These were a £1 from Poundland. The brand name, Coley & Gill is a PO Box number in Birmingham which belongs to Poundland, though they try to conceal it for marketing purposes (on the whole people regard "own brand" products as of lesser quality than other brands).
As with the other budget packs, this looks attractive, and appears to be good value. The sticks are machine made. This is not a problem in itself - what happens is instead of someone rolling the base paste onto a stick by hand, with the inconsistencies that comes with such a method, the sticks are fed into a machine which applies the paste evenly - the sticks are then dipped into a perfume - or scented solution. Most hand rolled sticks are also dipped into a scented solution after being rolled, so the machine made sticks are not inferior to those. However, in general, the incense sticks that are the most heavenly - that produce scents people pay attention to, and which can create certain moods and atmospheres, are made by hand from a masala (a mix) of dried ingredients. A damp, sticky base base is rolled onto the sticks, which is then rolled over the powdered masala, picking up the fragrant ingredients which adhere to the sticky paste. The sticks are then left to allow the base paste to dry. The advantage of using dry ingredients is that the scent is more stable, gives a greater range and depth of fragrance, and it is the fragrance itself you smell when the stick is burned.
Anyway. How's the fragrance on this stick? Well, as is common with cheap scented solution dipped incense, the aroma on the stick itself is quite attractive - it does indeed smell of freshly washed cotton - a little bit soapy, and a little bit floral. Quite nice. But that scent is quite faint on burning - the smell is mainly the base organic material, which is sawdust from the machilus tree, a type of laurel (some sticks use a charcoal base - you can tell which is which by the colour: brown is sawdust, black is charcoal). It's quite a harmless, inoffensive scent - but there are plenty of better ones out there, even for a £1, though you would only get around 12 - 15 decent sticks for a £1. You can play plenty more than £1, though paying more doesn't always mean you will enjoy it more, as scent is such a personal thing.
Date: Feb 2017 Score: 12
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