Crottendorfer are a well established German manufacturer of small incense cones. Founded in 1936 as a small scale kitchen producer, the company unusually use potato starch as a binder. They are the second largest of the three big German incense cones makes - Knox and Huss being the other two. There is a fascinating tradition in Germany of burning incense cones at Christmas in beautifully carved German smokers, pyramids, and arches. There is a strong incense culture in Germany, with some of the world's best incense shops, traders, blog, etc, based in Germany, presumably inspired, even if subliminally, by the long tradition of burning incense cones.
Cones are a form of dhoop - an ancient method of burning incense, thought to have been developed by priests in India. Dhoop forms the basis for all modern combustible incense - it is a blend of fragrant and combustible material, often with a binder and a fixative. The combustible material would be a form of charcoal powder and/or wood powder. The fragrant material would originally have been finely ground resins, roots, spices, petals, etc, but these days is more commonly perfumes - either essential oils or fragrance oils (blends or synthetics). The cone is a small, shaped dhoop. As it comes to a point it is easy to light. As it is small and compact, it can be burned in a small space, such as a wooden smoker. Both India and Japan claim to have been the first to develop the cone, but the dates they give are later than that of Germany - the cone was in use in Germany in the 19th century, and Knox was founded as a cone manufacturer in 1865.
I've never been a fan of cones. I don't quite know why this is, because some of my highest rated incense are cones. I find that, despite enjoying and respecting some cones, I somehow regard them as second rate incense. That is not a logical or appropriate assessment, but is a distinct prejudice I am aware I carry. I regard cones as convenient, easy to use, and tidier than sticks, but I cannot hold them in my hand the way I can hold a stick. Cones don't have the same emotional and spiritual hold on me that sticks do. I have memories of rock festivals in my impressionable youth, in which sticks were lit and waved about, and these memories are very evocative, and quite possibly drive my general interest in and enthusiasm for incense to this day. I have no such memories of cones. My earliest memory of using a cone is thinking that they were expensive for what they were, and that they didn't last long. All that being said, I keep an open mind on all incense I burn and try to suppress any prejudice. I noted earlier this year that blogger Nathan Upchurch burned some Knox incense - while not being impressed with the quality, he did enjoy the scent and the experience. I always like to focus on the experience rather than the brand name or method of manufacture, but it can be difficult to completely shake off deep, emotional, early impressions.
Cones are a form of dhoop - an ancient method of burning incense, thought to have been developed by priests in India. Dhoop forms the basis for all modern combustible incense - it is a blend of fragrant and combustible material, often with a binder and a fixative. The combustible material would be a form of charcoal powder and/or wood powder. The fragrant material would originally have been finely ground resins, roots, spices, petals, etc, but these days is more commonly perfumes - either essential oils or fragrance oils (blends or synthetics). The cone is a small, shaped dhoop. As it comes to a point it is easy to light. As it is small and compact, it can be burned in a small space, such as a wooden smoker. Both India and Japan claim to have been the first to develop the cone, but the dates they give are later than that of Germany - the cone was in use in Germany in the 19th century, and Knox was founded as a cone manufacturer in 1865.
I've never been a fan of cones. I don't quite know why this is, because some of my highest rated incense are cones. I find that, despite enjoying and respecting some cones, I somehow regard them as second rate incense. That is not a logical or appropriate assessment, but is a distinct prejudice I am aware I carry. I regard cones as convenient, easy to use, and tidier than sticks, but I cannot hold them in my hand the way I can hold a stick. Cones don't have the same emotional and spiritual hold on me that sticks do. I have memories of rock festivals in my impressionable youth, in which sticks were lit and waved about, and these memories are very evocative, and quite possibly drive my general interest in and enthusiasm for incense to this day. I have no such memories of cones. My earliest memory of using a cone is thinking that they were expensive for what they were, and that they didn't last long. All that being said, I keep an open mind on all incense I burn and try to suppress any prejudice. I noted earlier this year that blogger Nathan Upchurch burned some Knox incense - while not being impressed with the quality, he did enjoy the scent and the experience. I always like to focus on the experience rather than the brand name or method of manufacture, but it can be difficult to completely shake off deep, emotional, early impressions.
