Balaji World Premium Incense Sticks

  

Second review - scroll down for earlier

I've returned to this after a year. It remains a mass produced, machine-extruded everyday perfumed incense. Though I'm finding it kinda interesting, and I'm liking it more now than I did last year - it is a perfume fragrance, slightly musky, slightly floral, with an accord of sweet tobacco, rather like the old children's sweet (which is still sold, either as Sweet Tobacco or Spanish Gold). Yes, it is vague, and it is clunky, and it is a bit smoky and heady (made more for the hot and vibrant Indian market than the cold and grey UK), but it has its charm. Yeah - different day, different moment, different mood. 


Date: Oct 2023   Score: 29
 

First review

This is a low-end everyday perfumed-charcoal incense. The scent is fairly generic perfumed incense. Slightly acidic. Fairly vague. Not attractive or interesting enough for me to bother with working out what it actually smells like. It's not dreadful, but it's not great either. It's sort of - meh.  

It's a rather decent packet - quite large, with a range of images from around the world. The packet is probably the best thing about it. Cost 30 Rupees (approx 30p) for 15 sticks in India. 75p from Popat Stores in the UK (or you could splash out and treat yourself by paying £2.99 for the same thing from eBay, or £2.69 from IndiaBazaar). 

Date: Oct 2022   Score: 21

***

Balaji Agarbatti Company

Hem White Musk Incense Sticks

 

Second review - scroll down for earlier

Standard HEM everyday synthetic perfume room freshener charcoal stick. Musk scents are always copies, as the authentic musk scent comes from animals, and the animal needs to be killed. Scents are either copied from plants, such as the musk mallow,  or are created in the lab. They are widely considered to be acceptable scents. Almost all musk scents in incense will be synthetic rather than musk mallow. And even when musk mallow is used, it is likely that a synthetic musk will be blended in to give depth. This stick is purely synthetic. 

The scent on the stick is soapy, synthetic, slightly volatile. Faintly and mildly pleasant, though not evocative. Charcoal dust gets on my fingers while handling the sticks. Not nice. The scent on the burn is loose and obscure, wandering around in a haphazard manner. Sometimes fake bacon, sometimes synthetic florals,  some warm charcoal, and possibly a bit of musk. The impact of the fragrance is rather less than it was 16 months ago. 

Not great, but not offensive either. Score remains at the bottom of my Modest Everyday category. 


Date: Feb 2024  Score: 20 

First review

Standard everyday HEM perfumed-charcoal incense sticks. These are not profound or special, but they do the everyday job of fragrancing a room, and they do it cheaply and do it well. Scent on the stick is sweet and perfumed, more flowery than musky, though there are some deeper notes in there. The scent on the burn is strong, offering good  value if you want an impactful fragrance in your house, though some may be uncomfortable with its bold assertion. It burns evenly and at a decent speed. The scent feels mawkish and old fashioned with a sense of talcum powder on old ladies - there's something unpleasantly damp and greasy about it. It's slightly overwhelming, as with cheap ladies who splash on too much powerful but cheap scent.  I'm not a fan of this.  I'm not anti-HEM; I really enjoy some of the scents they produce, but I am really put off by others. I am not totally appalled by this White Musk, but it's certainly not working for me. 

I had reviewed this scent in the cone version: Hem White Musk Incense Cones. 

HEM products are easily available all over the world, either online or in your nearest incense shop or even corner shop. They are generally around £1 a packet of 20 sticks. 

Date: Oct 2022   Score: 20

***

HEM Corporation

Musk

Tulasi Agarwood Exotic Incense Sticks

 

A typical square box perfumed-charcoal incense containing 8 sticks by Tulasi. I've just noticed that the recent incense reviews I have done have been for Indian incense version of Persian incense, which is based on agarwood, also called oud/oudh and bakhoor.  

The scent on the stick is a little crude and chemical, but on the burn it has a pleasant mildly sweet perfume which is reminiscent of oud or agarwood. Modestly acceptable middle to top end everyday perfumed incense.  

Date: Oct 2022   Score: 27  

***

More Tulasi reviews

The best agarwood incense

Ranga Rao Cycle Brand Asli Bakhoor

 

Oooh! Deliciously sherbet sweet on the stick, which is a proper job masala. Charcoal dust blended with fragrant ingredients, and then coated in a fragrant pale melnoorva powder. It's a lively scent, a little acidic, which gives it a sharp freshness preventing the delicious sweetness from becoming cloying. Herbal notes, some cucumber, musky undertones, touches of fresh cedar shavings. Damn good. 

The scent on the burn is very similar to that on the stick, though not as bright and lively. The burn is slow and even, and the scent informs the room, leaving a residual fragrance that lingers pleasantly for a considerable time. All in all a very decent incense.  

