Bought from Aavyaa as a combo deal with three other fragrances by Om Sai Agarbatti Works (also trading as Om Brand Agarbatti). The packaging led me to believe these would be decent masala style sticks, but they are instead perfumed-charcoal. At £4 per packet (albeit 50g), for rather plain, unexciting everyday perfumed-charcoal, I'm not impressed. I paid £12 for boring outhouse incense. I can get 8 x 50g packets of delightful Rathnams Tanjore from Popat Stores for that price. I've already reviewed the Om Brand Chandan sticks, and was not impressed.
Sticks are 9 inches, with 7 inches of machine extruded charcoal paste. A fruity lavender scent on the stick, combined with a pine disinfectant volatility. It clears the nose and kills 99% of all known germs. It flares up on being lit, producing a black smoke, and is reluctant to being blown out. It smoulders gracefully, producing an attractive blue-grey smoke.
It behaves much as you'd expect a bog standard chemical-perfume charcoal incense to behave. It produces a moderately pleasant low end lavender scent which is sometimes crisp, and sometimes warm, vague and smoky. There is nothing interesting about this, and it underperforms all the decent and halfway decent perfumed incense manufacturers such as HEM, Moksh, and Tulasi. To its credit it is a firm scent, it is on target, it burns for around 70 minutes, and it fills the room pleasantly and inoffensively. But it's not value for money. And it's not special.
Sticks are 9 inches, with 7 inches of machine extruded charcoal paste. A fruity lavender scent on the stick, combined with a pine disinfectant volatility. It clears the nose and kills 99% of all known germs. It flares up on being lit, producing a black smoke, and is reluctant to being blown out. It smoulders gracefully, producing an attractive blue-grey smoke.
It behaves much as you'd expect a bog standard chemical-perfume charcoal incense to behave. It produces a moderately pleasant low end lavender scent which is sometimes crisp, and sometimes warm, vague and smoky. There is nothing interesting about this, and it underperforms all the decent and halfway decent perfumed incense manufacturers such as HEM, Moksh, and Tulasi. To its credit it is a firm scent, it is on target, it burns for around 70 minutes, and it fills the room pleasantly and inoffensively. But it's not value for money. And it's not special.
Your experience with this stick is so different than mine. This is not a perfumed charcoal stick. In fact, Om Sai told me they don't use charcoal to keep their sticks burning, but coconut ash mixed into the dough. This produces a darker grayish ash. Charcoal usually produces a white ash.
ReplyDeleteWhen we use the word perfume, we often are referring to the various synthetic scents produced by the commercial perfumery world. Lab based. I think it is a mistake to use this word in the incense vernacular. Many scents have become very expensive to use for incense. Many, many companies use synthetics. It is how they use and mix these oils with the other ingredients that will determine the final aroma. This is part of the art. I would venture to say that the greater part of this lavender stick is natural and contains halmaddi, honey, sandalwood, and resins along with any oils introduced and remains a very balanced, earthy blend I find very pleasant. Bog standard chemical perfumed charcoal is just a plain wrong description unless you indeed got a different stick in your package. Plus, this is a flora stick. This is not like most of the junk you review. Sorry. but I'm not buying your story. Maybe you need a holiday? lol.
Ha ha.
DeleteAnyway. Charcoal is made from a variety of burnable products, commonly willow and bamboo, but also coconut. Charcoal is a valuable product in incense making because it burns without smoke or smell, and is absorbent. It is preferred over wood powder. Saying an incense is made from charcoal is not an insult, it is simply an observation.
When I use the word perfume I mean liquid scent as opposed to a masala scent. From conversations with various incense houses it appears all houses use some synthetic scents at some point because of the positive properties they may bring to the finished product, plus the economy. I have often said on my blog that I am not against using synthetic scents. Chanel No 5, one of my favourite perfumes, is synthetic, so I'm OK with incense houses using a quality synthetic. The most successful Indian houses use their own facilities to research and develop their own in-house synthetic perfume.
DeleteI call all liquid scents perfumes, even essential oil, as that is what they are. They largely behave the same way when burned in incense. I did for a while use the term "liquid scent", but I found that clumsy and awkward, so I just use perfume now.
When I have conversations with incense houses they tell me that they dilute essential oil. The degree of dilution will vary, but my understanding is that dilution is common - at least among Indian houses. In my own experience, there isn't a significant difference between a quality synthetic scent and an essential oil diluted with DEP when they are burned. There is, though, a difference in purity when using an undiluted essential oil. But that, from my understanding (and please point out where I'm wrong as I'm all about learning), is not something that happens in Indian incense houses. I've not really explored Japanese incense. I've tried some - but only at the lower price end. My understanding is that if folks want undiluted essential oil in their incense, that Japanese incense is the place to get it.
Meanwhile, Rahul of Om Brand is sending an updated Vedamrut Lavender to me to see if my experience with the improved version is the same.
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