After finishing up what I had labeled as simply “Batch 6”, the VA/Per blend I tried earlier, I decided to make some more. This batch is a small run of 16 grams, slightly altered with a 50/50 mix of Samsun and Izmir for the Turkish portion. After 3 days under fairly high pressure in the noodle press, it was like a dark, solid little puck of tobacco. I let it sit in a jar for a day before slicing off a small chunk to try out. It’s good, and I know from experience it will get substantially better with some additional age.
At this point I plan to make a larger batch with the same mix. the largest plug I’ve made in the noodle press was 100 grams, and it was a challenge to get it out of the press. I’ll probably limit future plugs to 50 to 65 grams.
I’ve been smoking a good bit of my “Towers of Antioch” blend, and overall I’m pretty happy with it. It does, from time to time, display a rough edge here and there. It’s not a big deal, but I’d love to figure out exactly what’s causing it and maybe smooth it out a bit. I’ve also been tring out some of my very early stuff – like the pressed plug straight VA from late ’23, and my first Cavendish attempt. Both have a pretty bold component to them that can get a little harsh if you’re not careful. So, I decided to see what would happen if I tried some ToA without it. In its place I simply substituted the lemon VA that I bought from Whole Leaf. I mixed up a small test batch, enough for half a dozen pipes maybe, and pressed it for 24 hours in the noodle press. Not a long press, just enough to smooth it and blend the flavors a little better.
The result is… less interesting. It’s not bad, but it reminds me of the difference between two commercial English/Balkan blends I tried last year. One was the Sutliff Sobranie match, the other was – I don’t really remember what, I just remember it was tinned and enjoyed a lot of good reviews. Anyway, while it had VA, Oriental, and Latakia, it was notably less complex than the Sutliff and bordered on uninteresting by comparison.
So, back to the drawing board. I do have a 100 gram plug of ToA sitting in the jar that I haven’t sliced up yet. I’m still working my way through the other 50-60 grams that I sliced and rubbed out. I’m wondering whether letting the plug age in its semi-compressed form will make a substantial difference. I’ll just leave it in the jar until all the rest is gone, and maybe even longer than that. I do have probably half a pound or more of various commercial pipe tobaccos sitting in jars on my shelf. Orlik Golden Sliced, some Sutliff Sobranie match, some Ennerdale and Bob’s Chocolate Flake, My Mixture 965, little remnants of several others. There’s even some 1-Q there, along with an ounce or two of Haunted Bookshop and Bayou Morning – neither of which I like, so they’ll probably just stay there indefinitely.
OK, maybe not as bad as I originally thought. My first bowl of this overly topped, heavily scented maple confection of a pipe tobacco left me wondering why the hell I had ever bought an ounce of it. Made by Cornell & Diehl, I’d read glowing reviews of this stuff for a couple of years and decided to see what the hubbub was all about.
The pouch note can only be described as overpowering, artificial maple syrup. Like falling into a vat of Log Cabin or something, and accidentally inhaling half a gallon of it. I’m mystified as to why you’d call this “Autumn Evening” and not something like “Pancake Breakfast”. This stuff is comically over-the-top maple scented.
My first bowl was nothing short of terrible. Ashy, no maple note. I gave up and wrote off the jar until for some reason I decided to give it another try tonight. I let a couple pinches dry for a bit, but had to move the tin lid I use for drying away from me; the aroma was overpowering. I’m not exaggerating here. I almost tossed it, but decided that since it wasn’t overly moist I’d load it up and try it again. I filled the bowl of an estate Everyman billiard pipe and lit it up. This time around I decided to try a much slower pace and see if a lower temperature helps. Well, unsurprisingly it does.
Still no real in-your-face maple flavor, which is good. I can’t speak to the room note; I was alone in the garage at the time. It produced thick, luxurious clouds of smoke, so I suspect there’s some PG or glycerin there, but it wasn’t enough to produce any goop in the pipe, so that’s nice. And maybe it was just high sugar content from the topping, I don’t know.
Keeping the pace slow and the temperature lower helped a lot. It was not an unpleasant smoke, not outstanding but nice enough. I’m accustomed to English and VA/Pers and it’s been a while since I smoked an aromatic blend, but it wasn’t bad. The burn rate was pretty brisk, needing fairly frequent tamping and a couple of relights. At one point it started to taste a little ashy, and I was a bit surprised to find that was because I’d hit the bottom of the bowl. Just for fun, I let it sit for a while, then re-lit the dottle and took a few slow puffs. There was a slight sizzle, nothing harsh, and no notable moisture left in the bottom of the bowl. Honestly, for an aromatic I’m impressed that it’s not too moist or goopy. I’ve heard that about C&D.
