The Art Of Incense Making

[Al Shareef Oudh]

When working with fragrant oils to compose a blend the behaviour of the ingredients are well understood. Furthermore once the blend is completed it is easily and quickly able to be tested on the skin. The oils become one, and it is only a matter of getting the progression and evolution of notes right, and that is a piece for another day.

When composing incense it is a total different ball game. First of all the ingredients do not fuse together as do oils. Each ingredient still remains in its form, woods, herbs, spices, resins; how then to make these a harmonious orchestra? when each item has a different burning life, temperature, rising points for the notes, time when it turns acrid and so on...yet the scent is composed on these unique ingredients and then the test isn't on the skin but by lighting the incense. This is a different level of skill, to organise the concentration of the ingredients, the size to which they are ground, the length and thickness of the sticks, amount of binder, combustion material and density of sticks so that when the stick is burning the notes are released in a manner that is beautiful.

Now pause there for a moment, and imagine a burning stick releasing notes in the manner of an oil on your skin, not any random oil, but the famous Al Ghaliyah where the constituents are animal matter (musk and ambergris), woods (oudhs), Plants( rose) etc...

Al Ghaliyah - The Sticks

#master@work #boutiquescents #alshareefoudh

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

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‘GHALIYAH - The Incense'
Over 360 hours of creative effort, passion and love were spent in the composition of this olfactory wonder. It is one thing to compose a perfume which can be easily applied and tested but it is totally a different ball game when crafting incense sticks.These incense sticks are something to behold. They make you reflect, they arose ones feelings, they engage the mind and senses, it awakens you.

OUT NOW <<CLICK HERE TO READ MORE>>

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

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‘GHALIYAH - The Incense'
Over 360 hours of creative effort, passion and love were spent in the composition of this olfactory wonder. It is one thing to compose a perfume which can be easily applied and tested but it is totally a different ball game when crafting incense sticks.These incense sticks are something to behold. They make you reflect, they arose ones feelings, they engage the mind and senses, it awakens you.

OUT NOW <<CLICK HERE TO READ MORE>>

SOLD OUT, Alhamdulillah.

 

[Sproaty]

that was fast! Congrats

 

[Joe King]

Was thinking of buying some..... decision made.

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

Apologies to those who missed out, clients and followers are loving the premium quality and composition of our incense and demand is growing for them.

Incense making is a difficult art and very time consuming, further more exquisite compositions such Ghaliyah require the best of the best in ingredients. High quality top end ingredients are not come by easily. These two factors limit how much of the incense we can produce.

People have asked how to get their hands on the experience, the closest is Layal, by trying Layal you will get glimpses of Ghaliyah the Incense.

Once again thank you for all the love it is humbling to be the pioneer in ME+Tibetan+Chinese fusion sticks and to receive the love you guys pour our way.

Watch this space for new compositions and behind the scenes

 

[jensz]

Wow, sold in a matter of hours! Congrats to ASO and to all the lucky incense lovers!
Will be quicker next time lol!

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

My mentor would tell me that hand crafting incense sticks becomes a personal affair and I never used to get it. Now that I have been composing my own sticks for some time I am starting to see where he is coming from. When you spend hours grinding a single ingredient you do tend to become a bit obsessive, a little attached, a bit eccentric about your work, maybe even a bit coo coo :S that cant be a bad thing, most artists are a bit coo coo

As every step is drawn out and time consuming we all have some little tricks we employ to test and check to make sure everything meets our personal requirements before move to the next step. All great incense makers have it, they all call it something different but they all have it. I was asked to name mine so called mine 'moments of truth'. These moments of truth are my little gate checks before i spend hours onto the next step, these checks saves me from wasting time if there is anything that I feel isn't upto my taste I can make those changes before moving on. Here is a photo of one such check using a simple syringe dispenser to extrude a couple of sticks to see if the dough holds right and perfect firmness. Then I will allow these to dry and test them. Once they pass the drying and burning test there after, then the batch will be extruded.

