Whats your favorite Tobacco?

[Darkgael]

Just checking back.....seems like I enjoy tobaccos that are hard to find...earlier I referred to Esoterica Penzance (no longer made), Balkan Sobranie (out of production for years, now back on the market). I was going to recommend a drugstore blend that I enjoy, Middleton's Walnut, and I find that it, too, is out of production.
I do like Virginias in addition to the English/Orientals. Two of my favorites are Freibourg and Treyer's Full Virginia Flake and Rattray's Hal O'the Wynd.

 

[Maven]

Balkan Sobranie used to be one of my favorites when I still smoked. Dunhill American Standard Medium or Full was also good, as was one of their "My Mixture" concoctions.

 

[BullRunBear]

Marc, Thanks for mentioning the MacBarens Navy Flake. Hadn't tried any for a VERY long time. Picked up a tin and it's better than I remembered. Also, got a tin of Erinmore, another one from the past and another pleasant surprise. They both have that mild, sweet pressed Virginia taste and lend themselves to my slow puffing style.

Really enjoying this thread.

Jeff

 

[graybeard]

The new Balkan Sobranie I consider rather poor. Dunhill's Early Morning Pipe is a good all-day smoke. The Virginia mixtures can be very good but some smoke hot. Either buy a very good pipe or a corncob. Clays are best limited to rendezvous. Does anyone have any evidence of corncob pipes prior to the Civil War?

 

[Alden]

I just finished a couple of ounces of someone's Navy Flake I had bought. Very smokey smell prior to lighting -- beautiful. Nice taste. But...

...I don't like breaking apart pressed tobaccos. Looks cool and is convenient, but I find it messy and wasteful, time consuming to do right, gives imperfect results regardless, and it tires my hands out. What am I doing wrong!?

 

[tenngun]

Not direct evedince of corn cob pipes, but Mark Twain was drawn to them, and had a man hired to break them in since he smoked them through so fast. He was already a well paid man by the WBTS. This was a time when ciggerittes and cigars were becomming very popular mens smokes. Some one who was used to smoking a pipe and stayed with it after easier smokes became widly avalible would argue he prefered pipes.He would not ave been drawn to a corn cob due to the cost, but must have been drawn by the smoking qulities of the pipe. Briers and mersheams were also avalible to Twain, with vulcanite stems by this time. Mature men are often stuffy and not overly drawn to new stuff. We tend to be stick-in-the-muds. That makes me think he had been smoking corn cobs for some time.
How ever Twain built his persona on being a country boy. Sharp, wise but unsophisticated. He may have forgone the brier to look 'country'. He liked to wear the southren cut linen suits that never caught on in the north. So he may have adopted a corn cob in the post war years for his persona :idunno:

 

[Marc Adamchek]

Hard to say without actually seeing what you're doing, but off the cuff it seems like you're trying to make the flake too much like "regular" tobacco. It's OK to have it in small chunks in the pipe, they'll smooth out with your slow puffing. Really, it shouldn't be an effort at all. Now, whenI say flake, I mean it's basically like an old stick of chewing gum size and thickness. All you have to do is crumble it up enough to fall into the pipe, no real physical effort at all.

 

[Billnpatti]

From purely a health standpoint, no tobacco is the best tobacco. The stuff can kill you. However, if you are determined to use the stuff, one blend that I used to smoke and found a delightful blend is a mix of about 80% toasted cavindish, 15% latakiah and 5% perique. Smokes good, no bite but does not tickle the noses of those around you who are used to pipe smokers smoking some sort of modern perfumed tobacco. When someone said that my pipe smoke did not smell good like most pipe tobaccos, I would tell them that this tobacco is for my pleasure not yours.

 

[tenngun]

First time people smell latikia they mostly don't like it. My wife step children mon and dad didn't care for its smell but quickly came to like it. My dad hated my latikia, but soon was borrowing mine then smoking it. Smoked it until entering a nh at 91 struck down with dementia.

 

[Alden]

Marc;
See, I've always sifted through even non-pressed tobacco and break the flakes into their respective ribbons as best I can. Never THOUGHT about clumps of tobacco in a pipe. I'm talking pressed, like chewing gum sticks as you say.

