Oud Distillation

[Joe King]

I have followed this distillation discussion here and elsewhere with great interest. So my 2cents (only worth 1 cent😛)
My conclusion is along the line of the post by @PEARL and quote by Rai (by the way very spritely for a 600 yo).
There is just so much that influences the end result of distillation that the best method for deciding which oud is worthy is simply using your nose, feeling the oud and deciding if we will pay the asking price.
The history of the oud formation, the varieties, the locations, the difficulty in obtaining it, and technologies (some which are secret😉) and techniques around distillation make it most difficult to equate a value to the price of oud oil based on resination or the look of the wood and as such the oil is worth what people will pay for it. Use your nose not your eyes

 

[powdernose]

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.

It's true that some of the stories and the related mathematics are at times impossible to correlate.

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.

With regard to that, I find it useful to go back to Kyarazen's old blog post showing the relation of infection-age/oil/resin:

I'd like to think there are not great percentages of bunk wood in artisan distillations.
As @Faizal_p says I think that would be more predominant in "larger distilleries geared to producing volume".
I think they'd throw you into the pot too if you got too close 😛

Jokes aside, there are probably 4 categories to agarwood feedstock:
a. Whole trees (is a portion of bunk wood removed?)
b. Oil rich wood surrounding incense grade chips
c. Incense grade chips
d. Combining any of the above in differing ratios.

Each category would have obvious output volume limitations...

The above also bring another myth into question,
knowing the exact species of what is being distilled.
If we are talking about wild trees, hunted, one should factor in the fact that these hunters are not botanists, nor ultra selective.
Batches are at least sometimes mixed.
Now consider shavings as the feedstock. How long does it take to collect enough shavings to run a distillation? Is the slow accumulation of shavings all from the same species and locale?

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.

You've mentioned your wines often. I'm interested. message me.

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.

Aside from all related costs, and profit margins,
at the end of the day the end product should have some correlation to the cost of the first materials.
I don't believe in selling cheap wood distillations at the price of gold, however nice they smell.

lets learn. but unlearn first.

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.

Thanks for openness and the information.

 

[powdernose]

@Rasoul Salehi, avoid story, have a strategy for spending, and sample first if interested.

Why should we allow false stories to circulate freely with impunity?
Are you against buyer awareness?

I know you mean well, but more often than not, it seems like you are laying blame on the 'gullible' for accepting the stories or on "irresponsible spending".
In the case of outright deception, culpability, can not and should not, lie completely with the deceived.
Also, quite frankly, sampling has a cost. You make it sound all too trivial. Why should the buyer keep inuring the cost of falsehoods?

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

@Rasoul Salehi, avoid story, have a strategy for spending, and sample first if interested.

"If it happens, smelling before buying, then mostly buying won't take place". Rai Munir, circa 1439

P.S. I'm curious, what initiated your rant?

just going back to old posts on oud discourse and finding questions i had a while back that i still dont have satisfactory answers to. also my wish (naive perhaps) for a movement we have int he wine world "truth in labeling" to spill over to oud world.

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

I have followed this distillation discussion here and elsewhere with great interest. So my 2cents (only worth 1 cent😛)
My conclusion is along the line of the post by @PEARL and quote by Rai (by the way very spritely for a 600 yo).
There is just so much that influences the end result of distillation that the best method for deciding which oud is worthy is simply using your nose, feeling the oud and deciding if we will pay the asking price.
The history of the oud formation, the varieties, the locations, the difficulty in obtaining it, and technologies (some which are secret😉) and techniques around distillation make it most difficult to equate a value to the price of oud oil based on resination or the look of the wood and as such the oil is worth what people will pay for it. Use your nose not your eyes

indeed and same true for the wood. meh looking wood can be much more enjoyable on the heater than the sickest sinking nugs. not always and not rule of thumb, but enough of it i have seen to render buying based on sinking or tripple super vs incense grade, etc. a faulty buying strategy.

my questions were not really intended to be taken as such though. my intention is the search for truth. if yields are so much lower for higher grade wood and if the market for that wood for heating purposes is so good, why would distillers again and again make these oils? double the price or tripple it. the margins are still no bueno. now if someone said well actually the higher resinated pieces yield both superior quality and volume, then the hamsters in my head could take a break and be happy with that answer. can you shed more light on this @Faheem @Faizal_p @Abdullah and all other fellow resident distillers?

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

Why should we allow false stories to circulate freely with impunity?
Are you against buyer awareness?

