Oud Distillation

[Ammar]

Yeah i really couldn't understand, apart from it looks like a branding technique, the postdistillate maggots-barn oil/disrespect association then after that the postdistillate spent oudwood smells like the oil as a prove that the predistillated low heated oudwood smells like the oil...I mean of course the postdistillate should smell like the juiced oil both are cooked in the same pot, shouldn't it?!

Excellent posts full of science @Al Shareef Oudh as usual although the Bacilli spp are bacteria not fungi.

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

Yeah i really couldn't understand, apart from it looks like a branding technique, the postdistillate maggots-barn oil/disrespect association then after that the postdistilate spent oudwood smells like the oil as a prove that the predistilate low heated oudwood smells like the oil...I mean of course the postdistilate should smell like the juiced oil, shouldn't it?!

Excellent posts full of science @Al Shareef Oudh as usual although the Bacilli spp are bacteria not fungi.

Shukran, updated.

 

[Nikhil S]

How do you explain the "sweat" effect in Indian Ouds claimed by another prominent distiller ? At this point in my Oud journey I really find myself struggling between between subjective truth and objective truth. Taha's post was not in good taste and most got irritated by that. Do you think sweat from Indian Oud makers can contribute to the final distillation Jawed bhai ? Because it always leaves a blank spot.....the artisanal Oud world is losing its charm at a first rate......A few questions by my viewers that have been really afraid to invest in Oud !

 

[Ammar]

How do you explain the "sweat" effect in Indian Ouds claimed by another prominent distiller ? At this point in my Oud journey I really find myself struggling between between subjective truth and objective truth. Taha's post was not in good taste and most got irritated by that. Do you think sweat from Indian Oud makers can contribute to the final distillation Jawed bhai ? Because it always leaves a blank spot.....the artisanal Oud world is losing its charm at a first rate......A few questions by my viewers that have been really afraid to invest in Oud !

What "sweat" effect?

 

[Nikhil S]

What "sweat" effect?

It was hypothesised/claimed that sweat from workers hands get soaked by wood during sorting/breaking altering the optimum smell of Oud in Assam brother Ammar. I am bringing in the perspective of new readers/oud learners/explorers when they come to prominent forums and read such claims they automatically want to run off. So an answer or mythbusting by a prominent distiller will help to clarify this doubt for most because as users we can only rely on their word and pictures ? Only a lucky few have seen an actual distillation going on and what comes out of it. Pictures mean cannot prove anything in the world of Ouds. The truth is very far. An alien destination.

 

[Ouddict]

What "sweat" effect?

 

[Ouddict]

It was hypothesised/claimed that sweat from workers hands get soaked by wood during sorting/breaking altering the optimum smell of Oud in Assam brother Ammar. I am bringing in the perspective of new readers/oud learners/explorers when they come to prominent forums and read such claims they automatically want to run off. So an answer or mythbusting by a prominent distiller will help to clarify this doubt for most because as users we can only rely on their word and pictures ? Only a lucky few have seen an actual distillation going on and what comes out of it. Pictures mean cannot prove anything in the world of Ouds. The truth is very far. An alien destination.

A lot of what is claimed by online "experts" is hyperbole and I wouldn't take too much notice of it. I communicated my vigorous objections to that post directly at the time (via Whatsapp) and as you know @Nikhil S, I am not the most diplomatic of people at times, so you can imagine what I said.

The conversation remains private and me and the poster of that claim have a healthy mutual respect, but one should take with a degree of scepticism, what is said online. Listen carefully and connect the dots over time and if you are able, go to distillers and find out the truth yourself.

 

[Ouddict]

we have an oud section in ouddict.com called "oud library" that is been empty since the beginning.......................................😀
i propose to the administration that some of the posts of our respected member Rai Munir deserve to be moved there.

Bit of a late response, but the Oud library was meant to be populated by LOTS of PDFs that I and others may have come across. Unfortunately there has been little interest in building a repository of information. For example, I pay $15 a month for the Wiki and have even built the structure, but no one has bothered to post anything on it... That is $15 x 18 months = $270 down the drain. I will be taking it off very soon as its pointless when no one appreciates what we have built with the Wiki.

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

Bit of a late response, but the Oud library was meant to be populated by LOTS of PDFs that I and others may have come across. Unfortunately there has been little interest in building a repository of information. For example, I pay $15 a month for the Wiki and have even built the structure, but no one has bothered to post anything on it... That is $15 x 18 months = $270 down the drain. I will be taking it off very soon as its pointless when no one appreciates what we have built with the Wiki.

