Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

[rakovsky]

Have you smoked Presbyterian?

No, just the about 11 blends in the OP that I described as having smoked like Margate and Fr. Dempsey.

Today I smoked Moroccan Bazaar and the lead note was fig with a secondary Cavendish note of sweetness. It also had a secondary flavor medley that I couldn't Define exactly, like maybe honey or licorice or a little bit of black pepper or clove. I'm talking about the notes that are in the description by the manufacturer for Moroccan Bazaar. I shared the blend with a couple pipe smokers today and also let them smell my smoke, and some of them got notes that were in the blend description, like how one person said they got a cinnamon note, another one said he got a honey note, and another person said that they could smell incense in it.

 

[Dave760]

The very first time someone lights pinon wood on fire around you. It’s not like pine or cedar… but more like incense. Then when you realize what it is, it makes sense to your senses.

I've sometimes wondered what tobacco smoke-cured over piñon would taste like. If wish I'd known to try something like this when I lived in New Mexico, but sadly that was a lifetime ago.

Any home growers into Land of Enchantment want to give it a shot?

 

[rakovsky]

I've sometimes wondered what tobacco smoke-cured over piñon would taste like. If wish I'd known to try something like this when I lived in New Mexico, but sadly that was a lifetime ago.

Any home growers into Land of Enchantment want to give it a shot?

Dave,

A quick search online brought up a bunch of articles and webpages warning against using pinon wood for smoke-roasting foods. I know that some woods like ebony have natural toxins and irritants. I'm no specialist, so I don't know whether it would be any worse than using mastic wood like Latakia uses.

All the best.

 

[rakovsky]

Since I have a tin of Moroccan Bazaar and also three Biblical incense ingredients related to the tabernacle - Frankincense, Myrrh, and Galbanum, would some of you fellow forum readers like a sample of the blend or the three ingredients?

All the best.

 

[solideogloria86]

G.l Pease quiet nights has a great incense like quality, though not lemony.

 

[ChubbyOldHiker]

A second vote for C&D Byzantium. Strong tin note of incense that becomes mild in flavor and room note. Much better when dried out a little—I didn’t much care for it right out of the bag.

C&D Atlas Balkan tin note gives me a very slight incense vibe that does not make it into the smoke in any way I can discern. Still a fabulous blend if you ask me.

Gotta be the Latakia, as others have suggested—and Byzantium is loaded with it.

 

[Sigmund]

Im going to argue with myself. After saying no on this thread to Gladora lat 40 Im going to say yes. It does fit the general description being discussed here. For the life of me I cant name what Im tasting other than latakia but there is a lot more going on in that blend. It doesnt hit hard like Quiet Nights but it has its own vibe.

 

[rakovsky]

Im going to argue with myself. After saying no on this thread to Gladora lat 40 Im going to say yes. It does fit the general description being discussed here. For the life of me I cant name what Im tasting other than latakia but there is a lot more going on in that blend. It doesnt hit hard like Quiet Nights but it has its own vibe.

Sigmund,

It's up to you how you want to judge the issue.

Out of 10 blends on the list without specifically "incense" flavoring, 1 (Margate) was alot like incense, 3 were marginally like incense, and the other 6 were not like incense for me. So there is no demand that you have to find a big collection of blends as "incenselike."

 

[shermnatman]

Sadly, long-gone was my favorite "Insensy" tabak, which was Dunhill's Durbar.

I absolutely cherish the last tin that I have of it; and, only treat myself to one bowl about every 3 months; but, eventually, it will be gone.

I could never fathom why Peterson never brought this blend back, when it began making the Dunhill mixtures available under the Peterson brand.

Additionally,

Presbyterian Mixture is somewhat roughly in the same neighborhood - and, actually in production and available - as Durbar; but, I think of it as "Durbar-Lite".

Dunhill's Durbar was absolutely a transcendental smoke. What a treat! - Sherm Natman

 

[Aylesbury Pike]

Sadly, long-gone was my favorite "Insensy" tabak, which was Dunhill's Durbar.

I absolutely cherish the last tin that I have of it; and, only treat myself to one bowl about every 3 months; but, eventually, it will be gone.

