Category: Pipes & Tobacco

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Balkan Sobranie

The current version, that is. I know that this really isn’t the same as the legendary Balkan Sobranie of the 1970s or whatever. Now, having been around back then, I actually did very much enjoy the occasional tin (yes, actual tin) of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes. They were wonderful, if pricey at about $2 a tin, but not quite as bad as Black Russians at $2.40 a pack. But I digress; I never did try the pipe tobacco since I wasn’t smoking a pipe back then.

I bought a couple tins of the current version at my local tobacconist at a shamefully inflated price, partly to support a local shop and partly because I really wanted to try this and compare it to my Sutliff Sobranie match tobacco.

So this is partly a review on its own merits, and partly a comparison to the “match” blend, which is actually I think supposed to be a match for the older version that I’ve never had.

The presentation is very nice. I do love tinned tobacco just for the old school appeal of the tin. The aroma is, as expected with a Balkan blend, just delicious. It’s like a summer campfire, smoky and rich. It’s a fine ribbon cut, almost a shag, which I do like better than the coarser ribbon/flake of White Knight or BSOMM. It’s also moister, meaning it does need half an hour or so to dry out before it will stay lit decently.

I’m not a professional wine taster nor do I have the palate for a molecular analysis of the individual components of the smoke, so I won’t get into terms like figs or stone fruit or oranges or any of that nonsense. It’s a little lighter than the Sutliff version, I think, with just a little more subtle flavor. Don’t take that to mean there’s not a ton of campfire here; there is. If I were to guess I’d say maybe a touch less Latakia and a touch more Turkish/Oriental. Or maybe the other way around. Either way, there’s a difference. I like both.

The Sobranie doesn’t have the occasional note of anise that I seem to get from the Sutliff “match” blend, and I like that a lot. On the other hand, I do really like the finer ribbon cut. I just had a 2 gram bowl in my Ropp cherrywood, and it went literally all the way to the bottom with no dottle. I honestly attribute this more to the pipe than the tobacco, but it smoked well all the way to the bottom with just a couple of relights (mostly due to my taking breaks to type this).

I have one tin of the Sobranie still unopened. I plan to leave it that way for a few years and enjoy it with some age on it. It really is quite nice; I may pick up more if and when it becomes available again. It’s expensive stuff compared to the bulk blend, but both have a place on my shelf for sure.

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Escudo Navy Deluxe

Since I started smoking a pipe again several years ago, I’ve found that my tastes have shifted quite a bit. Like I think most pipe smokers do, I started out with aromatic blends, mostly vanilla topped – think Lane 1Q, Captain Black, that sort of thing. On the plus side, everyone loves the smell! Whether it’s in the pouch or jar, or being smoked, you’ll get constant compliments on how great it smells. I know I did. Even non-smokers or anti-smokers love the smell of a nice aromatic blend like that. They produce luxurious, thick smoke and are overall pretty enjoyable to smoke.

On the downside, they’re often pretty heavily doped with propylene glycol (PG), a humectant that keeps the tobacco from drying out and helps to produce that thick rich white smoke. My experience has been that these blends often require annoyingly frequent relights and tend to leave a lot of moisture in the pipe.

Eventually I tried branching out a little. I tried straight Virginia flake, some VA/Perique, and some English and Balkan blends. Once I learned how to properly smoke Virginia flake I liked it. I just didn’t ever really get into the VA/Per thing.

I do really still live my Balkan and English mixtures. I’ve probably smoked more of that than anything else, and still love it. I have been working a little VA/Per into my rotation, though, just to see if I develop an appreciation for it.

I’ve probably made it halfway through a tin of Escudo and actually have started enjoying it. I had a couple of slices in a Ropp cherrywood sitter that I’m breaking in. It was actually quite nice. It won’t replace my Sobranie match mixture any time soon, but I’m starting to appreciate it.

Maybe one of these days I’ll crack open the jar and try Bayou Morning again.

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Bob’s Chocolate Flake

If you’ve been smoking a pipe for a while, you’ve probably heard of Lakeland tobacco blends. These mostly come from either Gawith & Hogarth or Samuel Gawith, and include things like Grousemoor, Ennerdale, and this one – Bob’s Chocolate Flake.

Lakelands get a bad rap from some people, and I suspect that’s mostly from people who have smelled a tin of a Lakeland but not actually smoked it. Ennerdale, for example, has a very distinctive and fairly strong floral note n the tin. Comparing to “old lady perfume“ is not entirely unreasonable, and some people assume the stuff will forever “ghost” a pipe. I’ve found this to be a baseless fear; I’m on my second tin of it and it’s fine. It doesn’t smoke like it smells.

