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

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Jul 19, 2024
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You can always add the incense components yourself to any blend that you desire. It's not difficult.
You can buy it as a resin or oil, and it is soluble in alcohol. There is also a water-soluble product, but the aroma is less pronounced.
I did not know this at all. Might make me some frankensense and myrrh tobacco for the holidays. I may practice a nature based spiritual path but I am a cradle Catholic.
 

rakovsky

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Ok, just so I'm clear in understanding you, are we talking the tin note of the blend, or the scents and tastes we perceive when smoking?
Brian,
I am basically focusing on the smoke smell of the blend.

Frankincense smells lemony, and myrrh and galbanum smell like pine, and these smells are in both these resins' tin note and these resins' smoke.

Margate's tin note smells like beef jerky, old wood, and maybe black pepper, but its smoke is impressively thick and oily. The word "aromatic" fits it well. It carries a heavy aroma bringing to my mind the room note of an avant guard art club in the 1920's.

The tin note for Sintren had rhubarb but otherwise wasn't unusual. In my notes from when I tried it last year, I wrote that its smoke had scentiness reminding me of a Hindu temple. But later when I reflected back on it, I could remember a myrrh-resin-like smell. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️ It should have a Styrax resin scent.
I definitely get a barnyard/hay smell from VaPers or English blends with Perique in them when I open the tin or bag. For example, I just opened a sample of WCC's Ahab's Comfort, and the barnyard smell hit me right away. But lighting up, I also definitely got a resin note that I associate with incense (my best friend in grade school was EO, so I get what you're referencing!).
How strong on a scale of 1 to 10 is the incense smell from those blends that you are talking about?

For instance, when I smoke Fr. Dempsey, the normal tobacco smell is a 8, the barnstall smell of that blend is definitely there but just a 1-2, whereas its potential lavendar incense smell is just a 0-2, to the point that I don't know if I'm imagining it.

To give an analogy that might help, I read about coffee blends that were supposedly "chocolatey". I tried 7-10 blends, like a Guatemalan craft one, looking for that "chocolate" taste. I found that the beans' "tin note" smell and their flavor when cold brewed and mixed with lactose free milk reminded me partly of chocolate. But otherwise at best their flavor brewed in a cup only reminded me analogously to chocolate flavor. Like coffee and chocolate are both brown roasted grown sweet bitter seeds, so their flavors have analogies or overlapping qualities. But the coffees didn't actually taste as if they were chocolate.

The exception to this was a soft powdery Vietnamese coffee blend by Len's in MA. I think it was Truong Lam. That blend reminded me so much of chocolate I imagined that the manufacturer could be mixing chocolate powder into it.

Getting back on topic, it's neat if you have kept a sense of your friend's Church's incense smell and also if you would be noticing what was somehow an actual real incense smell in the blends.
Of course, smell being subjective, I can't say everyone's going to have the same experience!
Right. Moroccan Bazaar literally has incense, but it could be little enough that people might not notice it. One person told me it was "absolutely" like incense, whereas another person told me that he didn't get an incense smell from it, but that he could smell its fruit and clove contents.

I think Mrs. Pickles may be right that the incense smell from Latakia comes from the conifer woods and anacardiaceae species like mastic and terebinth that are used to smoke it. But tobacco leaf itself has a lot of different potential fragrant compounds, which the curing process may also bring out, so maybe you're both right?
Mrs. Pickles was talking about the terebinth or pine smoking process adding incense flavor. I'd heard a theory of that elsewhere, but it wasn't explained in more detail than that. She was also talking about flavors added to the blend to make it more incenselike.

So far I agree with the idea that added flavor can make a blend smell like incense like Margate's casing or topping does.

I don't have much opinion as to how much the wood smoking process for treating Latakia could or would make Latakia smell incense-like. It makes sense because of the maplewood smoked meat scenario: if you smoked bacon with maplewood, it might have a flavor that could remind you of maple syrup. But I don't know how well that would work. Maple syrup is a lot sweeter and oilier than maple wood by itself.
 
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rakovsky

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You can always add the incense components yourself to any blend that you desire. It's not difficult.
You can buy it as a resin or oil, and it is soluble in alcohol. There is also a water-soluble product, but the aroma is less pronounced.
Thanks for sharing.
I don't want to dismiss what you are saying, and it could be good in cologne. I Like everyone's posts on my threads.
A friend on another piper forum wrote that he spent a long time with friends who tried smoking frankincense and myrrh (not just adding a drop) and he said it went badly for them.
 
