Let's talk Oud: a detailed discourse on the various aspects of this substance we love

Well since they're shavings from beads, they look quite different from the previous cambodian dust which was grinded.

From what I understand, there's oil and resin in wood. when making oil, the aim is to get as much oil out from the wood as possible. resin usually doesn't become oud oil. but Taha (and maybe the others) have some technique in converting part of the resin back to oud oil, but not everything. so some aromatic compounds are still in the wood, stuff that didnt get extracted (hence why Co2 extraction or tincturing will get you a substance with additional aromatic compounds.)..plus Taha's super low cooking technique might influence the end result of the dust as well.

Usually post distillation dust is used to make incense or bakhoor, as a base..but usually it's not incense grade vietnamese Ha Tinh bead shavings though

@m.arif, we'll be hitting the 48 hour mark soon and progress is good - despite not using yield boost for this batch.
As I had mentioned to you, I don't think I've ever worked with this species before, and so yield boost is too risky. I could end up destroying the batch, so its safer for this round to use the best of conventional distillation. Progress is good because so far the yield rate is just slightly lower (slower?) than with yield boost (about 2/3rd).

@bhanny, as m.arif mentioned some of the resin but not all gets converted back to oil. ALL of it, in theory, can be - however prolonging the resin-to-oil conversion could harm the oil content (i.e. the non-converted already-oil oil). I've wasted plenty of batches of awesome wood in trying to determine the optimal sweet spot for various species, and you may recall I once mentioned that I don't see why anyone else besides me should find knowing the species to be beneficial.
Such 'failed' batches in the past have added up to tens of thousands of Georges, and considering the new distillation situation I face (having to make everything myself) I cannot afford to be doing that any more.
There's still CO2/Hexane extraction which would extract all the resin, but what I've found is that those oils - pleasant that they may be - smell 'dead'. And let's not forget, a bunch of the additional stuff that gets extracted isn't exactly what we want (lipids, waxes, etc). It appears that a certain amount of heat needs to be applied to bring this dead substance (agarwood heartwood) back to life, be it in the form of heating wood using an incense heater or distilling it in a pot.

So yes, like m.arif mentioned, this Vietnamese dust still has resin content (and smells pretty sweet! It was ambiently aromatic to begin with), and the Thai brew should end up with even more because I didn't implement yield boost (and it was even more ambiently aromatic).
Even the finest Japanese incense sticks use post-distillation wood as their agarwood raw material. Now imagine wood that's many grades higher than standard distillation feedstock, as the base for an incense mix.
Looking forward to draining the first pull. The hydrosol is the most unusual I've smelled in my life, it almost smells like Merauke oud, bitter, dark and smoky. After I test the oil on skin today, I'll know how to modify/tweak the distillation if required.

By the way, if anyone is wondering what 'rye snakes' m.arif was referring to..
I use rye dough + PTFE tape for sealing cracks and joints. No other dough, heck no other sealant, works as well in my opinion. And a couple days ago poor m.arif's gluey hands would have attested to that!

[update]
Just got to smell the oil—
By God... I never imagined I would capture the scent of a certain variety of Japanese incense this well.
If you've tried YM's (old stock) Hyofu or Tennendo's Enkuu, not just once but attentively over at least 10 sessions, you will come to really love and get addicted to the bitter-spicy type of aloes used in their base.
If you've smelled YM's new Hyofu (or Shikun, or any of their new batches for that matter), it'll break your heart to notice they now use Givaudan's synthetic Black Agar compound to flavor their sticks. But you'll also come to realize WHAT they're trying to amplify in the new batches.
Like I said, even the hydrosol smelled bitter and smoky (just like the raw wood... almost Merauke-like), and now even these bright light top note drops I collected smell bitter, green and smoky. Zero sweetness so far. Its neither like Trat, Prachin, Chanthaburi, nor south Thai aloes. Rather, its like a cross between a Cohiba and bitter green Chinese medicine.
Never seen or smelled this sort of oud before. Ensar, you're gonna have to help me identify this stuff!

That sound great Taha! If I was there I would pitch in, just to be around that aromatic treasure at least!

...pitch a tent here you mean, of course!

So I sat down and calculated the cost-to-benefit-to-yield-to-waste-of-time, and what not... looks like I need a minimum of 3 continuously boiling pots to break even and 5 or so to make a profit.
But the scary thing is: the current jungle situation won't even allow that. What complicates matters even further: what I've now resorted to using (old piles of antique woods) won't last forever. Sooner or later (sooner I fear), the old stocks will dry up.
I'm not sure how much longer prices can remain low.

