The Seasons Are Turning

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself a little further.

I’ve always been a “smell-person”, so to speak. I discovered incense sticks as a teenager and when I got involved in the Renaissance fair scene during my early twenties, I quickly found my “true love” in loose incense.
At this point, I lost all interest in stick incense (until about 2 years ago).
Back then, I made a pact with myself (mainly for budget reasons) to only buy individual ingredients and no blends – instead, I would make them myself.
Since then, I have mutated to an almost obsessive collector. I particularly like resins. But I kept true to my pact (with a few very specific exceptions).
In the 15 years that I have been working with incense, I have created a number of recipes and accumulated knowledge that I would like to share here.

Before I started this blog, I’ve been very active on Reddit r/Incense for a few years (and I still am, but less so). I think, writing there contributed to wishing for a platform where I could write about my favourite topic in my native language.
However, on r/Incense, I got hooked on incense sticks again.
Initially, I just wanted to finally use up the remaining incense sticks I kept in a drawer for so many years, and then curiosity took over. Nowadays, the choice is so much larger and, above all, due to online commerce, the access is so much better. This simply wasn’t given for a teenager in the 90s. At that time, the famous “Blue Box” Nag Champa from Satya and the Violet Line from Holy Smokes (BERK) were the crown of incense stick creation for me.

Now that days are getting colder, I’m starting to increasingly prefer using my incense heaters instead of lighting sticks – which I only do with open windows. Heaters produce almost no smoke and are therefore ideal for indoor use, especially during the cold season.
That’s why there won’t be any (or at least much fewer) incense stick reviews in the near future – but there will be information about incense in general and incense ingredients, as well as the occasional recipe.