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Mrs. Pickles

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Since terebinth resin and mastic resin are theorized to be classic incense materials going back to ancient times in the Mediterranean, it would make sense that they could relate to "terpy tarry scents from mastic and pine smoke" in Latakia's processing.

A tricky spot there could be that terebinth or pineish incense resin per se would be much more full in its essence than a leaf smoked with wood that contained that resin in unknown amounts. Another issue is that I don't know how close terebinth resin, which might not often be used in incense in real life today, smells to myrrh resin, which is a typical base in incense.

To use an analogy, suppose that you smoke bacon using maplewood. I don't know how close that would make the smell from frying that bacon be to maple syrup. In the grocery store, we have maple bacon with a maple syrup taste, but it literally has maple syrup slathered on it.

Leffingwell actually did some research on what smells and what amount of them stick to Latakia. Check out the full article here: http://www.leffingwell.com/download/latakia2013.pdf

He notes that they match up with the same volatiles as those from mastic on page 2:

latakia headspace analysis.PNG

So, at least for the Latakia he analyized in this study, the incense-like(?) volitiles of smouldered mastic are sticking to the tobacco, no maple syrup necessary puffy

The sourness and animal side of Latakia that you mentioned doesn't remind me of incense. Latakia for me seems bitter and earthy, rather than sour. But maybe I am misperceiving it and in fact it is sour. In contrast, Katerini seems more "sour" the way that I imagine Katerini to be.
Just to clarify, I think the sweaty animal sour flavors I get are coming from the non-Latakia orientals, like the Katerini you pointed out.

So I understand you correctly: Oud is a cologne that smells like wood and tobacco.

Here I'm refering to Oud not as the perfume, but as the name for agarwood/aloeswood that's used as incense in the middle east, east and south asia.
 

starrynight

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A couple thoughts…

First, thanks for going deep!

I think you’re dead on with the whole separation of smoke and incense smell. Like an Islay scotch the peat or bogginess of say Laphroaig differs significantly from that of Lagavulin or Coal ila, although there’s more similarities in the former. However both are carried so to speak by “smoke”. Within the smoke however is nuance and that is what you’re searching for.

When we walk into Church we’re greeted by icons, and often times the dustiness of the pews (or carpets in EO sometimes). This is accompanied by mystery and awe and wonder and excitement and solemnity: It’s sight, and smell but also spirit. All of these elements pour deeply into your conception of incense and the aroma your perceiving.

So, the blend you’re in search of has to have some Latakia base to carry it, but probably a high level of oriental to give it the spice needed.

My suggestion:

Get a clay ( if you haven’t one already) and smoke individual whole leaf to get a solid feel for what each element can bring.

C&D has some blending tobacco that might start you in this endeavor.

Clay for me really helps the components shine through. An example for me was Presbyterian. All the elements were distinct, and although it has too much sour, it does have a lot of “incense” like aroma and flavor.
 

rakovsky

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Leffingwell actually did some research on what smells and what amount of them stick to Latakia. Check out the full article here: http://www.leffingwell.com/download/latakia2013.pdf
Thanks for sharing. That looks very scholarly and above my level of education.
What is "headspace analysis"? I guess that it means that they burned the Latakia and then tested to find the chemicals that were in a limited area that they call "headspace?"

Last year I researched theories about what ingredients Jerusalem's biblical tabernacle blend might have used. My reading covered alot of ingredients like Terebinth, Styrax, and Myrrh. In Leffingwell's Introduction, Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) is the only plant that I recall specifically among those theorized as candidates for the ingredients in the tabernacle blend. The article doesn't discuss the Terebinth tree, but it's in the same genus (Pistacia) as Mastic.

I get stronger sweaty animal smells from Latakia and Izmir than Katerini.
Katerini is very light and delicate.
Izmir is lighter than Latakia. I could call it medium-strong, and call Latakia very strong. My smoking notes on Izmir were, "At times some marginal notes reminded me of an animal smell like a gerbil, elephant, or horse, but not like rotten hay." I didn't get any such animal notes for Katerini.
 

starrynight

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Thanks for sharing. That looks very scholarly and above my level of education.
What is "headspace analysis"? I guess that it means that they burned the Latakia and then tested to find the chemicals that were in a limited area that they call "headspace?"

