Category: Pipes & Tobacco

In the process of growing and blending my own pipe tobacco, I’ve grown and tried some Turkish or Oriental tobacco called Samsun. Not being familiar with the various different strains of Turkish, I picked that one to grow based on the description on the seed vendor’s web site.

It’s OK, but not really perfect for what I’m trying to blend. Based on feedback and further reading, I ordered a small quantity of Izmir, another Turkish variety. Of course the old blends referred to Yenidje, but that doesn’t seem to be available from anywhere – except as seed. Basma or Izmir is supposed to be close. Anyway, the Izmir arrived today and I decided, as I do, to try a small amount straight to se how it tastes. So, I pulled an bit out of the bag and chopped it into ribbons for the pipe and lit it.

Back in the late 1970s I was in high school, and (gasp) actually smoked. I never did develop an appreciation for the Marlboros or Winstons that were the usual choice; I really liked Camels. During a visit to David’s Briar Shoppe at Westroads Mall, I discovered fancy imported cigarettes, and fell in love with the taste of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes. Sobranie Black Russians were even better, but quite a bit more expensive – nearly two and a half dollars a pack!! The Balkan Sobranies came in a really cool flip-open flat metal tin, which didn’t hurt their appeal. But I developed a real appreciation for fine tobacco. I sure wish I’d kept some of those Sobranie tins.

I lit that pipe full of Izmir Turkish today and my mind immediately flashed back to those days. The taste of Balkan Sobranies was right there, almost perfectly captured. I was walking through the Westroads parking lot, black leather jacket on, my girlfriend (now wife) on my arm…

I like the Izmir a lot more than Samsun. I also bought a small sample of their Samsun just to compare it to mine. The aroma is identical; I’m going to guess the taste is also. I just wanted to make sure that commercially produced Samsun wasn’t significantly different from my own.

I’ll be buying some Yenidje seed and planting that this year. I could smoke the Izmir on its own, but I think it will vastly improve my English blends with Virginia and Latakia. I’m sure the Yenidje will be as good or better.

I decided to experiment with some of my Virginia tobacco on Monday. I took some fairly coarsely shredded VA leaf, mixed it with some similarly shredded Perique, and just for fun, tossed in a piece of Light Fire Cured from the little sample that WLT sent with my order. I included that mainly because it was handy, and I wanted to see if I could taste it in the mix.

The VA was pretty dry, despite my having misted it with water a few times. Still very low case. Since I intended to press it, I misted it with a couple squirts of Woodford Reserve bourbon. I mixed it all up well and loaded it into the noodle press. I screwed the press down in stages over about an hour until I had it down petty tight.

Having heard good things about using heat during the pressing process, and not having tried it until now, I stuck the press in the oven and warmed it up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 degrees or so. I think I had it in there for an hour or so, then pulled it out and let it cool for a few hours.

The resulting plug is solid, tough, nearly black, and displays no tendency to expand or separate. It’s got a typical VA/Per aroma. After removing it from the press I let it sit in a little plastic container with a snap-on lid for probably 6 or 8 hours until I had an opportunity to try a little bit of it.

I sliced off a little chunk, then cut it up into smaller chunks. It doesn’t fall apart at all. I rubbed out the chunks enough that I thought I’d be able to get it lit, and loaded up a corncob. While I smoked that little bit, I sliced the rest of the plug into very thin slices. It slices very nicely; it’s moist and dense so you can really get it shaved thin. I cube-cut some of it and left the rest as slices.

This stuff is seriously pretty good. It’s smooth, no bite, no overpowering Perique. The nicotine level is what I would consider a notch past mild, meaning that by the time I’m down to the second half of the bowl I can feel it – but it’s not too much. The flavor is very nice, not overpowering at all but quite robust.

I’m naming this one “Dark Lady”.

