Dimension 5 / Highland X D5 V. 3, V. 6, V. 7

March 21, 2024 at 4:27 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Animal, Benzoin (Loban), Dimension 5, Highland, Hyraceum, Incense, Mike, Musk, Muskrat, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), United States)

One day in conversation within the last year I mentioned to Josh Matthews of Dimension 5 that I had some Tibetan incense powders including some older ones stored away. If I’m remembering this correctly, Josh expressed some curiosity over what he might be able to do with these powders and so I sent him samples of I think three or four of them, including the long-deleted Highland powder. Readers who have been around on ORS for a while remember that some of Essence of the Ages early finds from Tibet included both the Highland stick and powder. The stick was brilliant at first, mutated to something less brilliant (but still quite good) and then vanished. The powder was also brilliant and not only did I have most of a package of it but somewhere along the line Ross sent me his package as well. Ross had resealed his after maybe sampling it once or twice and I also never got around to heating/burning my own very often, but I did notice when I’d go back to sample that this powder aged incredibly slowly and was still quite viable even though I’d had it for 15 years or so. So I packaged a sample up with some others (I want to say Samye, Mindroling (both older batches), and Wara (bought from incense-traditions more recently) and sent them out to him.

After some time, the door creaked open, there was some rattling, clinking and then a billow of smoke, and Josh emerged none the worse for wear with four, I repeat, four incense stick variations he had worked on, combining the Highland incense powder with animalics, premium woods and other ingredients. As anyone who has experienced his incense knows, these were not haphazard formulas, they were carefully crafted to work with the notes of the Highland incense powder in all sorts of interesting, variant and ultimately incredible smelling ways. The results of getting samples of these meant that I soon sent him Ross’ much larger package, only holding back a bit of the pure powder, I think, from my original stash, mostly for reference. Amidst some of the recent marvels coming from his label, the new floral line and the kyaras, I then received a couple tubes of his experiments with the Wara powder which were also fabulous. Then, a bit later, the three Highland based blends that Josh wanted to offer to the public and that I’m going to review here, one of which is a slight revamp of the original V.3 I received, and the other two brand new. Think of these like Tibetan grades except there is no order in quality, absolutely all of them are truly brilliant. Anyway, hopefully you clicked on the above link to my original review of the Highland powder as a starter. I feel largely the same about the powder except to note that I doubt this would have stayed as viable if it did have a lot of extracts and oils, but for sure the creators blended it to last. I’ve often heard that some incenses are supposed to improve with aging and I’m thinking this could be one of them. Most sticks I’ve managed to try that have lasted that long have usually lost a great deal of their power, but I’ve never noticed much in the way of any difference in this powder over the span of time.

As a powder heavy in musk and spices, Josh used a number of different animal sourced musks to complement these. V. 3 takes the Highland incense powder, adds civet, muskrat, and hyraceum (these three animalics are in every incense in this review), as well as Vietnamese agarwood. All of the musks highlight those in the powder while the cherry-note fronted agarwood (and a fantastic one to boot) gives it all a really unique and lovely twist, creating a sort of sweetness and spice that expands the palate of the powder considerably, creating all sorts of new interactions. The animalics are particularly powerful in this one, giving their potent stamp on the nearby environment, heavy and memory impressive. In fact, after rotating this from V 7 during review, the potency of both the incense and the animalics themselves were particularly highlighted. The new ingredients bring the Highland powder up to a premium level, while the powder provides a plethora of notes for these ingredients to interact with. Of the original four I received, this is one of the incenses in Josh’s first test group, but I believe there were only slight refinements, as there wasn’t any need to make it much better than it already was. This Tibetan-Japanese hybrid, if you will, really charts out some interesting new territory in incense, a whole range of interactions and combinations not found commonly elsewhere. I’d even add that between its original and this version, I’ve sampled this over a half dozen times and it feels more impressive with each use. It’s almost like you wouldn’t necessarily think that the powder would match well with a sweeter aloeswood but then it does oh so well.

Highland X D5 V. 6 is quite a bit different and to use a Baieido comparison, it’s sort of like the Hakusui to the V 3’s Ogurayama (wood or stick). The ingredients listed include the Highland powder, along with both Kalimantan and Papua agarwood, which are then matched with cinnamon, clove and benzoin, and the three animalics. I noticed with this one that I was constantly reminded of other Japanese incenses, for sure it has the same sort of spice and wood mix to something like Tennendo’s Kuukai, but then in a different setting, it reminded me of the leather, male cologne, and stubble mix of Baieido’s Kai Un Koh. The difference is that the aloeswoods are excellent in this one, and so the mix frequently gives you some wonderful, charry, black resin notes that almost mutate due to the presence and power of the animalics. The panoply of combinates that arise from all these interactions is quite impressive, I was getting desert notes, wheat, fire, liquor, saltiness and a really great sort of mix with the turpentine/lacquer notes you get from the woods. It’s a very heady incense, maybe even subtly erotic due to the way the masculine notes meet the musks. The Highland powder plays all over as well subtly mixing with all of the added notes to either bring out aspects of the powder or match them with something complementary. Of the three incenses here this is the most complex and perhaps the wildest.

