Wild vs. Cultivated

[Oudiferous]

I want to re-visit (or, rather, re-open) a significant topic for discussion. I've attempted to make rudimentary excursions into the deep and vast nature of this topic on my blog, but it seems that with the pace that Ensar is moving, that things are changing rapidly.

So far we have seen the release of two Organic oils: Oud Yusha and Encens d'Angkor, which in Taha's words, resembled his wild-harvested Oud Kampuchea to such a degree that he would not have been able to tell the wild oil from the cultivated oil.

Then we have all watched Ensar supervise with great care, affection, and intensity oils such as Thai Encens (1 and 2), Crassna Cha, and Encens Khmer.

The wild card in all of this is Oud Ishaq, a kien-distillation from wild Thai wood, yielding a scent profile that Ensar himself was initially perplexed by.

What are the implications of this on Organic Oud? In my opinion, Ensar has proved that Organic Oud oil can equal (and possibly even surpass) its wild-harvested counterpart. Nonetheless, as Ensar remarked, in Oud Ishaq he encountered the distinct scent of wild Thai wood. Does this imply that there is indeed an intrinsic difference in the scent profile of wild wood versus cultivated wood?

Even if we suppose that it does, does that mean that Organic Oud is not a worthy venture? Surely, Ensar has proved beyond doubt why Organic Oud is ethically sound and yielding oil of incredible quality. But I am still interested in examining the intricacies of wild vs. cultivated, and what is being discovered before our eyes, and under our noses!

Ensar has just completed his distillation from the wild Cambodi experiment that we all watched. This thread can be a place to discuss those findings, and for others to share their experiences of these oils as they acquire them.

 

[Ensar Oud]

Khao Yai Experiment

First day's impressions:

I've been so busy today with separating the oil from water, and then doing lots of different things with different distillers, that I've barely had the chance to sit with the oil and introduce myself. For now, it's the greenness of kyara transmuted to the clarity of pure mint which you inhale and keep inhaling and keep inhaling and keep inhaling without reaching the bottom of the scent; or should I say top? It is pure sky; an opening from above that makes the head feel light. And it never turns to a 'woody' dry down, it just maintains its mint-kyara green from first note to last. That's the most amazing thing about it. Don't mistake the green of Khao Yai with any of the other oils' green you've smelled. It is an airy note that is more ethereal than air itself. It is a lightness untainted by physical traces of earth, wood, or the minerals of water. Even the color of the oil is the most translucent green. You can see through the oil as if looking through a light green-tainted glass. It is transparent. Some of it sank in water in the shape of a bulb, and we couldn't get it to float to the top of the water. This made the filtering especially tricky.

Second day's impressions:

An oud oil that smells just like the fresh blue lotus flowers! It's as if everything is interconnected in this climate, and the zest of their cuisine is also found in the agarwood oil which is produced here, which in turn is affected by the mineral content of the water the wood is soaked in prior to distillation. Either I'm going crazy, or I smell fresh blue lotus flowers in the oil.....

I went to sleep with a swipe of it on the back of my hand, which at that time smelled like the blue lotus flower (soft, delicate, ethereal, with the faintest hint of buttery-earthiness permeating it); and when I woke up and revisited it, it smelled of the agarwood resin as it burns, devoid of any smoke, wood, the pure eternality of gently heated gaharu; Cambodian/Thai origin; spicy green with a subtle dark fruits undertone.

 

[Ensar Oud]

Fifth day's impressions:

Just collected the fifth day's yield of Khao Yai, which is slowly coming to a halt. The filtering is really driving me insane. I've never experienced this much stress filtering an oil. It's so costly, which is why I need to be ultra careful about wasting any, but that also means proper filtering is really difficult to pull off. I have a bottle with dust and water drops inside which I don't know what I'm going to do with, apart from just putting it in the morning sun tomorrow, hoping everything will evaporate apart from what's supposed to be there. That'll probably end up being the bottle I set aside for personal use... :S

The oil is surprisingly soft and understated; the subtle delicateness of lotus, and its elusive airiness. I was hoping to get something stronger, with more umph than Thai Encens in this oil. What I got was the exact opposite. Thai Encens was much stronger with its fruits and woods. Khao Yai is so delicate, so lithe, soft and polite it's like bottled propriety and delicateness. Blue lotus is the only thing it reminds me of; the mint I was getting before is now barely detectable. Maybe the faintest breath of white rose peering through, but you have to look for it in order to find it. It's like bottled blue air, blue waters, blue clouds, blue lotus, blue. Understated is the way to describe it. And blue.