This...
http://mcclellandtobacco.com/page-1718598

...kinda hurts my hands to the extent I have always done it.

Actually, I have a $26 can of this, put a Dr. Grabow filter (I have always used Medico) in my cherrywood pipe, opened a new box of wooden kitchen matches, and will put your plan to the test right now Marc.
http://mcclellandtobacco.com/Christmas_Cheer

 

[tenngun]

Ho ho ho :grin:

 

[Alden]

I checked -- it did NOT say "do not open before Christmas."

This experiment smoked OK but there is much compacted at the bottom half of the bowl that's not burned I think. It did need to be broken up a bit more but, again, I always make a mess and it's tiresome...

 

[Marc Adamchek]

Alden - I hope my aging memory isn't steering you off the path, but when you brought up the McClelland flakes, it put my mind right. I usedto smoke their flakes as well, but not nearly as much as the McBaren Navy Flake. I've still got Christmas Cheer from '93 and '94 unopened in my stash. Their flakes are uneven, like chips of wood, thicker, denser and all-around more difficult as I remember. Get a small tin of the Nvay Flake I mentioned and crumble it up and see if your hands and smoking enjoyment are more restful. The only thing left for me to do is to take up the pipe again to reacquaint myself with the procedure to give you the exact pointers needed, and I'm dangerously close to that now!

 

[Alden]

Thanks Marc. If you quit, don't start again except maybe in an historic role.

I find my smoking ebbs and flows in volume. I have smoked cigars (particularly, before they became a fad) and pipes for many years and have found that I can go from a smoke at a holiday and afield to every weekend to every day pretty easily, then basically have to catch myself and go almost cold-turkey. Since this thread I have even had a couple of bowls full with a cup of coffee here at dawn...

Pressed flake I have ONLY smoked regularly afield. The flakes simply have to be broken up, unfurled rather, to smoke properly and the only sane way to begin this is to roll a big pinch between your hands. But then it makes a mess, bits going here and there. And then the smaller kernels need to be unrolled into their ribbons. I hate "rubbing" it, and except for a can of McClelland Christmas Cheer every other year or so every other pressed flake has been custom including no-name from sutlers.

I guess I'll try Navy Flake though, like aromatics, I've avoided it for ready-rubbed and loose cut tobacco.

There is a can of Mac Baren Plumcake out there with my name on it I have always passed on too. Not any more -- let's go crazy!

LOL

 

[Cruzatte]

Thinking about flake tobacco, I found a Danish product called Orlik Golden Sliced that is easy to rub out, comes in a dandy tin which can be used for all sorts of things when it's empty

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Yummy

LD

 

[Rick Son]

I have some Perique seeds cept i'm in ca.I operated heavy equipment before retiring,i could smoke a goos aromatic cigar and really relax and concentrate one what I was doing,i don't smoke but now and then I would get a good cigar...

 

[Bon Sauvage]

Balkan. Balkan Dobra was my favorite years ago when I used to smoke.

 

[dyemaker]

Balkan Sobranie cigarettes were very nice. They arent made anymore. I bought some Yenidje tobacco leaf trying to create my own but pretty much failed. Uhles 00 burley is nice if you like burley.

 

[Arrowstorm]

I'm not a habitual smoker by any means, but I have smoked a pipe and cigars ever since I could buy tobacco. I'm not talking a lot, here. Maybe back then, I'd smoke a bowl a week. In Highschool, we'd smoke the drugstore brand out of a corncob pipe on the way to school and back home in my buddy's Gold Duster, but nowadays, I might have a smoke from the calabash pipe or a stogey once a month.

The absolute best pipe tobacco I've ever smoked in my entire life was from a tin called 1864 Perfect Mixture. I've only recently smoked the very last of it from the last tin I was able to find from about 8 years ago.

As far as varieties, I prefer cavendish or a sweet blend of whatever I can get at the local wine and spirits store. They have a good selection of pipe tobaccos there, so about once a year, I get an ounce or two of 4 different varieties and smoke that throughout the year. I keep them all in airtight jars on a special pipe and tobacco rack.

I generally like a moist and sweet tobacco that is easy on the tastebuds with a pleasant aroma and produces a good burn.