Cycle Brand – Woods

I bought this pack with my first Ephra order at the end of 2021.
They cost €4.45 for an approx. 32g pack of 20 sticks, 22ct per stick.

I had just gotten really interested in incense sticks again and ordered a whole bunch, including some that were recommended to me on r/Incense and that included Woods.

Cycle – Woods is special, to say the least.
My review on Reddit at the time read as follows:

I have a hard time deciding what to think about this…
Out of the packaging: Dark, but there’s also a fresh smell that I later identified as wintergreen-like. They are furthermore slightly woody, very strong and with a pinch of unidentifiable niff. 
Burned: At the beginning there’s a pissy-nutmeg odor but it gets overpowered very fast by the overall potency of this incense. With a lot of fresh air, I vaguely smell horse stable and the wintergreen freshness returns. This smell also remains in the room, sadly combined with the piss smell. I’ve never had Incense smell stick more to my clothes than this one. It’s clingy as fuck. I burned it shortly before leaving the house and I still smelled it at my destination. When I returned the day later, there was the oddest smell left behind in my living room. I apologize for typing this, but [NSFW]: It smelled like a freshly opened animal corpse, still warm. (Don’t ask.) WTF

The crazy thing is, I still cannot -not- like it. Maybe it’s because of the wintergreen (I love wintergreen). I wonder what this smell actually is, I doubt it’s actually wintergreen (or even more unlikely, birch bark). Any ideas? Recommendations for wintergreen incense?

I’ll keep them. And I’ll occasionally burn them to feel confused and love/hate them.

If you would like to read the entire post, including comments, you can do so here.

Because they smelled so intense, I put them into one of the glass vials that are usually reserved for my favourites. About a day later, the smell had managed to overcome this barrier. I then put the vial in an additional Ziploc bag and relocated it in the tin of incense for outdoors, which smelled like Woods from then on.

Now, a good year and a half later, the smell has slowly subsided. Last month I had the courage to pull them out again for the first time and – lo and behold – they have aged well.
The smell is still extremely potent, but I no longer find anything “pissy” in it. The cow dung is still clearly noticeable and still reminds me slightly of horse stables, but not nearly as much as Cycle – Dasara does.
What remains, and I’m truly grateful for that, is this crazy wintergreen-like freshness. This now competes enough with cow dung to maintain a certain balance of niff and pleasantness.
I now also notice a spiciness that reminds me of Manmohak Oudh from the same manufacturer. The Magenbrot association appears again, which is also due to the rich sweetness.
At least in the raw smell I think I can now detect something herbaceous, and I have the impulse to describe it as floral without having a specific note in mind.
The smell is now much more rounded and even has a certain softness.

I just burned one again on my balcony and took the last bit into the living room. They’re still too strong for me indoors, but it was bearable.

The after-smell (the next day) is limited. I noticed it briefly when I entered the room, but not in an unpleasant way.

Cycle – Woods remains unrated, but I definitely like it better than Dasara and also Yagna.