Incense in The Wind: September 2017

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

Hari Om 12/- Tez

Third review - scroll down for earlier

This is I believe currently my highest rated perfumed charcoal incense. It is an old sample now. Hari Om sent me this back in 2017, over six years ago. And perfumed incense doesn't last as long as masala. Having said that, the fragrance on this one is still fresh and attractive combining fruits and florals and supported by creamy soft woody notes and warm spices. There's wild curry notes blended in white chocolate and herbs. Fascinating. I can see why I gave this such a high score. I think it has reached the end of its life, though, and that is going to bring the score down. What I'd like is to have a fresh packet to relive the incense when fresh and strong.

Date: Dec 2023 Score: 33 [Average score: 38]

Second review

Gosh I do like this Tez. One of the most appealing perfume-dipped incenses I have had for a long time. There's an real old fashioned feel about this - plenty of floral notes, heady roses well supported by sweet musk and sandalwood, yet there are also modern perfume notes flying around with hints of citrus. There is so much going on. A very beguiling and attractive scent. I want more of this. I am now considering if I should be importing this to sell in the UK. I am sure people would love this.

Date: July 2018 Score: 41

First review

I absolutely love this. When I got the box of samples from Hari Om Fragrances, it was the masala incenses that I was really interested in, especially the fat fluxo type as they are proper job masala; but as I'm working my way through the sample box and trying the sticks, it's the machine made perfume dipped charcoal sticks that are really blowing me away. I adore this Tez. The scent is really quite divine. I am not sure what Tez means, or even if that is what the name is (the last letter is a graphic that could be a V) - in Hindi Tez means something like sharp or keen. And I'm not sure what the scent is supposed to be - there are tulip looking flowers on the box design, but what I am getting is musk and vanilla and honey. On the stick there is a pungent chemical note which resembles lemon and Earl Grey tea - it smells like a typical perfume-dipped stick. Pungent, floral, citric, and largely artificial, though not harsh, and with no plastic or alcohol volatiles. Indeed, quite pleasant, though not divine. But then on burning (and I'm on my fifth stick now, as I just keep burning them one after the other), the aroma is very warm and sensual, with hints of chocolate mixed with the musk. The scent is mildly sharp, and mildly pungent - pleasantly so. It's not aggressive at all. It is a gentle scent that doesn't overpower a room, but does assuredly inform it. You are aware of the scent gently enveloping the room, infusing it with warmth and sensuality. Now and then musk wafts past, and then maybe something floral. There's a surprising amount going on, so the mind is engaged as well as the senses, and this is a scent that teases and encourages further investigation. This is really quite divine, and I really want more of it. It is part of Hari Om's 12 Rupee series (all with a "from the makers of Sai Bhajan" mark on the box), which costs the equivalent of 14p in the UK. A packet of HEM or Tulasi costs on average £1 here, and I'm sure someone could sell this in the UK for around £1 or more, and have some very happy customers.

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 38

***

Hari Om Fragrance

Best floral incense

Incense Ratings - Top of the Dhoops!

Top Ten
Perfume-Dipped Incense

Monday, 11 September 2017

Hari Om 12/- Pankudi

This is floral and jammy sweet. It really lifts a room with a bright and happy aroma. I like this. A really decent everyday incense. The name pankudi or pankhudi means flower petals. And there is a wonderful freshness about this scent which is like having a bath in sweet flower petals. Really lovely.

Date: July 2018 Score: 35

This is from Hari Om's 12 Rupee (12/-) series (with a "from the makers of Sai Bhajan" mark on the box). 12 Rupees equals about 14p (UK) or 18 cents (USA). It is a machine made perfume-dipped charcoal incense. with an attractive floral scent which is like a cross between gentle red roses and sweet peaches. The aroma is quite jammy and very acceptable. This is a very decent everyday incense offering excellent value for money. These could be burned at any time of day, and in any room. They lift, invigorate, and gently charm a room. The aroma is clean, lively, light, and pleasant. It is a jolly, happy scent, that lifts the senses, creating a happy and playful mood.Yeah, damn good - I'd be very happy to buy a box of 12 sticks for 14p .

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 31

***

Hari Om Fragrance

Best floral incense

Incense Ratings - Top of the Dhoops!

Best rose incense

Hari Om Vishwa Sai (Fluxo Incense)

This is in a glossy packet a bit like Sri Sai Flora, which appears to be the original Fluxo; so - like Hari Om's Fluxo Incense, this seems to be in the tradition started by Sri Sai Flora, but is less of a direct copy, and more of Hari Om's own thing (unless there is a fluxo incense with this sort of packaging and imagery that I'm not aware of yet). I like the styling, and the way the packet is sewn closed.

