---
title: "Silver Tip: an Incense Build Featuring Osmanthus and Mastic"
description: "I make a fresh, sweet, and green incense build reminiscent of the flavor of white tea"
date: 2024-09-20
tags:
  - Incense
  - Incense Making
  - Incense Builds (Recipes)
synopsis: "I make a fresh, sweet, and green incense build reminiscent of the flavor of white tea."
imageURL: /img/testAsh.webp
imageAlt: "A small tin labelled 'test ash' beside a small glass jar containing matches."
mastodon_id: "113173725532729481"
---
If my memory serves me, some time ago I tried a stick from [Yi-Xin](https://craft-incense.com/) that contained osmanthus flowers and mastic gum. I recall enjoying the combination, so when I found a bag of dried osmanthus on sale while [doing some online grocery shopping](https://www.sayweee.com), I set out to make something using these ingredients.

Having read that osmanthus, like lavender, was one of those few flowers that could be used successfully in incense, I was brimming with confidence as I ground them finely and made an attempt at a batch of sticks containing 19% of the powder. The result was ghastly. At this percentage, alongside that characteristic beautiful fruity fragrance was a proportionate helping of the acrid scent of burning plant matter. Following this failure, I put aside my hubris, opened my tin of 'test ash'[^1] and began testing incense powders comprised of differing ratios of osmanthus and base-wood in a series of trail-burning tests, eventually finding that a ratio of 10% osmanthus to base wood seemed to return a reasonably good fragrance in the burn.

[![A small tin labelled "test ash" beside a small glass jar containing matches.](/img/testAsh.webp "My test ash; a very convenient way to perform a quick trail burn.")](/img/testAsh.webp)

Armed with this knowledge, I put together a build. The star aromatics sit atop a woody base of sandalwood and juniper sweetened by a touch of benzoin; the composition is slightly lifted with a minuscule amount of camphor, bound with guar gum and a little acacia gum. While also acting as a weak binder, the acacia gum is present to lower the burn temperature and strengthen the sticks.

## The Build
|Ingredient|Grams|% of Build|
|----------|------|-----------|
|Juniperus Virginiana|2.6|35.62%|
|Santalum Spicatum|2.6|35.62%|
|Osmanthus Fragrans|0.73|10%|
|Mastic Gum|0.5|6.85%|
|Acacia Gum|0.3|4.11%|
|Benzoin Siam|0.25|3.42%|
|Guar Gum|0.25|3.42%|
|Borneol Camphor|0.07|0.96%|

As with all of my incense, I extruded the dough into 2-2.5mm coreless sticks which I then dried on a mesh screen at room temperature and left to cure for a number of weeks.

## Conclusion
The sticks this build produces offer a [quiet listen](https://kikohincense.com/pages/listening-to-incense), but I find it very pleasant. Something about the combination of juniper, mastic, and osmanthus forms a fragrance that's at once green and fruity, with a bright, peachy, stone-fruit note, all atop a woody base. After a couple of months, the camphor is barely there on the stick; whether it is present in the burn is difficult to say without trying a build sans borneol.[^2]

My partner has a small wood-burning backpacking stove they like to use to make tea while camping. While I haven't yet had the pleasure, I have to imagine that making a cup of white tea on such a stove in a juniper forest would smell similar to the fragrance of this stick.


[^1]: I use the stick of a cotton swab to create a divot in the ash bed, which I carefully fill with incense powder to be tamped down, lit, and evaluated. When I'm done, I simply close the lid, shake the container, and drop it once or twice on a flat surface to smooth the ash and prepare it for the next use.
[^2]: Such a tricky ingredient, camphor. The tiniest amount can seem utterly overwhelming when blending or on a fresh stick, and as incense cures and ages, it seems as though it may or may not mellow out in the burn.
