Pure Tobacco Pipe Blends You Can Make

[deluxestogie]

Blending Base Label

What can I say? It's becoming a habit. (For reasons known only to the senility gods, this label is 3-1/4" diameter.)

Download: BurleyVirginiaBlendBase_blendLabel.pdf just the one label.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Vizier

In a first blend using the Burley Virginia Blend Base, I've added only a light-colored, mild Oriental. In this case, I used my newly kilned, stalk-harvested, sun-cured Düzce. The result is that the Oriental hovers just above the balanced Blend Base, which in itself provides a medium nicotine strength. Vizier has a mild, subtle, Turkish floral note. Vizier's appearance is a slightly lighter-colored version of the Burley Virginia Blend Base photo. It looks unintimidating, despite the richness of the Blend Base body. The label depicts the repose of a quiet lake in Düzce, Turkey.

Vizier

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 75% [Kilned Burley Red Tip 1/3; Flue-cured Virginia Red 1/3; Flue-cured Virginia Bright 1/3]
• Light Oriental 25%

Download single label: Vizier_blendLabel.pdf

This label and the Blend Base label have been added to the Orphan Blend Labels .pdf (in a previous post), if you're planning to print that set.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Grand Vizier

I'm really delighted with how easy it is to whip up some truly excellent pipe blends using the Burley and Virginia Blend Base. The well balanced Base provides both the body of the aroma, as well as the medium nicotine. It's just a matter of deciding on which condiments to add, in order to lift the final blend in your direction of choice.

Here, I've started with the Base at 50%, my Düzce Oriental at 25%, and turned it into a legitimate, mild Balkan blend, by adding Latakia at 25%--which is at the low end of Latakia for traditional Balkan blends..

Grand Vizier

• Burley Virginia Blending Base 50%
• Light Oriental 25%
• Latakia 25%

Grand Vizier resembles Burley Baby, but lacks Dark-Air. So it's smoother.

Download 3-1/2" labels for the 5 blends in the Ottoman Series: OttomanBlendSeries_labels.pdf

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Ottoman Series

I decided to make a complete blend series, the Ottoman Series. (And I've added that moniker to each of the labels.) All five begin with Burley Virginia Blend Base. Here are the remaining three.

Mamluk

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 1/3
• Oriental 1/3
• Latakia 1/3 [~33%]

Sublime Port

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 25%
• Oriental 25%
• Latakia 50%

Janissary

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 25%
• Latakia 75%

At 75% Latakia, Janissary will tend to separate within its container, whenever you pack a pipe from it (Brazil nut effect). You can just mix it again, or begin by solidly pressing the blend into a crumble cake. The latter will require considerable pressure over a period of at least several weeks. Then you just break off a piece, and crumble it into your pipe bowl.

My link in the previous post now goes to a download of all 5 labels.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I'm surprised you haven't taken the opportunity to put Saint Nicholas on a can of Turkish tobacco.

 

[deluxestogie]

Old St. Nicholas, back when he regularly smoked a pipe, is depicted on Rosy Cheeks. That image is from 19th century advertising. What could be more engaging to consumers than an old man with rosy cheeks and a tobacco pipe? See that bit of holly on his head? Or the polka dotted toy horse in his lap, looking aghast at the noxious fumes wafting from the clay bowl? A saint if ever there was one.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Pennsylvania (seedleaf) Blend

WLT offers Pennsylvania Binder. I made this blend using a WLT sample of PA "ligero", just to see how potent this can be. The pipe blend begins with my Burley Virginia Blend Base, then adds a full measure of the PA leaf--making up half of the final blend.

I would consider this a relatively full-bodied pipe blend (in the vein of the rich blends created by @greenmonster714). The nicotine is not overwhelming, witnessed by my packing and smoking two bowls of it in succession--because it's yummy. Burn is excellent. Aroma is robust and enjoyable. No gooeyness here. No bite. In a surprise, the room note is not a cigar leaf note. Pennsylvania seedleaf is different. There is no cigar stinkiness or acrid room aroma. Much of PA seedleaf is grown in the Lancaster Valley of Pennsylvania. Hence the name of the blend.

Lancaster

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 50%
• Pennsylvania (seedleaf) 50%

At the moment, I'm cooking up 3 different Cavendish tobaccos for a Cavendish Blend series: flue-cured VA Bright, kilned Silver River, and kilned Burley Red Tips.