And yes... there, I said it. Oud right now is way too cheap. Actual high grade oud, that is.
Not way overpriced, high, unreasonable, fair, or cheap. Its way too cheap.

Considering the actual current hunting costs (and the absence of decent trees as a reward for those hunts), its no surprise everyone in this industry is retiring. Shops in the Bukit Bintang district here shutting down and being replaced by clothing boutiques, hunters becoming tilapia farmers. agarwood traders turning to sunbear bile, seahorses and porcupine stones (which are pretty hard to harvest too, but anything is better than the oud state of affairs).
Once the current stocks in the oud shops run out (my guesstimate: two Ramadan rounds), we're all gonna face a bitter truth. Good oud can only be afforded by millionaires. We're just too close to the era where good oud wasn't too hard to get, and that alone is what's currently keeping prices so low. Let's see how soon Sri Lanka and Papua dry up. Per the latest news I've heard (Kinh hunters now even penetrating the jungles there), I fear it'll be sooner rather than later. I have seen enough Kinh and Khmer rape victims (jungles) to know the scale of damage they can inflict, and how swiftly.
Fyi, Sabah is finished too because of Cambodians. All in a matter of 2 years. The guy behind it? A Khmer with a Malay passport by the name of Mokhtar whose mansion was about half a mile away from my (former) distillery, who relocated to Sabah and opened the flood gates to Khmer supermen. He is returning back to Pahang soon - I'm sure you know what that means.
Sabah used to be Malaysian agarwood traders' 'insurance policy'. "Oh, if things get too bad here, we'll just focus on Sabah then". That insurance policy expired, as Adam or anyone else with actual ground experience/knowledge can tell you.

So yes. I said it. Oud is way too cheap right now. Sosumi.

In other news, I received a message from Jamal today.
Its now been 2 months and 2 days, on the dot. The hunters have covered pretty much the entire area of the last remaining (relatively) 'virgin' jungle in Borneo. They are frustrated and want to go back home. I'm sure you know what that means.

Like I always say... treasure these precious little bottles of wild oud that you have. If you have the will power to switch to bad plantation oud (or can't tell the difference ), then you have nothing to worry about.
And I know that Ensar may have kilos of awesome wild grade oud oils (not sure if he'd be willing to / could afford to release them), but I do know that he - and anyone else - couldn't have made enough of good plantation oils to last too long.

/ end prima donna rant

So what shall we say, then?...
$350 - $550 for quality organics
$1,100 for Aged Wild & Oldes
$5,000 for Legends (sinking grade, etc)

Or do you think that's too ambitious?

Whoever has no objections to paying the prices I am proposing, raise your hands!

/ hands quickly enter pockets.
I DO object!
I'm sure everyone else - just like me - would rather spend less instead of more.

But what to do?
There's been a hard (and ever increasing) discrepancy in the past few years between costs and prices. Now you managed to make plenty of oils back when it was still within the boundaries of feasible/'sane' (not sure why you are still at it?!), but the new wild agarwood paradism is one that I can't help but feel will ultimately push most (ahem.. all but one in my opinion) suppliers out of the game because of the cost-to-price incongruence.

I don't know if you were being serious or not, but yes, those prices are actually pretty spot on. Anyone who got over 75% in high school Algebra (or access to a calculator) can do cost calculations based on the prices of raw materials I've posted here earlier.
So those price ranges are spot on, for high grade ouds. But methinks the MOCA police will try its best to see that never happens. The MOCA police actually reminds me of a certain category of agarwood buyers who come to SE Asia and prey on the weak and desperate. Folks who are all too comfortable taking advantage of traders/hunters who desperately need cash (e.g. to be able to afford some medication for his wife... true story). Those buyers have a certain price fixed in their minds (based on what, and why??), and then will try to haggle even below that. If they don't manage to find any weak prey during a trip, they just take a suitcase full of Sina'i wood back instead. Wild. Sina'i. The fact that one replaces the other clearly indicates the value of agarwood in their minds.
Just yesterday, I had a potential client over at my place. He wanted sinking baby king super grade wood for $900/kg. I showed him the door.

So @Ensar, don't expect any hands to shoot up. Like me, everyone else I'm sure would like Bentleys to be selling at the price of Great Wall vehicles.