So, I take back most of what I said about this stuff the first time around, at least about the smoking of it. It’s still overwhelmingly, cloyingly maple scented before lighting. Once lit, it smokes fine if you don’t overheat it. So, will I buy more? Probably not. Will I finish what I have? Eventually, probably, sure. I’ve got several aromatics left… some 1-Q, Ennerdale, Bob’s Chocolate Flake, maybe something else I can’t remember. I figure at my present rate of consumption of aromatics that will last me a few years. I don’t hate aromatics, but I have to be in the right mood for them, or I’ll smoke them around people who might not enjoy the smoke from a heavy dose of Latakia or Perique. The person who doesn’t love the smell of a bowl of 1-Q is a rare person indeed. Probably true for this stuff too. I’ll try it at our next evening around a fire pit or something.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying out a few more tobacco blends. My daily go-to blend has become Towers of Antioch, a relatively Latakia-forward (37.5%) English blend that becomes quite wonderful after a few days in a press. Wonderful enough that I no longer lament the passing of Sutliff’s Sobranie match mixture… this is easily as good, and I can make all I want at a lot lower cost. I’m trying one now with 1/16th less Latakia and 1/16th more Oriental in it, named Damascus Sun. Too soon to tell if this one will be a winner; I only pressed it for a couple of days, and it will need to age for a week or two at least before it matures enough to really evaluate. So far it’s not bad, a little milder than ToA.
I also planted some veggies and tobacco varieties in starter seed trays, and those are sprouting. The corn and cucumbers are leading the charge, with green onions and cherry tomatoes trying to catch up. The spinach is lagging, with only one cell out of six having sprouted so far. I have faith that some more will come up, even if I need to poke a few more seeds in. Of the half dozen varieties of tobacco I planted, five are starting to come up, so I’ll be thinning those out in a week or two. I’m looking forward to getting the veggie planters and new landscaping done so we can transplant once the weather improves some.
I’m trying some new varieties of “pipe weed” this year, including a Burley, some Perique, and a Maryland that’s usually used for cigars, but is also used on some pipe blends.
One of my go-to pipe tobacco blends is called Escudo Navy Deluxe. It’s a blend of Virginia and Perique, a specially fermented tobacco that originates in St. James Parish in Louisiana. Perique can be quite… pungent. If you ever sniff a jar of pipe tobacco and think, “horse barn” – not in a bad way, but you’ll know it if you encounter it – that’s Perique.
Escudo has a great reputation, and for good reason. Not only is it quite delicious if you like VA/Per blends, the little coin slices are cool. Escudo is made by tightly rolling or twisting the different tobaccos together into a rope with the darker variety in the middle. It’s then aged and sliced thinly before being packaged. The little coins are easy to rub out to loose tobacco, or some people just fold or roll and stuff them into their pipe.
As Escudo is a little pricey, I figure if I’m blending my own tobacco I may as well try to make something either close, or at least something I like as well. So, I was a little excited to find a blend on the FTT forum that is billed as an “Escudo match” or substitute. I mixed up some a few days ago, spritzed it very lightly with bourbon – because why not? – and pressed it for three days in my noodle press. I took it out early this afternoon and sliced off a bit to sample. I rubbed out the slice and got a near perfect collection of chunks and ribbons, which I let dry for a while.
As I smoke it now, I’m pretty happy with it. I did make a modification to the recipe; in place of the Red Virginia tobacco called out in the recipe I used my own mixed VA leaf from the 2023 crop. It’s a mix of bright, red, and darker leaves, and they aren’t really properly flue cured. They were kilned and aged for a year and a half, but probably have lower sugar content than “real” flue cured red leaf. I’m sure the flavor is a little different.
One thing that surprises me is that I haven’t needed to relight this stuff yet. it’s burning perfectly, and the flavor is really good. As good as Escudo? Probably not. Good enough that I’ll mix and press another larger plug? Oh, yeah. And I remind myself that it will only get better with age. A year or two in a jar will make this stuff sublime.
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.
Started boiling 5 gallons of maple sap from our back yard trees to make syrup;
Blended and pressed my own tobacco mixture from whole leaf, mostly leaf that I grew myself (it’s a VA/Per bend);
Used boiling water to bend a piece of wood into a curve to finish restoring an old piece of furniture.
I have no idea why my darling wife pointed out the 10# pork belly at Costco and asked if I wanted to start making my own bacon too. She should know by now that if I wanted to make my own bacon, I’d raise a pig…
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.
