Pipes and Pipe Tobacco

As much as I enjoy cigars, late last summer I started to dabble in pipes and pipe tobacco. Really just out of curiosity and because of the centuries-long popularity of it, it’s a much older practice than rolling and smoking cigars.

Long story short, I really enjoy it. I still think an ultra-premium cigar, like a Padron 1926, is the pinnacle of what tobacco can be. But there’sl a certain level of enjoyment and charm to pipes and pipe tobacco that make it more than worthwhile to me, and there’s still a very wide variety of high-quality tobacco available, tobacco that’s entirely different from typical cigarette tobacco. It’s also significantly less expensive to smoke a pipe several times a day than it is to smoke a several cigars a day. Smoking three decent cigars a day, for a week, would cost anywhere from $105 to $210 depending on what you’re smoking. But even the finest pipe tobacco, the truly great stuff, could be smoked three times a day and every day of the week for literally $20 at the most. They’re not even close in price, pipes are dramatically cheaper to smoke.

Another advantage to pipes is that the smoke produced by them is far less intense, thick, and lingering than the smoke produced by cigars. You’re burning a much smaller amount of an entirely different variety of tobacco, and in general the pipe tobacco has a much more pleasant smell that doesn’t seem to linger nearly as much as cigars do. So if you happen to like smoking indoors, perhaps in the very cold winter months like I do, pipes will be much less likely to cause complaints from houseguests and you probably won’t need to use an ozone generator each spring to eliminate the smoke smell. Frankly a lot of pipe tobacco actually has rather warm and pleasant smells to it, it’s entirely different than the acrid sort of smell of cigarettes and certain cigars.

It’s also absolutely not to be underestimated in the realm of nicotine content. Like cigars, the strength of pipe tobacco can range from very mild (no nicotine effects noticed at the end of a bowl) to extremely strong (only part way through a bowl and you’re almost sick from too much nicotine), so it’s quite possible to get a nicotine fix in a much healthier way than smoking cigarettes because you’re not directly inhaling the smoke to get the effect.

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Right now I have one good Meerschaum pipe that I use, several types of good tobacco stored away in glass jars for preservation, and one type of tobacco (Night Train, from Cornell and Diehl) in bulk form (a 1lb. cake) that I smoke by default. Night Train is an excellent blend of different tobaccos, it’s very well-balanced I find. Sweet but not too sweet, hearty but not too cigarette-like in smell or taste, and the nicotine content is enough to get my fix but not enough to make me sick on an empty stomach. It’s really a solid blend all-around and when I eventually run out I’ll likely buy more. The blend contains the following tobaccos, all mixed together and pressed into a brick/cake form to meld the flavors and preserve the moisture level:

- Bright Virginia Ribbon
- Bright Virginia Flake
- Brown Burley
- Black Cavendish
- Perique


On their own, these tobaccos have quite distinct flavors. But all mixed together and pressed, as they are here, they provide an excellent overall flavor and aroma. As described above, it’s an excellent all-around tobacco that I’m happy to smoke on most occasions.

I intend to keep smoking this stuff throughout the winter months, the remaining stock of Night Train is likely to last me into the spring. If I pick up any other tobaccos, I’ll let everyone know what I think after a few bowls of it.

Peterson Flake, a pure Virginia flake-cut tobacco that’s comprised primarily of bright/lemon Virginia (as opposed to the red varietals), is an absolutely top-shelf pure Virginia pipe tobacco. I really have to say, as far as comparing it to the handful of other prominent Virginia tobaccos I’ve tried, it really is better.

Night Train is still my go-to everyday smoke, it hasn’t been dethroned. But sometimes I crave the taste and the really wonderful smells of a pure Virginia blend, and this Peterson Flake is just fantastic. Grab a flake from the jar, let it air out for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, fold it up, push it into the pipe, and away it goes. It burns very well and slowly that way, and man does it just taste and smell fantastic. The nicotine hit isn’t as potent as Night Train, but it’s still perceptible.

I still have to try Mac Barren’s HH Pure Virginia as well as C&D’s Yorktown, but for what I’ve had so far, this stuff is the king of Virginia pipe tobacco and many others who’ve tried the two I just mentioned still agree that Peterson Flake takes first prize.

New Meerschaum pipe and a couple new tobacco types on the way, should be here Monday or Tuesday I think. I’ll let everyone know what I think of the pipe when it comes in and I get a few smokes through it.