Today (Tuesday) i finished up the last bit of the bowl from last night, and it was still smooth and flavorful. I didn’t detect any rough edges (so to speak) or any taste that I didn’t like, until I decided to see how it did when smoked fast. That resulted in a couple of puffs that were less enjoyable — still not bad, but you have to expect that Virginias are not going to take well to smoking them too hot. Once I slowed back down to a normal pace, the taste returned to normal. So far, so good.

I liked it enough, in fact, that after that bowl was finished I loaded it up again. I rubbed out one of the small flakes, then loaded up the rest of the bowl with my cube-cut chunks just to see how those worked. I think those are probably just too big to burn well; I’ll slice any further batches into flake. The cubes taste fine, but require more re-lighting than I’m happy with. It’s distracting and not terribly enjoyable to spend a lot of time re-lighting your pipe. OK, so lesson learned, it’s a flake, not a good candidate for a coarse cube cut. That’s fine; cube cut tends to easily send burning embers everywhere as lot easier than a regular shred packed bowl anyway, and I don’t own a smoking jacket – yet.

This bend may just be a winner, I think. I’m going to take some up to Ted’s and see if the owner wants to try a bit; he’s a VA/Per lover. Oh, and I have not so far detected the fire cured leaf. I know it’s there, but there’s so little of it I think it just isn’t really detectable. I need to try a bit of that on its own to see what it’s like.

After three days under pressure, I took the 36 g plug of English blend out of the noodle press. It looks pretty good and smells even better – at least it does to me; Darling Wife thinks it stinks. There is a pretty pungent aroma of campfire bordering on “ashes of last night’s campfire”, and I can understand how that might offend some people. I love it.

After letting it rest in a jar for a day or so I broke up the plug and rubbed it out, then tried a bowl. The pressing made a pretty substantial difference. The blend is now fairly smooth, with the rough/harsh edges polished off. It’s not a perfect match for my favorite Sutliff blend, but I didn’t honestly expect that. It is, however, nice enough that I’ll probably finish the entire plug while I decide what changes to try. I think it will improve even more was it ages, but probably won’t last long enough to show its true potential.

What I’m missing is some of the complexity of the BSOMM/White Knight blend. When smoking that I’ll get hints of anise and a few other notes that are so far not present in my own attempt. It’s not a huge deal – even this little test blend is easily as good as some of the commercial English or Balkan blends I’ve tried. I’ll try a new batch with Izmir and see how that stacks up.

Having gone through all of the leaf I bought from WLT, I decided maybe I should do the same with my own. I have a large tub of flue-cured leaf, and a bag of very, very dry Samsun. Actually I took about half of that, spritzed it with water, and put it in a gallon Ziplock bag. Then I spritzed it a couple more times over a couple of days to bring the leaf into case. It’s pretty ratty, but still OK and it’s been sitting for a year and a half since it was harvested.

The VA leaf is kind of a mystery box. I had a dozen or so “Bright Virginia” plants, and four others that were some combination of “Tennessee Red Leaf” and “Ontario Bold”. Thise were the names on the web site where I bought them (seedman.com), but at least one of them is unknown to anyone with some speculation about what it actually is. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep track of what seedling ended up where. I say unfortunately, because those four plants were magnificently productive. To make matters worse, I didn’t keep the leaves separated when I harvested. Virginia is Virginia, right? Ah, we live and learn.

Anyway, as I go through the tub there are some leaves that are a light tan, some that area deep reddish mahogany brown, and some that are in between. I pilled one of each and shredded them, and tried them both. They’re definitely different. What I’ll call the “bright leaf” is mild, no bite, a little woody. The red leaf is more grassy, a little bolder flavor (maybe this is Ontario Bold?), and has some definite spice in the nose. They’re very different.

Later on I pulled some of the Samsun out of the bag and shredded it as well, and just tried some of it. It’s got a flavor that I liken to a dusty camel trail, very little spice in the nose. I got an occasional hint of burning fall leaves. It’s got a slightly astringent property to it as well. Quite a bit different than the Virginias, of course. I was thinking I could probably smoke it on its own regularly, but I don’t know. I mean, I could — it isn’t bad, but I do think it would be better blended.