V. 7 takes the Highland powder and the same animalics as in the previous two Vs, but combines these with Mysore sandalwood and benzoin, which definitely changes the whole base compared to the previous incenses. The effect of using sandalwood rather than agarwood is that the latter sort of creates an edifice to build on while using fine Mysore powder strengthens the Highland powder’s foundation, as if it dares you to imagine a finer grade of sandalwood was used to create it originally. The difference in woods also makes you pay attention to the relationship these ingredients have with the three animalics. They’re not quite as sharply used on this one, more delicately placed, which feels appropriate without having the agarwood resins to highlight. Josh uses these animalics pretty liberally in these incenses. I don’t think any of them are overdone, but V. 7 may have been my favorite placement of them, as like the Mysore powder, they kind of easily substitute for the Highland Powder’s own muskier elements. So in a way this might actually be the closest one of these sticks gets to making an actual high-end Highland incense. I often get this sort of desert-like impression with sandalwood incenses as the good stuff can have some drier elements (especially when you think sandalwood still largely ages in its trees rather than buried underground) which sort of relate differently to the spices. So of all the versions I’ve tried, this one actually feels the closest to the powder itself in match, but don’t discount what even these quality ingredients can do to transform this. It was towards the very end of my appraisal that I started to notice how the benzoin sweetens this and at the same time I would get notes like dried peaches which added a real subtlety to the mix.

I do really want to stress that this sort of Japan meets Tibet style of hybridization is quite rare indeed. With all the descriptions given, I still can’t underline enough how fun and clever this project is and it may be just the start. There’s something really special about a lot of real Tibetan incenses, in terms of how wild and original they are, so creating a sort of partnership with the high-end world really brings a lot of amazing new smells and energies. If interested in purchasing, contact Josh at dimension5incense@gmail.com for pricing and information. Josh also talks about his incenses at www.instagram.com/dimension_5_incense.

Leave a Comment

Kathok Monastery / Holy Mountain, Mipham Gyatso Formula

March 12, 2024 at 4:00 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Benzoin (Loban), By Company, Camphor, Borneol, Cardamom, Incense, Kathok Monastery, Mike, Saffron, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.))

Nice to see a couple more incenses from a monastery that makes very distinctive and unique incenses. Previously ORS had covered both their regular Formula Incense and one called King of Incense, I was personally more inclined to the latter than the former, but with the new formulations, I will likely be running back to reevaluate. These two newer imports are certainly at least on par with those, if not quite a bit better, but I think what really strikes me is just how different their styles are. Kathok Monastery apparently doesn’t really do grades of similar styles, but instead throws four points on a graph that show some really intriguing differences.

For the Kathok Holy Mountain, noting the price and elegant container, I think one must consider it the Kathok Monastery line’s high end. It is a really, really deep premium incense with a combination of elements that deliver a top note that you can barely describe, it’s something so distinctive and ultimately conglomerate that you’re not likely to have experienced it elsewhere. While there are no ingredients listed, you can sense a pretty decent level of wood quality here and what feels like an intertwined saffron and musk mix that penetrates very deeply. There’s a lot of spice here but not quite in front, although at times the overall incense brings out cinnamon and clove notes a little stronger. Perhaps most prominently is this front scent feels solidly in the cedar/mesquite area, it’s something that is almost fundamental to the way this works as a whole, in fact I would be sure you’re comfortable with a bit of (tangy) barbeque in the mix. If I’m not mistaken this note also works a little interactively with some aloeswood on a tertiary level at times – it’s quite subtle when it does. Even more intriguing is once the incense penetrates the area for a good 15-20 minutes, I start to notice all sorts of shimmery side notes. After the fourth stick I moved it upstairs and was quite surprised how the scent altered to the area. I felt that maybe the cedar/mesquite note may have had more room to dissipate and the whole thing felt like it had much more balance. It is most certainly deluxe and more expensive than the usual Tibetan stick, but there’s so much going on in this incense and so many facets that I still feel like I’m working on it and, especially, still getting my head around the cedar-mesquite sort of front. If this kind of long education gets your interest then you absolutely want to check this out, there’s nothing quite like it. The more I burn it, the more I love it.

The Mipham Gyatso Formula is completely different, just opening up the box you can see the sort of thin, red colored stick that one might find as Holy Land or Nectar. This one does have an ingredient list, including “white and purple sandalwood, clove, saffron, borneol, agarwood, benzoin, [and] Wurfbainia vera.” According to Wikipedia, this last ingredient was the first plant species named by a woman (Elizabeth Blackwell) and appears to be a type of cardamom. So undoubtedly a nice list of goodies here. The musk is really powerful on this one, huge even on the fresh stick (just slide the sticks out from the package to get this). Although not listed there seems to be a really neat floral thread throughout that you might find in Holy Land (I believe this is close to what IT is calling slightly sweet tones), but somewhat different in composition as well. I think all of the ingredients listed are quite clear, the musk sort of forms a backdrop for that mix of clove and saffron. The borneol is particularly strong here which I really love and may also be partly responsible for the sweetness. So the way all these different elements mix together is nearly perfect for my particular tastes, it almost feels like a mild stick with a loud effect if that makes some sort of paradoxical sense. And where Holy Mountain is up in a more premium price range and has a massive learning curve, this is quite accessible and about $11 a box which I think is a very, very good deal for the type of scent this is. I can imagine this will show up on some future top 10 lists, it’s really that good, it’s a little like a more floral take on the Nectar.

