One of my main intentions this year is to make deep inroads into my backlog, and I made a good start on that, but then I got bronchitis, so haven't been burning any incense. We also had some friends over, so I cleared away boxes of incense from my study, which is also our main dining room, and cleared my desk. I still want to finish off the remaining Gokula incense samples I have, and also delve deeper into HMS, but I thought I'd get back into the swing of things by polishing off a pack of Aromatika incense I got off Amazon a little while back.
Aromatika is the brand name of V Expo, an Indian incense company based in Jaipur, who have been making incense for over 30 years. I reviewed some of their Ace Scents range in the early days of this blog, and rated them quite highly, even though I felt the packaging was poor, and the appearance and presentation was more of a perfumed incense than a proper masala. I have felt for some time that I rated them too highly, especially after I went through 12 packs of their scented cones, such as the Rose, and found them, on the whole, pleasant but rather ordinary and not good quality, so when I saw a bundle of the Ace Scents range on Amazon, 10 packs for under £10, I thought that would be an opportunity to catch up, and see if I still felt they were decent sticks. The bundles are organised oddly in cardboard folders containing five different scents, but with some scents appearing in different folders more than once. I was sent two folders, but instead of 10 different scents, I only ended up with 8, because two scents were duplicated. The individual scent packets are stapled several times to the cardboard folder, which makes removing the packets quite awkward. And the packets are designed to have a resealable zip close, but they are cheaply made, so the plastic zips don't usually work, and are hard to access, while the seal at the bottom of the packets is not secure, so breaks open easily. This doesn't create a good impression. The foil packets all have the same dull design, with a coloured name sticker placed on them to indicate the scents.
I've been through all the packs, and all the sticks are crudely machine extruded paste onto plain machine-cut bamboo splints. They vary in colour, and some have a coating of melnoorva powder, while others don't. The sticks are 8 inches with 6 inches of paste. There are 20 sticks per pack. They all tend to give off an unimpressive standard synthetic room freshener fragrance which inclines to be a bit soapy. Not unpleasant at all, but not very engaging either. The quality of the scent on the burn varies, with at times a little too much of the core material being noticeable through the modest fragrance. On the whole a disappointing experience, and not really worth £10, though the bulk of the sticks are acceptable albeit modest everyday room fresheners. I will rattle though the reviews as they are not worth spending much time on.
There's not much awareness of white sage on these sticks - there's a a sense of a cheap, slightly sweet and musky, male perfume. Reasonably attractive - sort of chocolate, musk, and soap. The scent on the burn is much the same, though now and again there's some burning cardboard. I find it quite likeable, though nothing to get excited about. I'm happy to burn this in the house to cheer up a room, or to cover up poor smells, but nothing more than that.
I've been through all the packs, and all the sticks are crudely machine extruded paste onto plain machine-cut bamboo splints. They vary in colour, and some have a coating of melnoorva powder, while others don't. The sticks are 8 inches with 6 inches of paste. There are 20 sticks per pack. They all tend to give off an unimpressive standard synthetic room freshener fragrance which inclines to be a bit soapy. Not unpleasant at all, but not very engaging either. The quality of the scent on the burn varies, with at times a little too much of the core material being noticeable through the modest fragrance. On the whole a disappointing experience, and not really worth £10, though the bulk of the sticks are acceptable albeit modest everyday room fresheners. I will rattle though the reviews as they are not worth spending much time on.
There's not much awareness of white sage on these sticks - there's a a sense of a cheap, slightly sweet and musky, male perfume. Reasonably attractive - sort of chocolate, musk, and soap. The scent on the burn is much the same, though now and again there's some burning cardboard. I find it quite likeable, though nothing to get excited about. I'm happy to burn this in the house to cheer up a room, or to cover up poor smells, but nothing more than that.
Though the claim is that these are "Natural Masala", and on the carboard folder we have "made by natural gums, resins, crystals, aroma oils blended with halmaddi and honey", they present as machine extruded charcoal paste infused with a synthetic fragrance.
I hope you are feeling better Steve, bronchitis is no fun.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should pull these Aromatika incense out again, I lit a stick yesterday (Ace Scents Dragons Blood). I came across the pack at the bottom of a storage tub while sorting through my collection. I admit I still like this one, though I was less enthusiastic about the others I tried from the range, I ended up giving them away.
Stay well Steve.
Thanks Chris. Dragons Blood is in the set, so I'll be giving that a go. I was very positive toward it when I reviewed it back in 2015, though that was a different stick. I'm pretty sure all the Aromatika's I had back then have been burned. I don't think I was so keen back then on holding back a few sticks. These days I only hold back sticks that are interesting. Most stuff now gets burned after a review. Often just as room fresheners.
DeleteI've now updated the Dragons Blood post.
DeleteI still like the scent, though - as I suspected - the score I gave it in 2015 was a little high. Oddly, I did not recognise my 2015 description in the stick I was burning today.
Mine is an old pack from around the same time you posted the initial review Steve. Perhaps the ones in this review differ? My preference in incense shifts regularly. I still find enjoyment in simple dipped incense when the mood strikes, some scent experiences just can't be found in traditional masala incense.
DeleteI'm finding more and more that incense labelled as "masala" is perfumed. I've not yet quite pinned down what a masala incense is supposed to be, but I am becoming aware that many incense houses are including some packs they are terming masala in their range, and these will be more expensive than a straightforward everyday "perfume dipped" incense, and may indeed offer a fragrance that is deep and complex with few off-scents, but mostly is little different from a decent quality perfumed stick.
DeleteSome scents, such as musk, will be synthetic be it termed perfumed or masala, so I can't even lean on "natural" as a definer of masala.
My current theory is that most masala incense will include fragrant ingredients in the paste before it is rolled onto the stick, while perfumed will add the fragrance to the paste after it has been rolled and dried. Perfumed incense, as such, will not need the melnoorva powder, as the sticks are already dry, and the fragrance is being added via a carrier oil, which is not sticky.
The paste on simple, everyday, budget sticks are simply glue and charcoal. The paste in traditional masala will be glue, charcoal, plasticizer (mostly halmaddi), and fragrant ingredients (which I think would originally have been ground down dried ingredients such as herbs, spices, plants, flowers, resins, woods, but later started to include essential oils). These days a masala incense paste is likely to be glue, charcoal, DEP, essential oils and/or fragrance oils, and carrier oils, and then finished with melnoorva when rolled.
I think there is more of a continuum from budget everyday perfumed incense to traditional masala rather than a sharp cut off.
With the multiple methods used in incense production I decided just to focus on apparent quality and merits rather than definitives. I don't think any incense (with the possible exception of Tibetan, and some over-priced Japanese incense) can be described as 'natural'. I doubt any high-volume incense producers control the entire ingredients chain any more. Some cottage producers may, but identifying them once they've been through the reseller chain with any certainty is a challenge.
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