So third in a series of recent Baieido incenses is somewhere between the new review and revisit review of the last two in that I’ve had rolls of both of these incenses before but not the long ones. And I wondered just how much have these incenses changes given they’re both created from all natural ingredients and no perfume oils. The first thing I thought was is this true, but unfortunately we don’t have David Oller around anymore to check in with him. Because my thoughts with both of these was wondering if maybe they were using just a little bit now?
If I was to name one of the great affordable incenses in Japanese incense, I would easily name the great Kobunboku. In many ways this could be the archetypal “plum blossom” incense. Baieido have always included a really wonderful sandalwood to balance the mix but it still has a distinct and gentle plum blossom scent without drifting into anything harsh or cheap smelling. These plum blossom incenses are a hallmark of Japanese incense and many of them also go right up the price range when they’re mixed with aloeswood. Now this long stick version does remind me very much of the old shorter stick bundle (or two) I went through years ago. It often struck me that I enjoyed that incense as much as any of the aloeswood blends in Baieido’s ready for market traditional line. It does seem a bit different to me now, which is to be expected with ingredients drift, but there’s also a feeling that the bouquet is a bit stronger than it used to be. Baieido incenses have always been the sort that smelling the fresh stick without burning means you can’t really smell much and that still seems to be fairly true, so I can’t be certain if the company is using oils now or if perhaps this is just a lot fresher than I remember. But it at least invoked the question for me. Anyway this is described as a mix of sandalwood, aloeswood and herbs, but I would guess the aloeswood note is very faint and used more as coloring in the base. And that’s entirely because this range moves up in price when there’s more in the mix. And while this is technically a “blossom” incense and not a fruit incense, I really like that there is a distinct scent of plums on top in a sort of floral way that doesn’t feel cheap or artificial. Anyway I think this is an incense that you want to check out if you are exploring Japanese incense as it remains a classic at its price point.
Tokusen Kobunboku is a good example of a plum blossom incense that bumps up the aloeswood. In doing this that top fruity-floral plum aroma drops a bit backward into the wood mix without entirely disappearing, but at least to my nose it creates a very big change between its aroma and the regular Kobunboku even if some of the similarities are still there. Now I had a bit of the same feeling that it was stronger when I lit up a stick of the long stick version after purchasing a box, but now that I have sit with this a bit the afternoon I wrote this, it feels very much on par with what I remember. And even if there is some aloeswood tang to it that has moved in front, I still feel this has quite a bit of good sandalwood in the mix. This woodiness also brings out the spices a little more, as if to accentuate that element in the sandalwood.
So it appears both the regular and excellent Kobunboku are still in good health, which is fortunate as Baieido are really well knowing for making price-efficient incenses that still give you plenty to meditate on and enjoy. They’re really good examples of blends actually and while you can discuss the idea of how much aloeswood and sandalwood are in these, there are a lot of spice and herbal notes that make the overall scent that much more fascinating. If you haven’t checked these out, I highly recommend both. And be sure to check out the entire Baieido catalog at Japan Incense as there are some even more price conscious choices available to sample these. Even if you’re paying a little more, to my nose the quality is much higher here for low end incenses than you’d find in Shoyeido and Nippon Kodo catalogs.
So I had meant to sweep up these Bosen scents. I think for the most part ORS has covered many of this Taiwan-based line’s incenses through the years but occasionally they have added a new (ish) one like the 
This one’s a real treat from my perspective and the company appears to have matched the ambergris with a decent level aloeswood so you can equally experience the notes of the wood as well as the salty goodness of 
With the assistance of a reader, I made a 24-incense order of Gokula incense earlier in the year, basically all of the ones I was informed were not sourced by the Madhavadas family as these often overlap with other companies like Pure Incense. So these are divided into four reviews of six incenses each. My order arrived somewhere in the middle of several early orders to Vedic Vaani which largely eclipsed my entire incense year and while I went through all of the Gokulas, it felt like a good idea to sample and then let them rest a bit and come back to them with a fresh nose. With some exceptions in either direction, Gokula import a lot of decent scents and I might generally rate this half of the line as being on par with some of the Prabhuji’s Gifts incenses. All of these came in 20g packages although I do believe 250g bundles are also available. In my experience Gokula scents are either dusted charcoals almost entirely made from oil mixes or a step into masalas with occasional incenses being a bit softer to the touch.