The pipe was made by Tekin, a Turkish man who’s been making meerschaum pipes for about 25 years. I picked this one because the shape looked very easy to hold in the hand, the quarter or half bend makes it a bit more comfortable to clench between the teeth than a straight pipe, the bowl capacity is a fair amount larger than the one I had, and the chamber walls are quite a bit thicker than the one I had, which insulates the hand from the heat generated by the burning tobacco. It also looks visually distinct and interesting, in my opinion. It’s not an elaborate figural design but it’s a bit different and more stylized than a typical pipe style. The first bowl smoked just fine, as I’d expect from a good quality meerschaum pipe, and a full bowl lasted about an hour and twenty minutes.

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The two types of tobacco, as you can see, are both part of Mac Baren’s HH line, the Bold Kentucky and the Burley Flake. Both of them are actually flakes, not just the burley one, although the Bold Kentucky is a smaller flake than the Burley Flake ones. There are two stacks of flakes in the Burley tin, and three stacks in the Kentucky tin. I’ve already put them in jars, but if anyone would like to see what the tobacco actually looks like just let me know and I’ll post a picture of the flakes.

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The first one I smoked was the Bold Kentucky. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect with this one, but it’s extremely good. Absolutely no tongue bite even when puffed pretty aggressively (just to check to see if it would be a problem, not done for the whole bowl), that distinctive hardwood-smoked flavor of dark-fired Kentucky tobacco, very high nicotine content (I have a very high tolerance and I still got a very noticeable hit), and although the flavors and aromas are definitely full and strong, it’s not at all overpowered or rough or crude.

I think this is a far better tobacco than the fairly similar Peterson Irish Flake, which gave me tongue bite and was a more processed and artificial tasting than this very clean, pure, and delicious Bold Kentucky from Mac Baren. I like it a lot more than I had thought I would, this is absolutely worth getting a pound or two of and keeping around for the long term. One flake in the morning with a cup of coffee is the perfect way to start the day, I’ll be ordering more of this very soon to make sure I don’t run out.

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For the Burley Flake, I’ll have some of that later today and let you guys know what I think. It’s quite a bit different than the Bold Kentucky. Much more mild in taste and aroma, much less nicotine, and an entirely different flavor profile. Burley tobacco of this type generally has a flavor profile that’s earthy, nutty, and chocolatey, as opposed to the hardwood smoked flavor of Kentucky leaf or the grassy, hay, fresh bread, and citrus flavor of bright Virginia leaf. I think it’ll be a very good all-day type of smoke, since it’s not particularly high in nicotine and it’s also much less likely to cause tongue bite than the very sugary Virginias can if smoked too quickly or too frequently. A mild but flavorful burley flake should make an excellent all-day treat. But we’ll see.

Another note about the Night Train from Cornell and Diehl that’s become very apparent after smoking the Bold Kentucky and the Burley Flake is the quite prominent presence of Perique in the Night Train, or maybe the lack of it in the other two. It provides a lot of tangy raisin/fig/raspberry flavors and certain kind of peppery taste that is very enjoyable to me.

Night Train is still an exceptionally good tobacco when compared to the two Mac Baren offerings. Not to mention everything else I’ve compared it to over the last several months.

I took a chance on it, did a bit of research and bought a pound of it before actually trying it, and it’s probably one of the best tobacco-related gambles I’ve taken. The blend and the way it’s processed is just excellent across the board.

The HH Bold Kentucky is now my official morning smoke. A cup of coffee and a flake of Bold Kentucky. Just can’t be beaten as a way to get going for the day. I ordered a pound of it.

So I ordered another pound of Cornell and Diehl’s Night Train, and what I found is actually not Night Train. There are only a few different bulk bricks that they sell, and I’m 95% sure they mislabeled this one. It’s supposed to be Night Train, but what I got is actually their Briar Fox blend.

I’m definitely disappointed in the sense that it’s not what I wanted, this stuff isn’t nearly as strong as Night Train and the high Virginia content (Briar Fox is a Virginia/Burley cake) means that it needs to be smoked gently and slowly to avoid tongue bite, but it’s actually quite delicious stuff in its own way:

When smoked slowly and gently, Briar Fox produces thick creamy smoke that’s really loaded with pleasant flavors of things like bread, nuts, and a butter-like taste. Very smooth, very cool-burning and easy to deal with, and mild enough to easily smoke all day long without having an overdose of nicotine. Very different from Night Train, but very delicious nonetheless.

And given the fact that I now have a full pound of it stored in glass jars, there’s plenty to smoke now and plenty to keep sealed for aging. Half of it was completely rubbed out into ribbons and packed in a jar to be smoked now, and half of it was kept in 2”x2” chunks of cake to be smoked at a later time. I’m very curious to see how it changes in a year or two, the high Virginia content means that it’ll definitely age very well because of the natural fermentation of the high sugar content of the Virginia tobacco.