@Philip, thanks for asking the questions. Aside from deciding to wear the distiller’s coat yourself, that’s the only way to get these answers!
@PEARL has pretty much summed it up, but I will add a bit more.
Firstly, I would add that just as Adam brought up within that Facebook post, there IS a natural funk smell as well, which is possible to be captured in oils in very very rare cases. But its so rare that its mention really serves no purpose.
Secondly, it should be noted that a specific barn quality (most notably hay and leather) can arise naturally without deliberate human manipulation being the cause, in the case of Bengali, Indian oils, and (some) Burmese oils. These oils will have an intrinsic sweet hay note (intrinsic to the wood itself).
Thirdly, certain animalic notes can also be intrinsic to some batches of wood. Again, this is the exception and not the rule. But in certain cases (e.g. far far North Indian wood), it is in fact a salient feature of the wood. Case in point: Chugoku Senkoh. It has an animal element which is COMPLETELY different from more typical funky Indian oils. But this element is more perfumey in nature, like musk, ambergris, hyraceum (especially this), and so on… and what you’ll notice is that these animalics are very different from (and actually have a place in perfumery), when compared to something like carcasses and animal excrement and freshly peeled hides. Another case in point: Adam’s Borneo Adventure II. It has a mind-boggling musky animalic element, but again, it is intrinsic to that wood. I have in my bedroom (air-conditioned 24/7 = no rot/fungus infestation) a small bag of some Borneo wood which I regularly heat, and it naturally has this aroma as well.
So a distinction needs to be made between intrinsic perfumey-animalics vs funky/fecal/animalic smells that arise from nothing but bad hygiene.
Finally, a distinction must be made between fermentation and rotting. Just like fermented food is not the same as spoilt food, so too is fermented oud not the same as spoilt oud.
And now, on to the more serious issues-
It is important to note that what you see in the video is after a mere 1.5 weeks of soaking post-distillation in a copper pot. Let me break that down:
1) 1.5 weeks: hardly anything, compared to how long the wood is soaked for, in the case of conventional funky oils (usually a minimum of 3 weeks, and in most cases way way more - months)
2) copper: is itself a disinfectant that deters microbial activity. Typical soaking is done in plastic drums (Cambodia, Thailand) or cemented pools in the ground (India, Laos). You start to see fuzzies and slime and sludge starting to develop within a couple days. The maggots make an appearance soon after.
3) this is POST-DISTILLATION: and so the water inside the pot actually cycled through the entire distillation system and passed through the collected oil layer (oud oil being a natural disinfectant) at least 8-10 times while the distillation was running. Not only was the water I used in this distillation drinking-grade to begin with, but it got boiled (distilled) in copper (a natural disinfectant) AND it further passed through the ‘disinfecting filter’ (the layer of oil collected). And yet, you see what you see. On the other hand, typical soaking is usually done using ground water.
My takeaway from your post (on Facebook) is that Hindi Oud does not inherently smell barnyard, and that the traditional barnyard quality is mostly a result of a manipulated and corrupted distilling process (soaking, fermentation etc...). Your categorical and matter-of-fact statements, coupled with the video, left me powerless but to interpret your post as a condemnation of barnyard Hindi.
Now this is certainly true, and its no secret. I, Taha, feel very strongly about this topic. Although I would slightly reword it to say ‘human-engineered barnyard’ instead of just barnyard (since hay and leather can be intrinsic to the wood / raw material). Sadly, its almost always human-engineered.
As for barny oils that are that way due to fermentation (rarer), they shouldn’t really be lopped into the same category as oils that smell that way due to rotting (the typical case).
For ME, Taha, yes, I view BOTH as having been manipulated by human intervention and in my present stage in the oud biz, I view them as one and the same. But I am the first to admit that due to what I have seen and been through, I have an obsessive tendency towards purity and pristineness. Once you have seen first-hand death and suffering and the sheer difficulty of acquiring high quality agarwood, I think you too would be instilled with so much awe and reverence for this rare substance, that you would not want to tamper with its aroma.
But that’s just me. I cannot enforce that view on others.
And so I’m quiet on
fermented oud (which I see as being 'oud perfume'). My war is on
rotted oud which I consider outright abuse and disrespect.
An interesting fact bite: once absolutely no more oil comes out during a distillation, if you kill the flame and let the wood marinate for a couple weeks in the pot and rot kicks in, you can light the flame again and resume distillation; typically you’ll get 5-10% extra yield (e.g. if you got a 150ml pristine yield, you can get up to 15ml more after the maggots have at it).
Foot note:
In almost all cases, I too soak the wood before distilling. But there are ways to do it without tampering with the aroma. Adam and Ensar have mentioned several of those numerous times already, so no need to list them again.
Also, an important distinction should be made between clean/dirty soaking and clean/dirty apparatus. Oils distilled in 99.9999999999999999999% of the apparatus in the world used for distilling oud are filthy. They are coated on the inside with old sticky oil, a wonderful insect trap, and aged dead-insect paste. This is the reason why I do a thorough washing of all the apparatus after every single distillation, despite the fact that it inflicts physical harm (I developed a hernia), because you're talking about hauling a 550 lb loaded pot. There’s a photo of me from November that I could post here but I’d rather not. So, if you want to see it, drop me a PM. Then ponder WHY I would go through this extremely hard and annoying cleaning and washing, and why distillers will typically (and understandably) not want to do it.
Answer: a quick insert & twist of a bottle cleaning brush into the nooks and crannies of distillation apparatus in South East Asia will remind you… that this is South East Asia! Everything grows here. Especially in nooks and crannies.