I’m going to oder a sample of Izmir and compare it side by side with the Samsun. I’d like something with a hint more floral or anise to it in the English mix, and the guys on the FTT forum tell me that’s a Basma/Izmir/Yenidje characteristic. I can buy seeds for any of those, and Basma and Izmir are readily available as whole leaf.

Onward.

Wednesday morning I pulled the plug of VA/Per mix from the press, rubbed it out, fluffed it u, gave it a couple spritzes of bourbon, and put it back into the press for a few more hours. Yesterday evening I dried some out and gave it a try.

It’s still a pretty strong mix. Not necessarily the nicotine content, though that is higher than the English mix. The tobacco taste is quite forward. The Perique component is now about where I’d want it, I think. Smoking it in a corncob, I got an occasional little hint of cigar flavor, or something a little sweeter. It seemed to improve quite a bit about halfway through the bowl. This one is pretty interesting. I can’t see it becoming a favorite every day smoke, but for those times when I want something very straightforward and fairly strong, this would fit the bill. I doubt I’ll make more of it, but I’ll definitely continue down the VA/Per path to see if I can make something really good. At least now I know that probably 25% Perique is about as high as I’d want to go. I think I’ll take some of it up to Ted’s Tobacco and see if Jay, the owner, wants to give his opinion on it. He’s got a lot of experience and is a VA/Per fan with a very high nicotine tolerance ( the guy smokes a lot of cigars and pipe tobacco). I’m just interested to know what he thinks. Honestly, I just wish I hadn’t put anything in with the Cavendish leaf when I steamed it. I think it would be better if it had nothing, instead of the molasses and vanilla and whatever else I used. Live and learn, right?

On the flip side, I also finished off the bowl of English blend I’d started. The more I smoke that, the better I like it. I’ll probably make some tweaks here and there, but at this point I’m really not sure what they will be. I’ve got about 30 to 35 grams left, which is quite a bit for an experimental exercise — enough for a dozen to maybe as much as a dozen and a half pipes full. By then I hope to have figured out what adjustments I want to make. For sure the next batch will be made with a more floral Oriental, like Izmir or Basma in place of the Samsun.

The short takeaway is this: I haven’t hit on the perfect blend in the whopping 3 or 4 days I’ve been playing around with this stuff. Shocker, right? I can, however, see the potential for finding recipes that give me what I want, and without the PG and whatever else the commercial manufacturers — which seem to be increasingly narrowing down to Scandinavian Tobacco Group and Laudisi — seem to insist go into every single tin, pouch, or bag of pipe tobacco.

I decided to try something non-English — no Latakia. I’ve become a huge fan of Escudo Navy Deluxe, which is a Virginia/Perique blend. I found a recipe that used 2/3 Cavendish, which is essentially just steamed tobacco leaves, and 1/3 Perique. Another variation uses the same components but 75/25. So, I mixed up some of the Cavendish I made back in late 2023 with a bit of the Perique from my recent order.

The initial bowl was not fantastic, but not terrible either. It’s a little more Perique have that I normally like, but not overpoweringly so. And I’ve never really been fond of my Cavendish. When I made it, I steamed it in jars and I’d put a little water mixed with a small amount of molasses and maybe a few drops of vanilla or something. I don’t really remember what I used, to be honest, but it’s really never lived up to my hopes and expectations. Like my “mostly VA” flake, it’s smokable, but I don’t smoke it much because I really just don’t like it much.

After trying a good half bowl of it, I decided to mix in some of my VA flake and press it for a while. I tossed in a little pressed VA, roughly the same amount as the Perique. Now I figure it’s roughly half Cavendish, and a quarter each of VA and Perique. Thing is, that VA also has some indeterminate small quantity of Samsun in there too… and it’s made out of some random selection of bright VA, Canadian, and some unknown called “Tennessee Red Leaf” by the seed supplier that most people theorize is a flue-cured Virginia. One guy who knows a lot about tobacco says it like like an Orinoco of some sort. Who knows. Point is, I’m hoping it turns out decent but not perfect as I’ll like never be able to exactly reproduce it.