 

[Igor01]

Ensar, having now the benefit of experience of several distillations from incense-grade wood, do you still think it's worth the risk and do you plan on doing any more? The cost is much higher and because the wood is so resinated, yeilds are modest. Of course, the resulting oils can be spectacular, but even the "mad scientist" in you surely knows that this is not just a hobby

 

[masstika]

Ensar: Sometimes Allah gives us a reminder that not everything is under our control at all times. I understand your dilemma with it being subtle and with less oomph than what you would have desired but that probably doesn't make less spectacular non the less. It might not fall in line with the character of Oils you've been doing before but it could be fantastic and it could even be inspirational for future affordable line oils with similar scent. You write above about the zest of the Thai Cuisine and how that is gets reflected even in their oils. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? as I am a big fan of Thai Cuisine and seeing those delicious plates you had just made my imagination run wild with smells and taste of spicy sweet coconut curry and lemon grass

 

[Ensar Oud]

@Igor: LOL, you must've mistaken 'madman at the stills' for 'mad scientist'. This is not a question of risk, it is guaranteed 'kaatun!' (Th. 'lost money') as everyone here keeps shouting at me daily, in response to my requests and ideas. Just to give you an illustration: We recently acquired some wood chips from a 100 year-old tree which are now selling (out) at $20 per gram. See attached photos. A good 4 kilograms of the chips we ground up for the Khao Yai oil were all but identical to these 100 year-old chips in both appearance and fragrance. From a retail perspective, 4 kg x $20K = $80,000 gross. With the 5 tolas of Khao Yai oil we've collected thus far, we're looking at $4,000 a bottle to come anywhere near the price the chips would have commanded. Now add 10 kg of organic incense grade chips that could have sold for $3 a gram, which we added to the distillation to meet the still requirement; what does that indicate for the price of the oil? In short, this is definitely my last wild incense grade distillation.



@Masstika: I'm so glad you chose to mention Allah. All of a sudden, monetary considerations become unimportant and everything falls back into perspective. Surely there is a wisdom behind the Khao Yai distillation, otherwise Allah would have inspired us to keep the chips and sell them rather than grind them up to make this oil. I have to say I am quite impressed with the oil despite its subtlety and understatement, and my general preference for powerful ouds, Hindis being at the top of the list.

What makes it all worth it is the evaluative insight this distillation affords into the impact of high grade wild oud chips on an oil as opposed to sticking to organic chips exclusively. While I doubt I'll ever distill incense grade wild agarwood again, I now look forward to distilling other varieties of organic incense grade oud oils.

During our first visit, oranges came up in a discussion. A Thai native showed us a greenish citrus fruit I'd never seen before, indicating this is the type of 'orange' you get in Thailand. When I explained what we mean by oranges in the West, he said 'those kind of oranges are of little use in Thailand, as they're not tart enough.' Everything here is either zesty, or tart, or sharp, or green smelling (and tasting!) and this zest is found in the unique mineral content of their water, their unique fruits & vegetables, their cuisine; I'd even go so far as to say their sexuality. And it is most certainly found in the aquilaria crassnas that grow here. The best illustration of this is in Thai Kinam. Green like the galangal & kaffir lime & lemongrass, it is redolent of the zest that permeates everything under their green sun.

 

[Oudiferous]

The oil sounds beautiful, Ensar. Surely, nothing arises or is created that is not already in unity with its environment! I have never smelled a blue lotus note in Oud oil, and that alone makes the Khao Yai distillation intriguing to me.

It seems that these distillations in Thailand have all been useful experiments, and that you are learning a lot in the process! We are all certainly benefitting and enjoying immensely everything that you are doing with Oud oil right now.

I also have a preference for powerful Oud, but if I had a bottle of a very floral Oud, or an Oud with lotus-like notes, then I would probably be inclined to wear it one of these days when I'm not feeling the "blast" of Indian Oud!