So we’re up to four Kathok monastery incenses and all of them really couldn’t be far enough away from each other in scent and none of them have instantly identifiable aromas. The composition of every single one really highlights the creativity at work here and how some of these old recipes can really grab at the imagination. Both of these, I think, are worth your time and attention.

Leave a Comment

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!

Leave a Comment

Epika Earth / Artisan / Ataraxia, Celestial Opium, Jaz Mocha, Celebration of Life (dhoop)

February 14, 2024 at 8:29 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Agave, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Birch, Cedar, Chocolate, Coffee, Copal, Cream, Epika Earth, Frankincense, Guaic, Helichrysum, Incense, Jasmine, Labdanum, Mike, Myrrh, Oakmoss (Lichen), Orange Blossom, Patchouli, Rock Rose, Rose, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, United States, Vanilla)

Epika Earth / Rare Terra

The second installment of Epika Earth incenses are a group of incenses labelled Artisan, three sticks and one incense in “dhoop” form. Based on a different incense on the line, Epika Earth describe these: “Our artisan blends are made entirely with natural ingredients that include essential oils, extracts, resinoids, woods and herbs. While creating the extracts, essential oils and crafting our artisan blends we use our own proprietary methods to protect and maximize the aroma of the ingredients in order to bring you the pure scents of earth in incense form.”

Ataraxia makes me consider how I may have received it without first trying some of the other sticks in the Epika Earth catalog to compare it to as it has some of the same ingredients and smells a bit similar to the Bacchus I reviewed last installment. However, I haven’t really start noticing the complexities of these incenses until the third or fourth stick so it’s fairly essential to give them a bit of time. Ataraxia includes birch, styrax, labdanum, benzoin, golden copal, white copal, sandalwood, aloeswood, myrrh, patchouli, agave and beet juice (for color). The description of notes on the Ataraxia page also describe the aroma of the incense as the “Complex and continuously evolving scent of amber, woody, fruity, dry musk, leathery, sweet, birch, slight ozone and animalic.” I definitely don’t have too much issue with this description as all of these notes revolve out of the burn, and what you pick up depends on what you’re paying attention to at any given moment during the burn. It should be noted that while this incense includes several ingredients that really gave a concoction-like feel to Bacchus (something that is fairly common when most of the ingredients are coming from oils), Ataraxia feels like a somewhat drier blend even though you can still sense the resinous mix of styrax, labdanum, copal and myrrh as it moves to what I’d call the fruity note (perhaps more fruit than fruit juice maybe). But there’s certainly a woody layer where the sandalwood and aloeswood live, and I’d imagine that’s where some of the dryness comes from, although I have to note that I’m not always getting these during the burn. The patchouli for example, can come out pretty strongly at times and even the agave is pretty noticeable. So overall it’s a really interesting and dynamic incense. I would imagine if you were shopping that you might not need both Ataraxia and Bacchus as they both hit similar sort of autumnal or harvest qualities, but either one of them is a good pick.

Celestial Opium is described as a “sweet mix of coffee, vanilla, cream, orange blossom, cedarwood, and patchouli.” With that description and thinking of previous opium themed incenses, it’s hard to tell if the name is supposed to be evoking poppies, perfumes or if it’s something of a metaphor, but I might put it closer to the perfume. The incense base reminds me a little of the Blue Ice Pine, and although the top note is obviously quite a bit different, I’m wondering if they share a base that’s taking up some of the aromatic range, or if it’s perhaps a lighter cedarwood oil that’s creating the similarity. Perhaps part of the fun of these incenses is being given the notes and trying to pick them out because there’s never one I don’t sense in there, although the coffee seems quite a background and not as forefront while I get the patchouli and orange blossom a lot more in front. Sometimes the pitfall of oils mixes like this is they can combine in a way that can negate the distinctions of the ingredients. The vanilla and the cream, for example, are there but often you have to really get close to the stick to sense them and both seem to weave in and out of the blend. There’s also an effect similar to incenses like Nippon Kodo’s Aqua which I usually attribute to cyclamen, it’s a sort of watery sort of floral, but as it’s not in the ingredients list it’s hard to estimate where this is coming from. All of these elements give this as a sort of composite feel which rarely resolves to a whole, but when it does it’s perhaps at its most impressive.

