Homemade Incense?

I love burning incense, and I was thinking that it would be nice to have natural incense in our earthen structures. Any tips on making your own?

I'm passingly familiar with smudging, but it's not my culture and I don't want to do it for ritual purposes, just for the smell.

I'd like to make the incense with the resources we have on our land, which is in the Southern Utah desert and where there's plenty of sagebrush and juniper trees. I've made bundles of thin, dried sagebrush branches (similar to what's used for smudging), but I can't get it to stay burning for long. Basically, I get a strong initial scent, a little too strong, which dissipates quickly after it burns. I'd like something similar to what you get in the store where it burns for a while and slowly releases scent.

pine pitch is the magic ingredient. no pinyon in your area? i’ve made incense from pinyon sap with juniper and sagebrush…it’s not the kind that you can light a stick, though. more the kind to put a couple pebbles onto a hot piece of charcoal.

greg mosser wrote:pine pitch is the magic ingredient. no pinyon in your area? i’ve made incense from pinyon sap with juniper and sagebrush…it’s not the kind that you can light a stick, though. more the kind to put a couple pebbles onto a hot piece of charcoal.

Thanks! There are pinyons--though climate change is killing them rapidly. I could probably harvest some sap. You mention pebbles, so do you make small balls out of the sap and bits of juniper or sagebrush?

i heated the sap up in a little pot, added the other dried vegetable matter, and poured it out to cool. then the sheet of cooled, hardened incense gets broken up into the aforementioned pebbles.

greg mosser wrote:i heated the sap up in a little pot, added the other dried vegetable matter, and poured it out to cool. then the sheet of cooled, hardened incense gets broken up into the aforementioned pebbles.

Great!