Incense of the Day

Maunamoku said:
Mindroling Monastery, "Grade 1". Sweet and floral, balanced and easy to approach; uplifting and bright profile.

When the room is full of the fixative rich smoke, I light some Walla Patta by Dr. Incense. The notes hang suspended in the air.
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I'm gonna follow your lead today with this, I've not tried Doc's walla strick after the Mindroling stick trick!
I will however, say that Mindroling 1 is perhaps the most accessible Tibetan stick in my collection, and a great starting place for anyone curious about Tibetan sticks. It's not atypical to what you'll find with further experimentation in this regional category, but it's an extremely smooth gateway 👍
 
Al Shareef Oudh said:
I am trained in Tibetan style incense art.

Japanese were the last of the three civilisations to come onto the incense making tradition, it was introduced to them by a Chinese monk who sailed across from China. The Chinese had refined the art form into many spheres, from appreciating it's smell, to the smoke and then writing poetry about it. There were only specific people who had attained a level of refinement who would be able to write poetry about the smoke trails from the incense.

Tibetan incense art is as old as Chinese if not older, however it has a different focus, and the focus is to drown out surrounding smell noise and provide a meditative environment. They utilise high grade ingredients, infact I would say the highest grade. What would usually happen was a hierarchy of how ingredients were filtered for the monks. A batch would come onto the market, the lower quality items sold to everyone else and the highest grade went to the monks.

The foundation of most if not all Tibetan incense is Himalayan cedar, different to the Chinese and Japanese, who use some form or binder or sandalwood.

Secondly for the most part Tibetan incense is not ground as finely as Chinese. Understanding mountain herbs and their use is a pivotal part of Tibetan incense, my teach spent more than a decade learning just Himalayan mount herbs.

I however adapted the art of Tibetan incense making to my own cultural philosophy, I will utilise a Oudh foundation and I spent a lot of time in studying and learning how to get Oudh to behave sticky like the Himalayan cedar.
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Mate, your wealth of knowledge continues to astound me! It's like you have walked straight out of a fantasy novel or history book. Where would one even start to train in all these wonderful skills you have?
 
Maunamoku said:
Mindroling Monastery, "Grade 1". Sweet and floral, balanced and easy to approach; uplifting and bright profile.

When the room is full of the fixative rich smoke, I light some Walla Patta by Dr. Incense. The notes hang suspended in the air.
Click to expand...
This is my first time viewing the Incense-Traditions website. Are there any you would recommend to try besides the Mindroling Monastery Grade 1?
 
Olfactory Nomad said:
This is my first time viewing the Incense-Traditions website. Are there any you would recommend to try besides the Mindroling Monastery Grade 1?
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Holy Land 1/2 are very popular. @Taesik Yun has a lovely review about the Holy Land series. I am burning it right now outside.

Huiyou, Tibet Secret Inheritance, and Samye Monastery have some similarities to Mindroling.

If you like Mindroling, some Bhutanese sticks have similar recipes, such as Nado. “(A) Quality Bhutanese Incense” is a favorite, same with Cloud of Merit Wind Wisdom.

Huiyou and (A)QBI are notably sweet.
 
Maunamoku said:
Holy Land 1/2 are very popular. @Taesik Yun has a lovely review about the Holy Land series. I am burning it right now outside.

Huiyou, Tibet Secret Inheritance, and Samye Monastery have some similarities to Mindroling.

If you like Mindroling, some Bhutanese sticks have similar recipes, such as Nado. “(A) Quality Bhutanese Incense” is a favorite, same with Cloud of Merit Wind Wisdom.

Huiyou and (A)QBI are notably sweet.
Click to expand...
Fantastic, thank you. I'll check them out.
 
Seijudo's Kyara Enju. You can taste and feel the scents as much as you can smell them, and the smell isn't like super overpowering either. Very cooling, bitter, leathery-like, oudy and woodiness to start and all throughout, then notes of sourness, saltiness, sour and saltiness, bitter again, some fleeting moments of sweetness, sweetness and saltiness, spiciness that actually made my heart feel like it was on fire, in a good way, then my stomach, but all the same time it was cooling to the external senses. There is more, like honey and spicy honey and sour honey and sweet honey like notes with an oudiness to it, not much florals this stick though.

Wonderful sticks. Really nothing what I thought real Kyara to be like, with the limited experience with just these sticks. I used a full one and the sweet smell wasn't there as much this time, and the florals werent as prominent or there at all, maybe very fleeting, can this happen with these sticks? If someone can explain that to me with more experience with them, thanks.
 