Last year I researched theories about what ingredients Jerusalem's biblical tabernacle blend might have used. My reading covered alot of ingredients like Terebinth, Styrax, and Myrrh. In Leffingwell's Introduction, Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) is the only plant that I recall specifically among those theorized as candidates for the ingredients in the tabernacle blend. The article doesn't discuss the Terebinth tree, but it's in the same genus (Pistacia) as Mastic.

I get stronger sweaty animal smells from Latakia and Izmir than Katerini.
Katerini is very light and delicate.
Izmir is lighter than Latakia. I could call it medium-strong, and call Latakia very strong. My smoking notes on Izmir were, "At times some marginal notes reminded me of an animal smell like a gerbil, elephant, or horse, but not like rotten hay." I didn't get any such animal notes for Katerini.
Scratch my post, looks like you’ve already headed here…

And I 100% agree with the animal note on Izmir…. It’s uncanny! For me, its game-y lamb!

I barely detect it at all in Samsun…
 

Mrs. Pickles

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What is "headspace analysis"? I guess that it means that they burned the Latakia and then tested to find the chemicals that were in a limited area that they call "headspace?"

Yes, that's pretty much it. It looks like they both heated it up and captured the molecules and also just put some Latakia in a jar for various periods of time and detected what floated off it.

Last year I researched theories about what ingredients Jerusalem's biblical tabernacle blend might have used. My reading covered alot of ingredients like Terebinth, Styrax, and Myrrh.

That's awesome.
I get stronger sweaty animal smells from Latakia and Izmir than Katerini.
Katerini is very light and delicate.
Ah, see, I've only ever had Katerini in combination. I don't know the characters of the individual origins very well.
 

cosmicfolklore

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If you mean an aromatic, then I have no idea. Many are thinking about those cheap incense sticks bought at gas stations.

But, for me the most incense like blends are a 2013 version of Penzance and GLP's Ashbury. Here the Orientals are combined in a way that gives off hints of church incense every now and then. NOT those cheap gas station sticks.
The newer version of Penzance is good, but different from the older version.
 

dozicusmaximus

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It could be that the pipe smoke was different enough from other tobaccos he had smelled like cigarettes, and different enough from other smoke smells he recognized like campfire wood, that maybe he expected it to be like incense. Since you were outside camping, I expect that he was more likely thinking of East Asian Wood.

People unfamiliar with pipe tobacco can be really thrown off and confused by it. I say that myself as someone who himself has been getting deep into exploring blends for the last two years. One time I smoked a 50 50 mix of Cpt Black Dark Cavendish and a barnstall English B&M house blend outside a Vietnamese-run salon. One of the workers was smoking a cigarette. My mix's smell profile was so unfamiliar to him that he wasn't sure if what I was smoking was legal. I explained English blends well enough that it made sense to him.

For sure he was thrown off. The only pipe smoke he's used to us of the green variety. Haha.
I mostly smoke outside so I don't get to smell my room note. If I smoke in the detached garage, when I'm done I don't go back in.
I haven't smelled church incense since I was 13. But that might be a hidden memory that draws to me 965 type blends.
 
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Pypkė

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Compared to my frequent exposure to incense at Catholic Masses, the pipe tobaccos remind me of incense the most are:

1. GLP Quiet Nights
2. GLP Maltese Falcon

I haven't smoked every tobacco known to mankind, and I can't tell you what the best is. These two are from recent experience. I advise taking those reviews you've been reading with a grain of salt - even from the very best reviewers, People comment on the room note as being like incense - it's the latakia.

Father Dempsey is a blend I am smoking right now. It does not at all remind me of Church incense.
 
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rakovsky

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First, thanks for going deep! I think you’re dead on with the whole separation of smoke and incense smell.
"Last year I researched theories about what ingredients Jerusalem's biblical tabernacle blend might have used. My reading covered alot of ingredients like Terebinth, Styrax, and Myrrh." ~Rakovsky

That's awesome.
Dear StarryNight and Mrs. Pickles,

Reading about incenselike pipe blends and trying a couple made me interested in finding out what the essential church incense contents would be. An EO article, "The Smell of Holiness," asserted that it was based on the tabernacle incense blend in Exodus 30:34.
(SOURCE: menoikeion.princeton.edu/document/106)

I decided to get some of the main ingredients and burn them both because I thought incense was neat and to better compare real church incense to blends that I was interested in.