Jaz Mocha is an aged incense, apparently two years in a climate-controlled room, no less, and was started in September 2020. The ingredients include dark chocolate, honey jasmine sambac, sandalwood, guaicwood, oakmoss, tolu balsam and copal. Similarly with Cocoa Pods, the chocolate scent can take a bit to come out of an Epika Earth incense but when it does it’s really worth it. Aging also seems to do this incense favors, at the very least it really crystallizes most of the listed ingredients to where they can come out in the mix quite succinctly. This combination feels quite a bit different to the incenses I’ve reviewed so far and I think the presence of honey jasmine sambac and the balsam in particular move this off into a pretty original realm. It’s not a mocha scent in the most literal fashion, it’s more dressed up to smell even more delicious and possibly more like a tribute to both a setting and the drink (the floral quality in particular moves this out of the range of the name really). One thing I really noticed with this one is it smells different depending on where you are in the room and if you walk out and back in it can be incredibly arresting. Similarly to the Ataraxia and Bacchus, there’s some overlapping territory with Jaz Mocha and Cocoa Pods, but in this case the ingredients used in Jaz Mocha push the scent into different areas. The wood oils give it a sense of dryness and an almost solemn like regality to it that continuously reminds me of the southwest, even when the ingredients aren’t quite in that milieu. The sandalwood actually occasionally pops out at you which is wonderful. I might even recommend this as an example of essential oil blendings skills as it feels so carefully concocted.

Celebration of Life is a name used on both a stick and on a dhoop but I’m just going to tackle the dhoop version of this incense on this installment, after all it was these special sort of non-dipped blends that got my attention first (they are thematically similar, but have some differences). So Epika Earth originally forgot to put this in my original order. This happens sometimes and they fulfilled it immediately, and I wouldn’t mention it except that it was sent separately and the dhoops are so damp and fragile that they just didn’t really survive the trip in the sort of condition you can see in the Epika Earth picture even when padded up for protection (and they not only crumbled for this picture but once again over my own handling after this picture). So keep that in mind, it’s not the sort of thing that really bothers me when said dhoop is putting out enough smoke that burning a full length of one of these is probably a bit of an overkill unless you’re scenting a large space. So this is very much a situation like the Inspirecense last installment where it turns out that a small piece and heating is probably the preferable method, although I think the Celebration of Life burns a bit better/smoother when lit, so the difference is much smaller. The ingredients are explained as “We started with the finest sandalwood and agarwood; then we layer in high quality resins (frankincense, myrrh), resinoids (rock rose, styrax, etc), essential oils (Epika Sacred Sandalwood blend) and infuse with organic cinnamon, organic rose pedals and organic helichrysum flowers with gold copal woven in between.” Talk about winning you over with a description! This is yet another complex wonder full of woodiness and spiciness, with a real earthiness to the blend. It is a bit sweeter and richer on a heater – I got a ton of brown sugar and cinnamon on the heat which is the kind of mix that wins me over every time. It reminds me a little of a sweet and spicy oatmeal with some fruit mixed in. The dhoops are very soft and easily crumbled into the type of foil containers used with the Golden Lotus heater, so in the end the fragility doesn’t matter all too much, and I’d imagine burning one at its original length would be quite smoky. In the end this one’s merits outlive the caveats.

5 Comments

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…

2 Comments

Mermade Magickal Arts / Demeter’s Bakery, Pomander, Winter Wreath + Espirit de la Nature / The Light Mothers

January 3, 2024 at 2:49 pm (Anise, Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Bitter Orange (Neroli), Black Currant, Camphor, Borneol, Canada, Carnation, Cedar, Copal, Esprit de la Nature, Fir, Frankincense, Galbanum, Hay, Incense, Juniper, Labdanum, Larch, Massoia Bark, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Orange, Ornifolia, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Sweetgrass, United States, Vanilla)

So first of all, Happy New Year to all, this is the first review of 2024. I am happy to report that I got a lot of review work done and so expect to see reviews every third day until sometime in February. Thanks also to Katlyn Breene of Mermade Magickal Arts who has always been a big supporter of ORS, this will hopefully be the first of two reviews of her recent incenses, which are as good as they always are, if not better.

I can’t really imagine a holiday/Winter Solstice season without the incenses of Mermade Magickal Arts,, Katlyn’s wintery blends have been among my favorite heatable incenses for the last decade or two, in fact if you look at the reviews index you’ll see a whole lot of them have gone by. Some like Wild Wood are now perennials, if not classics. While you can get greenness in stick incense, I’m not sure you can ever get it in the sort of resolution where different kinds of evergreens – pine, spruce, fir, juniper etc – actually contour the whole palette of an incense. And even beyond these green wonders, Katlyn has experimented nearly every year coming up with all sorts of treats in the winter tradition. And like with my review on Dimension 5, I really should mention that I don’t think Mermade has steered off of making great incenses ever since I first discovered them, before I even started ORS, so if you’re picking up a bias, then yeah I will gladly own it, in fact I’d suggest if you’ve tried any of her incenses you may have also picked it up too. Katlyn is the premiere artist of these sorts of incenses in the US and this group is another bunch of quality scents. In fact what really impressed me this time was how long lasting they were. I accidentally left my heater on high with Winter Wreath sitting on it overnight and I swear it was still emitting a great scent the next morning, so these are also incredibly long-lasting scents.