What’s the link? Do share pls

 

[Ouddict]

What’s the link? Do share pls

https://www.ouddict.com/wiki/

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

It was hypothesised/claimed that sweat from workers hands get soaked by wood during sorting/breaking altering the optimum smell of Oud in Assam brother Ammar. I am bringing in the perspective of new readers/oud learners/explorers when they come to prominent forums and read such claims they automatically want to run off. So an answer or mythbusting by a prominent distiller will help to clarify this doubt for most because as users we can only rely on their word and pictures ? Only a lucky few have seen an actual distillation going on and what comes out of it. Pictures mean cannot prove anything in the world of Ouds. The truth is very far. An alien destination.

Like most things it is important to understand where the balance in the pendulum occurs in this discussion, there is the exaggerated view that you have quoted on one side and then the view that denies any impact from skin contact on the opposite. In the middle is where reality is. Skin contact is more of an issue with the tiny 2.5ml bottles, the reason for that being that such a bottle is made up of possibly a hundred odd swipes. one can actually imagine that every time a small residue goes back into the bottle and over time, in that small 2.5ml bottle there is going to be a fair build up of skin residue, be it skin oils, dead skin, dirt etc. This can spoil the oil as the contaminent vs oil is fairly high.

However distillers using their hands to handle the wood into the pot, etc, it is totally BS to say that such contact will ruin an oil, which at that point is still trapped in pours inside wood fibres. There is more chance that the negative energy created by these lies upon lies ruins the oil than there is of the distiller going about doing his work in his distillery. Maybe soon there will be a video where someone is getting scrubbed down before they jump into the surgical overalls whilst 'distilling' the next great oil.

As with regards to the picture and videos that many have seen, where the distiller touches the palm of the hand on the water then rubs it off on the teardrop collector to collect the oil. Then it is important to note, that this happens in older distilleries on the left over hydrosol and pot water after the majority of the oils has been collected without skin contact. This process does not occour with the collection of all the oil. They have been using this method for years to collect the last drops of oil left in the hydrosol. Some distillers do not add these last drops of oil to the main collection, rather the use it for personal use, others do add it. This is bad practice, however the quantity of skin that will transfer in that process is minute compared to the over all oil collected. Skin particles to oudh oil isn't exactly the same as lemon is to milk. Therefore like i said at the beginning there needs to be a balanced view to these issues and not an exaggerated motive driven perspective that freaks the consumer out to only buy the new oil that was distilled with surgical overalls.

 

[Nikhil S]

Thank you

 

[Joe King]

Wow i came to read about distillation and got so much more.......
What wonderful contributions

 

[Roman Abdullah]

I distilled Oudh dust for 4 days and it's come out solid Oudh resins.. is it my mistake of distillation or it happen?? And how can I make this resins to oil ..plea plif anyone can give me some idea about it ,I will be glad

 

[grandawood]

May I please know your current temperature? Around 15 degree Celcius, I am no expert but generally speaking, grade B (oud wood that has less resin than grade A), usually condenses into solid form, if you heat it slightly even wrapped your hand around the glass vial, it will turn into liquid again

 

[Roman Abdullah]

May I please know your current temperature? Around 15 degree Celcius, I am no expert but generally speaking, grade B (oud wood that has less resin than grade A), usually condenses into solid form, if you heat it slightly even wrapped your hand around the glass vial, it will turn into liquid again

Thank you so much brother for you reply..yes you are right the grade of oudh not so prominent.. so it's bcz of less resin that become solid right?? I thought I did misteks in distillation ,

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

hello oud lovers.

i wana open a can of worms. i thought hard about it before posting, but i believe some false theories we are holding onto tightly is only acting as a disservice to us. time to debunk them.

a year or so ago, when i first started geeking out on oud and going beyond the scent and more into the wood, distillation techniques, etc. my belief was the better oils came from higher grade wood. By grade here i mean traditional grading of wood for heating purposes. My belief was entry level/organic oils where made from bunk wood (white) and lue (the immediate surrounding area of point of infection), mid level oils made from incense grade, and super and as the prices went up so did the amount of seah (hard resinous wood with more resin than oil) and of course the top dogs made from sinking grade, king, baby king, etc.

of course, some rare examples would exist when an oil was made from a kyen grade wood (more oil than resin content), but the general rule of thumb was my belief that top dog oils are all from sick looking dark, resinous wood. this by the way, is utterly false. Sure there are examples of oils made from entirely incense grade or better wood. or even entirely sinking grade, but these are exceptions. i am more interested in the general realm. i know this not only because of the year or more of learning, reading, researching but simply due to the mathematics of it. knowing the price of wood in the market, even wholesale, and even if procured a while back, even with highish 20 gram/kilo yield, and the price that they go for, the number still dont add up. they fall way short in fact.