It is a fat masala incense, quite damp and heavy. It burns slowly, but not too heavily, so the scent informs more than overpowers. There is honey, halmaddi and sandalwood aromas. It is quite pleasantly woody and mildly sweet with gentle pricks of warm, damp wool. This is a proper job masala, and I like it.

Hari Om Fragrances were set up in 1990, and they are based in Bangalore.

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 35

***

Flora, Fluxo, and Supreme

Hari Om Fragrance

Monday, 4 September 2017

Darshan Patchouli cones

Second review - scroll down for earlier

I got sent a box of these as a substitute in an order. Ingredients seem to have changed to sawdust. Burns in a smoky, hot manner with more of the sawdust than the scent. The scent on the cone before burning is pine toilet cleaner. Not impressed. Score dropped, and the box is consigned to the toilet.

Date: July 2018 Score: 15

First review

Bought from Closet Krishna, a charity shop in Rochester, when we were back there visiting friends for a few days. There is a video about the shop on YouTube. There were some incenses around the counter, so I bought a few, including this box of Darshan cones. The box must have been a donation - the cones inside are a little damaged, and there's not many. A couple of other incense items I bought at the same time were also damaged, and the prices are not cheap - I paid £1.60 for these cones when they are normally only £1 (or less). But I wanted to support the shop. When I lived in Rochester I would buy my incense from Little Dorrit - I had intended to drop in, but we were very busy over the weekend catching up with friends, and also visiting the new micropubs!

Anyway. This is an acceptable charcoal based perfume-dipped incense cone. The aroma is pretty standard everyday quality - perhaps a little under average, as the charcoal is noticeable. Quite smoky (which I tend to like - I love watching smoke swirling, and I like cones for that reason, because you get more smoke, and so more swirls!) As it gets nearer the base so the charcoal becomes even more noticeable. The scent is faintly musky, though not really what I would call patchouli.

Date: April 2017 Score: 23

***

Darshan Incense

Patchouli
Score: 25

Sunday, 3 September 2017

Balarama Spiritual Sky Frankincense

A Spiritual Sky incense from the Balarama company in Thailand. As with the Frankincense & Myrrh, this is foiled wrapped. It is less sweet than the Frankincense & Myrrh, and the aroma is a little cruder, revealing a little too much of the base wood powder. I quite liked the Frankincense & Myrrh, but I'm somewhat less keen on this one. Initially they smelled very similar, but the weaknesses in this one are showing up rather more profoundly than on the Frankincense & Myrrh.

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 25

***

Foil wrapped incense

Incense by Country

Frankincense

Balarama Spiritual Sky Frankincense & Myrrh

Second review - scroll down for earlier

I have burned a lot of Balarama incense since I first reviewed this in 2017, and these sticks - while shorter than usual, are typically Balarama. Bright, modern, sweet, commercial scent on the stick. Easy going, fun, and inviting. The Balarama website is currently up and running (which it wasn't when I first reviewed these), and they show the Spiritual Sky incense in the flat packs which us old hippies remember it being sold in back in the early Seventies. The scent on the sticks does remind me of the old Spiritual Sky - bright, modern, sweet, and inviting.

The scent on the burn is a little quiet and smoky - more smouldering sawdust than bright perfume, which is a shame, as the promise of the scent on the stick is quite joyful and interesting. There is little awareness of frankincense or myrrh anywhere - neither on the stick nor on the burn.

Date: Nov 2024 Score: 25

Average of the two reviews: 30

First review

Spiritual Sky was THE incense of the Seventies, and every aging hippy will remember it with great fondness. It was originally made by the Krishna Temple in California, but after financial troubles the brand was sold. It has had over 14 owners, and there are many versions available, as I wrote about in this post from 2013. None of them are very good, and none are anywhere near the original. This is a new version to me. It is made by Balarama, a Thailand company, who - according to this article, took over Spiritual Sky, but went bankrupt in the 1990s. The Balarama website is no longer working, though from this archive page on The Wayback Machine, they did sell Spiritual Sky and a range of other brands as well, including Divine Spirit, which may or not be the same as the Divine Spirit I reviewed in 2013. There seem to be links between Balarama, Ancient Wisdom, and Emporium. [Added 2024]: Balarama of Thailand is in business, they are quite possibly also the source for Kuumba incense.

Anyway, I bought these from Just Aromatherapy, and some of the scents I ordered were not available and were substituted, so it may be that when supplies are gone, they will be gone. They are foil wrapped. They are a paste applied to a bamboo, which is then rolled in a brown masala powder. They are quite pleasant, and are indeed, the most pleasant of the non-original Spiritual Sky incense I have tried - they are quite sweet and yummy, like the originals. This Frankincense & Myrrh however doesn't smell anything like frankincense or myrrh. It smells like the foil wrapped Mystic Incense Pink Sugar. It's nice, whatever its original.