The cones are small, mustard coloured, and with a faint but clearly discernible cold scent. The scent is a little like the powdery pollen in a flower, along with sandalwood soap, and honey flavoured sweets. The company state that "many" of the fragrances they use are natural, though this is likely to be a fragrance oil composed of ingredients which smell like honey, rather than honey itself. The scent on the burn contains some honey notes though is dominated for me by the general smell of scorching wood. I have been burning a lot of Chinese and Japanese incense recently, in which wood powder is the main combustible, and I have been attuning myself to that experience, which generally means burning the incense a good distance away from me, to allow the lighter fragrance notes to diffuse toward me, while the heavier combustible fall to the ground. And this works well with German incense cones such as this Crottendorfer, which are made with some degree of wood powder. Though the honey scent which drifts across is fairly light, and smells singed and smoky. The burn lasts ten minutes. Sold in boxes of 24 cones for €1.95, and available direct from Crottendorfer.
I was interested to try this particular scent ever since I watched a video on their manufacturing process. I was surprised to learn that it comprises a number of natural ingredients, assuming it would be some kind of dipped charcoal just based on the low cost. Here is the video if you're interested:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/ZTICSQJDqmA?si=p2xW1kHfJH7ktUaJ
Thanks.
DeleteYeah, I already have that video linked in my Knox post .
There is often an assumption that because something is made from natural ingredients it will be a) more expensive, and b) great quality. I've found that in many things that is not always the case. Sometimes, yes, but not always. Certainly, it is more attractive and desirable for most of us that a product should be natural. But often nature needs a helping hand to turn the natural into something that works well.
A rose in nature smells gorgeous, but that scent is actually not easy to capture for re-use as a perfume. The best (and most expensive) rose perfumes combine rose absolute with geranium essential oil and several synthetics to create an alluring rose fragrance. There are a number of flower fragrances that cannot be captured naturally.
Such is life. I often think of that Simpson episode where Cows don't look like cows in films, so they paint horses.
I think Crottendorfer and Knox would appeal to me more if they tipped in more fragrance - either natural or synthetic, as long as it smelled good and made a more lasting impression.
But it's each to their own, and some people like soft and subtle. For me, though, I struggle with soft and subtle when it comes to burning incense cones and sticks because I tend to pick up the smell of the combustible material. I need to put the cones further away from me to give the fragrance a better chance of not being obscured by the combustible material. Unfortunately when the fragrance is already quite soft this makes noticing it and appreciating it more difficult.
Great video! Interesting binder they use.
DeleteI'm with you on the cone supposition - mostly due to the fact that, I believe, when they're wood-based they burn hotter as the width increases making it impossible to compose a wood-based cone with a consistently good fragrance; they'll always get a bit stinky at the end. Ironically, I think this makes them a good format for charcoal-based incense, which starts off super hot anyway and uses oils.
ReplyDeleteIn my discussions with incense makers my understanding is that oils are used with both wood powder and charcoal powder as the combustible when the oils are blended with the paste. And in German cones the fragrance ingredients are blended in with the paste - they are not dipped afterwards. This does mean that the fragrance is more locked in, and so lasts longer. Unusually, the cones in the Crottendorfer boxes are not kept in an inner pouch - they are simply tipped into the cardboard box. As long as they are kept dark and dry the scent will be held in the cone for years.
DeleteA lot of folks in the West tend to associate charcoal with unscented sticks dipped in a solution of DPG and fragrance oil. But unscented sticks are also made of wood powder. Wood powder sticks need to be left in the solution longer because the wood absorbs more slowly. The upside is that the scent is held in the stick for longer - it doesn't evaporate as quickly. As a broad generalism, my understanding is that dipped charcoal sticks are quicker and easier to make, but without fixatives don't last as long, and so are more likely to be the poor quality bargain basement stuff that gives incense a bad name!
I didn't mean to say that wood-based incense doesn't use oils, rather that if an incense base is mostly charcoal, the incense will have to use oils, because raw natural ingredients don't smell very nice when burning at such a high temperature. Of course, this doesn't apply to sticks that use a small amount of charcoal as an accelerant, such as high-end agarwood sticks.
DeleteI've noted others talking about the right temperatures for certain incenses, particularly on the Reddit forum.
DeleteI'm aware that top notes burn off sooner, and don't last as long as base notes, but are somewhat protected when the fragrance ingredients are folded into the paste and/or fixatives are used. So incense which is dipped will tend to smell good on the stick, but rather unbalanced when burned, while incense which has the fragrance folded into the paste and which uses fixatives will tend to smell weak or unclear on the stick, but open up beautifully on the burn.
I've noted that folks into bukhoor say that it needs to be burned at a lower temperature, and so is best suited to adjustable burners rather than charcoal. But I've also watched videos by bukhoor makers in which they show the best way to burn bukhoor, and they use charcoal.
But I've not previously come upon the notion that natural ingredients per se don't smell nice when burned on charcoal, especially considering that charcoal has been the predominant fuel for incense for thousands of years.