Bob

 

[CobGuy]

That one looks like it's right up my alley!

~Darin

 

[deluxestogie]

Chaptico '72: a Maryland pipe blend

I haven't experimented much with Maryland. This is the first of two Maryland blends. This one uses kilned Maryland 609, flue-cured Virginia Red, and a modest dose of Latakia. The second blend (ready before Christmas) will utilize kilned MD 609 Cavendish and the Burley Virginia Blend Base--no Latakia, and will be a member of my set of 6 blends in the Cavendish Blend series.

Chaptico '72

• kilned Maryland 609 25%
• flue-cured Virginia Red 50%
• Latakia 25%

In this settng, the Maryland plays a role similar to that of burley, and to a lesser extent replaces the need for Perique. This lights easily, burns well, has a medium+ nicotine, and a gentle, Latakia smokiness. Using VA Bright here, instead of the Red, creates some tongue bite. The taste of Chaptico '72 is a bit more savory (think beef broth) than a typical Latakia blend.

The "72" in the blend name is a nod to the year that I cruised on my mortorcycle through the Amish tobacco country of south Maryland, en route to Chaptico. I hand-rolled my very first stogie from a field-cured leaf of Maryland tobacco offered by an Amish man working on his tobacco harvest.

Bob

Progress Note: I've cooked and dried down Cavendish of VA Bright, Cavendish of kilned Burley Red and Cavendish of kilned Silver River. Kilned Maryland and kilned Black Mammoth are currently undergoing Cavendish stewing.

 

[deluxestogie]

This is my Christmas blend for 2018. It is not flavored like food or candy--just tobacco. If you have any pipe smoking friends or relatives (pretty rare these days) consider making up an extra Ziploc or two as gifts.

The blend's pouch aroma is that of a mild English/Balkan mixture. It lights easily, burns well, and to a clean, dry ash. That hint of Pennsylvania in the blend broadens the flavor profile, but not so much as to reveal the leaf fully. It does add a seasonally expected, glycemic note--tra la la la la, la la la la. Nicotine is moderate. The proportion of Latakia is rather low--just enough to add a mild smokiness, and fill out the pouch aroma. The small amount of Perique, together with the PA leaf in the blend results in no tongue bite. (That may not be the case if, using the "generalized" blend recipe, you select VA Bright, instead of Red Virginia or my preferred Double-bright. If you use VA Bright, then you may want to increase the Perique a bit.) The Prilep I used was from my 2013 crop, and was sun-cured, then kilned, prior to a 5 year snooze.

Bob's Christmas Blend 2018

• Virginia Double Bright 37.5%
• Prilep 25%
• Latakia 18.75%
• Perique 12.5%
• Pennsylvania seedleaf 6.25%

Generalized Christmas Blend 2018 (tablespoons or grams or pounds or handfuls)

• Virginia flue-cured [preferably double-bright or red] 37.5% (6)
• Oriental 25% (4)
• Latakia 18.75% (3)
• Perique 12.5% (2)
• PA leaf [or Dark-Air] (1)

If anybody needs a pdf file of the label, just let me know, and I'll create one.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Cavendish Exploration

Got Cavendish!

This has been fun. Testing and working with 6 different types of Cavendish is fairly revealing. As with Perique, even the blackest of Cavendish dries to a dull brown when it reaches a proper case for smoking. I suspect that if the leaf is boiled (cooked while submerged in water), rather than just steamed, it will become permanently darker--and maybe become less combustible.

The extent of cooking and cooking temperature really didn't seem to have much of an impact on either the color or the burn characteristics of the varieties tested. All varieties became darker, but their relative color ranking did not change.

All the bending possibilities are too great in number to be realistically approached. So I simplified the process by using each of the six in its own blend, in combination with my Burley Virginia Blend Base (1/3 kilned Burley Red tip; 1/3 flue-cured Virginia Bright; 1/3 flue-cured Virginia Red). After settling on the proportion of Cavendish to add--determined by both the nicotine potency and flavor intensity, I created each of the 6 unique Cavendish blends.

In addition, I've smoked each unique Cavendish straight, and also created two blends that do not use the Burley Virginia Blend Base. Each of the tobacco varieties (except the flue-cured VA Bright) was kilned prior to being transformed into Cavendish.

