How to Make Incense: A Beginner's Guide

Those of us who enjoy aromatherapy and creating "atmosphere," know the importance of scents. Incense is probably the most intense of mediums and can be irritable to some people and create headaches in others. Yet, for many of us, a favorite incense helps relax and put us in a good frame of mind for meditating, reading, studying or for simply relieving stress.

There are basically three forms of incense - loose incense, cones, cylinder and stick. The oldest form of incense is the loose kind and by far it's the easiest of the four to make. Loose incense usually burns on charcoal. Cone incense is economical to make and less messy than loose incense. Cylinder incense lasts longer than cone and both are the hardest to make because they are made my hand and can be time consuming. By far, my favorite incense comes in the form of sticks.

When learning how to make incense, the main thing to remember is that there are four basic ingredients that go into making incense, with the exception of the loose incense. They include your aromatic substance (which creates the scent), a base or chemical that helps the incense to continue to burn, some sort of bonding agent that holds it together and a liquid that allows the bonding agent to change into a type glue.

When it comes to the aromatic substance, there are many scents to choose from. The following list is from Wylundt's Book of Incense, and breaks the scents down by categories:

Bark: woody, semisweet, mild
Berries: heavy, earthy, resin-like
Flowers: dry, grassy, semisweet
Gums: heavy, semisweet, resin-like
Leaves: dry, herby, grassy
Roots: earthy, heavy, woody, different
Seeds: burny, bitter, smokey
Spices: sweet, dry, mild
Wood: woody, semisweet, mild

Things to consider when making incense

It's important to keep the proportion of aromatic substance at least twice as large as the base. Too much base can cause a strong after smell of smoke, so be careful not to overdue it.