Once it was all blended together, it was into the noodle press for a few days of increasing pressure. I cranked the handle down a bit more every couple of hours yesterday and last night, until it got to the point where it was obviously about as compressed as it’s going to get. I have the little plug of English that I took out of the press yesterday; in fact, I just crumbled it up so I can try smoking a bit later on. The plug has expanded slightly since I took it out of the press, and seems surprisingly dry — I may need to add more moisture in the future. I did give the VA/Per mix a few spritzes of Woodford Reserve bourbon before pressing it.

Anyway, we’ll see how that one works out.

With a decent assortment of tobacco leaves on hand, I decided to try blending a bit of pipe tobacco. Even though I’d pressed a little block of VA with a few leaves of Samsun in the mix, I’m going to consider this as my first “real” blending attempt.

There are quite a number of recipes available in Bob Goff’s books. He also posted kind of a “Latakia matrix” in the FTT forum, with a number of different blend recipes varying in their percentage of Latakia. I decided to start where he suggested, with one called “Towers of Antioch”. The proportions are the same as “Balkan White”, but the Oriental I have is Samsun, not Xanthi, which has a different flavor profile.

I started out by cutting up enough of each component leaf in 1 gram per part, ending up with about 16 grams of tobacco. I tried some in the pipe and it was OK; not great. A little rough around the edges, not a smooth blend. I could see the potential there, but overall it just “felt like” it needed some time to mature before I could really make a decision about adjusting the ratio of components, or adding something like a touch of Perique or Cavendish or something. I decided to press some and age it a little.

I started that exercise by mixing up another 16 g of the blend and combined it with what I had. I had ordered a noodle press from Amazon, based on recommendations from others who have tried this. The noodle press arrived yesterday, so the timing was perfect. I cut a circle of parchment paper to block the extrusion end of the noodle press, and another for the press follower. I loaded the batch in the press and, over the next several hours, gradually added pressure until it was pretty tight.

This morning I took the resulting puck out of the press, broke it apart into a loose blend, and misted it with some water and then re-loaded the press. I don’t want to repeat the mistake I made last winter with the VA flake, which was pressing it in too dry a condition. I think that would have turned out a lot better had I made sure the lease was in high case before pressing.

As I write this, the blend is back in the press under moderate pressure. I’ll crank the press handle a few times today to get it back under as much pressure as it’s safe to maintain with he noodle press (and its few plastic parts), then let it sit for another 2-3 days before removing it.

What really struck me about this exercise is that, while this bend is not what I’d say is my favorite, it’s close enough to one of the commercially produced English/Balkan blends that I like that I can see the potential for getting it there. I think with some adjustment, maybe switching from Samsun to Yenidje or Xanthi, I may be able to produce a blend that I enjoy as much as or more than my go-to White Knight/Sobranie Match, or one of the others (Father Dempsey, My Mixture 965, Balkan Sobranie) that I have enjoyed so much.

Next up: I have to wonder how difficult it would be to blend up a VA/Per that I like as much as Escudo…

Cue the Steve Martin video…

I ended up ordering a few different types of tobacco leaf from WLT, and it all arrived today. I’m looking forward to mixing up a small batches of different blends and trying them out, until I find the combinations I like. I find that I enjoy different types of tobacco depending on the day and my mood. Some days nothing but a nice Latakia-infused English or Balkan blend will do. Other days I really like a straight Virginia flake, or a Virginia/Perique (or VA/Per, as it’s often called). My own pressed VA that I made has some Turkish Black Sea Samsun in it, and in my opinion needs something else – like Perique or Latakia. So, I’ll be doing a lot of experimenting over the coming weeks and months, I think.