In Exodus 30, the Lord gave Moses instructions to use Galbanum, Frankincense, Nataph, and Shekheleth in the tabernacle incense.
Verse 34 gives this recipe for the incense blend:

Hebrew
וַיֹּאמֶר֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֜ה קַח־לְךָ֣ סַמִּ֗ים נָטָ֤ף ׀ וּשְׁחֵ֙לֶת֙ וְחֶלְבְּנָ֔ה סַמִּ֖ים וּלְבֹנָ֣ה זַכָּ֑ה בַּ֥ד בְּבַ֖ד יִהְיֶֽה׃

My literal translation
And said Yahweh to Moses
Take to yourself fragrances
Nataph and/with shekheleth and galbanum
Fragrances and/with pure frankincense
Of each shall there be a like weight.

Galbanum is resin from shrubs of the genus "Ferula." Mine was pine-sap smelling and reminded me of a gooey version of myrrh.
220px-Goli_Lo.jpg
galbanum-essential-oil.jpg


Frankincense is resin from trees of the genus "Boswellia." The species growing in the Asian Near East is Boswellia Sacra. "The Curative Use of Frankincense in Oman and Beyond" has a nice map of where Boswellia's species grow.
(Source: earthstoriez.com/the-curative-use-of-frankincense-in-oman-and-beyond )
Mine was hard like amber and smelled lemony.
808x454_cmsv2_ff22d022-a950-54fe-a7b9-196a459ddaa9-7253948.jpg

(Source: "Frankincense: I uncovered the story behind the traditional Christmas scent on a trip to Oman.", euronews.com/travel/2024/12/30/frankincense-i-uncovered-the-story-behind-the-traditional-christmas-scent-on-a-trip-to-oma)

"Nataph" in Hebrew literally means "drop" or "drops" in English, as in gum drops or water drops. The Septuagint, a 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Torah, translated Nataph into Greek as "Stacte," which also means "drops." Based on available information, it's a generic term for resin drops, including mixes of resins into drops. But it especially implies myrrh. For instance the Greek botanist Theophrastus (371-287 BC) wrote that "Stacte" came from myrrh or from a concentration of myrrh mixed in water with oil from Egyptian Balsam tree seeds (Balanites aegyptiaca).

Myrrh comes from the Myrrh Tree, which could be Common Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha) or Abyssinian Myrrh (Commiphora kua / C. habessinica).

Modern writers suggest other possible sources of Nataph: The Balsam tree (Commiphora opolbasamum), Storax (either Styrax officinalis or Liquidambar orientalis), Styrax (Styrax Benzoin), Labdanum (resin from Cistus creticus), Balm of Gilead (Commiphora gileadensis), the Mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus), and Terebinth (Pistacia palaestina / Pistacia terebinthus).
As candidates for "Nataph" in the tabernacle incense, Scholars typically suggest resins from the genuses "Commiphora" and "Styrax," like myrrhs and balsams. In contrast, Cyprus Latakia preparation involves smoking Mastic wood. But some modern writers consider the Mastic Tree (P. lentiscus) to be among potential sources for Nataph. Plus, the common theory that "Nataph" is a generic term for resin drops that can be made of multipe substances still allows for including Mastic resin (P. lentiscus) among legitimate varieties of Nataph.

Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) and another candidate, the Terebinth (Pistacia palaestina / Pistacia terebinthus), are in the family "Anacardiaceae," also called the "Cashew" or "Sumac" family.

Here is Wikipedia's map of the native range of the Mastic tree (P. lentiscus):
1920px-Pistacia_lentiscus_range.svg.png

The Xs on the map are isolated populations.

The article "Deciphering the Incense" in the Law and Halakha journal focuses on three candidates for Nataph's identity: 1. Myrrh 2. Storax-Styrax 3. Mastic.

[C] Pistacia, Mastic, or Terebinth (Pistacia; Anacardiaceae)

Abarbanel on Torah, Exodus. 30.34
[וכתב רש"י שנטף הוא הנקרא צרי והוא הנוטף מעצי הקטף][ובלע"ז קורין לו גומ"ה והנכון שהוא מסטצי"י]

In Arabic it is called dseri or dseru; similar to tsori. See Dioscorides' writings as πιστάκια ; pistákia, recognizable as P. vera by its comparison to pine nuts. [Balm of Gilead: P. atlantica; Iran-Saqqez]. The term "πιστάκια" refers to the mastic tree, scientifically known as Pistacia lentiscus. Pistacia lentiscus and its resin, known as mastic gum, hold significant historical importance. Dioscorides, in De Materia Medica, specifically references the mastic tree and the resin as being used for its medicinal properties, including as a treatment for gastrointestinal issues and respiratory conditions. This is also the opinion of Talmudic German translator Lazarus Goldschmidt; Sefaria T. Keritot 6a. ["Mastix"]

