Incense / Lavender Supreme, Lotus Flower, Myrrh, Orange Blossom & Lemongrass

September 11, 2021 at 6:57 am (Citronella / Lemongrass, Citrus, India, Jasmine, Lavender, Lotus, Myrrh, Orange Blossom, Stephen, Temple of Incense)

Temple of Incense Part 10
Temple of Incense Part 12
The entire Temple of Incense review series can be found at the Incense Reviews Index

In my fifth Temple of Incense installment, we are looking at more florals with one resin stick. The quality here is so high that it’s hard to say that I don’t like something because even if the scent isn’t my favorite, I can tell that all of these are best in class.

Starting with Lavender Supreme. Part of me wanted to include this in my last review to have a Lavender vs Lavender challenge but the issue is that unlike Amber/Amber Supreme, this is the clear winner. Like in the story with the tortoise and the hare only the hare never took a nap and just smoked the tortoise THEN took a nap. This Lavender Supreme is a handmade masala made mostly of charcoal with a brown powder finish. For a 20% price hike, you get at least 75% more quality.

The scent here isn’t bothered by the ‘burning hair’ scent and instead there is a pleasant wood underneath the floral, salty enough to make it’s presence known. On top of it is at least three different kinds of lavender. There is a lavender absolute that actually makes it smell like you’re cutting fresh lavender. There is a lavender oil that is giving a huge middle presence like you’d get from annointing your pillow with lavender essential oil. There is something like spike lavender or similar giving it a bitter, green edge, that I associate with the varietal. (The oil of spike lavender to me has always smelled like someone crossed lavender with juniper.)

Overall, I’d suggest this over Lavender Fields unless you’re either pinching pennies or are a fan of the dipped incense style. Lavender Supreme is also sold as Vedic Lavender at Absolute Bliss.

Lotus Flower is an extruded dark charcoal-rich agarbatti on a bamboo stick finished with a fine tan powder. This is also sold as Happy Hari’s Queen of Lotus. This is a soft, sweet powdery entry for lotus, with a front that really has that soft lotus note with only a few hints at other things, the box mentioned jasmine and florals but I don’t quite get jasmine in here as much as I get the lotus, a sweet vanilla scent and then more lotus with a tiny hint of something like maybe sandalwood to ground it and give it a bit of saltiness. This is almost the same scent as ‘Floating Lotus‘ or ‘Shiv‘, which is the larger sized thick incense with lotus as it’s central scent.

If you’re familiar with King of Myrrh, you’ll know that Myrrh is the same stick. This is an extruded resin agarbatti with no powder finish. This is a very sweet interpretation of myrrh, very fruity, like they found a locality of myrrh that is sweeter than opopanax. If you like the sweet sorts of myrrh, this is going to be a favorite for you. This is a slow burning, sweet, grounding stick. The box mentions there is a ‘balsamic’ smell but I’m going to say it’s more like the extra sweet flavored balsamic. In fact, I kind of wish there was a balsamic vinegar that tastes like this smells. There is a touch of something, maybe just the myrrh that grounds it and brings a little bit of gravitas at the bottom of the scent. This has been one of my favorites, even before I met ToI as King of Myrrh was a high rotation incense for me.

Wrapping up this quartet with Orange Blossom & Lemongrass, a handmade charcoal masala finished with a tan powder on a natural bamboo stick, we have a scent that is strange and different. Strange in that it doesn’t mention musk, but there is a musky interplay between the two headline ingredients. You can smell the lemongrass, it’s a bitter, acrid, herbal scent that represents more the cooked scent of lemongrass rather than lemongrass growing fresh. And the Orange Blossom is timid and shy, but when you catch a glimpse of it, it’s a decent if maybe musky interpretation of a very delicate flower that is currently scenting my driveway since the neighbor’s orange tree is in bloom.

Overall this comes across as a very fresh scent, but as it builds up in a space it does get a little bit soapy, but stepping back and sniffing from afar, it goes back to the more fresh scent. I do like how there feels like a hint of musk in there someplace. While I don’t find myself really enjoying the scent profile, I know this stick will find it’s home with people who do enjoy lemongrass, as I can tell that this is still a quality crafted stick.