Right now I’m thinking I’ll start by trying a pinch of each of the leaf varieties I have, on their own, one at a time to get a better idea of what they’re like. I have some Lemon VA, Dark Air Cured, Perique, Latakia, and they were nice enough to throw in a small sample of Light Fire Cured.

It’s going to be bitter, deep cold for the next couple of weeks, so I won’t be distracted by any maple sap collection. I’ll update this post as I try each of the leaf varieties on their own.

• I decided to start with some Dark Air Cured (DAC). The bag note is like a box of cigars or high end cigarettes. The leaf is in medium case, easily handled and stretchy. I shredded a little over 4 grams, or s small piece about half a hand size torn from one leaf, and loaded up about half of that in a briar. Wow. Strong stuff!! I would have bought a smaller quantity of this stuff, because the blends I want to try only have very small quantities of it. I understand why. It lights easily and burns well, but the strength and nicotine content is well above what I’d want to smoke on its own. I only made it a few minutes into that pipe before I had to set it down and take a break. This stuff is most definitely not for the faint of heart. I was left dizzy and a little nauseous for a couple of hours afterward. I fought it with some dark chocolate and a little food, but in hindsight a better approach would have been trying s very small amount after a full meal.
• Next up: Lemon Virginia from Canada. This gets its name from the color; the leaves are indeed a light lemon yellow, unlike the medium browns tending to reddish-brown of my own home grown VA (which is why I bought it; a lot of blend recipes call for it and I haven’t grown any). The bag note is… light and quite frankly uninspiring. Not bad, just not that delicious “tobacco” smell. I shredded all of one small leaf of this. As expected, the flavor and nicotine are quite a bit milder than the DAC. The taste is fairly mild; I have a hard time describing flavors but I’d call this rather a classic Virginia, a little woody more than grassy. No overpowering nicotine hit from this stuff. I didn’t notice a lot of spice in the nose, but it does make its presence felt in the back of the mouth and tongue. Overall quite smokable, but one-dimensional and in need of other flavors to give it some complexity. I was tempted to mix in about 5-10% dark air cured just to see how it would taste, but decided to wait. I still have Perique and Latakia to sample.
• Next up: St. James Perique. The bag note of this stuff is unmistakable. Earthy, with a hint of what others and I have called “barnyard”. Think horse barn, not cattle feed lot. There’s more to it; maybe a little hint of pepper or something there as well. Darling Wife said she smelled candied fruits. Some have said the Perique from Whole Leaf Tobacco arrives “soggy”; I’d just say it’s just high to very high case, pretty moist. Probably a good thing, given the amount of handling that would required to flatten the leaves out. The leaves seem to be fairly small compared to other varieties, more like an Oriental size. They’re pretty well wadded up from their time in the fermentation process. I unfurled one leaf completely and shredded it, putting the contents into a snack size Ziplock bag like I did with the others. It needs a bit of drying time before it’s ready to light. Having learned a valuable lesson with he DAC, I very cautiously tried a small amount in the bottom of the bowl of the briar pipe I’m using for sampling. It’s got a definite Perique taste to it; not overpowering, and the nicotine wasn’t immediately overpowering (but as I said,I’m being very cautious). More telling was that, just before I tried it on its own, I sprinkled a few little strands on top of some half-smoked Lemon VA and re-lit that. The resulting smoke was, unlike the VA on its own, quite interesting — I got a hint of almost a soapy taste, in a good way, like all sorts or Sen-Sen. Not strong, just a hint.
• Last up: Latakia. As expected, this had a strong, pungent smell of smoldering campfire as soon as the bag was opened. Actually, a little before — I think it actually permeated the rather thick poly heat sealed bag, to be honest. On reflection, the aroma isn’t exactly “smoldering campfire”; it’s closer to “smoldering ashes of last night’s campfire”. The tobacco isn’t large leaves bundled or laid together as with he VA or DAC; at least the stuff at the end of the bag I opened is broken and crumbled pieces of leaf. I pulled out some pieces and chopped them into small strands and chunks to load up a little snack Ziplock for tasting and test blending. This tobacco, opposite of the Perique, is fairly dry – I’d say a bit below medium case. I dropped a bit into the pipe and lit it. Honestly, this is one I think I could probably smoke straight. It’s not overpoweringly strong, there doesn’t seem to be too much nicotine, and it’s a quite nice smoke with kind of a floral undertone to it. I’m eager to see how well it plays with some VA and maybe a bit of Perique, just for a little more depth and complexity.