So up front we’ll start with a trio of aloeswood/agarwood incenses. The 
On the fresh 
I will admit that I am at a place in incense life where jasmine incenses are getting on my nerves, no matter how good they are, so I may not be the best judge of 
With 
Anyone who is an afficianado of aloeswood knows that the stocks of the premium woods have been slowly shrinking over the years. The fact that the best of these stocks came from woods buried underground in deep jungles, allowing the fungus that turns aloeswood into the aromatic treasure that it is, not to mention the wood’s popularity, has essentially made it close to impossible for Japanese companies who deplete their stocks to make the same incenses. The response to this has been either to discontinue the incenses, permanently or temporarily, or use lesser quality woods. It is perhaps somewhat surprising that Baieido, a company well known among aficionados for using the least amount of oils or perfumes in their natural sticks, would choose the latter approach. Simply because it means Baieido, of all the great Japanese companies, has taken the biggest hits in quality in the last decade or so. And some of the evidence comes from the five aloeswood incenses in this assortment set, a set bought last year. ORS reviewed all five incenses in this line by Ross 
And this is why the 
So how does the Thai wood stack up? Honestly, the 
So after such a hoary, dense treat as the Ho Ryu, the Cambodian aloeswood 
From my experience 
Finally there is the great kyara incense 
Baieido started their Ensei series many years ago with five different aromas and looking in the index I see 
And so they burn fast, real fast. 
Initially, I found 
Finally, there’s the 
Seijudo are mostly known in the US for their very expensive aloeswood to kyara line that seems largely made from charcoal and expensive oils/perfumes rather than woods (much older reviews of these are in the Reviews Index link on the left and the few I’ve tried in last year or so were still about the same as I remembered them). The high ends of these incenses were probably comparable with Shoyeido’s now deleted kyara trio, so given that we are losing a lot of these high enders to aloeswood depletion it’s a bit surprising you can still purchase these. So if you were thinking about trying something deluxe now’s the time to do it (for example we just lost the top three Kourindo incenses to shortages). I can’t imagine most of these are going to last forever. However, these two larger box Kotonoha incenses (120 sticks) present both sandalwood and aloeswood incenses in a much more traditional form and accessible price (the remainder of the catalog available in the US seems to be low smoke incenses).
So where does the 
The 
So here’s one of those “double roll” packages of Tibetan incense, filed at incense-traditions.ca under their therapeutic and relaxation category. It’s described as “an excellent therapeutic incense containing a lovely blend of fragrant plants such as eaglewood, sandalwood and nutmeg.” First of all, like why don’t we just get rid of agarwood and aloeswood and start calling it eaglewood? Isn’t that a much cooler name? Diversions aside though, finding this wood in relaxing or healing incenses from Tibet seems to be a very common sort of thing. The nutmeg addition, though, seems quite a bit more in front than it usually does and in many ways sort of makes this incense. It doesn’t quite add that same sort of spice note you’d find when cinnamon and clove are more forward in the incense but you can still sense the nutmeg quite clearly as something that tops the mix of the two woods and gives it its own aromatic nudge. And just like most Tibetan incenses the use of a sort of musk on top of the scent is present here as well and somewhat titled to a slightly animalic presence. So yes, this is indeed quite the nice scent and like so many goodies from incense-traditions, you never get the impression that 
The first, Absolute Sandalwood, was enough of a trainwreck that I didn’t review it originally. Corey at Absolute Bliss is basically as aware as we are when something ships over that is not up to snuff, so in that sense I don’t really relish a blistering review of something we all know isn’t good. The new version of Absolute Sandalwood may not be the greatest sandalwood every extruded but it presents a really unique sort of woodshop-like take on it. Where the previous version did not get this mix right in the slightest, this new one actually really started to intrigue me after a few sticks. Think of that mix of turpentine, glue and fresh wood dust you’d get in a shop and then kinda bolster that with some level of sandalwood in the mix and you’re onto what this one smells like. I’m sitting here with my third stick from a 10g package and actually really starting to like it, in the sense that it’s actually complex but the complexity is almost like these specific woodshop elements one at a time. It has a strange quality of richness with these elements that elsewhere might not be to a lot of people’s tastes. So while I’d probably caution one not to go hogwild, I would also highly recommend checking out a small package of it to see if it’s your speed. I’m actually starting to love it.