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Temple of Incense / Jasmine Blossom, Kerala Flower, Lakshmi, Lavender Fields

September 8, 2021 at 6:04 am (Citrus, Floral, Incense, India, Jasmine, Lavender, Lily, Resins, Stephen, Temple of Incense)

Temple of Incense Part 9
Temple of Incense Part 11
The entire Temple of Incense review series can be found at the Incense Reviews Index

Without actual planning, this next block ended up being mostly florals. Historically, florals tend to be problematic for me because I expect when offered a smell and told ‘this is lily of the valley’, I expect it to smell like the lilies of the valley I had growing in the back of my home. And when I get handed a smell called ‘lily of the valley’ and it smells like feet bathed in crappy perfume, I shake my head and move on. Most florals don’t tend to smell like the flower it’s named after and that ends up being my primary complaint.

Most florals in Japanese and Indian incense fall into the category of shake my head and move on because many of the people involved in crafting go and find a great essential oil or absolute and throw it into their incense and think they’re done. The problem is that some of the absolutes and oils can show up differently when they combust, and in many cases, they smell like the ‘cooked’ version of the flower, as if someone were taking the fresh flowers and stewing them for a jelly.

Our first entry is Jasmine Blossom, a handmade charcoal heavy agarbatti finished with a brown powder. This box and stick smell of fresh jasmine without lighting it and that alone is quite pleasant. Absolute Bliss sells the same stick as ‘Vintage Jasmine‘, with the same bamboo and same masala and very similar scent. The jasmine here, once lit, transforms a little bit from the scent of the unlit stick, to something much bigger. There is a saltiness in here that makes it feel like a touch of sandalwood oil might have been added, and then the reveal that there must be at least 2-3 jasmine sources in this stick. One of the notes remains in the fresh category, one of the notes turns a bit towards the ‘cooked’ category, and a third smells like a different kind of jasmine like Night Jasmine but without the bottom note that comes as the bloom starts to fade.

This is definitely a stick for jasmine lovers. As someone who dislikes floral, this still makes it into my rotations because it is far more pleasant and never crosses into the cloying range that so many florals can do. This is a work of art, a masterpiece of blending in the floral world.

Kerala Flower is a yellow-green bamboo stick with an extruded agarbatti that appears to have a powdered finish. The agarbatti appears to have charcoal but doesn’t looks as black as others, so there might be more fragrant material than oils making this. For those of you who are familiar with Happy Hari’s Samadhi Sutra, this is the same stick with lime green stems and scent profile. One of the things about my newness with Indian incense is that there are smells that I don’t know what the real world equivalent is, and Kerala Flower is definitely one of these. I’ve smelled this smell before but only in Indian Incense. If I had to describe what I’m smelling it would be something along the lines of ‘lemon/lime baby powder’ because there is a definitely scent that reminds me a bit of ‘Sprite’ but also a scent that reminds me of a typical Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder. I believe I encounter this scent in multiple incenses I love, like Niyama Sutra/Dancing Sufi.

Looking up the ‘Keralian Lily’ I find that this isn’t a particular species of flower but rather a place where lilies grow in abundance. Instead I found different websites showing pictures of festivals where the water is filled with colorful lilies so I’m wondering if this incense is trying to conjure that. Either way, as far as this goes, it has a sweet, bitter, playful floral note that I enjoy and I was hoping that this ‘Kerala’ was the name of the scent but alas, I’m still wondering what the ingredients are that make this scent.

For Lakshmi, if you have a princess, or a fairy, or even a fairy princess in your life, then this incense is for you. Adorned with glitter, this extruded resin stick seems to be dark with charcoal and resins in the masala. I will say that since I started using this incense, I am finding glitter in places I least expect it. A friend of mine said ‘It’s impossible to be in a bad mood when you have glitter on your face’ and I think that can apply to this incense.

As it is burning, it seems more to me that this is a charcoal stick with oils rather than any resins as the box suggests, but this is mostly due to the ash appearing to be more like ash from a charcoal stick than a wood stick. The scent is soft and floral in the baby powder range, again, as this has a very dry top note that might very well be amber or a floral similar to amber. Since the ingredients include ‘perfume’ this very well could be the perfume I’m smelling. The website has a mention of the perfume but the box does not. The citrus mentioned is both in the front and in the finish, as if this perfume covers its middle note. Most of the time it sort of blends into the perfume but enough interplay is there to allow you to detect it if you start looking for it. The glitter makes this special, and the scent is lovely, combined you have a stick that, while gimmicky, is probably one you’d like to have in your collection.