I’ve been accustomed to smoking Sutliff’s Balkan Sobranie Original Mix Match, later renamed “Balkan S Match”. Unfortunately, Sutliff was swallowed up by Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG), and STG promptly drove a stake through the heart of Sutliff. Their factory was shut down and most of their tobacco blends discontinued without notice, including BSOMM. It looks like I can still buy its nearly identical tinned version, Hearth & Home White Knight, but I’ll hold off and see how much success I have in blending something that I like as much. One potential obstacle is that the Match & White Knight use Yenidje as part of the blend, and I have none. My Oriental is all Samsun, but I can order some Yenidje seeds and grow it myself. WLT also sells Izmir, which I’ve been told has a much more “floral” taste than Samsun. I may have to try some of that, though again the smallest quantity I can buy is a full pound.

If nothing else, this growing and blending of pipe tobacco is teaching me patience. The Virginia I grew in 2023 is just now beginning to show its potential, about a year and a half after harvesting. It will be next winter before I would have some Yenidje available to try out. I think it’s worth the wait.

I’ve still got nearly all of my 2023 crop of Virginia and Samsun Oriental tobacco. I’ve tried it at various times and generally found it to be rather harsh and one-dimensional. Even the Cavendish I cooked over a year ago wasn’t very good at all the last time I tried some.

A few days ago, I tried a bit of some that I’d pressed back in December of ’23. I had cased the ear with water and a bit of molasses, stacked the leaves, wrapped the stack in parchment paper, and pressed it between two pieces of particle board in a shop vise for a couple of weeks. I tightened the vise every couple of days during that time to keep the pressure up. When it was done I sliced the resulting block of tobacco, and it was… horrible. I stuck it in a jar and have tried it every few months since then, and it’s slowly improving. The bowl I sampled a few days ago was actually not bad, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I didn’t like. Then it occurred to me… I was expecting a pure Virginia flake tobacco. This wasn’t. I had included some Samsun leaf in the stack, so what I made was almost a cigarette blend. That’s why I wasn’t wild about the taste.

I think I’m going to order two things from Whole Leaf Tobacco that I either cannot produce myself, or simply don’t want to. The one I can’t reproduce is Latakia. Once produced in Syria and now almost exclusively in Cyprus, Latakia is made by hanging Turkish tobacco leaves in a shed and burning aromatic wood and leaves in a pit in the floor of the shed. They’ll use myrtle, pine, mastic, maybe juniper. Who knows? They burn whatever is available locally – none of which is available here, not that I could keep a smoky fire going for months at a time. So I’ll but the Latakia.

The other is Perique. Used as a “condimental” tobacco both for flavor and to Ph-adjust the Virginia, Perique is both the name of a strain of tobacco, and the process that is commonly used to prepare it. This involved compressing the leaf in an oxygen-deprived environment, which allows a specific bacteria to breed and do its work fermenting the leaf. During the months-long process the leaf needs to be periodically removed, tossed, and re-compressed. Even if you do it right, I understand it to be a tedious, stinky process. I may try my hand at it later on, but for now I think I’ll buy mine.

The pressed flake I have will probably be pretty good with the addition of some Latakia and maybe a pinch or two of Perique. I’ve got some Cavendish that’s still sitting in a jar contemplating its sins, and as soon as this cold clears up I’m going to try a little of that and see if it’s learned its lesson yet.