---

Learn How to Make Combustible Herbal Incense at Home

---

Combustible herbal incense comes is several solid forms.

The most popular are bricks, cones, coils, and sticks.

• This article will tell you how to make your own solid herbal incense.
• Stick incense, however, is more complicated, requiring additional steps, so it will be covered in a later article.

Step One: Research

The internet is a wonderful research tool for learning how to make homemade herbal incense (just avoid synthetic marijuana pages, which also go by the euphemism “herbal incense”). You can find dozens of herbal incense recipes for every season and holiday, as well as online stores for the more exotic herbal incense ingredients.

For the best results, try to acquire all-natural organic herbs.

• Non-organic herbs may contain synthetic chemicals like pesticides that can affect the aroma of your incense.

Step Two: Grinding

Grind your dried herbs into a powder, preferably by hand with an old-fashioned mortar & pestle.

• Grind each herb separately, then mix the powders together.
• For the best results, cure the herbal mixture by storing it in a cool, dry, dark place for about a week. This gives the different aromas a chance to blend together.

Step Three: Add Saltpeter

Adding potassium nitrate, better known as saltpeter, ensures that your herbal incense will burn evenly and well.

• You can find saltpeter in almost any drug store, although you may have to ask the pharmacist for potassium nitrate.
• Add 10% saltpeter to your herbal incense mixture, or one part saltpeter to ten parts of the herbal incense mixture, and mix thoroughly.

Step Four: Prepare the Gum

Obvious, to turn your dry herbal powder into incense cones, some sort of binding agent is required so it can hold its shape. Gum Tragacanth (basically just dried sap from milkvetch plants) is the preferred binding agent for herbal incense, but Gum Arabic is almost as good. Both can be purchased form hobby shops or the internet.

1. To make the gum, stir a teaspoon of the Gum Tragacanth powder into a glass of warm water until it is completely dissolved, then set aside and wait.
2. The gum will absorb the water until it thickens into a paste.

Step Five: Add the Gum

1. Add the gum, one teaspoon at a time, to your herbal incense mixture, mixing it in by hand as you go.
2. Stop once your herbal incense has the consistency of play dough or modeling clay.
3. Be careful and go slowly; you can always add more gum, but you can’t take any out.

Step Six: Molding

1. On a large sheet of wax paper, mold your herbal incense “dough” into the shape you want.
2. Block incense is the easiest shape to achieve.
3. It can be made by flattening the dough with a rolling pin down to a ¼ inch thickness, then cutting it into one-inch squares.
4. Cone shapes can be achieved by rolling the dough while pressing down on one end, then cutting the tip off to get a flat, even base at the bottom.

Step Seven: Dry

1. Finally, place your molded herbal incense in a cool, dry place for about a week.
2. Be careful-if the herbal incense dries in air that is too humid, the molds may not dry out thoroughly, making them hard to light and keep lit later.
3. Once they’ve dried thoroughly, store them in an airtight container to keep them dry.

Conclusion:

If you do not wish to make your own homemade herbal incense, you can go buy herbal incense online at really good discounted prices, and even get free shipping on your order.