I could never fathom why Peterson never brought this blend back, when it began making the Dunhill mixtures available under the Peterson brand.

Additionally,

Presbyterian Mixture is somewhat roughly in the same neighborhood - and, actually in production and available - as Durbar; but, I think of it as "Durbar-Lite".

Dunhill's Durbar was absolutely a transcendental smoke. What a treat! - Sherm Natman

It could be helpful to mention that I have seen HU's Asmara described as being similar to Durbar (though I have never tried either).

 

[InWithBothFeet]

If only tobacco tasted like it smelled. HU Moroccan Bazaar's tin note is heavenly.

 

[rakovsky]

If only tobacco tasted like it smelled. HU Moroccan Bazaar's tin note is heavenly.

Moroccan Bazaar's tin note matched its smoke smell, taste, and aftertaste for me. But its tin note was slightly better.

A local SC B&M cigar lounge has a great sweet smelling generic bulk blend called "Toasted Cavendish". It smells like a Dark Cavendish version of CRB Moon. An assertive cigar smoker in the lounge told me that the room note that my smoke gave off from it was amazing, and tempted him into smoking a pipe. "It doesn't taste like it smells, does it?", he asked rhetorically.

I agreed with him reflexively. But then I thought about it more and told the owner, "It tastes great like it smells."

CB Royal though was a blend with the taste - smell difference problem for me. The more I smoked it, the more it built up an amazingly great sweet vanilla ghost smell in my pipe. But at the end of my pouch I started trying to suck in juice from the pipe like a straw to get that great flavor as a taste. And that tactic hardly worked.

 

[rakovsky]

I got Mastic gum from the local Greek Orthodox church office. The jar is imported by the Krinos company.
For me the jar smells like light waxy white soap and licorice, and is sweet, light and lemony.
The outside is hard like frankincense drops, the inside is waxy and sticks together like chewing gum. The taste is like the jar smell, but a lot lighter.

Mastic gum is classically used as chewing gum, but is also used to prepare Cyprus Latakia. The gum is smoked and the smoke smokes the Latakia leaf.

The pellets are the size of pebbles, a little smaller than M & M candies.

 

[rakovsky]

When I burned drops from Mastuc gum today, they burn quickly and turn into yellow ooze and give off a solid amount of smoke. The main smell is lemon, with secondary good smells reminding me of frankincense, brown hippie incense cones, a light clean fresh new house smell, and a good light soap smell.

 

[karam]

Thanks for writing, Fightnhampster.
C & D has a lot of neat-themed names, like "Byzantium". However fitting it would be, Byzantium doesn't come up as one of the especially incenselike blends.

May I ask if you have tried some other blends in my list in the OP?
If so, how would C & D's two blends Seersucker and Dreams of Kadath compare to them?

I came here to write that the only tobacco that gave me the feeling of incense was C&D Byzantium, which incidentally is one of only a handful of C&D offerings I happen to like. It didn't TASTE anything like incense while smoking, that's why I wrote "it game me the feeling of incense".

The other one that gave me the taste rather than the feeling, and completely different, would be SG RB Plug.

 

[JOHN72]

It has many more nuances, but something is also close to incense, or at least that's what it seems to me. C&D Byzantium.

 

[rakovsky]

I came here to write that the only tobacco that gave me the feeling of incense was C&D Byzantium, which incidentally is one of only a handful of C&D offerings I happen to like. It didn't TASTE anything like incense while smoking, that's why I wrote "it game me the feeling of incense".

Karam,
Can you please describe the feeling that it gave you?
Do you mean that it had the consistency/body of incense, as in being oily, or that it made you feel relaxed, like in church?

By comparison, My Mixture 965 had a charcoal smell and I associate that with incense, but I didn't notice MM 965 as smelling like incense otherwise.