SOURCE: sefaria.org/sheets/384577.2?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Some points in the article deserve explanation.
Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel (1437, Portugal –1508, Italy) was a Jewish philosopher of the Rabbinic school. I take the article's quotation from Abarbanel in Hebrew about the incense in Ex. 30:34 to mean something like:
"And it's rightly called a gum and it's correct that it is Mastic (מסטצי). Rashi wrote that what drips is called "tsuri" (balsam) and is what drips from "kats" (harvest) trees."

The Arabic name for the Mastic tree is "dseri"/"dseru," which sounds similar to the Hebrew word "tsuri." This is important because the Talmud interprets the "Nataph" in the Biblical tabernacle blend to be "tsuri". "Tsuri" in the Bible seems to refer to a balm, like the balm ("tsuri") that the caravan from Gilead to Egypt carried that rescued Joseph (Gen. 37:25).

It's not clear that tsuri is a version of nataph though. This is because the ancient Septuagint translation of the Bible translated "nataph" and a couple other Hebrew words like "mor" (myrrh) into Greek as "stacte." But the Septuagint never translated "tsuri" into Greek as "stacte."

Dioscorides was a 1st century AD Greek writer. The article is using Dioscorides' writings about "pistakia" to show that mastic resin has historical importance. This doesn't show that Nataph especially referred to pistakia/mastic trees.

When the article says, "This is also the opinion of Talmudic German translator Lazarus Goldschmidt" and cites to "Sefaria T. Keritot 6a," the article refers tothe Talmud's discussion on the tabernacle incense. Keritot 6A says:
"The Sages taught in a baraita: How is the blending of the incense performed? 'Tsuri', and 'tzipuren', and galbanum, and frankincense, each of these by a weight of seventy maneh... Rabbi Shimon says: The 'tsuri' mentioned here is nothing other than a resin exuded from the balsam tree, not the bark of the tree itself."

The 20th century translator L. Goldschmidt translated "tsuri" in the Talmud into German as "Mastix". The 2010 William Davidson Talmud translates "tsuri" in the passage above into English as "balm".

Wikipedia's article on "Incense offering in rabbinic literature" asserts that the rabbinic physician Ashtori ha-Parhi (1280, France - 1355, Ottoman Palestine) wrote that Nataph was Mastic resin, but Wikipedia doesn't cite a source.

 
Jun 23, 2019
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I love the smell of church incense. Lemony Frankincense and the oily pine sap smells of Myrrh and Styrax Benzoin are three of the most common ingredients in church incense. By comparison, the South and East Asian traditions often use Nag Champa and sandalwood.

I smoked 9 blends out of about 30 blends that reviewers desribe as incenselike. Some blends literally include a major incense ingredient. Anothery category reminded me a lot of incense, a third category has a borderline faint incense smell, and the rest don't remind me of incense.

Indonesian "Kelembak Kemenyan" means Rhubarb Styrax Benzoin. Indonesian "Sintren" brand cigarettes use it. I could smell the myrrh-like Styrax in it.
Frankincense-Cigarette-Ingredients.jpg


HU Moroccan Bazaar's description on Tobacco Reviews says:

moroccobazzar2.jpg


Esoterica Margate reminded me very much of incense because of its heavy oily consistency and body. Its flavor however reminded me more of cologne, like Ralph Lauren's "Chaps."

Grousemoor Plug's smoke seemed to have a little Nag Champa or sandalwood side.

Kramer's Fr. Dempsey was made for a Roman Catholic priest. It includes a faint light note that gives me the idea of incense that has lavender in a R.C. mass. The resemblance to incense is weak enough that I could be imagining the similarity.
maxresdefault.jpg


Maltese Falcon includes ginger. It has a faint oily note that I can't tell for sure whether to describe as incense-like.

A friend told me that Maltese Falcon smells more like incense than GLP Westminster does. I haven't tried Westminster, but some say it's like incense. Its cover art shows Westminster Abbey.
003-029-0052.1181.jpg


Peterson's Nightcap, My Mixture 965, Ennerdale, Boswell's Northwoods, C & D's Star of the East, and GLP Gaslight did not particularly smell like incense to me.