I know you mean well, but more often than not, it seems like you are laying blame on the 'gullible' for accepting the stories or on "irresponsible spending".
In the case of outright deception, culpability, can not and should not, lie completely with the deceived.
Also, quite frankly, sampling has a cost. You make it sound all too trivial. Why should the buyer keep inuring the cost of falsehoods?

i didnt take pearl's post the way you did. i saw it as simply his curiosity at play. In regards to your point in the above, this is a discussion of ethics/morals and even law. i know i am the odd man out on this subject, but i put equal weight on both the consumer and supplier when it comes to matters like this. my brain is foggy this morning and i am having a bad writing day. what i am trying to say is, in general consumer goods we have and should rely on the governing bodies and regulating bodies to have the consumers best interest in heart and mind and walk the talk. we know that is not the case with our GMO produce, medicated proteins, etc. etc. but when it comes to luxury goods like oud that is something for aficionados, we need active participation of the buyer/collector. hence the existence and activity on forums like this. shame on us if we keep gobbling up "shit that sells" stories and what sounds romantic and sexy without digging deeper. makes sense?

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

It's true that some of the stories and the related mathematics are at times impossible to correlate.



With regard to that, I find it useful to go back to Kyarazen's old blog post showing the relation of infection-age/oil/resin:

View attachment 5114


I'd like to think there are not great percentages of bunk wood in artisan distillations.
As @Faizal_p says I think that would be more predominant in "larger distilleries geared to producing volume".
I think they'd throw you into the pot too if you got too close 😛

Jokes aside, there are probably 4 categories to agarwood feedstock:
a. Whole trees (is a portion of bunk wood removed?)
b. Oil rich wood surrounding incense grade chips
c. Incense grade chips
d. Combining any of the above in differing ratios.

Each category would have obvious output volume limitations...

The above also bring another myth into question,
knowing the exact species of what is being distilled.
If we are talking about wild trees, hunted, one should factor in the fact that these hunters are not botanists, nor ultra selective.
Batches are at least sometimes mixed.
Now consider shavings as the feedstock. How long does it take to collect enough shavings to run a distillation? Is the slow accumulation of shavings all from the same species and locale?



You've mentioned your wines often. I'm interested. message me.



Aside from all related costs, and profit margins,
at the end of the day the end product should have some correlation to the cost of the first materials.
I don't believe in selling cheap wood distillations at the price of gold, however nice they smell.








Thanks for openness and the information.

in hindsight i probably shouldnt have said most make from lue and bunkwood. but most make oil or makes sense for them to make oil from "oil grade" wood. lue. kyen. somewhere in between. once we get to incense grade and better, if it is true that yields go down and oil in resin cant be distilled, then why waste that wood. sure no wood is all resin and no oil. well not the ones that make it to distilling and yes that oil along the seah is probably plenty more complex and of interest, but why arent distillers extracting the oil trapped in resin and then distill. i know that's what ASO id in terms of his lamah oil, but we usually dont hear this practice at play. unless is done quietly and not talked about. can someone reconcile this for me? the dots are simply not connecting...

 

[Rai Munir]

If the auxiliary points in the first post of respected Rasoul are to be omitted, the question is crystal clear, and makes sense. The forum is meant to be what it has been getting to be- appreciation, debate, sharing both liking and of course disliking, etc. but all in a friendly way.

I am totally into this thread. Sensitive. Crucial. Needed. Hope it will continue, and the major point will be discussed to help people like me.

but when it comes to luxury goods like oud that is something for aficionados, we need active participation of the buyer/collector. hence the existence and activity on forums like this.

True, and that active participation is there.

makes sense?

Yes, of course.

 

[Rai Munir]

my intention is the search for truth. if yields are so much lower for higher grade wood and if the market for that wood for heating purposes is so good, why would distillers again and again make these oils? double the price or tripple it.

First, there are only four distiller vendors. I think only they can answer it. We the wearers/ consumers have speculations, and I am afraid that speculations may not lead us to the abyss of suspicions.

An offshoot sort of question does arise here: When some oils are offered below the regular prices on certain occasions, do the vendors sell bellow the cost price of the oils and bear loss, or reduce their profit, if any? Sorry to ask it, but for me it is important because when some matter is to be thrashed out, such questions are always there. Wood and pricing proceed together.

