Monsoon Incense: Herbal Amber, Herbal Musk
These two packs were part of a generous selection of samples that Eugene Andrushchenko, owner of the Bhagwan and Monsoon Incense brands, sent me in mid-2024. At that time, the brand was still called Good Incense.
A 15g pack should contain 5 sticks for both varieties. They’re 9″ (approximately 23cm) long and burn for about 2 hours.
Herbal Amber costs €2.95; €0.59 per stick.
Herbal Musk is priced at €2.50 – €0.50 per stick.
The description of both varieties is almost identical. About Herbal Amber, Eugene writes: ‘Heart-warming amber incense made solely with local herbs, flowers, and wood powders from Southern Tamil Nadu. It contains no Halmaddi resin and is very similar in recipe to Tibetan-style incense, where wood powders and herbs play a prominent role. Local jaggery syrup is used as a binding agent, giving Herbal Amber its unique sweetness and balsamic profile.’ For Herbal Musk, he only adds that ‘specific herbs and flowers were chosen to recreate the fragrance of animal musk’.
Herbal Amber
Herbal Amber have a really lovely, very classic amber scent; sweet and balsamic.
Initially, I thought I’d sense a blurry mélange of herbal notes in the background, but the more often I’ve used the sticks, the more I’ve wondered whether this was only suggested to me by the name and presentation of the sticks.
Unfortunately, the smoke has an odd scratchiness.
Herbal Musk
With Herbal Musk, I feel exactly the same as with Herbal Amber, except that here the amber perfume has been replaced by a sweet musk scent.
The fragrance is nice, but also somehow even simpler than that of Herbal Amber, and the harsh characteristic of the smoke seems to be even more pronounced.
Conclusion
With both varieties, I feel strongly torn. In good air dilution, both Herbal Amber and Herbal Musk have a beautiful scent, but as long as the smoke isn’t really completely dissipated, I encounter an irritating scratchiness. Standing near the burning stick is very unpleasant.
I find both varieties equally good and bad. Good in their relatively simple but classic scent, bad in the odd harshness of the smoke.
The claims that the sticks are made only from herbs, flowers and wood powders with the addition of jaggery (that’s raw palm or cane sugar) as a binder appear implausible to me. Too intense is the scent of both varieties, as well as their sweetness; not least on the raw sticks.
Nothing about the perfume of these incense sticks smells as if it comes purely from natural plant material, not even the smoke.
The green colour of the amber variety also gives me the impression that it comes from a dye, not from herbs or similar; these wouldn’t retain such a fresh, bright green.
I find the comparison to Tibetan incense sticks far-fetched. Apart from the partially large particle size of the ingredients, these two varieties have no similarity whatsoever to the nature or character of Tibetan incense sticks I tried.
However, Mike writes in his review of Herbal Musk on ORS that the sticks remind him of some of the perfumed Tibetan incense sticks made in India, and he knows a lot more about Tibetan incense sticks than I do.
He later reviewed Herbal Amber as well.
To write the reviews, I burnt the sticks in my living room, but I’ll use up the remaining ones outside. I think they’re best suited for outdoor use, where the long burning time is also a real advantage.