I’d wanted to try Bob’s for a while, and finally scored an ounce of it. It’s a dense flake, which doesn’t easily crumble like some. I’d expected a strong chocolate note from the bag, but it’s more of a subtle undertone.

I’m not one of those people that describes tobacco in wine tasting terms. Maybe my palate isn’t sufficiently refined, but picking out “notes of dried fruit, sweet grassy almond” whatever just doesn’t happen for me. Bob’s does have a somewhat unique taste; not overpowering and not unpleasant. It’s definitely a more aromatic smoke, but doesn’t seem overly “flavored” as some are. I’m thinking of Lane 1Q / Captain Black’s vanilla, for example.

BCF smokes fine, given a bit of a rub out and 20-30 minutes to dry a bit. It lights evenly and seems to smoke without requiring much in the way of relights, just the occasional light tamp. I like it, but I don’t love it. Will I buy more? I can’t say at this point. I’m about halfway through the ounce of flakes I bought. One of the things I’ve learned about tobacco is that it seems to take a while, at least an ounce or two smoked over several months under different conditions and in different pipes, for me to decide whether I like a particular blend or not.

My tastes are also evolving as time passes and I get exposed to more blends. Where I used to love aromatics like 1Q, I now find them to have a displeasing chemical taste from what seems like a rather heavy-handed dousing with propylene glycol (PG), a humectant used to keep it from drying out. I’ve gotten more accustomed to VA/Perique blends, though my tolerance varies on those. About the only constant is my taste for English and Balkan blends; I’ve become a real fan of Latakia.

Anyway. Bob’s is a decent enough tobacco, but so far I haven’t really developed a love for it. We’ll see if and how that changes over time as I finish off what I have.

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Peterson’s My Mixture 965

Picked up a tin of this at Ted’s Tobacco yesterday, and have been trying it out. Flavor wise, it’s a pretty good Latakia-forward English mixture. It needs half an hour or so out of the tin to dry out before lighting, but burns evenly. It doesn’t seem to need a lot of relights, and doesn’t get wet quickly.

I’m on my second bowl of it. The first one was yesterday in a newly purchased estate pipe that turned out to need some serious cleaning… it had some truly nasty tasting stuff inside and on the stem that I’ve since cleaned out. Today I’ve got it in my Jobey 450 paneled billiard. I have to say, this stuff is plenty strong. The taste is good; plenty of flavor and all, but the nicotine content is enough that I had to lay the pipe down halfway through. I can see this being a good candidate for smaller pipes and quicker smokes. I’m really glad I didn’t load up the Savinelli 320KS with a big pile of this! I’d probably be on the floor by now.

So will I buy it again? It’s too soon to say. I do like it, but at this point I’m thinking the Sutliff Balkan Sobranie match is more my speed. A bit milder and a lot less nicotine. I’ll smoke more of this, obviously, since I’m only maybe 5 grams into the 50g tin. if I can get past the nic buzz, it’s pretty good stuff.

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In praise of calabash pipes

I have ended up with two calabash pipes. The first I bought used on eBay. I suspect it’s an old Pioneer; it’s a little unusual in that the gourd is rusticated. When I got it, the meerschaum bowl was in good shape but stuck fast in the gourd. I tried a number of different ways to get it unstuck, including freezing, and was unsuccessful. Eventually, as I was applying what I thought was “gentle but insistent” pressure to try to encourage it to come loose from the cork seal, the top of the bowl broke off of the rest. Damn! There was really no way to repair the bowl — believe me, I tried. I’ve seen people suggest plaster of Paris, but it dried instantly when I tried to apply it to one part of the bowl and wouldn’t stick. In the end, I ended up reluctantly and with no small amount of heartbreak removing the rest of the bowl in pieces.

It’s not impossible to find a replacement bowl for a calabash pipe, but so far it has proven impossible to find one the right size for this pipe. I’ve seen a number of bowls come up for sale that measure (where the bowl seats in the cork seal) in the 32-33 mm range, but mine needs to be 37.5 mm ideally, though I could deal with a little over or under that. Another alternative would be to have a new bowl made; there are places in Turkey that will do it, but for the cost I could just buy another calabash pipe.

While trying to find a replacement bowl, I did pick up a second pipe. This one is another probable Pioneer, with a smooth gourd, and I didn’t really like the shape nearly as much but thought I could re-shape the stem a little. As they are Vulcanite stems, I was actually able to do that with very little work and excellent results. As it turns out, the bowl was a very good fit for the first pipe as well. Bonus!! All it took was a little sanding of the cork seal on the rusticated pipe, and the bowl is a snug fit in both of them. Now I have two nice gourd calabash pipes — but only one bowl between them.