Available in the UK from Amazon in packs of 12 for £20.99 with free postage. Single packs from ScentedAndMore for £3.50.  Available in the US from StoutMonk for $3.99. 

Date: Oct 2022   Score: 38 

***

Ranga Rao 

Parimal Mandir

 

Parimal Mandir are a well established Indian incense company, founded in 1942 in Bangalore by Sunku Gundaiah Setty as the “Gandhi Flour Mills & Perfumery Works”. The company is domestically  successful with some exports to Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, and there is at least one family member still on the executive board.  They have a useful video detailing both their history and their production methods: Documentary Release (2014).  They mainly use the "Parimal" brand name, but also have a "Shubh Labh" brand name for use on at least one incense.  

  

IndiaMart video report on the company

Reviews

 

Parimal Yatra Natural Incense (M)

Dec 2023 - Score: 47 (in)

Parimal Yatra Natural Incense Cones
Oct 2024 - Score: 45↑↑↓

 

Parimal Shubh Labh
Vedanta incense Sticks
Oct 2021 - Score: 40

Parimal Cosmic Scents
Floral Petals Natural Incense
Oct 2021 - Score: 37

 

Parimal Golden Oudh
Premium Incense Sticks 
Oct 2022 - Score: 25

Scents reviewed: 5
Top score: 47
Low score: 25
Average: 37

Conclusion:  I'll need to revisit this maker. 

***

The Best Incense Makers

Parimal Golden Oudh Premium Incense Sticks

 

Machine-made perfumed-charcoal incense. Pleasant sweet flowery scent on the stick - a blend of rose and violets. It's the same scent on the burn, which is uncommon, especially for perfumed incense. The stick burns evenly and slowly with a moderately pleasant scent. This is a decently made, professional, everyday perfumed incense. Nothing remarkably good, but nothing remarkably bad either. The scent gently informs the room with a modestly bright, uplifting scent - quite acceptable to gently cheer up the house in the morning, or to discreetly refresh the house for casual visitors. 

Date: Oct 2022    Score: 25

***

Parimal Mandir

The best agarwood incense

The Mother's India Fragrances Sample Pack: Ganesh, Meera, Amrita, Rishi, Sattva, Shanti

 

Sample pack of short sticks - two of each scent, with six scents in the pack. Bought quite cheap from a hippy shop in Hitchin, Herts: Harvest Moon. I've had a few Mother's sample packs over the years, and the content does vary. This one contains samples of Amrita, Ganesh, Meera, Rishi, Sattva, and Shanti. The pack is attractive, and as with other's I've had, opens up to reveal the samples inside in little packs, glued to the pack. The pack is a little difficult to open - I find the best way is to slip a sharp knife or scissors into the bottom to cut it open. I picked up what I thought were three different packs, though it turns out that two are the same, though with different coloured packs - orange and blue, and with the list of scents in a different order. 

All the sticks are composed of a fragrant charcoal paste hand-rolled onto a plain bamboo splint, and then rolled in a finishing or melnoorva powder which prevents the sticks from gluing together while the paste is still moist. The scents on the sticks are variable in the amount of liquid volatiles (essential oils or perfumes) detected. The scents on some sticks feels to be more propelled by dry ingredients, and there are notes of halmaddi present on a few, to varying degrees. The pack when opened releases a  pleasant, flowery  scent more reminiscent of a modern perfume shop than an incense shop.  

Sattva

The scent is flowery, sweet, pleasant. Quite modern and perfumey. It is a light, modern, polite scent - nothing to get excited about, but certainly quite attractive to have around. The weight of the scent appears to rely on a liquid fragrance, either an essential oil or a fragrance oil of some sort. There are citric notes: soft orange and tangerine, hints of melon, some St Julien tobacco, supported by sweet sandalwood, and fresh beech. 

Sattva is one of the three guna in Hindu philosophy.  It relates to honesty, goodness, and positivity. If you feel that such a concept is somehow represented by a flowery and modern scent, then the name will resonate with you. The rest of us will just see it as a name given to this particular incense. I find the names given to products (especially cars!) somewhat interesting, but given that I am rationale enough to know that it is just marketing (says the man who while at university wrote the astrology column for the international travel magazine Utopia), I tend not to look more deeply into the names of products beyond a healthy curiosity. 

I like this scent. Here's what the maker, Greater Goods, says:  Sattva. 

Date: April 2022   Score: 39  

To be finished.....