But before we get to the winter incenses, let’s pop back to the autumn for Mermade’s Demeter’s Bakery. As soon as I had this heating, I started getting a sense of nostalgia about the scent. Over time I realized that it was reminding me in some sense of an old Nu Essence blend that I think was the Pluto. I scrambled back through our archives and realized Ross had reviewed this one many moons ago; however, I think I only matched up the benzoin as being overlapping. But the thing is, the longer you heat Demeter’s Bakery, the more it sort of transforms and modulates over time and so it even began to move past this later in the heat. The incense has a huge, yummy list of goodies in it: Omani black frankincense, Kua myrrh, Yemeni myrrh, ornifolia resin, massoia bark, anise seeds, Saigon cinnamon, benzoin, hay absolute, vanilla, Peru balsam, and black currant absolute. Once I gave this a second heat at the suggested temperature of about 230C, I noticed once again that similarity to Pluto, but where it felt like that aroma was created a bit by the sandalwood and bitter almond, here it’s much harder to call except that this is very much like a heated bakery good all the way through with that bit of yeast to get the bread to rise. Of course part of this is all the spices and the vanilla, but it seems almost facile to just talk about the cinnamon when there is so much going on at the spice level here, it’s like a rainbow of scent. But that sugar spice smell is right at the center of this and makes it oh so friendly. It’s funny with incense I often don’t even think of how important baked good are to our olfactory senses, how important cooking memories are to our olfactory experience. What’s clever about this one is it seems to start with those memories but then runs in a whole new direction with them. The second phase of the heat, feels like some of the moistness of the scent gives way to a more austere dry quality almost as if your baked good is finishing up. I think some of this is dependent on how much resin is in the heater cup and much later in the heat when its exhausted, some of the frankincense and myrrh remains give it a different quality as well. All in all this is some really fine work and somewhat different for Mermade as well.

I have probably brought this up before (I seem to remember doing so recently with the Temple of Incense Festive Kiss which is certainly in the same spirit) but one of my early memories was a recipe my mom made called “spiced tea.” It was a very 70s sort of thing with Tang powder, Lipton tea and spices. It had loads of sugar and smelled amazing so of course I loved it. Mermade’s Pomander is an almost 100% accurate representation of how I remember it smelling so this one moved pretty quickly to one of my very favorite incenses this year. In an environment where the most prized scents are rare woods or ingredients it’s always good to know that something a lot more conventional can do the trick as well. However the trick to this is that it’s not created conventionally but with a whole lot of artistic skill to make sure this is a real delight. If I have the list right, I read the ingredients as Carmel benzoin; labdanum absolute; Peru balsam; aromatic winter spices; Saigon cinnamon; clove; carnation absolute; bitter orange essential oil and orange zest; green, honey and silver frankincense; kua crimson; Yemeni myrrh; Mysore sandalwood; styrax liquidambar; and vanilla. What I love about all of this is just how it all coalesces into a simple but powerful spiced orange incense. It is just utterly perfect and I can’t recommend it more highly.

Winter Wreath is another classic winter green mix, Katlyn has gotten so good at these over the last couple of decades that I don’t expect anything less than top notch. This mix seems to have a bit of an herbal component to it that mixes it up a bit (it may just be some of the cedar touches), but it just ends up enhancing the increasingly high resolution mix of the usual wonderful ingredients: fir balsam resin and needles, Aleppo and Sweet Pinon pine, arbor vitae (Thuja cedar) and red cedar – you can nearly pick each one out in the mix, an amazing thing with evergreens all this close in family. These scents are all magnified by the resin mix of copal blanco, Oman frankincense sacra, and kua myrrh in the usual manner, giving that real depth to the top green scents. One thing I love about this resin mix is a lot of lime is coming out of the bottom which I assume is probably the quality of the copal blanco in the mix. It makes me think back to some of the older winter blends in the sense that this quality has shown up before, but this is probably one of the first times I’ve really noticed it, it’s such a powerful note that I’m reminded of key lime pie. It blends absolutely perfectly with all the wonderful evergreen notes as well. The myrrh seems to be more in the mix later in the heat, transmuting the blend into something different, almost wistful and poignant. It’s hard to say more, if you’re a long time customer of Katlyn’s then you probably know this kind of thing very well and if you aren’t it’s a perfect way in. Like I mentioned earlier, this a blend that heats for ages too, I can imagine getting at least 12 hours of a heat if you fill a foil container about half full or so.