What I have discovered is that there is a reason calabash pipes were so popular at one time, and while less so today I suspect it’s mainly because so few have actually tried smoking one. New African gourd calabash pipes are quite expensive, and even used ones tend to be pricey unless you’re willing to do some restoration work. I have found, however, that smoking one is well worth the effort of finding and cleaning up an estate pipe. I’ve smoked aromatics, English, Balkans, straight VA, and VA/Per and loved every minute of it. The smoke is cool and dry, no matter the condition of the tobacco or your technique.

Both of my calabashes required a couple hours’ worth of cleaning, polishing the stem, and so on. The bowl was a mess, so I very lightly sanded it with 320 grit sandpaper to clean it up, After that I used 400 grit and Micro Mesh pads to smooth and polish it, and gave it a coating of beeswax that I then melted and removed the excess. The stem got deoxidized in Oxi Clean and polished up with Micro Mesh. The difference in cost between a somewhat rough but serviceable estate pipe that needs cleaning and restoration, an estate Pioneer that’s already been cleaned up, and a new pipe – many of which aren’t gourd calabashes, but use mahogany or some other wood for the body — is pretty large, on the order of several hundred dollars.

I keep looking for a source for a bowl to fit one of my pipes. I’m tempted to buy a suitably sized block of briar and make a briar bowl to fit. We’ll see how this plays out, I suppose.

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Borkum Riff Bourbon Whiskey, yet again

I did a review of this about a year ago. I almost never – OK, never – throw out tobacco. Even if I don’t like it, I’ll stick it in a jar and let it sit. Sometimes I find that my tastes or my technique change, and I like it better later on. Sometimes I find that some age really improves the blend. And honestly, some I tried early on I just didn’t really know how to smoke yet. So last night I broke out the jar of Borkum Riff and tried it again.

Once again, it started out innocuously enough. As I’ve changed my smoking habits quite a bit, I took it easier this time around and paid attention to keeping it burning relatively cool and slow. I’m still not a fan. I checked tobaccoreviews.com to see what’s in this blend; they say Virginia and Cavendish, but it used to contain Burley as well. I would believe that. I’m really finding that I’m not a big fan of Burley, and this seems to have some in it. I don’t know. What I do know is why it scores less than 2 stars on that site, and about the same on smokingpipes.com. It really isn’t very good. I’m down to the last 3/4 ounce or so. It may just get dumped into the scraps jar, or I may try mixing it with some VA flake or something to see if it’s got anything at all to offer.

Overall, I think it may at its core just be some fairly decent tobacco ruined by heavy-handed topping.

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Tobacco harvest, 2023

Yesterday (10/6/23) I harvested all of my remaining tobacco plants, as there were frost warnings for overnight and this morning. I cut most of the VA leaves off the stalks and bundled them until I can get my curing kiln finished and get them in there. I leaf harvested some of the Turkish, then stalk harvested the rest – whether I hang the stalks or cut the leaves ff remains to be seen. I am keeping the VA and Samsun separate, though I haven’t kept the bright VA separate from the TN Red Leaf or Ontario Bold.

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Hearth & Home White Knight

This has become one of my favorite tobaccos. It’s a Balkan of substance; not overpowering with Latakia or Oriental, but a good blend that just ticks all the boxes for me. It’s got that unique flavor from the Oriental tobacco that I find I really enjoy. The tin note is a delight as well, at least if you’re into smoky, English and Balkan style mixtures..

It’s very close in its flavor to Sutliff’s Balkan Sobranie Original Mix Match. The differences between the two are subtle but do exist. I’ll digress for just a moment and talk about both of these. White Knight is a tinned tobacco, sold under the Hearth & Home brand. It’s a consistent, high quality ribbon cut product that is perfect (other than needing a bit of drying time) right out of the tin.

The bulk product (which I’ll refer to as BSOMM from here out, just to save a few electrons) is sold by Sutliff. Sutliff also makes Hearth & Home blends. The two tobaccos come from the same manufacturer. It’s been argued that BSOMM and White Knight are one and the same; I disagree. While the two have very similar flavor profiles, White Knight seems to be a little higher quality product. It’s usually cut better and more consistently, and its flavor is more fully developed. BSOMM seems e bit less carefully produced; the last bag I opened had a huge clump of uncut leaf in it. I’ve found chunks of stem (well, OK, not a stem; more likely a chunk of vein or midrib) and other inconsistencies that I don’t find nearly as often in White Knight. The flavor is also just a little bit milder; it may do well after a couple of months in a jar.