So this temperature thing perplexes, and has done for a while.
With bukhoor, I have assumed that because it uses fragrance oils, which can be susceptible to scorching at high temperature (when heating oils I put them into water so they don't get burned or scorched).
With resins, I like to burn them on charcoal rather than on burners, because I personally like that quick and intensive warm, sweet, beautiful scent.
Would the high temperature thing be a) more of a personal taste, b) depend on the raw material - resins needing more heat than flower petals for example, c) apply more to oils than the raw material, and d) depend on use of fixatives and where the fragrance ingredient is placed in the incense (on the surface, or inside the paste)?
I do agree that charcoal burns hotter than wood. And that is something I'd not previously considered when burning incense sticks. I'd previously just focused on differences in scent.
I can't speak to the performance of oils (fragrance nor essential) because I don't use them in the incense that I make, but my best guess is that temperature reduction is all about reducing the amount off-notes naturally produced through combustion while allowing time for the VOCs from ingredients time to escape into the air before they burn up or are overwhelmed with burning smells. Kyarazen, for instance, wrote about how even the angle at which an incense stick is burned can affect its fragrance.
DeleteWhen I'm composing a stick, I almost always take measures to lower the burn temperature, such as including a resin (even something virtually odorless like acacia gum), or using ingredients with extremely fine particle sizes, which increases stick density and slows combustion. I also exclusively make sticks extruded at 2.5mm or less, which helps keep burn temperature in check as well. That said, while this does produce better sticks, I'm hardly scientific about it or certain of the mechanism of action.
What is interesting is that with wood-based cones, I can smell when they're getting near the end from across the room, because off-notes increase with the diameter, whereas with predominantly charcoal and oil based cones, I can't tell at all, presumably because the composition is designed to deal with the high combustion temperature at the outset, in a way that simply can't be done with actual plant matter.
On the different temperature needs of different natural materials, my hypothesis is that this is where aging / curing makes the difference as all of the aromatics mingle together from the different powdered ingredients over time, eventually making a more cohesive fragrance in the burn.
I also certainly wouldn't say that natural materials necessarily smell bad on charcoal, but that pleasant notes are also met with a rapid influx of off-notes (while possibly also being reduced through the rapid combustion). Even very old incense varieties like kyphi, thiouraye, and bakhoor often include temperature reducing agents such as sugars, resins, and liquids to improve their performance on a hot coal. Certainly, you can probably get away with putting a highly resinated chunk of agarwood on top of a coal, but (speaking from experience) low-resin content agarwood is absolutely rank when burned this way, even though it opens up nicely on a heater. On the discrepancy between bakhoor makers and enthusiasts, I wonder if the makers are more interested in portraying a more accessible method than buying a potentially expensive electric heater?
Some ingredients I find have entirely different profiles at different temperatures. Palo Santo gets really bright and citrusy at high temps, but in my sticks it's quite mellow and sweet. Rose petals are like this too: at higher temps they are fruity and hibiscus-like, and at lower temps they're more gentle and floral.
But this is all just supposition and subjective experience: I really wish there was someone out there studying this sort of thing so that I could read up on how it all actually works!
I largely agree with that Kyarazen article. I'd noticed some upside down burners were very popular with Kuumba enthusiasts, and an incense burner trader sent me some burners as samples to review, including the beautiful Carhartt burner I use as my blog header. I felt that burning upside was not producing as good an olfactory result as other methods of burning, so for a few months I conducted research by burning sticks in various positions, reporting on it in my posts, and also reading around the subject. I came upon the Kyarazen article at that time, and agree that a 20 to 40 degree angle appears to work best, though upright is also OK. Upside down doesn't work for me. Which is a pity because it is the neatest and most practical way of burning incense sticks! I found that when burned upside down, most of the top notes went too quickly to be noticed, and the resulting fragrance was often quite unbalanced and messy.
DeleteI've just looked back at videos on YouTube on burning bakhoor, and I noticed this time that it's not charcoal that is being used but something that is called "magic coal" which burns slower. Also that it is sometimes mentioned that charcoal can burn bakhoor too fast.
DeleteInteresting! I've never heard of magic charcoal. I also wish you could burn incense upside down. It might be interesting to attempt to formulate a stick made for it!
DeleteWould you say that the "temperature reducing agents" you mention are the same as fixatives. You mention using resins, which are I believe the most common fixative in incense, and which are used to protect the fragrance during the burn, and to allow it to be released slowly.