Side note: Sina'i wood is now banned in Qatar (yay!!) and anyone caught dealing in Sina'i wood faces serious criminal charges. Kuwait is in the middle of implementing the ban as well, and pretty close to achieving a full ban. Saudi Arabia - far from it. And the market demand for Sina'i in SA is at least 100x more than all the other Gulf countries combined. So Sina'i is, it seems, there to stay.
Side side note: THE largest supplier of Sina'i wood in the world, based in Bandung, Java, will be visiting me today or tomorrow. He wants to produce "Gen3 style" oils from Sina'i wood. He's gonna get a piece of my mind (and since he's a bazillionaire, I'm hoping some bottles of my oud oils too).
What I don't understand is... why does he want to distill oil from Sina'i wood, why not just directly sell the oil that's injected into the wood instead of injecting it in first and then distilling it back out?
(answer: that's what his SA customers are asking for)

Those are the hottest questions ever!

The MOCA police are those who dictate and determine the prices of agarwood oils sold by the agarwood oil artisans....In there own mind. Basically, DSM-5 297.1 and cluster B 301.7, 301.81, 301.50

Our biggest challenge (ahem!... since the release of Guallam Solide) has been with the MOLA police... But to address your questions, I've made certain commitments to members of this community and that is why I won't be able to raise prices just for the moment...

We are going to make Oud fragrant again
We are going to make Oud addictive again
We are going to make Oud amazing again
We are going to make Oud liquid again
(After temporarily having made it solid)
We are going to make Oud peaceful again
We are going to make Oud uniting again, and yes –
WE ARE GOING TO MAKE OUD CHEAP AGAIN!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am guessing that in the total World Market of Oud. The Artisanal Distillations and offerings of the Fab5 represent less than 1% of the Market.
We're in a very small Niche.
"Lucky" are those who are in it

@Ensar @Taha @Adam The houses or house you bought or rented in 2006-2009 should be the same prices now as they were back then No? I mean I remember the rent of a apartment in a city i was in was $840 in 2007 and 2 years later when I visited it shot up to $1050. The same apartment. The housing market in the San Francisco bay area are like out of a horror book. 1 bedroom is running for $2500 Can you believe this? Whats wrong with those people? Have they got no shame to raise rents to such horrendous prices. Yet there are people flocking to go and get them, because they know the market is only going to get worse.
Now why don't we all go to our landlords/banks and start a protest saying give us back the same prices as a decade ago. They will take you to a first class suite in a jumper suit and will be in your own 6X6 cell.
Fast forward to 2017 and expect the same prices for some of the most precious wood on earth. I can't understand how is that possible? I think you got to appreciate syntatic stuff, i mean some perfume you bought a decade ago for a certain price might still be that price due to mass production.
That's the beauty of these artisans and distillers, once its gone its ancient history. If per say it comes back for a limited time we should be thankful to them, that they decided to share some of their own personal supply with the rest of us.... Just saying!

Yep you got it. Its basically not really agarwood. But its burned, emits an aroma, and is much cheaper (and practically unlimited supply), and so its the hottest seller.
MOCA Police - well, PEARL pretty much summed it up!

In other news, I was honoured by a visit from Kruger and Ensar yesterday, and the oil was honoured by yesterday's pull being at Ensar's hands.

Looks like they have to go today, but I should hopefully be seeing them again today before they depart.

I of course got to smell a bunch of goodies (sadly, most/all[?] of them will never be released publicly) including that base-notes-pushed-upto-top-notes oil Ensar mentioned elsewhere in a different thread. One out of ONLY 3 Indian oud oils I've ever encountered in my life that I believe is northernmost Indian Sinesis whose ancestors somehow managed to crawl over from China.
With around a 0.15g swipe of Kyara LTD v2 on my right arm, my nose kept going to the Indian swipe on the left.
Think about it. Chinese oud cloaked in the timelessly satisfyingness of Indian oud (minus barn). Is that not the very definition of the most satisfying oud??!

Last time Ensar visited, perhaps the most 'satisfying' thing he left me with was the realization that his eyes light up for the same ouds that mine do. Yesterday, he additionally told me that his reactions to the top top top ouds is pretty much the same as mine as well. And not just that, but the inner battle he fights (and for all the same reasons) is the same too, when he thinks about having to part with them.

So what's so satisfying about this? It demonstrated that his nose fully operates in the Z axis. More on that further down below.

My biggest complaint, which I'm sure is abundantly clear to all by now, is that some folks cannot distinguish between truly high grade vs very nice (but) lesser grade well-made ouds.
But its also totally understandable, if you think about why that's the case.

Now, the following might sound a bit racist, but firstly keep in mind that I am only relaying this, and secondly my own wife is Caucasian.
So here, in Asia, a lot of people say that Caucasians all 'look the same'. Ironically, many say the same about Asians in North America.
Think about it.. If you had never encountered a person of the other race in your life ever before, and then you were blind-folded and dropped in that country where you see for them for the first time - wouldn't you feel the same way?