And not terribly far from Winter Wreath is the Espirit de la Nature offering The Light Mothers, an incense offered as a pair with The Dark Mothers, both presenting different winter energies for the season. Unfortunately these two sold out right before I posted this, but I’m leaving the review for posterity (and a reminder that EdlN incenses often go really fast at Mermade!) This incense has a really sizeable list of ingredients including balsam fir resin, larch wood, juniper berries, cedarwood, larch needles, balsam fir needles, cedarwood, mugwort, sweetgrass, tree mosses, pinyon pine resin, pinus sylvestris resin, mastic resin, galbanum resin, camphor flakes, amanita muscaria mushrooms, as well as extracts of balsam fir, juniper berry, and cedar. As you can tell in the picture these come as pieces, although it looks like the mushrooms are in there as larger chunks. Those versed in Bonnie’s intensely personalized style of incense will be familiar with her careful and gentle approach. But while all of her creations are really subtle and widely resonant, this one is a bit louder in the mix, which is good for my oversaturated olfactory organs. While this incense shares some ingredients with Winter Wreath, it definitely goes in a different direction without that resinous backdrop, creating a similar aromatic depth with the extracts. To the fore are the larch ingredients and this might be only something I got by trying a couple of EdlN’s earlier blends with this magic scent involved, but it’s an unforgettable scent, one I almost immediately purchase anything with it in it. As always even this wide variety of ingredients can usually be detected with some guided sniffing, I’m always impressed with the way Bonnie puts so many voices together until it feels steered by one greater entity. Utterly brilliant work.

Leave a Comment

Temple of Incense / Bulgarian Rose & Oudh, Festive Kiss, Portobello, Tulsi

November 28, 2023 at 11:42 am (Amber, Bayberry, Benzoin (Loban), Bergamot, Geranium, Halmaddi / Mattipal, Incense, India, Mike, Musk, Oakmoss (Lichen), Orange, Oud, Pine / Pinon, Rose, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Temple of Incense, Vanilla)

Please note that if you are new to ORS, we have done a wide-ranging number of reviews on the absolutely fabulous Temple of Incense line, all of which can be found by either clicking on the Temple of Incense link under Incense>India or checking out Incense Reviews Index. Please note that Temple of Incense has provided ORS readers with a 10% off coupon since February 2022 by using the code OLFACTORY. The current review is a bit of a catch up as for the most part the Temple of Incense line has remained largely stable. These four are among the newest of their line.

The Aydees announced their new Bulgarian Rose & Oudh incense recently, and if we can encourage the well from which great ideas come from, then we’d have to encourage them for more pairings like this one, it’s quite frankly one of the most stunning incenses I’ve encountered not only in their catalog but outside of it. And like a lot of good things it comes from a simple pairing of two notes both well-famed in the incense community, Bulgarian rose absolute and oudh (they also mark notes of oakmoss, sandawood, amber and geranium, all of which I imagine would make two good things go a long way). It is a HUGELY brash and powerful incense and their suggestion to burn half a stick at a time is a good one. To explain this better, I could burn a stick of this in the evening, wake up, go downstairs, do a bunch of things and go back up in the early morning to still smell the main note as it hovers in the room many hours later. This would be a bad thing if it wasn’t such a good incense, but it is a tremendous thing for an incense as well-crafted as this one. It’s difficult to go much farther than to say it really is an equal combination of these notes, but in an era where both of these ingredients are expensive, and often too expensive for incense, the way the creators managed to still get some great and real smelling rose top notes out of the mix, not to mention a deep oudh base, should be congratulated. It will be sticks and sticks before I can really suss out the complexities here, but the main combination is absolutely top notch. An absolute classic, this one!

Festive Kiss is an essential oil blend on charcoal (I’d imagine the incense in the photos at the TOI link must have been the first vintage, what I have here does not look dusted) that Temple of Incense provides for the holidays and it’s a wonderful, cheery and perhaps surprisingly British-themed incense that certainly brings some nostalgia back for me from living there in the 70s. The list of ingredients is pine, cinnamon, orange, bergamot, and bayberry. The cinnamon and orange in the middle are a combination I have loved since a child in spiced tea, the pine gives everything a yuletide grounding, but I think it’s the bayberry here that gives this a nicely original twist on this sort of holiday scent. I asked the rhetorical question in one of the articles I wrote recently about which ingredients tend to do well in a charcoal base, and well here’s one of the answers right here. This is a lovely treat for the holidays and just from an incense perspective it’s completely unlike almost anything you have tried before.

Portobello is the Temple of Incense import of the great Meena Supreme. I have probably sampled a half dozen of these incenses and they all vary just a little bit (and some more than a little bit) but I am always particularly happy when you can get Meena Supreme out of those old carboard boxes and weak inner wrappers and into something a bit more protective that will hold the aroma longer. So of all the variants I’ve tried this is probably the best by probably the slightest of hairs, there is a bit of a thickness in the middle of the aroma that makes it a bit richer than I usually experience (as always the question here is just how fresh it is and based on this batch everything feels at a peak). Oh and hey we get a nice list of ingredients here, halmaddi, a vanillin base, gum benzoin and a touch of musk. It’s something of a simple list of things that come together to create a classic incense for sure, certainly the base itself is something that grounds several of the Meena line. If you haven’t tried the Meena Supreme, I highly recommend it, it has an aroma that you won’t find outside the company (well at least done properly), it has something of an almost creamy sort of base, with something of a light feel contrasted by a lot of complex notes in the middle. It’s absolutely one of a kind, and there’s no better place to start than with the Portobello.