As I write this, I’ve been working my way through a couple ounces of BSOMM and a tin of White Knight, both received a couple of months back from Smokingpipes.com. I’ve been alternating the two for comparison. Why do that? Well, in the quantities I would order for long term use, White Knight costs roughly three times as much per ounce. The question is whether the savings is worth the differences between the two. Honestly, I can find so little difference between them that I’ll probably keep a jar full of BSOMM on hand after the White Knight is gone.

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Kramer’s Father Dempsey

I’ve tried a number of English and Balkan blends over the past several months. For those who don’t know, different types of tobacco each have their own unique flavor profile. Virginia is quite different from Burley; Latakia is quite distinct, and Turkish or Oriental leaves are different still. There are differences in the leaves themselves, then there are differences in how the leaves are dried, cured, and so on.

An English blend is typically Virginia tobacco blended with Latakia, which is a smoke cured leaf that comes from Cyprus. It was at one time produced mainly in Syria, but due to decades of war and other factors Syrian Latakia hasn’t been available in quite a while, and quite likely never will be again. The tobacco leaves are cured by hanging them in a shed with a fire pit burning various types of resinous, fragrant wood native to the region where the tobacco is grown. This produces a very distinct, rich, smoky aroma that carries over to the flavor of the tobacco when smoked. If you’re a fan of Islay Scotch (or even Johnny Walker Black Label), you’ll like Latakia.

If you add some Oriental or Turkish to it, you’ve got a Balkan blend. Orientals are small leaf, sun cured tobaccos and are quite fragrant. They tend to have a slight note of what I can only describe as an “incense” like flavor. That flavor is present to varying degrees in different blends, and when it’s there’ it’s quite distinct. My favorites have a hint of it, not an overpowering amount.

I ordered an ounce* of Father Dempsey to try just based on having seen quite a few favorable reviews in various places. Based on the descriptions I was reading, it seemed like it might be a blend I’d enjoy. It’s typically described as a full bodied English blend. One of the more raved about English blends is called Squadron Leader, which I’ve tried. It’s nice, but honestly I find it a bit too mild. I’m not a fan of overly strong tobacco, especially those blends with high nicotine content, but I do smoke English blends for the flavor. Father Dempsey is a notch or two more full bodied, and I find that it really holds its own.

I do love my Balkan blends; there are times when I really want that unique, slightly incense-y flavor of the Oriental leaf. Then there are times when I’m just in the mood for something with a little different character. That’s when Father Dempsey, or Squadron Leader, or some Navy flake or even an aromatic like 1-Q is nice to have on hand. I have to say, though, that I may end up keeping a good stock of Father Dempsey on hand. I could see it being something I’d reach for pretty regularly. I really enjoy an assertive Balkan like White Knight when I’ve got the time to relax and enjoy it. There are times, however, when something a little less “forward” is called for, and Father Dempsey seems to be a blend that just fits in perfectly. I can see why people tend to rave about it.

* If you’re not a pipe smoker, the idea of ordering an ounce may not mean much to you. Pipe tobacco is generally available in either tins or pouches, or in bulk. Tins and pouches are generally 50 grams (1.75 oz), with some exceptions. 100g and larger tins and tubs are not uncommon. Bulk tobacco can be ordered by the ounce, or even by the pound. An ounce is pretty much a sample size. At a bit over 28 grams, and roughly 3-5 grams per bowl, an ounce bag will give you enough tobacco for roughly six to maybe ten or twelve average sized pipe bowls.

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Hearth & Home Black House

I tried this tobacco based on some reviews and suggestions from r/PipeTobacco Reddit users. It’s supposed to be a close match for the original Balkan Sobranie, though most people think White Knight (also from Hearth & Home) is better. From what I’ve read, H&H developed two different blends to try to match the old Sobranie blend. One was wildly popular with pipe smokers, the other won an award from other tobacco blenders. Or so the story goes.

It’s a ribbon cut mixture, with a good smoky tin note. I’ve smoked about half the tin now. I like it fine, but I really do like White Knight better. This seems to me to be more of a straight English blend; it’s got more “substance” to it than, say, Squadron Leader, but lacks that little hint of incense (for lack of a better word) that I get from a more Oriental forward blend like White Knight or Sutliff’s Sobranie match. I’m not sorry I tried it; it’s a good solid blend and I do enjoy it. That said, it’s not high on my re-order list. Tinned tobaccos are generally more expensive than bulk blends – usually double the cost or more. This one is no exception, and there are bulk blends I like as much or better.