ReplyDeleteI'm not of the opinion that it's the fixative properties of a resin that helps fragrance quality in the short term, because I imagine it would take some time for the VOCs to be 'locked into' the resin. But also, smaller stick diameters and reduced material particle sizes (more dense sticks) seem to make a big difference too. It's so hard to make some materials smell nice when burning that you really have to pull out all the stops if you're not using oils (and I'm told those have their own challenges) unless you're making Tibetan style incense, where a little smokiness is part of the charm. I do know that resins can be used to hold onto oils, and I also know that they can be used as a fat substitute in an enfleurage process, so I fully expect that they play a fixative role in whole-plant incense over the long term as you say.
DeleteI'm curious about the nature of "burning" as opposed to "warming", and your experience of and knowledge of incense making seems to align with my own experiences of burning incense sticks. I've been curious for some time about the whole nature of burning materials, especially oils. Burning, as you say, seems to result in off-notes. To put it simply - "burnt" notes. It seems curious that incense developed in this direction.
DeleteI don't regard putting resins on charcoal as burning the resin. Resins seem quite resilient - and they also contain moisture which appears to protect them.
What I've been told and read about using resins, including halmaddi, as fixatives is that the resins "protect", "hold", and "enhance" the fragrance ingredients. And I can visualise the resilient, moist, resins enfolding the more delicate fragrance ingredients - wrapping them in their resin, and so protecting them from the intensity of the burn, and then allowing the scent to be released slowly and to remain in the atmosphere for longer. I always kind of visualised that is what a "fixative" does. I imagine that this aligns with your "temperature reducing agents" comment.
DeleteI actually know very little about incense making, and I'm too impatient to be a crafts person measuring out exact does. I'm rather more of a broad strokes and general principles sort of person when it comes to cooking. I tend not to follow recipes! So I don't think I'd be good at incense making where the right amounts would be important. I think my results would be rather crude and slapdash like those Pushkar incenses!
I'm interested in your smaller dimension comments (actually, I'm interested in pretty much everything you say - your comments always fascinate me!). Could you explain a bit more regarding your thinking regarding smaller diameter sticks. Chinese and Japanese dhoop sticks tend to be thin, while Indian and Tibetan dhoop sticks tend to be fatter. My take on burning thin against burning thick, is that the thin sticks tend to have a more delicate fragrance impact than the thicker sticks. The thicker the stick the more heady and prominent the aroma has been my general experience. Kind of like burning one stick compared to burning five at once. The more fragrant material that is being burned, the more noticeable the scent. That's been my experience. What am I not paying attention to?
DeleteI don't know this for sure, but I believe that the smaller ember isn't as hot as a larger one, which has the effect of reducing off notes. As far as strength of fragrance, I think that probably mostly has to do with the fact that dhoops usually make liberal use of oils, whereas Japanese and certainly Chinese incense tends to use less oil and focus on whole plant ingredients. But that said, if you take something like Gyokushodo's Suzaku, Tennendo's Vanilla, or Minorien's Fu-In Agarwood, for example (all of which *surely* use oils), they're plenty strong. Naturally, they won't be as powerful as a 4mm diameter dhoop stick that likely has significantly more oil in it due to the style. If you compare a stick of Nippon Kodo Kayuragi Sandalwood to a stick of Shunkohdo Sarasoju or Daihatsi Good Fortune Sandalwood, for instance, there's a pretty drastic difference in fragrance strength there also, as the latter two use very little if any oils whereas the Nippon Kodo is loaded up with synthetics (per Irene who sent me a picture of the European label). But even with whole-plant ingredients alone, it's quite impressive how much fragrance you can get out of a 2mm stick. But for some ingredients (like sandalwood), you have to be buying absolutely balling materials that are processed extremely fastidiously to get a lot of projection in the burn - which you're not likely to find in mainichikoh level incense sticks due to the expense. Dave of The World Makes Scents, for example, processes ingredients like rose petals (rosa canina) extremely finely using ball mills, which keep heat to a minimum during grinding. As a result, it's possible to get a subtle rose fragrance in the burn using the petals alone - something that is close to impossible unless your ingredients are absolutely excellent. (As an aside, this is one of the big reasons I focus on making whole plant incense: it's a real challenge.) You're probably right that there is more potential fragrance in thicker whole-plant incense sticks, but I think you'd have to formulate it differently to keep the temperature down so as to avoid a reduction in the quality of the fragrance due to the additional heat of a better-fueled ember. I don't doubt that oils might also suffer for the extra heat, but I don't think they're quite as affected as whole-plant ingredients that have cellulose and other compounds to break down also. But as I said, this is all just speculation on my part!
ReplyDelete