I nearly went to publication with the above three, but the arrival of a couple sticks of Tulsi in my last package from TOI was a nice (eventual) reminder that this one was released a year or so ago right after Stephen was wrapping up the catalog. But it is absolutely one I wanted to add to our reviews as it’s a brilliant incense, easily in the line’s top 10 or 20. Tulsi is basically “Holy Basil,” and in a lot of incenses I’ve tried that claim to use it, it’s the herbal side of the basil that is usually accentuated. However, this incense sweetens it up in an absolutely beautiful and extremely arresting and user-friendly way that I’d imagine you’d never expect. I loved it the first time I tried it and have ever since (I’ve tried several variations of it and the more halmaddi the better). It has this sort of fruity-green middle (part of this is sort of like fresh kiwi fruit), quite attractive and friendly with the herbiness just being a slight component of this. It is in no way a pesto sort of basil scent and it made me wonder if the holy basil essential oil went in the direction of the major notes or if the creators moved it in this direction with other ingredients. Needless to say this one is brilliant, and well worth picking up, it’s certainly an incense that will go on my list to reorder when I’m close to running out.

So, overall I can enthusiastically recommend all four of these scents the next time you visit Temple of Incense. To wrap up here I also want to bring attention to the Temple of Incense Three Kings sampler, this is a nice way to sample the line’s Nag Champa Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all of which have been previously reviewed here, it’s nicely holiday themed. I see that it’s not the only sampler that TOI have added since I last visited, and they have also added quite a few incense and holder combos that should be of interest as well. You can scan their list of goodies here and elsewhere on the site for more information.

Leave a Comment

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!

Leave a Comment

Pushkar Temple Incense / 100g / Gugal, Hari Dhoop, Green Loban, Pink Loban

November 19, 2023 at 11:37 am (Benzoin (Loban), Guggul, India, Loban, Mike, Pushkar Temple Incense)

According to Pilgrims Fair Trade (PFT), Pushkar Temple (PT) Incense is a “Producer of natural traditional Indian [incense] for prayer, pooja and meditation from the Holy city of Pushkar, Rajasthan.” As such it’s something of a separate line compared to most of the incenses coming out of Mumbai and Bangladore. Pushkar Temple Incense exports a healthy range of different incenses and it looks like they’re sold by a number of different vendors; however, the largest range appears to be sold by PFT and so the links will be going to the store I bought it from, PFT’s Etsy shop. Note they also sell the same incenses through their website as well as on ebay but PFT moved remaining stock to the Etsy in anticipation of this review as the link addresses change when they are out of stock. One other seller, I noticed, repackages them under their own names, which probably will add some confusion to the mix. I will just note that there probably are roughly 30-40 incenses in the PT catalog and at the end of the series, I may check in to see if I missed anything and remedy what we’re missing later. I ordered from PFT twice and the service was exemplary both times. Do note that PFT also regularly restock so it’s worth checking back if something that sounds interesting is out of stock (I will let readers know they’re back as well).

First of all we’re going to get a few incenses out of the way that aren’t necessarily my favorites in the catalog, but please note that there are a lot of very extraordinary and high quality incenses in the PT catalog and even an incense or two in this installment are better representations of their aromas than you’re likely to find elsewhere and reviews of all of these are coming in future installments. So it’s always good to pay attention to ingredients that I am just naturally not all that fond of no matter how well they’re done, you might very well like some of these better. I am having to divvy them up in groups and for the 100g batches which I will start with, they roughly split up as floras, and two more or less miscellaneous groups, of which we’re going to do the smaller and lesser group first. Keep in mind that, postage aside, 100g of the first incense I will talk about is showing the day before publishing as $6.48 for 100g which is a tremendous price even when you include international postage. The 50g incenses roughly fall in the same price range so with an exception or two they tend to contain the line’s more premium incenses. These I will run in groups after the 100gs and I believe there should be about six installments at 4-5 incenses apieces on those. So let’s get started, there’s a lot to go through!

Gugal is a gum that is often used in place of myrrh (in fact my initial notes stated that this was like the Pushkar version of AB’s King of Myrrh, but it’s not that sort of quality). Gugal (or guggal sometimes) always struck me as mediocre whether it’s the pure resin itself or any stick created from it (and does sort of smell like cheap myrrh). However, the bitterness in this stick does not lie at the fault of the resin itself, which is largely unremarkable, it smells to me that there’s been some sort of non-sandalwood wood content to base the incense and perhaps a distillation of the resin into a perfume. That is, it’s not only bitter but there’s some sort of sour quality as well. You will find from many other PT incenses that most of their incenses are never this harsh, so it feels like a bit of an anomaly. This does relate to the lobans a paragraph down, as gugal is sometimes a presence in those as well.

