The Perfumer's Studio Part 3: Nerikoh and Kyphi

The majority of incenses Persephenie taught me to make were of the non-combustible variety, meaning they can only burn via an external heat source such as a charcoal or an electric warmer. Making combustible incense is like baking—ratios of ingredients must be followed closely to get the result you want, whereas creating non-combustible incense is more like cooking, and is thus a little more open to interpretation. 

Nerikoh

Nerikoh is a Japanese fermented incense that uses honey and umeboshi plum as a binder to make soft pellets or pills. Nerikoh is traditionally warmed (not burnt) during the Japanese tea ceremony, and like the tea ceremony, sharing nerikoh is an artful practice in mindfulness and attention to detail. Persephenie showed me the traditional way to enjoy nerikoh, burying a smoldering charcoal inside a carefully shaped volcano of ash in a censer. On top of this she placed a tiny mica plate and a piece of incense. This gently warmed the incense, and its effect was so subtle, I had to hold the censer close to my face with one hand while cupping its top with the other to smell it. Resting the warm censer in my hand, closing my eyes, and cupping it close was unexpectedly comforting, like holding a cup of cocoa in my hands on a cold day.

Warming nerikoh old-school style. Photo my own.

Compared to other non-combustibles, nerikoh is the most time-consuming to make because it requires pulverizing all dry ingredients into a fine powder, cooking the water out of honey to make it super thick, mixing this excessively sticky honey with mashed plum and melted resins, and mixing the whole lot into a stiff dough. I definitely understand now why Persephenie charges $11 for just one of her mica-dusted nerikohs: they are a lot of work!

Persephenie’s gorgeous Atatakai nerikoh. Photo from her website.

 By definition, nerikoh contains agarwood, honey, plum, and camphor, but I could add my own combination of additional resins, woods, and spices. I passed on the pohinahina this time and stuck with a musky, leathery mix of benzoin, Yemeni myrrh (Commiphora kua), sandalwood, cinnamon, tonka bean, ambrette, and black cardamom. A visit to the Taschen store during lunch, where I eyed a selection of sexy books behind the counter, inspired me to call this my Tom of Finland nerikoh. We jarred them to ferment for a few weeks.

After a week of drying, I sampled one of my nerikohs in my electric warmer. While not as “sexy” as I imagined, it was definitely amazing: rich, nostalgic, and fruity like a spiced berry pie left out to cool on a windowsill. It was more grandma’s kitchen than leather daddy lair, but I loved it all the same. I would love burning this right next to my bed, its delicate scent sweetening my dreams.

Kyphi

Kyphi is nerikoh’s ancient Egyptian grandmother: an incense bound with honey, wine, fruit, and nuts. If you think that sounds good enough to eat, it is, as the ancient Egyptians sometimes nibbled on them to freshen their breath! (I imagine that, like toothpaste, you wouldn’t want to swallow it.) While similar to nerikoh, kyphi is a little less fussy to make, enough that Persephenie had me make two batches: one along more traditional lines and another of my choice. My first batch had the requisite myrrh, fruit, wine, nuts, and honey, which I mixed with cinnamon, spearmint, Cyprus scariosum, rooibois, juniper berries, and saffron. Everything was pulverized, mixed together, and cooked in a pot until it became a thick paste that we formed into pastilles.

My two flavors of kyphi: more traditional on the bottom and a kyphi “bark” on top.

My second batch was an experiment at making a green, forest-like kyphi. Instead of myrrh, I used mastic and opoponax resins, which I melted with honey and mixed with ground pohinahina, calamus, star anise, juniper leaf, and mugwort. Forgetting completely to add the wine-soaked raisins and pine nuts, I plowed right ahead to cooking the mess and spreading it on wax paper. This hardened into a strange, bendy incense “bark,” which I coated with more ground pohinahina.

The kyphi would mold if I closed them up, so we wrapped the bark chunks and pastilles in wax paper. I unpacked them as soon as I got home and left them to dry for a week in the coolest, driest corner of my house. They were still very tacky when I checked on them, so I moved them from the fridge and then to the freezer for most of a day. This didn’t make much of a difference, either, so I stuck them in the dehydrator for another 24 hours on low heat. A day later, they were still very sticky. I fear keeping honey-bound incense from turning into goo may be one of the climactic challenges of living in the tropics, right along with keeping spices from molding and and table salt from dissolving. My kyphies will have to be stored in the freezer until use.

When I finally warmed the kyphi “bark” in my electric warmer, the green freshness came through just as I’d hoped it would, and the sweetness of the honey gave it a fruity, rich tang despite forgetting to add the nuts and fruit to the dough. The kyphi bark was definitely the best use of pohinahina. I may try another experiment where I adapt this bark into more of a nerikoh so that it can be stored better at room temperature. As for the more traditional kyphi I made, it was enjoyable, but unremarkable. It shared the same fruity, nutty, wine-y base notes of the excellent Mermade Magickal Arts kyphi I’ve tried, a gold standard kyphi, so I knew I was doing something right despite the Hawaiian climate turning my kyphi into goo.