These are incense crafted from wild Maleki (Royal) grade hindi wood of yesteryear. I was cleaning up the wood vault and the trays that held wild hindis from the old timers times, i took some of the broken chips and bits and ground them to make these sticks. Due to the resin content they were a bit tricky to balance with the binder, it is a fine art to ensure all the notes are captured true to the wood. After testing the two sticks, i made one other adjustment and then all was good to go. So the time to load my little hand extruder and churn them out;

and then rolling them out one by one into nice straight sticks. You will note my sticks are not as thin as some of the other sticks from the Japanese houses and elsewhere. This is because I have been trained in the Tibetan style and the general style is larger and usually not always coarser. There are of course exceptions to the size and fineness as well.

and when its all done and waiting to dry up

These will be coming out on Thursday 23rd of May 2019, they are a very limited amount. These woods to me are more valuable than kyara. Kyara you can now get from certain plantations. These hindis are nowhere to be found, I am lucky to have these in the family. If you are lucky enough to get some of these sticks and smell them you will see what I mean with regards to their uniqueness and captivating scent.

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

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‘5 Rivers - Maleki Hindi Sticks'
Mandalee was for the Arabs as Kyara is for the Japanese or Kinam is for the Chinese. According to our tradition Mandalee is considered “the best of Indian Oudh wood” – an Oudh for which poets even sung couplets. These are single origin oudh sticks of a different level, crafted from oudhs of yesteryear.

You will note from the video below the density of the smoke, this is from the resin and oil content of the wood and how it rises like an arrow and does not bloom like cheap or fire smoke.

OUT NOW LIMITED STOCK

 

[Martin]

Looking forward to burning the first stick! TY.

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

SOLD OUT!

Alhamdulillah

 

[Martin]

My order of the ASO Five Rivers incense sticks have safely arrived. Nicely packaged I might add. Looking forward to burning a stick this evening. Thanks for the samples too!

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

My order of the ASO Five Rivers incense sticks have safely arrived. Nicely packaged I might add. Looking forward to burning a stick this evening. Thanks for the samples too!

Much appreciated Martin, looking forward to your impressions

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

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‘7 Orchards - Incense Sticks'
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The core ingredients to achieve this work of art is not citrus but rather Royal Hojari Frankincense from Oman and Somali Myrrh. Working with resins is never easy, and incense composition that includes resin isn’t an exception. Royal Green and White Omani Hojari freshly harvested is soft and malleable, impossible to ground into a powder and a powder is needed if we are going to make sticks! The Somali myrrh used in this composition I had been aging for some 5 years so it was nice and dry, easily milled into powder. The delicate issue however with the myrrh is that so little of it can over take the whole composition, and if not enough of it then as an ingredient it may work as a back drop for an array of other ingredients. My aim was to have the myrrh and frankincense work together to give a citrus and citron vibe, with the richness of the leaves, trees and fruits included.

The composition I employed is an old formula for blending resins with woods. It was a 5-month journey and a very labours and difficult composition. 7 Orchards is a pure toil of love as the cost could never recover the time and tears spent on these amazing expressions of perfumery art.

<<click here>> to get yours now

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

The Arab traveller Ibn Batuta and the Arab Geographer Al-Idrisi referred to Sri Lanka as "SERENDIB". It is believed that this was the Arabic version of Sidhaleepa, meaning “the dwelling place of lion’s island”, a term used by the Indian traders whom the Arab sailors interacted with. Some records also say that it also meant “Island of Rubies”. This beautiful Island is also home to the agarwood species Gyrinops Walla, famously known as Walla Patta.

Our Serendib Incense sticks is a fragrant motion ‘video’ on the 3 different rare occurrences of resin structures in the Walla Patta. These three rare types are sinking grade chips from the trunk of the tree, sinking grade chips from the trunk that have been buried, and the immediate area around the first fungus infection on the tree, some call this section the ‘Kyara’ of Walla Patta and it can be soft like a mud cake.