Olfactory Nomad said:
Mate, your wealth of knowledge continues to astound me! It's like you have walked straight out of a fantasy novel or history book. Where would one even start to train in all these wonderful skills you have?
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The learning never ends mate, there is a famous statement in our tradition regarding learning; from the cradle to the grave. Even though I am a master in my own right, if there is a art I want to learn and don't know I have no issue humbling myself, learning and crediting my teachers.
 
Al Shareef Oudh said:
The learning never ends mate, there is a famous statement in our tradition regarding learning; from the cradle to the grave. Even though I am a master in my own right, if there is a art I want to learn and don't know I have no issue humbling myself, learning and crediting my teachers.
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Out of curiosity, who got you into Oud and Oud oil as a personal thing? Like, I am guessing you are from a country (or since it says you are form the UK, then your parents may be from the global south?) where Oud is a very big thing, and I am guessing your religion also also have reverence for it (just guessing you are Muslim, sorry if I am wrong), like Islam and Buddhism and different sects of them. I am also somewhat sure that Arab Christians revere it as well, as Christ' oil that was rubbed on his forehead after being taken down from the cross was either spikenard or oud, or an attar with a bunch of oils in them, most likely being, oud, spikenard, sandalwood and some sort of cannabis oil, last one there is purely speculative, from me, but there is some cultural evidence that Christ used cannabis oil as a treatment for sick people, especially people taking fits.

Also, what made you get into distilling, and what was your first distillation like? And, if you can remember, what wood material did you use, like region, quality (incense or infected white wood), and how did the oil turn out? And who was your teacher? Are you still friends with him today (if you had one)? I have yet to buy an Oud from you, but I will get round to purchasing an oud from you sometime in May or June, most likely a gram of an oil or a gram each of 2 different oils. Very curious at what I want to try, I will most likely look every other week on your profile and on your website, but I love how being members of this forum can give us access to oils that are newly released (at a discount, looking at you @Habz786 😉 ) that may not even be available to the public yet.
 
Just arrived…Seijudo Nichigetsu

Compared to Kohshu it has less flavors, but more wood and agarwoodiness.

These Seijudo sticks, along with Enju, Seiran, Horen, and Shiragiku seem to need their own method to appreciate, I’m still trying, certainly not your typical burn, maybe it is the use of oils or extracts, or maybe even some synthetics???

When I gently heat them on my Kodachi, they smell like heating agarwood/kyara
…..so intriguing.
 
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My first japanese incense sticks Nipon Kodo - Jinkoh Juzan
(This is the only japanese incense sticks i can get in my area, considering the 8 euro price point for 24 small sticks isnt really bad) After smelling lot of church type of incenses i forgott, this is the other way how can incense smell, really meditative scent without any catholic conotations, with little bit of smoke scent from burning . At this time i tried sample of perfume Kodo from Solafa, which is without smoke, little bit like citrusy, really fresh In sense of someone made the fresh incense stick and its not yet dry. If is the higher quality incense sticks smells like this im defintelly into it.
 
Kaden Kobunboku. Lovely sticks, and especially lovely when you haven't burned them in a while. I am now on box number 2 (maybe 3) now of 170 sticks for £26.95 off www.lotuszenincense.co.uk, who are now selling high quality agarwood. Kaden is a nice, sweet aloeswood stick, it also have elements of bitterness. You can smell the camphor in it, but it is a background scent to the aloeswood. The Vietnamese aloeswood in it is sweet, dry and woody, the camphor helps the woodiness stand out, and also gives it a "cooling" sensation, albeit no mint or menthol in any shape or form. Notes of chocolate melting and spices cooking.

Lovely box of sticks.
 
Peaceful Sky by Shoyeido. Smack in the face with florals as quickly as it started, then some bitter/sweet, sourness, sour/sweet and florals upfront sometimes but always in the background. I do think these sticks contain around 5-15% of Kyara now, with the rest being a mixture of Crassna and Malaccensis or either or. Beautiful sticks that have different attitudes at different times.
 
-Renton- said:
Kaden Kobunboku. Lovely sticks, and especially lovely when you haven't burned them in a while. I am now on box number 2 (maybe 3) now of 170 sticks for £26.95 off www.lotuszenincense.co.uk, who are now selling high quality agarwood. Kaden is a nice, sweet aloeswood stick, it also have elements of bitterness. You can smell the camphor in it, but it is a background scent to the aloeswood. The Vietnamese aloeswood in it is sweet, dry and woody, the camphor helps the woodiness stand out, and also gives it a "cooling" sensation, albeit no mint or menthol in any shape or form. Notes of chocolate melting and spices cooking.

Lovely box of sticks.
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I agree, they're very nice. It's easy for the nose to get "tired" from these sticks so less is definitely more.
 
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