Nicotine Potency ranked from mildest to strongest:

• flue-cured VA Bright Cavendish
• Harrow Velvet Cavendish
• Silver River Cavendish
• Burley Red Tips
• Maryland 609
• Black Mammoth

Both the VA Bright Cavendish and the Harrow Velvet Cavendish are mild enough to smoke straight. The others, when smoked straight, made my head spin.

The VA Bright Cavendish is a beautiful, uniform mahogany red, and is, I suspect, what Dunhill marketed as "Red Virginia". The Cavendish process raised its pH above (more alkaline than) the flue-cured VA Bright source leaf. A bit of sweetness remains. But even the Cavendish still has a slight tongue bite, which inspired the VA Bright Cavendish with Perique blend--a genuine Virginia/Perique blend, but with better manners.

A common burley/bright blend is 50:50. In my Cavendish version, the burley must be reduced. So I ended up with 1/3 Burley Red Tip Cavendish to 2/3 VA Bright Cavendish, to make my Burley & Bright: the Cavendish. It's noticeably milder than the blend with Burley and Bright Blend Base, though still somewhat stout.

Kilning reduces some of the terpene aroma of Silver River, but not enough for my tastes. Cavendish cooking reduces that terpene smell even further. The Silver River Cavendish blend uses only a tiny proportion of Silver River, and at that level, the slight terpene aroma makes the blend interesting. I think the straight Silver River Cavendish will need to rest for a few years, before it is tamed.

Maryland Cavendish is a deep, woody treat for the nose, but the nicotine is quite heavy. I would say that pipe smokers who enjoy very robust blends will find the Maryland Cavendish blend tempting.

As with any other Dark-Air variety, the Black Mammoth Cavendish is just too intense to appreciate straight. Since its presence tends to raise the pH of a blend, the nicotine absorption is amplified. Its pouch aroma is enticing, but its use demands a little caution. At a mere 10%, my Black Mammoth Cavendish Blend is just about right, and is rather tasty. Smoking Black Mammoth Cavendish straight requires a better man than me. Using my tiniest cob, I filled 1/4 of the bowl, and could not finish it, because of the nicotine. It's a beast. But its flavor and aroma are surprisingly well tamed by the Cavendish process.

The Winner
Flue-cured VA Bright Cavendish is the only one of all six that caused me to say aloud to myself, "this is delicious!" Each of the others suggest themselves more as condiments for blending.


The Blends

Burley Virginia Blend Base

• Kilned Burley Red Tip 1/3
• Flue-cured Virginia Red 1/3
• Flue-cured Virginia Bright 1/3

Virginia Bright Cavendish Blend

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 75%
• Flue-cured Virginia Bright Cavendish 25%

Harrow Velvet Cavendish Blend

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 50%
• Kilned Harrow Velvet Cavendish 50%

Silver River Cavendish Blend

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 85%
• Kilned Silver River Cavendish 15%

Burley Red Tip Cavendish Blend

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 2/3
• Kilned Burley Red Tip Cavendish 1/3

Maryland Cavendish Blend

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 75%
• Kilned Maryland Cavendish 25%

Black Mammoth Cavendish Blend

• Burley Virginia Blend Base 90%
• Kilned Black Mammoth Cavendish 10%

Virginia Cavendish with Perique

• Flue-cured Virginia Bright Cavendish 87.5%
• Perique 12.5%

Burley & Bright: The Cavendish

• Flue-cured Virginia Bright Cavendish 2/3
• Kilned Burley Red Tip Cavendish 1/3

Download all the labels: CavendishBlend_completeLabelSet.pdf (~1 MB, 3 page pdf.)

CONCLUSIONS:
You can make Cavendish of any tobacco variety you choose. I would recommend that you first kiln any tobacco that has not been flue-cured, prior to turning it into Cavendish. Your considerations should include your expected role for the Cavendish (main component vs. condiment), as well as the nicotine hit you desire from it. I think that for most varieties, the Cavendish process makes the (unchanged level of) nicotine more absorbable, so strong tobacco will seem even stronger.

Bob

Footnote: For each tobacco variety, I used about 10 frog-legged leaves in a 1 quart Mason jar. Each frog-legged leaf was rolled into a little bundle, then tucked into the jar, making it quite easy to remove each bundled leaf afterwards, using tongs. While inserting the leaf bundles individually, each was spritzed with distilled water several times, resulting in very damp leaf, and less than a teaspoon of free water at the bottom of the jar. Some were processed in a boiling hot-water bath, others within a pressure cooker. The method seemed to make little difference, other than the time.

