squeezyjohn
Well-Known Member
I'll come clean - I've never really been a pipe smoker, and nowadays I don't even smoke at all really - most of my tobacco has been taken in chew or snus form for the past 6 years and the last time I smoked my pipe was about 6 months ago!
However, today I was checking on my "perique" of tobacco (not real perique, just a very tightly bound roll of leaves tied up under pressure with rope so that it has been compressed in to a very tight sausage - sometimes called a carrotte). They were made after colour curing the leaves just as a way of storing and ageing them in the very little space I have available to me indoors. I made three of them from single varieties, Dark Virginia, Black Stalk Mammoth and Del Gold, about 1-2lbs of solid stalk-free tobacco in each one. No additives or flavourings. And even though they're only 2 months old I couldn't resist it and cut a coin off the black stalk mammoth one to see what it's done.
I tried chewing it - at the moment it's definitely too bitter and dry to use as straight chew. It also had a really salty taste to it which I think comes from my soil type - other vegetables have a strong mineral taste to them grown on my land too.
So then I cracked the pipe out and filled a bowl with a couple of thinly sliced coins rubbed out. And I don't think it's a word of a lie to say that despite sampling many different commercial blends (most of which I still have nearly full tins of!) - this single variety, un-aged, homegrown stuff has to be one of the best pipes I've ever smoked. A full unflavoured tobacco taste, no tongue bite, but still very potent - a bit like some of the virginia flakes I've had but smoother. It burnt superbly to the bottom of the bowl and was so strong that I nearly couldn't finish it. The smoke had something else I've never noticed in a tobacco without additives before too - it was nicely sweet on the tongue.
Maybe I'm also just enjoying it for the fact that I made it myself from a tiny seed - but there's no denying it was delicious - and still could be aged for years to become better. I didn't realise that tobacco this young could be this nice.
It's almost enough for me to take up smoking again full-time!
However, today I was checking on my "perique" of tobacco (not real perique, just a very tightly bound roll of leaves tied up under pressure with rope so that it has been compressed in to a very tight sausage - sometimes called a carrotte). They were made after colour curing the leaves just as a way of storing and ageing them in the very little space I have available to me indoors. I made three of them from single varieties, Dark Virginia, Black Stalk Mammoth and Del Gold, about 1-2lbs of solid stalk-free tobacco in each one. No additives or flavourings. And even though they're only 2 months old I couldn't resist it and cut a coin off the black stalk mammoth one to see what it's done.
I tried chewing it - at the moment it's definitely too bitter and dry to use as straight chew. It also had a really salty taste to it which I think comes from my soil type - other vegetables have a strong mineral taste to them grown on my land too.
So then I cracked the pipe out and filled a bowl with a couple of thinly sliced coins rubbed out. And I don't think it's a word of a lie to say that despite sampling many different commercial blends (most of which I still have nearly full tins of!) - this single variety, un-aged, homegrown stuff has to be one of the best pipes I've ever smoked. A full unflavoured tobacco taste, no tongue bite, but still very potent - a bit like some of the virginia flakes I've had but smoother. It burnt superbly to the bottom of the bowl and was so strong that I nearly couldn't finish it. The smoke had something else I've never noticed in a tobacco without additives before too - it was nicely sweet on the tongue.
Maybe I'm also just enjoying it for the fact that I made it myself from a tiny seed - but there's no denying it was delicious - and still could be aged for years to become better. I didn't realise that tobacco this young could be this nice.
It's almost enough for me to take up smoking again full-time!