Jeomra’s Hojari

 

This is fascinating. A traditional masala stick but made in Germany by Georg Huber who runs an online incense shop Raeucherwelt.de; and since 2022 has been making commercial incense on an incense machine he bought from India. Small scale production, yes, but certainly professional. The stick was sent to me by Irene of the German incense blog Rauchfahne.de, and is part of Georg Huber's original range of all natural incense sticks made using the original masala method of folding the fragrance into the paste, though also applying some incense powder to the outside of the stick to give an attractive pre-burn fragrance. The incense is branded Jeomra's, and is available from Raeucherwelt at just under 10 Euros for 10 sticks. It contains frankincense from the Hojari valley in Oman, which has a non-medically licensed reputation for its therapeutic qualities when chewed. The other ingredients are charcoal (from beech trees in Germany), German honey (I assume as a moist binder), and joss powder (powdered tree bark which is traditionally and widely used as a binder with the added benefit of assisting with a stable and consistent burn). My assumption is that the ground ingredients  (frankincense, charcoal, and joss powder) are blended with the honey into a paste, and the paste is then fed into the incense machine which extrudes the paste onto the bamboo splints. A small amount of frankincense powder is then dusted over the sticks. The finished stick is neat and attractive. The scent on the stick is soft and pleasant, with a chalky, mineral quality, some vanilla, some church resin, some toffee sweetness. Nice. Not exciting or heavenly, but certainly very nice. Soft, gentle, relaxing, and pleasant. 

It burns nicely. Quite smooth, with an attractive column of white-blue smoke. There is a distinct resin scent, quite citric with apple notes, and a strong lean toward cannabis, with some herbal elements. Some rough bonfire notes add interest. It's good stuff, and is quite clean and pure. I like it. And I particularly like that it is made from pure ingredients in a European country. Germany does have a long incense-making history via companies like Knox and Crottendorfer, though those companies make more populist incense, while this Jeomra's Hojari is more specialist.   

This is like pure resin but in convenient stick form. In some ways it's like the resin-on-a-stick incenses that have started to spread out from South America, likely influenced by Fred Soll's Resin-On-A Stick incenses. As such it is part of the current new movement in incense. My quibble with this stick, and the reason I'm not scoring it higher, is that it doesn't do much more than be frankincense in stick form. I'd like to see more exploration of the possibilities of this form of incense - a bringing together of scents, an aim for a certain expression or accord, rather than simply putting a single resin on the stick. However, I very much like what I've experienced, and I'm interested in exploring more of Jeomra's incense. 

Date: Feb 2025   Score: 35 

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Reviewed on Rauchfahne

Frankincense