 

[peter4ptv]

indeed and same true for the wood. meh looking wood can be much more enjoyable on the heater than the sickest sinking nugs. not always and not rule of thumb, but enough of it i have seen to render buying based on sinking or tripple super vs incense grade, etc. a faulty buying strategy.

my questions were not really intended to be taken as such though. my intention is the search for truth. if yields are so much lower for higher grade wood and if the market for that wood for heating purposes is so good, why would distillers again and again make these oils? double the price or tripple it. the margins are still no bueno. now if someone said well actually the higher resinated pieces yield both superior quality and volume, then the hamsters in my head could take a break and be happy with that answer. can you shed more light on this @Faheem @Faizal_p @Abdullah and all other fellow resident distillers?

incense grade, sinking, high oleoresin agarwood is way above 5000 per kilo at least that’s what I am reading (I am a couch “expert” on oud, not a jungle one) there is so much oils available lately made from the above materials in let’s say range around 500 to 2500 dollars per 3 ml. and as again from what I have read from the experts the higher the grade the lower the oil comes from the wood average 2-5 ml. I am not including here the profit margins and the expenses of the distillation but something do not look right, all this oils are total gifts to us, or the producers use very different mathematics.😀

I think this question has been talk about before, and one producer justified that he has agarwood stocks from 20 30 years ago when the wood was a small fraction from what cost now and that’s why, hmm very nice of him to do this charity business instead of selling the material for many thousands of dollars on the open market.

 

[Rai Munir]

(I am a couch “expert” on oud, not a jungle one)

😕 Your memory! And mine as well.

and as again from what I have read from the experts the higher the grade the lower the oil comes from the wood average 2-5 ml. I am not including here the profit margins and the expenses of the distillation but something do not look right, all this oils are total gifts to us, or the producers use very different mathematics.😀

This is why I said that wood and pricing are interlinked, and the price during offering sales. Here mathematics will do. I must refer to respected Sarfraz who always indicated this point, but I didn't listen to him.

Your light humour does indicate towards some specific point.

I think this question has been talk about before,

Exactly.

Respected PEARL's last post is highly important, in my opinion.

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

w

First, there are only four distiller vendors. I think only they can answer it. We the wearers/ consumers have speculations, and I am afraid that speculations may not lead us to the abyss of suspicions.

An offshoot sort of question does arise here: When some oils are offered below the regular prices on certain occasions, do the vendors sell bellow the cost price of the oils and bear loss, or reduce their profit, if any? Sorry to ask it, but for me it is important because when some matter is to be thrashed out, such questions are always there. Wood and pricing proceed together.

with ensar people's series is a marketing statement. a PR campaign. we do this in the wine world too. literally loss leaders. and i mean it. swear to almighty truth. not even sold at cost but below. just to hook new clients. younger clients with les discretionary income or in response to a certain influential critic that may say our wines are awesome, etc. but price is high. i am sure is true with most if not all vendors...

 

[peter4ptv]

w

with ensar people's series is a marketing statement. a PR campaign. we do this in the wine world too. literally loss leaders. and i mean it. swear to almighty truth. not even sold at cost but below. just to hook new clients. younger clients with les discretionary income or in response to a certain influential critic that may say our wines are awesome, etc. but price is high. i am sure is true with most if not all vendors...

totally true I am sure some ouds are sold below cost and this is done probably by anybody who is in the oud business not just ensar people's.
while back I use to deal with ancient coins and I know from experience I have sold many times coins at cost or even below just to free money for new inventory, but most of the time with only few coins I made back all the lost from dozens of coins with a very healthy profit on top of it.

 

[Ouddict]

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

I think distillers and vendors have a duty - up to a certain point - to explain and clarify. After all, we read many claims, descriptions and are continually introduced to new terms. So a customer should be informed as to what the facts are regarding these narratives.

 

[Ouddict]

w

with ensar people's series is a marketing statement. a PR campaign. we do this in the wine world too. literally loss leaders. and i mean it. swear to almighty truth. not even sold at cost but below. just to hook new clients. younger clients with les discretionary income or in response to a certain influential critic that may say our wines are awesome, etc. but price is high. i am sure is true with most if not all vendors...

I can GUARANTEE you that those People’s Sultan oils are not sold at a loss. I know some of the distillers and the prices and they do tell others in the industry about the prices they sell at.

Now that’s in no way a criticism of those oils, but let’s be clear about this fact that those oils are not sold below the price that they are procured for.

Now if a vendor chooses to calculate the cost by including very high overheads... well, that’s another thing altogether.

I do know that some vendors have very very small overheads and do not depend on oil sales to provide their living expenses and those oils are sold at very small margins. That is a challenge for the likes of Agar Aura and Ensar Oud which I definitely sympathise with. But it is what it is.

Too many customers want cheaper and cheaper oils, but don’t want to pay the price. This won’t be good for the market in the long term. A fair and balanced equilibrium needs to be found, but is hard given the cynicism that abounds due to years of exaggerated claims.

