Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I was reminded of this question when I had received some questions from friends on our recent incense venture. Some of the questions were like, are the Hall of the Peaceful Heart incenses any different from the blended incenses we see on on the Japanese Incense market?… [Read More…]
Articles
De-mystifying Onycha
For over a year, there was just so much hype on Onycha in Chinese incense circles, it is something that they call 甲香 (jia3 xiang1), no one knew what it really was! There is a legend amongst these circles, that Onycha is a legendary and amazing material, that if it is milled or ground for… [Read More…]
Wishing all readers : Happy Lunar New Year 2016!
Hi folks! Happy Lunar New Year! Time flies.. and another year has gone by. Wishing all my readers, good health, happiness, and many fragrant experiences! Growing a little radish at my tea and incense table, in chinese, radish is called 菜头 which sounds like auspicious beginnings Plum blossoms – announcing spring’s arrival. I had… [Read More…]
Traditional Dong Ding Oolong & the KZ Tea Experiment
A super long over due article! But mainly because I was waiting for survey results/replies from people. Many months ago, I held a free tea sample give away, a sample set that consists of 4 teas, 5 grams each, sent out at no cost to the recipients, only with the request that they fill in… [Read More…]
Kyara, is it or is it not?
Do you know that there are just countless people in the world, trying to make a fortune from all sorts of materials they try to find from the wild? Take for example, ambergris, it is quite a dark trade, the amount of rivalry between scavengers (some of them whom even tried to run others down… [Read More…]
Soil Agarwoods
There are two obvious lines of soil agarwood on the market, one from vietnam, and the other from Indonesia. The Vietnamese line consists of 3 types of soil agarwoods, yellow, red and black soil. In Indonesia, some call it yellow soil, but it is just Irian/Merauke’s Filaria material, and occasionally some papuan. But that said,… [Read More…]
Installing Teapot filters
Oops, another hiatus in writing. Had been caught up in much work and was also away on a trip to Taiwan. As I should be re-starting to warm myself up by writing more posts.. I thought I would start with a simple, but important subject, installing filters in tea pots. To proper tea drinkers, and people… [Read More…]
Incense Stick Making – A Walk Through
I had received some requests on how to actually go about making incense sticks, and there were comments on my earlier post that I had not show how the incense dough was made prior to extrusion, and how I managed to get such straight sticks and scale up my production. The truth is, I’ve not been… [Read More…]
Agarwood in Microscopy
oops! long overdue articles as usual. beeen reallly really busy studying and researching on tea pots and making incense sticks but i’ve not forgotten about writing. Sometimes, when people handle agarwood, they are seen pouring over the piece of wood with a handheld magnifier. What are they actually looking for?… Here are some tips…. [Read More…]
Alshareef II – Journey to the Heart of Oud
Ever since a few years ago, Oud had become the buzz word in western perfumery, all the major western perfume houses now carry different “oud” products. I had friends that would ask me from time to time to check out this “oud spray” or that “oud eau de parfum”, and I would respond like……. [Read More…]