Other blends that reviewers describe as incense-like and that I haven't tried are:
  1. McClelland's 3 Oaks Syrian
  2. McClelland's Orient 996
  3. Kopp's Fox’s Provost Mixture
  4. HH Magnum Opus
  5. S.G. Cannon Plug
  6. S.G. RB Plug
  7. G. H. & co.'s Balkan Blend
  8. Sutliff's Bengal Slices
  9. Sutliff's Holiday Pipe Mixture
  10. A & C Petersen's Caledonian Melange No. 499
  11. Dan Tobacco's Liberty
  12. GLP Samarra
  13. GLP Horizons
  14. Peretti’s Oriental 40
  15. Peretti's Royal
  16. Gladora Tobacco's Pesse Canoe Latakia 40
Have you tried blends that you found to be like incense?

For me, incense-like is both a taste and a texture of smoke.

Kind of shocking no one has mentioned Penzance yet, especially since you gave a nod to Margate, which to my palate is not that incensey.

Penzance
Quiet Nights/Chelsea Morning
Dreams of Kadath

those are the top blends I think of when someone says incense.
 

rakovsky

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The article "Deciphering the Incense" in the Law and Halakha journal focuses on three candidates for Nataph's identity: 1. Myrrh 2. Storax-Styrax 3. Mastic.
To follow up, the argument that the Mastic tree, whose wood is used for processing Latakia, was in the tabernacle blend runs: Exodus 30 gives "Nataph" (drops) as one of the tabernacle ingredients; The Talmud identifies Nataph as "Tsuri"; "Dzeri" is the Arabic word for Mastic and sounds similar to "Tsuri."

But it's not clear to me that the Arabic word "Dzeri"/"Dseru" means Mastic. The normal modern word for "Mastic" is مصطكى, pronounced "mastakaa" in English. The Wikipedia article on the Balm of Gilead gives a different meaning for "Dseru":
The lexicographer Bar Seroshewai considered the Arabic dseru (ﺿﺮﻭ), a tree of Yemen known as kamkam (ﮐﻤﮑﺎﻡ) or kankam (ﮐﻨﮑﺎﻡ), Syriac qazqamun (ܩܙܩܡܘܢ), Greek κάγκαμον, Latin cancamum, mentioned by Dioscorides (De materia medica 1.32) and Pliny (Hist. Nat. 12.44; 12.98).[33][35][36]

References
[33] Löw (1881), pp. 58–59
[35] "κάγκαμον", GEL, p. 718
[36] "cancamum", OLD, p. 264
Rev. Farrar's book, "Solomon: His Life and Times" (p. 169, Footnote 1) says:
"The opobalsamum is still called in Arabic dseri (Heb. tzeri)."
biblicalelearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Farrar_Solomon.pdf
 
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Singularis

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I just smelled my jar of Fr. Dempsey (I got it in bulk) and it does have a more of sweet incense-like pungency than I realized, though maybe not quite Orthodox/Eastern-style frankincense, which I also love. Must be why I like this blend. Now wishing I had another pound put back.

I generally like smoking latakia-laced blends because it reminds me of the Liturgy (East or West), and my wife speaks positively of the aroma for the same reason.
 
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rakovsky

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The most incense-like blend I knew of was SG RB Plug, sadly now out of production. But that was more "Grateful Dead concert" than "church" incense.
Dave,
That sounds to me like the South and East Asian scent profile, like Hindu incense sticks.
 
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rakovsky

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FWIW when ever I smoke Early Morning Pipe the better half always comments on the incense note, I get very little in the smoke but the room note must carry that smell.
Dear VDL Piper,
I didn't have EMP, just the tin note of a blend that a pipe maker told me was his EMP-like house blend. The tin note smelled like a light version of a normal English house blend.

If EMP's smoke smelled like incense to her but not to you, I'm guessing that the key factor is a person's own varying perceptions of smell, rather than the issue of smoke vs. room note.

One reason is that some people find a collection of Englishes to be incense-like, whereas others don't.

The other reason is that to the extent that I could separate a smoke note from a blend's taste, I haven't noticed much difference between smoke smell and room note. So for instance, when I smoked Captain Black, the smoke and "ambient" aroma had a strong great vanilla smell, but it didn't carry over much into the taste. Or when I smoked Margate in my van, the smoke in my mouth and the "room note" in the van had the same artsy fine nice thick cologne smell.
 
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rakovsky

Can't Leave
Nov 28, 2024
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C&D Seersucker and Dreams of Kadath
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.
cdc77197d43227c7570f.png

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?
 
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