King of Saffron is not the King of Saffron I remember from many years ago when Paul Eagle was running the shop – that stick I remember being brown and very different from this one. The current King of Saffron should be familiar to those with some experience with Indian incense as it’s essentially the very thin, extruded, yellow dusted stick often called saffron sandalwood or some other name in plenty of catalogs through the years. I probably came across 3 or 4 versions of the same incense in the Vedic Vaani catalog this year except Absolute Bliss’ version is definitely better than all of those, and incredibly reminiscent of when the Mystic Temple version was a classic. The only other incense I’ve tried in the last 25 years that reminds me of the glory years of Indian incense is Temple of Incense’s Extreme Sandalwood. King of Saffron not only has the dryness, the saffron spiciness and a level of wood but it has that incredible floral finish that these incenses used to have but have usually just disappeared. It also has a wonderful camphor thread through it which has always been one of my favorite things about this particular scent. And remember these sticks are thin enough that 125g of this is likely to have has many as two times as many sticks as you usually get by that weight. So this is one you want to jump on for sure.
The King of Sandal is also very different from previous versions and it’s not really so much a pure sandalwood stick now as a sort of sandalwood champa type mix and a really beautiful one at that. It’s actually not easy to balance the sweet and woody of these two elements, and I come across plenty of these mixes that are off in some way. This new stick is halmaddi rich and probably leans in the sweeter direction but it’s rather perfectly balanced for a sandalwood top note and not only that it’s a very accessible scent. In many ways it’s not unlike the Oud Masala in this sense, where the sweeter base really creates more of a blend than say a charcoal with oil would. I actually was kind of wondering if part of this is that the sandalwood here isn’t turned up too high where the woodier notes might conflict a little more. Needless to say this is another highly recommended new find.
The last two incenses, the Oudh Saffron and White Lotus Oudh Saffron are now in a different format, moving to a bit larger of a charcoal masala base than the previous versions. These are incenses that are largely carried by the oil mixes on top and when they are, the mixes tend to vary a little from batch to batch. This is my third batch of the White Lotus and it’s largely the same incense, just maybe a little bit different. The second batch may have been a tiny bit more dialed back in the woodiness where this new batch turns it back up a bit. The Oudh Saffron however, actually strikes me as quite differently formulated. I am not sure how to explain this except that this new formulation seems a bit more complex and rich than the prior one. I think that the inherent woodiness in Indian oud incenses is generally pretty rare because there usually isn’t any real oud in them and so the approximation doesn’t account for the deeper and richer aspects you’d find in wood or wood-heavy aloeswood incenses like you’d find in Japan. Instead Indian oud incenses tend to approximate that a bit and go for more of those spice tones you tend to find at the top of ouds. Saffron itself is also pretty multifaceted, even among incenses called saffron sandalwood that stretch beyond the one I reviewed above, the note can be anything from floral to spicy and all places in between. Here I think it ends up pushing the usual Indian oud spice mixes into something a little richer. It still has the same sort of almost licorice like middle in it the previous stick had, but of course when the batch is fresher you’re likely to catch all of this more up front.
So ultimately a stock well worth going back for. As always, there are 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 
The first of the five incenses in this collection, Division By Zero, is described as a Vietnamese agarwood, sandalwood and spice blend with some oil work. Usually with Japanese incenses (or in this case Japanese-styled incenses), we tend to check if they’re predominantly agarwood or sandalwood based. In this case it really is a blend of both woods with a rather equal amount of spices. The mix, which I’d guess must contain a bit of cinnamon and clove, or a similar mix, imparts an almost applesauce-spice like element to the entirely, one that seems an equal to the woods. The aloeswood and the sandalwood sort of blend together where the crystalline nature of the latter seems more topped with the regal elements of the former. One notes as with all of the Dimension 5 incenses that there seems an almost painstaking attention to getting the balance right which allows all of the elements to shine in their own right. In this case it feels like the aloeswood is being used more for the top aspects than for any middle or base. The surprise is that it feels somewhat resinous, although that isn’t listed in the ingredients, but it’s a quality a lot of fine wood tends to impart on its own. In reviewing this on two occasions it was the first stick I burned in the morning and it seemed quite fit for that time of the day.