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 35

Average of the two reviews: 30

***

Top Ten
Perfume-Dipped Incense

Foil wrapped incense

Incense by Country

Frankincense

Damodhar Sri Sai Flora Fluxo Incense

Second review - scroll down for earlier

Cheap as chips and available everywhere, you get a lot of bang for your buck. I always have a packet or two in the house. Example retailers: PowellsAromatherapy UK (£1.65 for 25g); Sensia USA ($2.95 for 25g); MagicEssence Aus ($2.70 for 25g); InciensosDeSevilla Spain ( 82 Euros for 25g).

This is not a subtle or a profound incense. It is actually quite crude or bold, and I'm not sure how much this famous incense compares now with when it was originally made. It is a remarkably moist and flexible stick, and resembles a wet dhoop more than anything else. A wet smoky dhoop made with ghee and sandalwood powder. The wet dhoop has been rolled around a perfectly round bamboo stick, which must be machine made, then rolled in a fragrant melnoorva/masala powder and possibly additionally dipped in oils/perfumes. So it's a rich, fat, strong combination, and yet very cheap. These are clearly fragrance oils rather than essential oils.

The scent on the stick is oily, prickly, perfumed, sweet, compelling and hugely attractive- mostly sandalwood. It is not a complex scent - the focus is on sweet sandalwood, hovering between woody and floral. After the burn, and lasting well into the next day, the scent in the room is of that sandalwood. The downside of this Sri Sai is that in between the stick scent and the after scent comes the burn scent. And the smoky wet dhoop smell is what dominates during the burn. It is a penetrating, assertive, and somewhat crude and rude scent. The pleasant fragrance of the sandalwood is in there, but is completely dominated by the smell of burning oil, butter, and petrol. A little goes a long way. On the whole this is not an incense that favours close up inspection of the fragrances during the burn; indeed, while I often do have it in the room with me, it is not an incense that many people could stand to have in the room with them for long periods of time. As with a firework, this an incense to light and stand well back. Perhaps, indeed, stand in the next room. Light it, stick it in a room you want cleansed and perfumed, and leave it for an hour or two to do its work.

I like it. I like it for its place in the history and tradition of Indian incense because it has had such an influence. And I like it for the power and depth of its scent. But I recognise the downsides - that, despite the richness of its composition, it is actually quite a simple incense, quite a crude (albeit very effective) incense, and that during the burn it can be quite overpowering, and can at times touch on offensive with its smoky edges. Despite all that, I love the robustness of the scent, and the power and beauty of the rich oils of sandalwood and florals. This is an incense that stands out in the crowd and makes itself heard.

Date: Jan 2022 Score: 36

First review

This is a very famous incense - popular in India, and sometimes copied by other manufacturers, such as Hari Om's Fluxo. And even where a manufacturer has perhaps not copied the packaging, they might have copied the name Fluxo, or at least the heavy loading of ingredients so the stick is rich and fat and very heavy.

From what I can tell, this incense has been around for 50 years, though the company that makes it today, Damodhar & Co, was formed in 1988, and it is distributed by Tejjas, whose details appear on the pack. Indeed, it appears as though - like Shroff/Channabasappa & Co, Damodhar and Tejjas may be different divisions of the same company, they have the same address: Dickenson Road in Bengaluru.

The sticks are very fat and heavy and pregnant with oils, there is a petrol aroma on the sticks. It is surprisingly flexible - most incense sticks are straight and firm - these bend almost like rubber. The core is a charcoal based paste which is sticky and gummy, and that paste is applied first, and then a brown melnoorva/masala/finishing powder is rolled on top. I suspect, giving the moist feel, and volatile aroma, that this is then dipped in a blend of fragrant oils - or perhaps the melnoorva/masala powder was previously impregnated with oils. Comparing it with the Hari Om Fluxo, the Hari Om stick is much firmer, and the finishing powder has been applied more neatly and consistently. The aroma is more perfumed on the stick, though there is a distinct awareness of volatiles. They both burn at around the same rate, and both produce plenty of smoke. There is something of a dhoop aroma in both - quite oily and smoky, and I suspect there is some ghee present. The main aroma is sandalwood, though there is also some slight suggestion of halmaddi - a sort of damp wool scent, combined with a sharp prickling.

As with the Hari Om, I find this likeable, even though there is nothing profound or interesting in the scent. It's a warm, woody, sensual scent - quite straight forward, but sometimes that is just what is wanted. It is a little heavier and blunter, and a little less sweet than the Hari Om, so the family all preferred the Hari Om, but not by much, and mainly because it was softer. I can imagine there would be others who would prefer this one. To each their own.

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 33

***

Flora, Fluxo, and Supreme

Incense Ratings - Top of the Dhoops!