I now have a different outlook. i understand most distillers and most oils are made from lue and white bunk wood around it; what they call oil grade. maybe small inclusion of incense grade or just below it. higher resin wood yields less oil and the wood is so high in demand for carving, for being sold for burning, incense, etc. that no one except a fun small side project or in their right head would distill such grade wood. now some like taha say that they have found a way to distill the oil trapped as resin in such wood. others say that's not possible unless a chemical wash is done or the oil is first captured via extract, then distilled. it would be nice to get some clarity on this matter too. @Taha @Alkhadra @Al Shareef Oudh @Abdullah @Faizal_p .... pls help us with this.


back to the main topic:
i feel this false rhetoric and story has stuck with most of us, b/c it is an easy straightforward way of understanding things (us humans like to categorize, compartmentalize the life around us to make sense of it) and some vendors fell into the trap of re-circulating the same story to justify their prices. we have this in the tea world, coffee world, wine world, beer world... why is wine X so much more expensive that wine Y from same vicinity, same grape. some use the older the plant the better quality the grape story. which has some truth but also plenty of false in it. some use the story of my tonnage was 1 tons per acre vs others 3 tons an acre. so i sacrificed 2 tons to get my 1 ton to ripen to mythical levels. this is also not a true story and so much more goes in to it. in a certain difficult cool year, it may hold true but in a hot year, a very low crop will backfire and end up with highly out of balance grapes that turn into shit wine... lets debunk this garbage "shit that sells" story and get to the truth. this means don't email your supplier asking for ONLY their sinking grade stock. sinkers dont equate to better-smelling, more complex wood. i have seen this one too many times. this also means not chastising a vendor that comes out and prices an oil high but dares to say is made from incense grade or below level wood. proof is in the pudding. is a two-way relationship. we gotta correct our narrative and distillers will follow. at the end of the day is business and they have expenses and have families to feed and like us they want to have a comfortable and enjoyable life too. lets get real.


lets face it if mr x sold us an oil for $750 and said is made from young infection or mostly lue wood and tiny bit of kyen/seah, vs. if we were told is made from half sinking material, incense and super category, we would gobble up the latter story and stay far away from the oil in the first story. but is the same damn oil!!! the story behind it makes us react differently. This doesn't take anything away from a distiller that can turn out an insanely layered and awesome oil via technique and what not from simple wood. it doesn't make me see he or she oils as any less. Only those that were holding tightly to a false belief that a $800 oil MUST be made from sick looking and awesome wood are kicking and screaming b/c their world is collapsed and they don't like to face the truth. Any more distillers can say about this would be appreciated.

end of rant. lets learn. but unlearn first.

 

[KHH]

Any more distillers can say about this would be appreciated.

researching but simply due to the mathematics of it. knowing the price of wood in the market, even wholesale, and even if procured a while back, even with highish 20 gram/kilo yield, and the price that they go for, the number still dont add up. they fall way short in fact.

the distillers know the truth / and it will be their secret i guess

 

[Faizal_p]

I'll let @Abdullah chip in regarding the Hindi oils he's done in Assam (he was meticulous with Bahadur and Shah jahan -

) and what @Faheem was involved with in Sri Lanka (

), Laos and Malaysia. From my own experience and testing of wood in Borneo, Malaysia and java I made sure we didn't use completely white wood, always with resination and trying to get shavings from sinking and "incense" grade wood.
I think @Faheem also made a video in Cambodia where the wood for a lower grade wild oil (aging) is shown (

). This is probably the best example to show our low grade wood. I agree with you @Rasoul Salehi that there is oil made from white wood at $10/20 per kg wood but that tends to be larger distilleries geared to producing volume for the Middle East market and for perfumery.
Also 20 ml/kg of wood is amazing, need to hire you next time!! More like 3 to 9ml is the general yield. With sinking grade we have realised yield is much lower and therefore price increases double fold due to expense of material as well.
My 2c

 

[Faheem]

For our Sri Lankan distillations the yeild was around 2ml/kg on low temp all the way. SS pot with 45kg resinated logs and chips gave us approximately 80-90ml of oil. Adrijaya was similar yeild with normal/sinking grade chips.