 

[Abdullah]

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.

if only it was that easy. to a certain point the above statement is correct. i have found that the better quality of wood you use, the better the resulting oil yield, up to a certain point. After that grade line is crossed the yield starts going down. what we like to do is test test test the smell of the wood in a few ways to try and judge what the scent of the resulting oils may be.

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.

if you compare oil "made from bunk wood (white) and lue" and then some made from "kyen grade wood" i believe that because you(@Rasoul Salehi) have a good "well developed" nose, you will be able to tell straight away which is which. Again oil made from sinking grade wood might smell "amazing" but it depends on what the wood initially smelled like. the yield will be very very low. This will add to the overall price of the resulting oil. 20g of oil per kilo of wood is being very very very very generous. but i know maybe you were just trying to make a point. i would also like to point out at this stage that there are so many other costings that go into a distillation. for us it's all about the scent.

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.

i can only speak on behalf of Imperial Oud. when we conduct a distillation, we try and make sure everything is hyperclean and no white wood at all goes into the distillation (as much as humanly possible) because we don't like the resulting scent or the notes that creep in as a result.

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.

"this guy is crazy", "he has lost his mind and is mad", "even ajmal and the big houses don't use this grade of wood", "he must have "saw carore"", "give me all this wood and i'll sell it for you for ten time what you paid for it guaranteed in uae and only take a small cut",. these are just some of the things that were said to me while distilling our recent offerings in assam india. people use to come from miles around just to confirm if what they had heard was true. so you are correct upto a certain level in what you say.

those of you who have distilled his/her own oils will know this already but when a true "artisan" distills some oils (the word is used too freely nowadays imo), they only want to use the best of the best. nothing else will do. regardless of cost or difficulty. in search of a heavenly result. reason being?

because he/she is offering you (the buyer) up part of themselves to be judged. All the sleepless nights, Backbreaking labour, blood, sweat and sometimes tears. maybe the artisan will have some type of maternal instinct towards the resulting oil. what should the price of that be?

Maybe it is similar for a vintner or carpenter

Imperial Oud's oils are priced based on cost of wood/distillation/oil. all of us have good income outside of Imperial Oud (so thankfully this is a passion we can indulge?) and we try and keep our margin as low as possible. there are oils we have sold in the past and are currently up for sale where we could charge so much more. We have sometimes sold oils just so the buyer can come along on the journey of progression with us and watch our "baby" grow, where we could have sat on them for a few years and again charge so much more. we COULD charge more but we sat together and consciously decided not to.

For us, it is not about making loads and loads of money. that is why you will notice that we do not offer sales very very often and when we do, our discount is reasonable but not very high. Sometimes that discount scrapes very very close to the bone.

something not many of you may know but, so far, nobody from Imperial Oud has ever taken any money from the company as a wage or dividend etc. it is a labour of love.

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.[/QUOTE

if you know anybody who works to produce bio diesel, a biochemist or biochemical engineer etc or someone in a similar field, and ask them the right questions then you too might come to learn of the techniques @Taha talks about. i am only theorising to @Taha 's techniques but they are not outside of the realms of possibility. all i will say is there are natural and un-natural ways to increase yield and very few people actually know of them.

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

I agree

 

[powdernose]

It's not what you think you know, it's what you can prove. There's no way to definitively prove that falsehoods are circulating about what grade of wood that went into the pot, unless you were there.

Okay let's assume nobody in this community has any proof of anything or any parts to the puzzle.
If anyone has questions regarding these issues, why shouldn't they pursue them?

All we have as consumer is trust. The oud industry is wholly unregulated.

All the more reason to question things.
If you cease to question, it will always remain unregulated.

Has there been any proof of outright deception or falsehood from any of the popular vendors as to the grade of wood used for a particular oil? Thus far, if there at all, would only be speculation.

Is falsehood limited to the grade of wood?
Let's assume there are zero falsehoods in all aspects of the oud business.
If there is persistent speculation or suspicions, why should these issues not be addressed?

Barring that, the only thing I can do as a consumer is to sample and do comparative analysis with other oils, that I believe and trust

Ah yes, trust the nose, trust your selected vendor; that old precept...
Sample and spend strategically.
I'm curious, how many times have you repeated those words?

Respected Pearl, it seems you have long ago found your solution to this conundrum.
So I must ask, if you have found your solution and are not interested in questioning the process, why do you join these discussions?

What would you suggest as an alternative to that strategy concerning how we choose to consume oud?