Sandstorm is Dimension 5’s most sandalwood-fronted incense, although it includes quite a bit of Indian and New Guinea aloeswood in it as well; however, the presence of sandalwood oil in the mix tends to mean the aloeswood is included to contour what is indeed a storm of sand(alwood). I tried an early version of this before this current refinement and was immediately amazed by it. I tend to prefer good Indian sandalwoods by a long margin usually because Japanese incenses seem to mostly center on certain qualities in the wood that have long been diminishing in quality due to shortages. Sandstorm does a better job of dialing the volume up on the overall scent a bit without losing those more heartwood like qualities. As a comparison, while I was reviewing this stick I also had the Kotonoha Indian Sandalwood blend out so decided to burn a stick of it to compare it. As a comparison, Sandstorm does appear to use quite a bit more aloeswood, as the edges of the scent tend to have agarwood qualities that are a bit deeper than what you’d usually find in a sandalwood-based stick. But these notes also maintain a bit more of that central sandalwood note in Sandstorm that the Kotonoha stick basically just hints at. Sandstorm adds what are some neatly complex aspects to what is a surprisingly involved blend for this type of wood. It’s a sandalwood to contemplate and even so just a bit more than that. 
Yume No Supaisu is described as “A dry, woods, resins and spices incense with musk, kaiko, and others. An advanced incense connoisseur stick – the least immediate of the collection, tremendous depth, a highly complex incense for the blackbelt afficionado to learn over time. Old school Japanese with whispers of Tibet.” It has a very large list of ingredients: red soil Vietnamese agarwood, New Guinea agarwood, Indonesian agarwood, Tongan and Mysore sandalwood, spices, resins, musk, operculum of sea snail, and others. So where to start reviewing such an elaborate stick? There are really a ton of varying notes that come off this one. In front it feels almost like some sort of tangy fruit or plum, but this front really gives way to a mix of sandalwood and agarwood qualities that are quite startling. With so many different kinds in use, you are treated to a fairly wide range of aspects, but they all sort of hang together as one and that’s before the other elements outside of the woods pop out to tickle your nose. Once again that feeling of the unity giving way to a multiplex of sensations and then back again really arrests your attention. Truly a beautiful aroma and almost hard to believe it was possible to take this big a step up from the first two classics, but I’d dare say this is Josh’s masterpiece to date. There are depths in this one that you don’t reach except at the higher levels of Japanese woods. And the “whispers of Tibet” seem very real on this as well, there’s a note that pops up that feels a bit more swankily herbal than you would normally find in a Japanese stick. It’s a touch on this one I really enjoy.
Josh provides a longer and detailed explanation for his Borneo LTD blend, which gives a window on a creator’s thinking about how they go about crafting their incenses. Josh uses a number of different types of aloeswoods for his blends, but this one focuses on a particular island’s resinous woods. This is somewhat edited but you can request the full explanations directly from Josh if you want to read more: “My apex Borneo island wood blend, featuring 4 different types of top-shelf Borneo agarwood and 2 primo Borneo island Ensar ouds, blended with resins and spices. If you’ve had very high quality Borneo agarwood on an electric heater then you’re familiar with those lovely “green mint honey” types notes and the deep woodiness … I spent a great deal of time balancing the ratios of the different Borneo agarwoods and Borneo ouds, and also balancing those elements with the resins and spices blend – the goal was to highlight those gloriously green, woody, somewhat austere type notes of Borneo agarwood while eliminating the acrid, harsh type notes that can so easily arise from such wood. Is there a sweetness in there? Maybe, but, more this is focused on the pleasure of bitterness. May have a learning curve..”
And finally we have the long-awaited Dimension 5 high-ender, Cosmika Flamboya. Josh says “This one pulls out all the stops. By far the most elaborate oil work of any of my sticks. A decadent mélange of agarwood, sandalwood, spices, oils, oud, resins, musk, and others. Stack it against any kyara incense in terms of wow factor.” It includes Vietnamese agarwood, Malaysian agarwood, sandalwood, oud, musk, operculum of sea snail, resins and others. So you could literally write an essay on exactly what kyara is but rather than being explicit that there is kyara in here, I think you can definitely describe this as least as a kyara-like incense. It has the kind of notes you might find in some of the real kyara incenses such as the sadly depleted Kourindo Kourindkyarai where caramel-ish tones meet a much deeper wood scent with that almost definitely kyara blend sweetness in the mix as well as a touch of that sort of minty-menthol-green note you find more in the less blended kyaras. But much of this plays on top of those deeper turpentine-like notes you only tend to find in the more expensive aloeswoods. A lot of these aspects seem matched with the other notes in order to bring out the woodiness, but there’s a rather dank musk note floating on top and some level of acridity that may come from the operculum. It’s all quite fascinating and gives you this feeling there’s so much more to learn from it once the stick has been used up.
Olfactory Rescue Service 
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