Emporium Mystic Scents Lemon (brand closed)

I picked up this pack of basic incense for 49p from JustAromatherapy  last year when I was gathering in as much Happy Hari incense as I could before they all disappeared. I got a bunch of cheap Emporium incense at the same time. Emporium are a budget incense supplier - they supply the folks like me before I had the revelation in 2013 and found Satya Nag Champa; indeed, we still have a place in our household for budget incense - such as in the outhouse to keep the flies away from the cat food in the summer.

These sticks are very small and thin, with a roughly rolled and barely adequate coating of charcoal dust, which is then dipped in a scented chemical solvent. The scent is not profound, but to be fair, it's not intended to be, and it's not offensive. It's a little smoky when burning, and as with most of these budget incenses it has a basic aroma of burning sawdust and grass with little awareness of the intended aroma. It's not an incense to burn in the main house, but works fine in the bathroom or outhouse. The sticks are cheap, but 49p for 10 sticks is not good value when compared to 99p for 80 decent quality sticks plus a wooden ash holder: Bloome Incense Garden Strawberries, or £1 for 60 decent quality sticks plus an ash holder: Poundland Fig & Wild Plum, or £1.49 for 100 decent quality sticks plus a wooden ash holder: Sifcon Cinnamon Cedarwood. But, to be fair, those do represent the best value incense I've come across. These Emporium incense are much more common, and are found in the places where people look for incense, while those three I just mentioned, are only found in pound stores and hardware stores - places you don't expect to find incense. And they don't seem to be available online - more's the pity.


Date: June 2018   Score: 19

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Emporium incense
(Own brand label
out of business)