Whilst the goal and vision were clear; to give a fragrant motion of these unique sections of the wonderful walla patta, capturing the scent of each of these unique presentations of agarwood wasn’t. Even if one was to heat up pieces from each of the chips the overall scent would be a culmination of all rather than the individual beauties of each. This is one of the reasons the Chinese valued incense making as an appreciative art form. It allowed fragrant materials to be presented in a multi-dimensional presentation with the aromas each broken into layers and notes one coming after the other like a well composed orchestra.

*Sticks may not look identical to photo.

Serendib will undoubtedly be the most fragrantly sophisticated Walla Patta sticks I have composed to date. I have spent over 4 months of constant reflection, labour and testing. Whilst the actual sticks are not physically pretty the content is, and the scent is absolutely phenomenal, please don’t take my word for it, try them.


<<CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS NOW>>

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

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KYARA STICKS - Floating Mountains

One by one – Inspiration, ideas, lots of effort:- bring your dreams to reality.

Many people stop at ideas because they don’t have the drive to do the work in making those ideas a reality. How many possibilities never made it and how great those ideas could have been had they made it.

An idea; sticks hand made from arguably the most fragrantly complex material known to man, Kyara.

Effort; whole process hand worked – grounding, kneading, hand rolled one by one. No third party, no contracting to factories or students, all done in house!

Know exactly what went into your sticks, Kyara and Oudh, then more Kyara and more Oudh, not just any oudh, but the best Oudh you can imagine.

Kyara Sticks – the hard work and dedication that goes into perfecting incense sticks is a true test of one’s patients and focus. Then a top that with the complexity of an ingredient such as Kyara. You don’t really have any chances to get it wrong…unless of course you want to go bankrupt.

I devoted a lot of the lockdown time to this composition, so it has a lot of reflection, resilience and a fighting spirit. The composition also speaks of past and future, of the highs and lows, the beauty and beast of the world we live in.

Deep, rich, meditative, reflections and projections. Opens with a lovely powdery apple skin note, then bitter cherries combined with a lovely woody note that is nearly floral. Comes along the sweet incense wafts that is figs and dates, before transition to a dance between the sweet and bitter, the dark and light shades.

There is ~20% Kynam in these sticks, supplemented royal grade Malaysian and Indonesian oudhs. One of my intentions in making these sticks was to share some beauty, joy and hope with as many people as possible, after the difficulty we have all been through and continue to go through.

Composition begins with an idea, then sourcing the ingredients for the idea, then preparing the ingredients – this can sometimes take days if not weeks, milling down everything to the right consistency. In my compositions I don’t grind every ingredient to the same size. I will vary size of ingredients based on their behaviour during combustion.

After the ingredients have been milled, then it’s time to make the dough and extrude. I find the extrusion very time consuming and straining as every stick has to be rolled one by one. I do everything myself, by hand and that is why it takes so long and the passion and love can be felt in the sticks.

This is incense sticks at for get levels but a total different dimension. These are fragrant at room temperature and they are a collectors item for any incense lover.

 

[Taesik Yun]

I've been following this. and finally, it's here.
Thank you @Al Shareef Oudh for sharing this treasure with us.

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

Thank @Taesik Yun !

2 x 5 grams left
2 x 10 grams

For the incense lovers, you cant talk about incense if you havent tried these!

 

[DubOudh]

Doha..."The morning"
Is the greeting...Sabah_alkhayr...good morning?
A really information packed thread. I need to go through these posts again. Such labours of love.
Thank you for posting yaa Al-Shareef.

 

[Al Shareef Oudh]

Sabah Al Khair does loosely translate to good morning, and Subh ,is a more general term for morning, Doha is a more precise time after the sun has risen and lost its redness.

Most welcome, we do make an effort to share our knowledge and know how as we believe that is part of the relationship.

Doha..."The morning"
Is the greeting...Sabah_alkhayr...good morning?
A really information packed thread. I need to go through these posts again. Such labours of love.
Thank you for posting yaa Al-Shareef.