***

The Mother's India Fragrances

Incensum Benzoin

 

This is a very pleasant masala incense made in "The Incensum Village", South India. There is a website, www.incensum.in, which in Oct 2022 was not working - however, it has existed on the internet since at least 2007, and there are glimpses of it available on WayBack. Incensum Incense appears to have been founded in 2000 as "Project Incensum" - an independent research project which became "a collective effort of many incense traders, retailers, fragrance professionals and scores of incense lovers from many countries", and then produced its own incense in Coimbatore, South India, with its own group of workers, shown here.  I am unsure if it still exists, and I can't recall where I got this packet of incense from.  There is an incense company, Vittal Lalitham Aashirvaad, who occupy the same premises in Coimbatore, but it's unclear what relationship, if any, there is between the two. 

There is a very pleasant scent on the stick which appears to be oil/perfume based, and is sweet, woody, musky, sexual, very attractive. This is a charcoal based masala, coated with a woody melnoorva to prevent the finished products from sticking together. Melnoorva is usually made from a mixture of charcoal powder and jigat (also called joss powder, jiggat, jiggit) which is fine powdered tree bark. 

The scent on the burn is woody and natural. It burns evenly and slowly, and gently informs the room with its clean, woody scent. This is a decent quality incense - solid, traditional, and without frills. It's calming and reassuring and comforting, with a refined and gentle sense of cleansing. It gives a long burn which leaves a gentle and pleasing aroma.  Decent stuff. 

Incensum have some curious opinions on halmaddi, the tree resin popular in the West as an incense ingredient. They feel that moist incenses are due to the presence of halmaddi (this has not been my experience - my own experience is that flora/fluxo incenses tend to be the ones that are moist, and that is due to heavy use of fragrant oils  - essential or "agarbatti oil" (which is usually diethyl phthalate) rather than the use of halmaddi, and that most incenses I have had which have prominently used halmaddi, have been dry).  They also feel that moist incense attracts mould. Mould on incense is uncommon, but can occur, and is more due to storage than the possibility that an ingredient is attracting moisture. Dry organic ingredients, such as are present in masala, Tibetan, and Japanese incense, can become mouldy if poorly packed and/or allowed to come into contact with moisture, and then left. A wet masala such as a fluxo which contains a fair degree of essential oils (with or without halmaddi) is less likely to become mouldy as the oil would protect the ingredients. Mould is more likely to occur on poorly packed Tibetan incense.  Their final comment is one I do agree with, that incense with halmaddi can become "corrupted" by the halmaddi, so that the halmaddi aroma dominates. Indeed, from my research, the use of halmaddi as a plasticiser to strengthen and prolong the scent decreased over time because of problems with aroma dominance, and that it was replaced with DEP, which has a volatility but does not have a scent. However, use of halmaddi as a fragrant ingredient is increasing because of its popularity in the West. 

Date: Oct 2022    Score: 32 

***

 What's The Best Incense In The World?

Benzoin / Loban / Sambrani

Hari Darshan Noor Oud Crystal

 

There is a very pleasant and fairly authentic oud aroma on the stick. The sticks are neatly machine made from a charcoal blend with a fine coating of fragrant melnoorva powder. The scent comes from a perfume or essential oil.  The aroma on the burn is a little dry and spicy and quite woody (or even wooden). I'm not getting too much of the oud. It's more like a Tibetan incense than a Persian. 

On the whole we've not been that impressed with this one. It's OK, a sort of lower end everyday incense. The packaging is attractive and well made. The sticks are kept inside an inner paper packet placed inside a stiff card box which slides open. It gives a feel of a quality product.  

Available in the UK from DMRLS for £1.80;  WitchesSage for £2.00;  OMGI for £2.69; or   ScentedAndMore for £3.50; and in the US from PrabhujisGifts for $3.38. 

Date: Oct 2022    Score: 22 

***

Hari Darshan

The best agarwood incense

K.V. Exports Supreme Krishna Incense Sticks Strawberry

 

Second review - scroll down for earlier

Standard bargain basement everyday perfumed-charcoal incense. I was quite harsh on these last year, and lighting them again now as part of my clear out (keep, chuck, or outhouse) I fully expected this to be a chuck. As it is, it's not a keep, but a move to the outhouse. That is, we'll keep it to burn casually just to refresh the outhouse, which is where the cats eat. There is a pleasant fruity smell which kinds hovers around strawberry, though it's a synthetic strawberry, rather than a fresh natural one. This reminds me a little of the old Spiritual Sky Strawberry Fields incense. The flat packet is kinda similar as well - fatter and shorter, of course, and different design, but there are similarities in that it is a flat pack, it has the window to show the sticks, there is a Krishna illustration, and it has the sticker for the name of the fragrance.  Us old hippies have fond memories of the old Spiritual Sky, though maybe those sticks were not quite as good quality as our (my) nostalgic memory makes them out to be.  But this, though, is quite nice. And it is leaving me wondering how I could have been so dismissive last year, and yet so, well not appreciative maybe, but accepting today. A different time, a different mood, a different experience. Hmmm. The more I burn this the more I like it, and I'm wondering  if I should hold onto it for a little longer.....