 

[Ensar Oud]

 

[Ensar Oud]

Eighth day's impressions:

I now have the entire yield from the first batch in front of me, which came to five full tolas; as well as the first few grams of oil from the second batch. I have a swipe from the first batch on the inside of my wrist; and one from the second batch on the back of my hand. The differences are stark, yet the 'familial tie' between the two oils is obvious, unlike the two batches of Thai Encens, which were complete strangers, and will not settle their differences to this day... :S

First batch:

This is a lithe, bluish substance that is very bright and energetic. Top notes of guava, subtle pear and the tart fruitiness of blueberries complement each other atop the buttery ether that is the heart of the blue lotus flower. If mint was colored blue, it would smell like this. No kyara green notes, no incense notes; just an uncanny spirited substance that is so delicate yet so alive and ethereal I cannot call it an oud oil in the 'vulgar' sense of the term (thick opaque liquid that stays close to the skin and smells like wood or leather or animal). It is a pea-green liquid as transparent as glass. This is what Chris McMahon would likely call 'one of the precious extracts'. I see this oil in the collections of high class perfumery aficionados who adore any and all precious aromatics rather than the 'stashes' of agarwood oil bottled up for daily application by wearers of oud.

Second batch:

I once had a miniscule amount of antiquated wild Cambodian oud a distiller gave me from his private archives. Here is a worthy heir of that oil. A resinous yet light, incense-y yet grounded oud that is neither fruity nor floral but rather redolent of the resin crystals that coat high grade Cambodian oud chips. The swipe I applied was sticky, and given the fragrance I'm getting I speculate some of the actual resin crystals are finally starting to make their appearance in the oil. Rather than blue, this smells green-yellow; the scent of honeyed lemon, devoid of citrus and radiating instead in fine gaharu smoke. This is the oud lover's dream come true. A resinous, incense-y Cambodi that smells ancient fresh from the still. I salivate thinking what this will smell like in two years.

 

[masstika]

Just to be clear in my head regarding the definition of the terms; Second patch means it's the same chips from the first batch just run over one more time or is it new and similar chips to the first Batch but run in a different method? And if they are the same chips what do you attribute this chance in the scent profile to? I am amazed because from your description it sounds like those 2 oils are an entirely different kind of oils that I fail to see the 'familial tie'. Can you elaborate more on what is the common thread between them?

 

[Taha]

Ensar,

I've faced similar challenges - especially when the oil 'breaks' in the water. You could try centrifuging the water to the bottom and the oil to the top, if you have the equipment.

Also, I know you're not a fan of sunning (nor am I, but in cases like this you have no choice), might I suggest some sunning and then when the oil has cooled down a bit, pour it into a different container. I've been amazed by how much debris settles at the bottom of the first bottle! This debris, in my experience, spoils the smell of the oil after some months if left in it.

With larger quantities of oils, you do things a little differently. But with small-scale distillations like the one you just conducted, I find the above to be immensely helpful in saving an oil from irreversible damage.

 

[Taha]

Just saw the video after posting, and I see you've already poured the oil into another bottle. : )
I do the same, by the way.

There's a salt/crystal (Sodium Sulphate) which is commonly used by E.O. distillers to get the water to clump together, for easier separation. It isn't supposed to contaminate the oil its added to, since it binds to the water only. Did you consider using that for your own bottle?
I have a Sumatran oud distillation, and filtration was a nightmare. Using the crystals (in my own bottle), the water turned into blobs.

 

[Ensar Oud]

@Masstika: Second batch is the same raw materials as the first, only distilled for a second run to get any remaining oil out. In the case of Khao Yai, it's the exact same raw materials. In the case of Thai Encens, I had to leave right after collecting the first batch, which was extremely poor yield. When I returned, the distiller said he'd kept cooking the raw materials, and handed me 3 quarter tolas of oil that smelled like Serge Lutens' Ambre Sultan. He felt so awful about the thousands he charged me for the raw materials, and then handing me two tolas of oil to go home with, I even suspected he might have added more dust to the pot just to ensure I got some more oil. He was and remains extremely apologetic about the low yield, as though it were his fault. "I should have warned you, I should have warned you!" he keeps saying.

As a rule, the first and second batches will never smell the same. The lighter, airier top notes will come out in the first batch, and the darker deeper base notes will emerge during the second. This explains the difference between the two versions of Thai Encens, as well as the two batches of Khao Yai we're currently collecting from the still. The change is most likely due to the different types of molecules making up each 'grade' of essential oil / resin content in the raw materials. Essential oil holds a lighter grasp on the wood than hard resin, so I imagine this is the reason for the airier notes emanating from the first run, and the resinous incense notes in the second. They still make up the same scent, kind of like pieces of the same puzzle. It's like fragmenting one aromatic into different groups of molecules. If you smell them separately, they don't really resemble each other. But if you put them together in the end you end up with the 'whole' fragrance. Which is why oud is traditionally worn neat on the skin, because of its complexity and multi-layered-ness. It's more like perfume than single note aromatic.

