Kai un Koh by Baieido.
Never done a write up of this as I never closely listened to it, heck, even now I wasn't doing the Monkoh style of listening I just put the stick a couple feet away from me and just closed my eyes and started picking notes out. Here we go (it is still burning though but close to finished).
Starts out with a very rich Vietnamese aloeswood and resin notes, quickly jumping into a semi-sweet, spicy, and a slight pleasurable bitter note. This stick is heavy on the quality Vietnamese aloeswood by far, but you still get those whiffs of sandal (which i will come to), notes of borneol and camphor making the incense very clear and crisp, in my opinion the spices ADD or "attenuate" the fragrant woods, but the clove spice also adds a little more woodiness to the already heavily packed fragrant woods (especially the aloeswood). Jungle notes as if i am in a Vietnam jungle, as it very much has a Vietnam wood profile. Further in the burn and i start picking up sandalwood notes with the aloeswood note still playing right in the middle, as if the sandalwood was dancing around the middle of the stick (that's how i perceive it in my head with a lot of blended sticks) with its creamy, vanillic, dry woody sweetness, and butteriness, the sandalwood note would jump in and out and basically become invisible (if you want to know about silent notes like this, I will post it at the end of this post) then would come back again with even stronger creamy and butteriness, as the stick further develops, the aloeswood comes with absolutely gorgeous sweet berry fruits and a sourness, which becomes a mystery, soon after it came out with a very slight sweetness and fruitiness and it became VERY clear that it was a sour cherry note. The aloeswood note is very dominant in this stick, and is very pleasurable, with its high quality woody, oudiness, resinous and jungle vibes and the sweet berry fruits and sour cherry, a great marker of a nice crassna. The spices and herbs make it slightly medicinal feeling, but not as much as people say it is. Very woody, semi-sweet, spicy, bitter, sour, sweet, creamy, buttery, vanillic, quality aloeswood resin, fruity etc etc.
Lovely experience to just sit and contemplate the notes, and once familiar to them, have them in the background to lift your mood as they are definitely psychoactive and change the
atmosphere around you, like a lot of quality Japanese sticks, and independent artisanal incense too. Or to just sit and contemplate thoughts,meditation or whatever.
10/10 by Baieido, yet again.
Incense notes:
https://www.kyarazen.com/incense-notes/
This is just my experience, some people dont like Baieido's style of sticks. So, always buy samples or if you cant, get the smallest box possible of each incense. Baieido definitely has a steep learning curve, olfactory wise.