What was the first oud ever that totally changed the entire oud paradigm? In my opinion, it was Borneo 3000.
Clean, sweet, no funk, with hints of florals and fruits - for many (including myself) it was the first oud that was an absolute, utter departure from "Oud" as we knew it.

"Clean, sweet, no funk, with hints of florals and fruits". Tell me now, can't that description now be used for countless (almost ALL) Borneo ouds since then?
...most of which don't hold a matchstick, let alone a candle, to Borneo 3000.

The problem is, the clean oud and totally awesome oud phenomena happened simultaneously, embodied by Oriscent. Since then, most oud distillations (at least the ones that online oud enthusiasts have gotten) have been clean oils. Do a quick cleaning of the apparatus, give the fungus a miss, and use rudimentarily decent apparatus. Voila, you have a clean oud.

Asians... Caucasians..

Can you see what I'm getting at?
For some, the nose (sight) does not venture too far past the overall basic flavor (generic facial features) of the oud (race).
If you're of that race though, you can errm.. easily tell the difference between beauty pageant material and a gorgon.
And so, getting back to the point after this long detour, what I'm trying to say is that I found it utterly satisfying to look at Ensar sniffing countless oils and see his eyes only light up every time it was a super high grade oud.

For truly high grade oud, I always get a mental image of that thing you see at carnivals.. you know, you grab a mallet and hit it as hard as you can, and if you hit hard enough this thing shoots up and hits a bell at the top, DING!
Truly high grade oud, no matter how it was made, no matter the style, no matter how great (or not) the apparatus was.... hits that bell every time.

A while ago, I had coined the terms 'vertical' and 'horizontal' complexity to try to simplify some of the basic things one can look for in an oud to measure it up. The problem is, the third plane is actually the most important. If horizontal and vertical satisfaction can be mapped on the X and Y axes, we're talking about the Z axis.
That's where the bell is.
And it doesn't matter how the oil was made, on that plane you cannot use clever tricks to make an oil interesting (apparatus and techniques). The wood does the talking.

As I was sniffing Nha Trang LTD late last night, totally blissing out obviously, I mentioned to Ensar that my concern is that perhaps some might find this oud to be monotonous. The most beautiful aroma in the world, undoubtedly, but monotonous. Its actually anything but. However, its entire scent development unravels in the Z axis. It smells like a million bucks (priceless actually, especially if you consider its replacement value, but my guess for the selling price like I told Ensar was $10,000 per bottle) but THIS oud, to me, is the ultimate litmus test. If you think its a flat (albeit sublimely beautiful) oud, your nose needs some schooling. If you feel like you're drowning (in an infinite Z-axis depth, like NOTHING ELSE that I for one have ever encountered), you got yourself a solid schnoz.

Barnyard ouds are an entirely different can of worms, maybe another post (3 times as long) will address that. Its more complicated because fermentation and rot simulate boosts in X and Y axis complexity, and so its additionally harder to get to the Z axis.

Very interesting read Taha, and much appreciated. I have wondered about the same things. I do not know whether it is a factor of one's olfactory cortex not being receptive to the complexities and overall quality or more of an unwillingness to truly rely on it as one of the most primitive but most complex parts of our sensory nervous system. Oud, especially good and great Oud, requires a certain effort to fully appreciate and decode. It is not just taking a sniff and saying, 'I like this' or 'this smells strong', etc. You must peer deeper into the scent. Then the differences come out loud and clear. Well at least to me, anyway.
Oud is the most fascinating substance to me. Capable of almost connecting me to my primordial self. Can take me to deeper planes of though, peace, and spirituality. Like a window into the universe. But, ONLY certain oils can do this for me.

I can't help but think that how/who distilled the oil "matters" in it being a truly great oil. So aside from the high quality wood Ensar used to make them, I'm pretty sure it's his technique that made 'em great.

Sina'i in the Arabic language literally means artificial. However, although on sultanuloud.com they are selling wood labeled as Sinai Gold (Borneo Malaccensis), it could just be maleccensis from the region of Sungai Sinai, which is located in Malaysian Borneo.

Now that's a doubling of price that I would seriously consider

In fact, let's make it official. From now on, Nha Trang LTD is $10,000 a bottle!

Hey it was all Taha's idea!

No worry, Taha will pay for the difference!

Hey who invited that Negative Nancy to the party anyway! Let's see what was the song we were playing again? Oh yes "Nearer, My God, To Thee".