How is irish peat (turf) incense made?

Question

I am interested in making some form of incense from Irish peat (turf). I have experimented with turf briquettes, grinding them up and trying to light the dust, but they are hard to grind and the dust seems to need a very hot ignition source. Any ideas?

Answer 1

It seems the basic ingredients for making incense are herbs, flowers or oils etc for the aroma, an adhesive to bind it and raw charcoal (not the same as used in barbecues) for ignition.

The first site listed below give the ingredients for an incense which includes 'Tabu no ki', the bark of a tree that grows in Southeast Asia that is water soluble and has adhesive properties and works as a burning agent as well. If you can get this ingredient you wouldn't need the charcoal.

Other binding agents are
Gum tragacanth
Guar gum
Gum Arabic (acacia)
Frankincense
Benzoin
Myrrh
Copal
Dragon’s blood
Pine resin (called Collophony)

Another site mentions that incense is always made with potassium nitrate, better known as salt peter. This helps the incense to burn well, and evenly.

There are various recipes at the sites below which you could experiment with and if that fails you could get some ready-made ones at the last site.

Answer 2

Irish Turf Incense

Answer 3

I would say it's really, really bad. Peat is similar to fossil fuels in that its a natural carbon store. There can be 5000 tonnes of carbon per hectare of peat. When you burn it, all the carbon is released into the atmosphere, just like when you burn oil or gas. It's better to burn locally sourced wood, as that is a renewable source (new trees will take up the CO2 released from the wood you burnt before). Hope that answers your question.

Answer 4

Use tree bark