Date: Nov 2023   Score: 28

First review

Not as crude as the Jasmine/Mogra by the same company, but comes from the same mould of cheap, generic synthetic-perfume charcoal sticks. There's not a lot of strawberry scent attached to these, either on the stick or the burn. It's more of a chemical aroma that you get from cheap perfumed incense. Kinda sickly as well. So, a little better than the Mogra, but still borderline offensive. 

Date: Oct 2022   Score: 17 

***

Fruit Fragrances
That'll Make You Drool

K.V. Exports Supreme Krishna Incense Sticks Mogra

 

Third review - scroll down for earlier

This has been in the outhouse for a while, then it got shuffled to the front, and we've burned all the sticks in the last couple of days. Fair do, it does leave a sort of jasmine fragrance in the air for a long time. Keeps the room smelling fresh and clean. There's a place for most things. 


Date: Nov 2024   Score: 23 

Average of three reviews: 19 

Second review

Bargain basement perfumed charcoal incense. This is the sort of stuff that gives perfumed incense its bad name. It's a chemical jasmine aroma. Not good. But not actually offensive. I'll put it in the outhouse to keep the flies away from the cat food. 

Date: Dec 2023   Score: 19 

Average of three reviews: 19 

First review

One of two packs of Krishna sticks I picked up from Little Dorrit in Rochester for £2 per pack, which was about £1.50 too much. These are cheap, crude, perfumed charcoal sticks. To their credit the packs were in sealed plastic bags, and inside the packs is another sealed plastic bag. This ensures the perfume on the sticks doesn't evaporate. Sadly, it's not a great perfume. I don't think K.V. Exports make the perfume themselves - I think it's a cheap, generic perfume they have bought in bulk from a main supplier.  Mogra is, of course, jasmine, but there's little flowery about this scent - it is a crude chemical scent that approximates jasmine, badly. 

It's borderline offensive. 

Date: Oct 2022   Score: 15 

Average of three reviews: 20 

***

Best jasmine incense

Balarama Asoke Govinda Nag Champa

 

Tatty box with the original porcelain holder missing. Bought for £1 from Little Dorrit in Rochester, my former incense shop. Contains 20 short sticks roughly made with some variation - some thin, some thick, some stiff, some bendy. Made in Thailand. Faint scent on the stick - fairly neutral. Faint scent on the stick, quite organic, rather like grass burning. This is quite humble, rustic incense. I can find little info on the Asoke company - the website doesn't work (as of Oct 2022), though was active from 2002 to 2017, as shown on WayBack. And there is a (barely active) Facebook page.  

If you like rustic, earthy, simple incense rather like Tibetan incense, then this may appeal. But if you like something more refined and aesthetic, then this may be a little too crude. It's not for me.  

It's available online, with the incense holder, for £1.99 from ShivaOnline. 

[Oct 2024: This is another product mada by Balarama]

Date:  Oct 2022  Score: 18 

***

Balarama foil-wrapped

Nag Champa

Hari Darshan Tribal Soul Backflow Incense Cones White Sage + Lavender

  

Big, long lasting perfumed cones. The scent on the cone and the initial burn is acceptable - it's a little bit like pine disinfectant, but on the whole is quite clean and bracing. But while the burn scent is pleasant, the backflow aspect of the cone is quite weak; as the cone burns down so things start to reverse, and the scent from the cone weakens while the backflow smoke starts to increase. 

On the whole, though, the scent remains borderline acceptable, and the dirty ash and mucky tar scent from the backflow is mostly hidden by the pine disinfectant scent of the evaporating perfume.  This is the first reasonably acceptable backflow cone I can recall burning. 

Date: Oct 2022    Score: 21 

***

Hari Darshan

White Sage

Dr. Jieer Incense Cone All Handmade 6 Color

An incense cone gift pack made in China by  the Guangzhou Indian Style Trading Company -  and bought off Amazon for £6.99.  The perfumed cones are a decent size with a fairly robust, though generic, perfume. The six fragrances are fairly standard: Red Rose, Super Sandal, Jasmine, White Musk, Meditation, and Lavender. They burn for a decent length of time, but are not great quality. The burns are variable - some tend to be a little smoky, and keep little of the promise on the cone of the fragrance, though others are moderately acceptable. This is a lower end everyday incense. They are pretty much what you'd expect them to be - something modest to burn to cover up a bad smell, or to introduce a moderately pleasant scent into the house. Nothing interesting or profound, but they do what it says on the tin.

Date: Oct 2022    Score: 22

***

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