@Taha: Yes, they have the cylindric centrifuging pyrexes here, but I cringe at the idea of using them, as they're coated with oil from other runs on the inside, and it's not really possible to clean them 100%. I ended up leaving the oil in the first bottle standing upright for a night, then the next morning everything had precipitated to the bottom, so I used a glass syringe to collect the clean oil from the top, until I got to the dregs at the bottom, which slowly and painfully were finally separated and are now left in the empty first bottle. I did one very brief, closely monitored sunning session, just to get any final traces of moisture out. It's the lengthy, intentional sunning that is done in order to modify the fragrance which I'm against; the brief initial filtering sessions done to purify the oil of any water and debris are unavoidable....

There's a distiller here who produces drums of oil on a monthly basis. Obviously he's forced to use an evaporator. For a five-tola yield like mine, as you mentioned, there's little else one can do but go through the painful stages of coaxing each water molecule out, one by one.

I haven't heard of the sodium sulphate; I'd be scared to put a foreign substance in the oil though.... Where do you get yours from?

 

[masstika]

Thanks Ensar for the clarification. Through the above explanation of the lighter notes in the first Batch and the heavier resinous notes of the second batch would it make sense then to mix a little bit of both to see what the full spectrum of the scent is? and wouldn't the resultant oil be more true representative of all the possibilities that this wood had to offer? or do you think the mix would be incompatible?
@Taha: ow would you collect the sodium sulphate after they've congealed? you just pick them up?

 

[Ensar Oud]

Yes, standard practice would be to mix both batches so as to get the full spectrum of the oil obtainable from each batch of agarwood.

We have quite a few orders & enquiries on Khao Yai, though, and each one is different. Some want only the second batch, some only the first; others want us to experiment with mixing them and call the shots as to how we deliver it..... It's going to be tricky!

 

[masstika]

I will stay away from any suggestion and will leave that decision in difference to you. You know best what will be the way to go and based on everything you have been doing so far (ISA) this also will also be a stellar Oil.

 

[Ensar Oud]

Thank you so much for entrusting the decision to me, masstika. I truly feel honored & humbled by that.

After ten days of distillation, yesterday I pulled the plug on Khao Yai. We had planned a 15-day total extraction but the yield just came to a halt.

I'm sorry to report the yield was poorer than Thai Encens 1. For Thai Encens, we cooked 5 kg incense grade wood and got 2.75 tolas yield. With Khao Yai, we cooked 14 kg wild & cultivated incense grade wood and got only 6 tolas. That shows that the harder the resin (as in the case of the wild portion of the raw materials in Khao Yai), the less overall yield. This was something we already knew, but it seems to have even impacted the organic portion of dust we cooked. According to the Thai Encens numbers, 10 kg organic wood alone should have yielded 2.75 x 2 = 5.5 tolas. I'd find it difficult to believe 4 kg wild incense grade chips only yielded .5 tola oil.

I'm busy filtering the second batch now. This is my least favorite part of conducting an oud distillation. :S

 

[masstika]

You're welcome Ensar. I had read in one of those Agarwood studies that a 10 kg normally yield abut 6 tolas on average. I guess we had expected the yield to be less due to high resin content but I guess one of the lessons to be learned yet is whether the resultant oil is superior to the average content or slightly higher than average batches to justify the effort and the cost. I was thinking about the patience needed for the filtering process and smiling thought to myself that it ought to be named after the prophet Ayoub (AS) and his patience

 

[Ensar Oud]

Thanks for the great suggestion, masstika. I think the Khao Yai oil better remain 'Khao Yai' so as to avoid confusing people further.... I received a complaint last night that all the names are starting to sound similar (Yusuf, Yaqub, Yusha, Yunus, to name a few)

But I have a lemony honeyed new Meghalayan oil I think would work nicely as Oud Ayoub!

 

[Mr Oud]

Ensar, please tell us more about this new Meghalayan? Perhaps this can be added to your list of upcoming oils? Thanks