New Acquisition for 05/29/07

I recently won this brand new il Ceppo stubby billiard on Ebay. It's got some nice straight grain, a thin gold band and handcut brindle stem. Handmade in Italy, this pipe sports a virgin briar bowl and promises to be a great smoker!

New Acquisition for 05/08/2007

This is a gorgeous "Bridge" pipe hand-crafted by my favorite pipemaker JM Boswell. This pipe has near-perfect grain and a beautiful hand-cut cumberland stem.

I can honestly say that in my collection of over 100 pipes the Boswells (14 and counting) are the only pipes of one brand that are all perfect smokers.

New Acquisition for 04/29/2007

I just ordered this new Savinelli Virginia series pipe in Shape 703KS (The "KS" stands for "King Size" as it is a larger sized version of the standard shape).

The stem has a very subtle bent to it and it wrapped in a fancy shank band. This pipe sports some very nice grain and a generous tobacco chamber.

New Acqusition for 4/22/2007

This is a custom author by master craftsman JM Boswell. The base is covered in near-perfect birdseye as it transforms to running lines of straight grain all around the bowl.

The dimensions... Height of Pipe 1-3/4 Diameter of bowl top - 1-3/4" Diameter of tobacco Chamber - 7/8 " Length is 6" Weight 2-1/2 oz

Tobacco Review: Solani Aged Burley Flake

Here is my review of the new Solani Aged Burley Flake:

First of all, I love all tobacco. I am not partial to any particular type of blend. I love VA, VApers, English, Balkan, Burley and good aromatics. With that said, here is my review of Solani Aged Burley Flake:

The day I ordered my tin of this blend I had also ordered a tin of Wessex Burley Slices. When they arrived I noticed that the tins were identical with the exception of the label. The interior packaging is also identical including the little picture of a Burley leaf. I will not compare these two tobaccos but I did find it interesting that there was no difference in the packaging.

The Solani flakes are pliable without being too moist. I smoke flakes unrubbed so I fold two flakes lengthwise then fold them once over width-wise. I place this plug into the bowl with the bent part of the tobacco facing the bottom of the bowl. I thrn gently work the top of the plug around so it makes a nice tight pack yet with a good open draw.

The flakes light up quickly and evenly. The initial taste is a bit of rasin-like flavor followed by some good dark nutty Burley taste. The smoke is very smooth and mellow. There is little to no sweetness during the smoke, just a nice nutty smokey full-bodied flavor that grows in strength as the bowl progresses. It provides a very good olfactory (through the nose) taste that compliments the flavor that the mouth receives. There is very little bite even when producing some huge clouds of smoke. It also smokes quite dry and needs only one pipe cleaner throughout the entire two-hour smoke. It burns slow cool and easy.

Solani Aged Burley Flake leaves the pipe clean and burns down to a fine light grey ash. There is no mouth fatigue so you are ready for more as soon as the bowl is complete. The nicotine content is pretty high but not overpowering like some ropes can be. This is a true Burley without the sweetners or perfumes so this may not be the best choice for a beginner. For those who really love a good honest Burley, this is it!

Blends of the Undead

I was working on some writing this evening and the subject matter was zombies. It got me to thinking "What blends would a zombie smoke?" I came up with a few blend names that I could see being smoked by some of the Undead.

"Dead Virginia"

"Buried Burley"

"Ashes to Ashes"

"Old Zombie"

"Cemetery Wynd"

"Funeral Flake"

"Brains & Burley"

"Potters Field & Scream"

"Reanimation"

"Decay o' Flesh Flake"

"Cajun Coffin"

"Haddo's Death"

and the all-time zombie favorite: "Scary Cherry"

Have one you'd like to share? Leave a comment!

My Nutty Buddy: Burley

Ah, the delightful Burley leaf!

How I truly love the taste of a good Burley! So often we hear about Virginia blends, Latakia and Oriental concoctions, but it seems that the Burley leaf is one of the most underappreciated tobaccos there is.

A good burley is sweet, nutty, full and creamy. Blends like Barbary Coast, Nut Brown Burley, Wessex Burley Slices and Solani Aged Burley are all top-quality leaf. There are some blends that contain terrible burley and they taste bitter, harsh and even a little sour. Usually these blends are found in drug stores or discount stores like WalMart.

Burley is to tobacco what rice is to cooking. Unlike the Virginia leaf, Burley does not have a high content of natural sugar, so it makes a good neutral base for a recipe...it can compliment almost anything it is used with...it takes on the flavors of the other ingredients. Burley is used in most aromatic blends because it absorbs the flavorings that are added.

Most Burley comes from Kentucky and Tennessee. It can be ribbon-cut, flake and (my personal favorite) cubed. Many smokers praise the combination of Burley smoked in a corn-cob pipe. Another great combination is a fine Burley smoked in a meerschaum. Because of the lack of natural sugars, Burley does not experience the drastic changes from aging that Virginia leaf does.

If you have not yet explored the wonderful spectrum of flavor that quality Burley can provide, why not check out some of the above mentioned blends and sit back for a real treat.

A Most Unusual Pipe

Recently I came upon this pipe on a site called Neat Pipes. This is a Radice creation that has two large bowls and one very large stem. One can just imagine the many various ways that this pipe would be able to be smoked. One could smoke one bowl then start another one immediately afterwards, both bowls could be smoked at once with two different blends providing all sorts of variables for experimentation purposes. More than likely, this pipe will end up in the collection of someone who will keep it as something to look at and perhaps sell at some later time. Personally, I would like to see the double-bowl concept deeply researched and deployed into the mainstream pipe culture. We could be on the verge of a whole new era in smoking!

Chat with us!

The alt.smokers.pipes newsgroup, as well as many other pipe smoking forums, can be a great place to chat with fellow pipe smokers. One of my favorite places to chat is the A.S.P. channel on IRC. Join me and the regular chatters for fun, humor, information and talk. Share your pipe knowledge or get some of those big pipe questions answered! If you ever get on the Undernet, join channel #alt.smokers.pipes and be a part of the group.

A Little Experiment: Air Pocket Packing

Recently I read an article in Pipes and Tobacco Magazine regarding a packing method called the "Air Pocket" method which was invented by pipe industry icon Fred Hanna. This method involves pushing a large bunch of tobacco into the pipe and twisting it in without having any tobacco lying at the bottom of the bowl. It sounds easy enough, so I thought I would try an experiment in just how much better this method actually is. I started with a brand new pipe and a ribbon-cut blend of tobacco. I smoked a bowl using the standard three-level method then the next day I would smoke it using the new Air-Pocket method. What I noticed was that my smokes using the AP method lasted longer, seemed to have more flavor and required less tamping. The biggest difference I noticed was that the burn was much cooler. There was never a bite in a bowl packed with the AP but the bowls with the three-level could bite quite easily. So far I have not tried using the AP on different cut blends like flakes, cubes, etc. but when I do I will be sure to report those findings here.