Hari Dhoop is a very difficult incense to parse simply as it isn’t a dhoop in the most traditional sense (these often don’t have bamboo cores and are shaped like logs). It may be an attempt to do something similar in a stick form and it does present a perfume that sort of reminds me of a dhoop or two, but the perfume is also kind of sour and a little off-putting. It’s a lightly dusted charcoal that starts with a sort of powdery kind of background that is not particularly uncommon in this format and then seems to build something sweet on that but it’s almost more like what happens if you burn your chocolate chip cookies in the oven. In my initial notes, I found that this burnt smell may be due to actual floral material combusting, but it’s hard to know for sure without knowing the ingredients. Incenses like this always make you question whether or not this is an aroma that goes over much better in the east, but it’s hard to recommend simply because a continued burn over the stick just doesn’t sit well. Like the Gugal it becomes abrasive over time.

I tend to feel the same about a lot of Loban incenses, but the two here are actually somewhat refined and feel more perfume based rather than being dominated by that sort of gravel-like middle that cheaper lobans have. These types of sticks are often built from cheap benzoin, guggal, frankincense or other resins and often resemble the least premium of catholic church resins.

I bought the green-tipped Loban on my first major batch order from PFT and the pink seemed to be added a bit later, ultimately both may be too close in aroma to be particularly distinguishable. The green tipped is called Green Loban on the PFT Etsy site but just Loban on the PT packaging. It is actually quite refined for a loban, having a level of oil in the middle that is like very passable tree resins. There still is some level of that sort of low quality frakincense gravel smell on the outside, but in a way, a small quantity of this still kind of slots it nicely as a loban (the absolute finest loban I have ever tried is the premium in the cylindrical packaging at Vedic Vaani which actually doesn’t have any gravel of the sort). I would suspect, despite my reservations, that lobans are still popular enough to show up in so many catalogs, so people might like this better than I do. (I’ll note that I see ads for like 1000g batches of lobans, so they are not unpopular, even in the west apparently.) Anyway, this Green Loban seems to find itself in an acceptable middle, and there are almost foresty or pine like notes at the very tippy top that will likely inspire me to hang onto this batch for a while. But as a loban it can’t completely avoid what are harsher notes, some level of bitterness you get from inferior resin, a sort of astringency and the ever-present smell of heated rock. These aspects are just not as obtrusive as they often can be, which is certain a plus.

The Pink Loban is a bit milder, a bit richer, and definitely less harsh. but it’s still close enough to the Green Loban that you really only need one. I’d pick this one because the heated rock/gravel tones have largely been refined out and it has a little more inner breadth to it. There are even some sweeter undertones, implying that oils are taking even more of the aromatic burden from resins. It sort of proffers the question which is how much of the cheaper resin bitter element can vanish before an incense is no longer a loban? Needless to say though, this one may have been discontinued and there is only one left as I write this, so its uncertain if it will be available again. It’s certainly one of the better lobans I have tried.

Stick with me, it gets even better from here…

2 Comments

Dimension 5 / Voyager (new)

August 23, 2023 at 10:05 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Benzoin (Loban), Camphor, Borneol, Dimension 5, Frankincense, Incense, Mike, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), United States)

For lack of a better definition, I find it fascinating that “boutique” smaller shop incense creators are not only working on new scents but improving or altering old scents. Voyager was reviewed here in late 2021, but I know Josh Matthews’ incenses can often still be on the lab bench if he feels there’s any possibility of making something better. This incense is essentially a Voyager upgrade, although I am going to review this one before looking at the old notes…

First of all, Josh has explained to me that there’s a choice in the creation between the amount of binder in a stick and the choice of the more intense scent when there is less of this binder. In that sense, this is probably as far over to the intense scent side, leaving the sticks extremely fragile (more so than other comparable D5 sticks). Like just now I lit a fragment and as I held it the top half that was burning fell off! So keep that in mind, although I will say at this level you definitely do not get much in the way, if at all, of binder materials in the aroma. It is de-luxe. This new version of Voyager is thus a very pure scent and it also burns quite fast. First of all what I notice in this is this sort of an apple juice or apple cider type of scent which I think is largely due to the mix of woods as well as the cinnamon in the mix. So even before looking at my old review I am sensing something quite familiar somewhere in my scent memory. Now if I remember correctly, I don’t believe the original has this strength which brings out more of the sort of lacquer like qualities you get in better aloeswood. They are definitely being coaxed out here a bit more. It feels as well like the frankincense and camphor both merge nicely into mix, the camphor is actually on the edges of this in the best way. As the burn deepens, the aloeswood qualities really come out to the fore, giving a richness to the overall aroma. I might add too that I had to step out of my place for ten minutes, when I came back the area around my burner was still quite resonant of the scent of the incense, there’s no question there’s some level of strength going on in this.

My take compared to my previously linked review is that the original largely applies, but it feels like there’s been a substantial agarwood bump, if not in quantity than surely in quality. The resemblances to Japanese frankincense incenses didn’t pop to my mind reviewing it this time, but I definitely find them quite valid still, although this, of course, is in a much more woody and spicy direction. Overall, like all of D5’s incenses, this is still a very high quality, incredibly intense scent blast and recommended. If interested, you contact Josh at dimension5incense@gmail.com for pricing and information, and I will also mention that while Mermade Magickal Arts already carries parts of the line sometimes, they have a tendency to go fast.

Leave a Comment

« Older entries