HEM – Church Incense

I received these samples from Steve in May (2025), you can find his review here.

Church Incense of the masala varieties sold by HEM, which is why I was curious about them.
At one of my favourite shops, Ephra World, a pack with 15g costs £1.65.
I forgot to weigh the sticks, so I can’t say exactly how many should be in a pack, but I’d estimate it’s no more than 10; the sticks are thick and relatively heavy.

I’d hoped that Church Incense would be ‘resin-on-a-stick’-type sticks. They certainly contain some resin, but not enough that you can see it bubbling and simmering behind the ember. The smoke output is also rather moderate.

In terms of smell, Church Incense suggests a high perfume content.
The raw sticks smell quite sweet, with a floral, somewhat indolic ‘toilet cleaner’ note. Only in the background do I find a hint of a vaguely frankincense-like resin smell.

When lit, the sweetness comes even further out. It’s not a simple, pure benzoin sweetness, the smell seems more volatile than that; it appears more like a perfume again.
Thankfully, the floral aspect loses the toilet cleaner-reminiscent character when burning and resonates in a very pleasant way.
Again, only vaguely present in the background is the dry, resinous note. You have to search for it a little to find it.

Church Incense doesn’t smell like any church I’ve ever been in. (Though that weren’t many.) In (German) Catholic churches, it’s more common to burn pure frankincense, or perhaps mixtures with myrrh.
The oil-perfumed frankincense varieties that you find as ‘Athonite style incense’ or simply ‘orthodox incense’ are typical for Orthodox churches, and these can indeed be quite sweet.

Church Incense smells more like ‘Loban’ incense sticks to me than like church. Anyone who likes intensely sweet fragrances won’t be bothered by that, though.