Just the box of Lavender Fields smells lovely. Opening it up, the smells of fresh, concentrated lavender wafts out. This is an extruded charcoal blank soaked in a scented solution to create the stick. Lavender can come in many different forms, and in this case, I get the cooked scent first, followed by the essential oil version, with a scent at the tail end of it that is a little acrid, something I associate with the dipropylene glycol (DPG) that is used to make the essential oils thinner. I associate it with the kind of perm-and-burning hair you get in a hair salon that does perms. As dipped incense is probably my least favorite of the styles of incense, I just want to say that this still manages to be an okay stick. If you’re a lavender lover or you love the dipped style, then check this out.

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Absolute Bliss / Floating Lotus Flower, Oudh Saffron, Patchouli Khus, Red Blood Dragon, Vedic Lavender, Vintage Jasmine

August 19, 2021 at 5:40 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Amber, Incense, India, Jasmine, Lavender, Lotus, Mike, Musk, Patchouli, Rose, Saffron, Vetivert / Khus)

Before I start to go through the large amount of treasures that Corey Topel has recently stocked at Absolute Bliss from the same Indian group that makes the Happy Hari line, I just wanted to make the note here that the use of Absolute Bliss in the subject headings at ORS is meant to indicate the importer of the following incenses rather than indicating that it is a branding and so I will not be adding this as a category. But other than this group of incense’s similarities to those in the Temple of Incense line, Absolute Bliss is the western point of origin. Also, there is no current plans to actually put these incenses up at the Absolute Bliss website so it is highly recommended and encouraged to contact Corey directly using the methods at his contact page. My experience is that you can find what you want and ask him for a Paypal invoice. I will also encourage those who are interested by saying that my experience is that many of these scents are at peak freshness and well worth trying as soon as you can.

This first group of incenses that Corey sent me samples of I wanted to get up first because I’m already aware of their matches with Temple of Incense lines. Please note that when I say this, the match ups are not 100%. Indian suppliers who use natural ingredients in their scents will also find fluctuations in those ingredients that are generally enough to cause some slight variation in batches. But I do want to note that these incenses are still similar enough that it’s likely customers in the US will find better prices with Absolute Bliss and avoid the shipping costs from the UK (as well as vice versa with Temple of Incense). And of course just as inversely true with Temple of Incense, there are some AB incenses here that are not in the Temple of Incense catalog, many of which we will get to in further installments. But these six are a match…

Floating Lotus Flower is more or less completely identical to Temple of Incense’s Shiv which I have previously raved about and recommend oh so highly, although it feels like the dusting on this one is more consistently applied, perhaps as if it was added when less dry (or maybe the dust gets shaken off a lot crossing the Atlantic). In fact you could almost compare the lotus in this description with the amber, patchouli, musk and rose listed in the Shiv review, as if, perhaps, that combination of ingredients tends to point the way at a lotus type of scent. And if you were to compare this to the Happy Hari Queen of Lotus or the TOI Lotus Flower then the similarities are pretty much immediate. But make no mistake, this rich, luxury thick stick is a big step up on that scent and about as good as it gets, well worth putting out the extra money for. Like all thick sticks, they’re easily put out to relight for a different session. It’s just tremendously beautiful with an almost amber-vanilla-frangipani sort of scent that is lovely, warm, and gentle. Truly one of my 2021 favorites in either version, the quality of this incense during the burn is consistently striking.