 

[karam]

It's hard to say unfortunately, despite being a Lat bomb. This will probably not be helpful but I find that Latakia has very interesting behaviour, percentages are not to be taken as exact science:

• low % (5-10%), it adds some little smokiness and generally elevates the main player
• mid % (30-40%), it adds leather and smokiness but not overwhelming, that's when a blend becomes a "Lat blend but not Lat bomb" for me
• high % ( 50% plus) it dominates the blend and makes it very creosoty and oily, which I've come to not like
• 100% - yes I've smoked straight Latakia to see what it's like: it seems (to me) to lose the creosote/tar taste and bring out more of the Oriental/Turkish leaf characteristics which it's made of:
  • incense
  • savoury
  • curry

Probably it'd be good to hear from other experienced members what their take on how Lat's impact of blends change with %. Like others I've smoked a ton of Latakia in the beginning of my pipe journey, probably 10 years straight of smoking just Dunhill Nightcap, then started branching out and lost taste for it, now coming back to it in blends where it's a strong team member but not the boss. It's clearly a very versatile leaf which plays ball very well with Virginia and Orientals, it's the skill of the blender to find the best combinations where it adds rather than take over.

 

[rakovsky]

It's hard to say unfortunately, despite being a Lat bomb. This will probably not be helpful but I find that Latakia has very interesting behaviour, percentages are not to be taken as exact science:

• low % (5-10%), it adds some little smokiness and generally elevates the main player
• mid % (30-40%), it adds leather and smokiness but not overwhelming, that's when a blend becomes a "Lat blend but not Lat bomb" for me
• high % ( 50% plus) it dominates the blend and makes it very creosoty and oily, which I've come to not like
• 100% - yes I've smoked straight Latakia to see what it's like: it seems (to me) to lose the creosote/tar taste and bring out more of the Oriental/Turkish leaf characteristics which it's made of:
  • incense
  • savoury
  • curry

Probably it'd be good to hear from other experienced members what their take on how Lat's impact of blends change with %.

Sutliff pure Latakia tastes/smells like musty old wood barrels and a horse and cow barnstall's overripe hay to me, not incense or curry. I don't like it, so I can't call it savory either. It feels that if I were living on a farm it would blend in with the farm's smells fine enough that it would smell normal to me. A couple strong Latakia Englishes like Star of the East smell like that to me.

A friend with Sutliff pure Latakia and another company's pure Latakia said that Sutliff pure Latakia had that barnstall smell but the other company's Latakia was milder and different, and sounded like it smelled better.

There is a line of Englishes like Gaslight and Squadron Leader where the smell is like a horse's old leather saddle. I don't really like the smell either, and can't call it incenselike or curry or savory. But it's better than the barnstall flavor in Sutliff pure Latakia.

Then there are blends like Walnut MATCH where the Latakia is so slight that maybe it adds character to the blend without making it smell like a barnstall.

So I come away agreeing with your characterization, but with some critiques/qualifications. One is that there is a difference in smell between Latakia brands. Another is that I don't get incense from the Latakia that I tried, except for some Latakia blends like Fr. Dempsey that have a borderline incense smell for me.

So to get back to your main point, you said that you get an incense feeling from Byzantium, and that it's a Lat bomb, and that you think the incense part is from the strong Latakia, although you don't get an incense taste from the Latakia. So I'm trying to zero in more on how you have an incense feeling but not a taste. By comparison, Fr. Dempsey has a borderline incense smell for me and reminds me of incense, whereas Sutliff's pure Latakia had no incense smell and didn't remind me of Latakia. Maybe Sutliff's Latakia could remind me of incense in the sense that they can be both heavy bodied.

 

[karam]

I don't think I can help, it could well all be subjective. Latakia never gave me any barnyard or hay smell or taste, while leather has always been there too (for me).

Gaslight and Squadron Leader are very different though, to the point that for me there's no point in putting them in the same sentence. Gaslight I didn't like at all, it was creosote and tar, while Squadron Leader was nice but quite light for my tastes. In general I have never been impressed with Gawith's use of Latakia.

To distinguish the smoky/woody characters between eg Latakia and Dark Fired Kentucky I'd say the first smells/tastes like a campfire that's died down, while the second like wood chopped and/or burning.

Sweet hay/grass/tea even are tastes I'd experience from light VAs. Manure and cattle piss I'd say is what I get from C&D's Perique bombs.