Reviewed on Ratnagandh

Reviewed on ORS

Saturday, 2 September 2017

Hari Om Fluxo Incense

This is my first "fluxo incense". I wasn't quite sure what is meant by "fluxo", which is an Italian word for flow, so I asked some Indian incense manufacturers. Soham Singh of Wala, who make perfumes and fragrance compounds for incense sticks, responded with this info:

Well normally we call it masala incense. It's all loaded with spices, honey, Halmandi (a form of natural ingredient which comes from a tree). The scented ones are made by simply dipping the raw black charcoal sticks into perfumes; though in the case of fluxo the dough is prepared by mixing charcoal, wood powder, adhesive, honey, perfume, some aromatic crystals chemicals like ISO bornyl acetate powder, phenyl acetic acid flakes, vanillin, a lot more, mixed all together step by step and then hand rolled on blank bamboo sticks to make a fluxo incense. It contains oil and resins as well. There are various fluxo incense famous from India like Sai Flora, Ganesh, Nag Champa and many more.

So fluxo is a masala incense, though it's use appears to be when the masala incense is particularly thick and luscious. The most famous and notable example of this is Sri Sai Flora Fluxo incense, and it might well be that Indian incense makers, much like beer manufacturers (well, I suppose all manufacturers when you think of cheeses and wines, etc) will just copy the style and name and imagery of the most successful brands.

Other side of the Hari Om packet

Both sides of Sai Flora Fluxo Incense

It appears to me that Fluxo Incense was a name first used by Sai Flora, and that name, as well as other aspects of their incense, such as the colouring and imagery, has been copied by other manufacturers. Hari Om have an incense called Sugandha Mala - the styling of which is very similar to Sugandha Swarna, and the scent is very similar as well, so Hari Om do like to provide a range of incenses familiar to their customers by being similar in style and scent to other popular incenses. This is good business practise, though mega success only comes when a manufacturer can produce their own successful brand that others then start to copy.

Anyway, I quite like this Hari Om Fluxo Incense - it's warm and spicy, with clear tones of halmaddi and sandalwood. It's a proper job masala, so it works effectively as an incense - better than most average perfume-dipped incenses. It remains pretty much on one level, and is intense rather than profound - which is what some folks want. It does its job, and does it well - a straight talking, rich, heady incense that never over asserts itself, but informs the room with a lingering and very pleasant scent. On comparing this with the Sri Sai Flora Fluxo incense, the whole family felt they were similar, but we had a slight preference for the Hari Om. I can imagine though that others would feel differently, and would prefer the Sri Sai, particularly if that was their regular incense.

Date: Sept 2017 Score: 34

***

Flora, Fluxo, and Supreme

Hari Om Fragrance

Incense Ratings - Top of the Dhoops!

A little scent comparison

Amber

Amber is one of those scents that we are familiar with, but is not essentially natural. I have some amber resin that I thought was genuine natural amber resin, but it is more likely to be labdanum.

Amber, which is dried tree resin, has been used since the days of Ancient China as a fragrance, and when burned has a subtle pinewood aroma. Ambergris, which is produced by whales, is also known as amber, and has been burned as an incense by Egyptians, producing a musky scent - it is usually this aroma that is associated with modern amber fragrance. As with a number of ancient and traditional incense sources, the costs of using the original source can be prohibitive and/or less effective than using a replacement. Today, labdanum, which is a resin produced by the gum rockrose plant, is used to create an amber aroma. Acacia is occasionally used as an amber fragrance source - most notability in the French perfume Cassie, which is considered to be warm with soft hints of fruit and herbaceous flowers.

The scent is difficult to pin down because there is no actual amber scent - it is a composed scent, often part natural and part synthetic. It is generally warm, sweet, musky, with qualities of vanilla, benzoin, patchouli, fruit, sandalwood, etc. Each perfumery or incense house utilising "amber" will create it in their own way, according to how they think amber should smell.

Amber may be distilled from the gum rockrose or labdanum as an "absolute", a term used in perfumery when a fragrance is extracted from a plant via a solvent such as ethanol before being distilled. It is a longer process than steam distillation, though is needed for certain fragrances which are otherwise difficult to extract via steam distillation. Amber is one such fragrance. Amber fragrance is extracted from the gum rockrose or labdanum - it is named after ambergris, a waxy substance found in sperm whales, as it has a similar fragrance, and is a suitable substitute. Ambergris is no longer used for fragrance. The term is occasionally used in incense - HMS of Pune tend to use it, and I assume it is used to signify that the fragrance is good quality. How much weight of reliability one can put on this use is uncertain, as companies are fairly free with using descriptions such as "Premium" or "Top Quality" for even the most basic of products. I would assume, though, that if a company is selling several amber fragrances, and one is labelled "Absolute", and is a higher price, that the Amber Absolute will be their best amber fragrance. But it doesn't mean it will be a better quality amber than another company's amber.

Reviews

* = Review over 5 years old so may not be reliable