H&B - The incense that takes care of your health
H&B Incense is a Spanish company based in Alforja (Tarragona), specialized in natural incense. Born in 2011 with the premise of offering a chemical-free incense, for which it designs a series of fragrances based on wild aromatic plants and spices that are combined with resins and floral essences. For more than a decade now, incense has been a product on the rise. However, the lack of regulation and the complete absence of controls means that in its manufacture most brands use various chemical substances that are highly toxic to health, such as: diethyl sulfate: a solvent declared by the WHO as carcinogenic, benzoic acid: a chemical preservative whose toxicity directly affects the blood, and formaldehyde: a highly irritating chemical substance widely used for the production of resins and which is mainly responsible for irritating both the respiratory tract and the eyes. This worrying reality motivated H&B Incense to undertake a project aimed at offering a product that respects the environment, maintains the medicinal properties of its plants and is, above all, healthy for people.
To achieve this goal, H&B Incense prioritizes the quality of its raw materials and focuses on blends of spices, roots and wild aromatic plants to enhance traditional Indian aromas and achieve new fragrances whose main characteristic lies in the harmony of their relaxing properties as well as in the ability to create clean and unloaded spaces, thanks to the content of natural plants and resins.
The manufacturing process
H&B incense is manufactured by a family business with modest production, which allows the use of natural products instead of the chemical oils used by large manufacturers to emulate the aromas of nature. These differences are clearly noticeable in the quality and fidelity of each of the aromas, which tend to be much more delicate, lingering for a long time in the spaces, bringing a sense of harmony and serenity.
First of all, it is important to mention that many of the plants are completely wild and are harvested directly from the mountains, as well as that the woods used belong to trees that have been dead for several years. The manufacturing process begins with the collection of the raw materials: from spices, natural resins and aromatic woods to a wide variety of herbs, medicinal plants and fruit peels... It is necessary to separate the flowers, stems, leaves and roots according to the part to be used.
Many of these ingredients need to be left to dry. Once the drying process is over, all the ingredients are ground separately until a fine powder is obtained. With this powder the mixtures are made to obtain the desired fragrance and later the natural resins and the vegetal charcoal extracted from the coconut shell are added. After this process, a thick paste is obtained which will be manually rolled into bamboo sticks. Once they have been shaped, they are left to dry in the sun for several months (the drying time is very variable and depends on the season, humidity and temperature at the time). Once the paste has dried, they are ready for packaging.