That buyers be more demanding.
That questions be supported in the community rather than swiftly quashed with distraction or condescension.

How about Ouddict's ideas for the Artisanal Oud Guild - www.artisanaloudguild.org.


Or to take your nose reliance further, set up an anonymous review database with number ranking, so that reviewers can be uninhibited and objective about the oils reviewed.
Or set up a club of enthusiastic experienced noses to sort through the samples.

I think if one remains open to the possibility of progress, ideas will follow.

I would love to increase buyer awareness,

I'm glad to hear it!
I wish you showed it more.

 

[Arsalan]

@Abdullah Great insight into IO...Thanks for sharing that.

 

[powdernose]

if only it was that easy. to a certain point the above statement is correct. i have found that the better quality of wood you use, the better the resulting oil yield, up to a certain point. After that grade line is crossed the yield starts going down. what we like to do is test test test the smell of the wood in a few ways to try and judge what the scent of the resulting oils may be.



if you know anybody who works to produce bio diesel, a biochemist or biochemical engineer etc or someone in a similar field, and ask them the right questions then you too might come to learn of the techniques @Taha talks about. i am only theorising to @Taha 's techniques but they are not outside of the realms of possibility. all i will say is there are natural and un-natural ways to increase yield and very few people actually know of them.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I found it informative.

The post about yield techniques was a bit cryptic though. Care to share more?

 

[Joe King]

if only it was that easy. to a certain point the above statement is correct. i have found that the better quality of wood you use, the better the resulting oil yield, up to a certain point. After that grade line is crossed the yield starts going down. what we like to do is test test test the smell of the wood in a few ways to try and judge what the scent of the resulting oils may be.


if you compare oil "made from bunk wood (white) and lue" and then some made from "kyen grade wood" i believe that because you(@Rasoul Salehi) have a good "well developed" nose, you will be able to tell straight away which is which. Again oil made from sinking grade wood might smell "amazing" but it depends on what the wood initially smelled like. the yield will be very very low. This will add to the overall price of the resulting oil. 20g of oil per kilo of wood is being very very very very generous. but i know maybe you were just trying to make a point. i would also like to point out at this stage that there are so many other costings that go into a distillation. for us it's all about the scent.


i can only speak on behalf of Imperial Oud. when we conduct a distillation, we try and make sure everything is hyperclean and no white wood at all goes into the distillation (as much as humanly possible) because we don't like the resulting scent or the notes that creep in as a result.


"this guy is crazy", "he has lost his mind and is mad", "even ajmal and the big houses don't use this grade of wood", "he must have "saw carore"", "give me all this wood and i'll sell it for you for ten time what you paid for it guaranteed in uae and only take a small cut",. these are just some of the things that were said to me while distilling our recent offerings in assam india. people use to come from miles around just to confirm if what they had heard was true. so you are correct upto a certain level in what you say.

those of you who have distilled his/her own oils will know this already but when a true "artisan" distills some oils (the word is used too freely nowadays imo), they only want to use the best of the best. nothing else will do. regardless of cost or difficulty. in search of a heavenly result. reason being?

because he/she is offering you (the buyer) up part of themselves to be judged. All the sleepless nights, Backbreaking labour, blood, sweat and sometimes tears. maybe the artisan will have some type of maternal instinct towards the resulting oil. what should the price of that be?

Maybe it is similar for a vintner or carpenter

Imperial Oud's oils are priced based on cost of wood/distillation/oil. all of us have good income outside of Imperial Oud (so thankfully this is a passion we can indulge?) and we try and keep our margin as low as possible. there are oils we have sold in the past and are currently up for sale where we could charge so much more. We have sometimes sold oils just so the buyer can come along on the journey of progression with us and watch our "baby" grow, where we could have sat on them for a few years and again charge so much more. we COULD charge more but we sat together and consciously decided not to.

For us, it is not about making loads and loads of money. that is why you will notice that we do not offer sales very very often and when we do, our discount is reasonable but not very high. Sometimes that discount scrapes very very close to the bone.

something not many of you may know but, so far, nobody from Imperial Oud has ever taken any money from the company as a wage or dividend etc. it is a labour of love.



if you know anybody who works to produce bio diesel, a biochemist or biochemical engineer etc or someone in a similar field, and ask them the right questions then you too might come to learn of the techniques @Taha talks about. i am only theorising to @Taha 's techniques but they are not outside of the realms of possibility. all i will say is there are natural and un-natural ways to increase yield and very few people actually know of them.



I agree

Great to hear such an honest and detailed response from a respected vendor/distiller. Very informative