Oudh Saffron [9/16/21 – Upon revisit I thought the differences between the Wood Spice and Oudh Saffron to be much more different than I originally noted down here. So I rewrote. – Mike] is a somewhat similar incense to Temple of Incense’s Wood Spice although for my nose it felt like the oudh is much more noticeable in the AB stick, in fact it’s more comparable to both lines’ Oudh (Masala). The TOI stick also does not list saffron and nor did I really notice it as much, but it’s certainly very noticeable in the AB Oudh Saffron. I would also say that the TOI Himalayan Spikenard is also fairly close when it comes to this sort of family of incenses. They are basically lightly dusted charcoal sticks with a tremendously rich, woody and spicy oil. I will say that all of the incenses in this family are the types of scents where you may notice the charcoal base more, as if some of the more hardy ingredients compliment it. But on the other hand the ingredients are still truly impressive and this is a whole area where some of the best uses of aloeswood in Indian are apparent. After spending some time with the White Lotus Oudh Saffron, while that is an incense on its own level, it will also make you appreciate just how great this blend is on its own.

The AB Patchouli Khus (aka Green Patchouli) and ToI Patchouli Woods are nearly exact matches. Unlike the previous two scents, as of writing this I do not have a review up for the ToI Patchouli Woods, but suffice it to say this patchouli/khus mix is one of the driest, least sweet and almost herbally dank and green patchoulis you will find on the market. Where so many patchouli incenses are sweetened up for western noses or resemble the sorts of patchouli oils you used to be able to smell at Grateful Dead shows, the oils in this seem to portray the most earthy aspects of the oil, the vegetable and sort of clay mix of both of these herbs. As such, even if you’ve tried other patchoulis, this is very likely to be different from anything you own. I was almost startled when I first tried the Patchouli Woods because the initial hit is so unique and not super user friendly, but over time as I acclimated to the scent, I found it as interesting as any other patchouli I’ve tried and probably one of the most authentic. If you want to learn this scent, this is well worth checking out in either version.

AB’s Red Blood Dragon is an almost exact match to ToI’s Dragon’s Blood, the latter an incense that also has not been reviewed yet here yet. Both have that incredibly fruity, red dusting on charcoal aroma that seems to be a lot more stylized than what you might think of with the classic dragon’s blood resin. As a charcoal, the fruity aroma is quite a bit more intense than it is in some of ToI’s more gentle fruit scents, but at the same time this is probably what you would call a very user friendly scent even to those who may not be familiar with the usual arsenal of incense aromas. And perhaps not surprisingly there’s some level of spice content, for example cinnamon, that probably help to bolster the incense’s redder and firier qualities in order to help provide a bit more reason behind the name. It should be said that there really is no other incense quite like this unless you go into dipped incenses and those aren’t nearly as likely to have as pleasant of a perfume mix on the stick. And so if you’re looking to expand your collection’s range this is a good stick to have, but do keep in mind this is the kind of aroma that can get a bit cloying in too high quantities. It’s very much almost like a berry or fruit punch sort of aroma, not unlikely say opening a pack of powdered Kool Aid.

Vedic Lavender is a very close match with TOI’s Lavender Supreme. This is another one of those cases where you have a particular ingredient whose natural oil distillations can vary a little bit depending on the batch. Language can be a little difficult to capture the differences when the general style of an incense is more or less the same. But essentially the lavender oil mixes in both the Vedic and Supreme are very pleasant to my nose, certainly a step ahead of cheaper lavenders that often smell more like what you would get in bad, synthetic air fresheners (the low end TOI stick and cone both fall into this category). A decent lavender mix has a nice bit of complexity to it and is a little warmer and less sickly sweet, with some hints of the actual herb itself. I would guess, of course, that your affinity for a stick like this comes entirely from whether you like actual lavender itself, which I definitely do when it’s right. The Vedic I think actually probably leans a little bit more to reminding you its an oil than the TOI does, but both have a nice sort of freshness to them that really don’t have any off notes. Nonetheless it’s likely this may remind you a little of air freshener or cleaner products anyway since lavender is used so commonly in them.

And finally the Vintage Jasmine is super close to the TOI Jasmine Blossom, although I would descibe the AB as being a wee bit fruitier and the TOI being a little bit more dry flower in comparison. But other than that they are virtually the same stick and it would not surprise me if it’s just because the AB is a bit fresher. But I am finding myself increasingly enjoying this style of masala, it kind of feels a bit like a jasmine infused champa to some extent (no halmaddi though, just the sweetness in the oil mix) and it presents the floral in a beautiful way, one of the best I’ve experienced in a stick to be honest. Outside of the way Mermade weaves in jasmine into loose incenses, this is about as pleasant a jasmine experience as exists.

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