 

[Charly]

Thank you Bob for sharing your in-depth notes about your cavendish experimentations !
Very instructive !

 

[deluxestogie]

Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse

• Flue-cured Virginia Red 25%
• Flue-cured Virginia Red Cavendish 18.75%
• Kilned Burley Red Tips 25%
• Kilned Burley Red Tips Cavendish 18.75%
• Latakia 12.5%

To begin, you need, in addition to Latakia, some Virginia Red and Kilned Burley Red Tips. Then you're on your own for cooking up batches of the VA Red and Burley Red Tip into Cavendish.

It was the bizarre media frenzy over the silly name of the rather ordinary lunar eclipse expected this month that spurred me to make this blend.

Facts: There is a lunar eclipse somewhere in the world every single month, at full moon--when our moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the Sun. A lunar eclipse is occasionally called a "blood moon", just because you see a somewhat reddish moon during the eclipse. "Blood Moon Eclipse" is simply redundant, and should properly be called either "Blood Moon" or "Lunar Eclipse", but not "Blood Moon Eclipse". Since the moon's orbit around earth is not a perfect circle, sometimes it is closer to earth than at other times. At its closest, it is labeled a "super moon". Somebody somewhere calls any full moon in every January the "Wolf Moon". Whoopie! But astronomical events need to be spiced up a bit for mass media consumption. So we have been fed, "Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse".

Imagination: For the blend, I wanted 5 ingredients--one to represent each word in the invented name: a bunch of "red" names of ingredients, as well as something black, to symbolize "eclipse". That's it. No skill involved. Just symbolism. To my surprise, my first trial of such a nonsensical blend tastes wonderful, and has a mild but complex pouch aroma. The strength is a low-medium. Perhaps I should shorten the blend name to just "Blood Moon", but that's not as much fun.

Bob

 

[Charly]

Fun idea to imagine a blend this way, a good thing it came out good
And (of course) I love the name ! It's like a comic's book title

 

[deluxestogie]

It's like a comic's book title

Coming soon to theaters everywhere.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Cajun Muse

This is a pipe blend that I've listed previously. It appears in my Perique/Latakia matrix. But I can't recall discussing the unique qualities of this blend.

Cajun Muse

• Latakia 37.5%
• Oriental 12.5% [I used Düzce for this batch.]
• Lemon 12.5%
• VA Red 25%
• Perique 12.5%

In balancing a blend, I focus on the pH--the acidity. Too acid, and it hits the tip of the tongue (tongue bite), while too alkaline is felt on the sides and back of the tongue. This particular blend does something unusual. It creates a tang on the tip of the tongue, but simultaneously on the sides and back of the tongue. It also somehow gives the impression that the Latakia proportion is much lower than it's fairly robust 37.5%.

In most blends, when the acidity is ideally neutralized, there is no perceived sensation of a tang or bite anywhere. It just vanishes. But with Cajun Muse, something else about the blend allows the tongue to perceive both sensations at the same time. It doesn't vanish. I'm inclined to attribute that odd effect to the combination of a modestly high Latakia, together with a modestly high VA Red. But I'm really guessing about this.

Theory aside, the diffuse piquancy of the blend deceives the tongue into sensing a mild and warm cayenne pepper effect. Go figure. But...it's Cajun, after all.

Bob

 

[Plöjarn]

pH of the smoke.
After experimenting with blending pipe tobacco a couple of years I can only agree, balancing the pH of the smoke is central in finding a blend that you like. I have discovered that my own preference is on the more alkaline side. Virginias just give me a sour taste and feeling in my mouth and a lot of tounge-bite. But if the smoke is too alkaline it will loose a lot of its aroma and get harsh and just feel and taste like ash burning in the pipe. Thats how it works in my body.

Based on my own experience and what I have read on this forum, I have tried to create a list to get an overview of how different tobaccos affect the pH of the smoke. I have only tried a few different tobaccos in a small number of blends and I understand that this is somewhat personal and subjective, but perhaps we can collaborate to make a list that is as universal as possible. This is my first attempt at sorting, please help me to add more tobaccos and to get this right!

From most alkaline to most acidic (smoke):
(Naturally it will differ between different types of tobacco within a group.)

Perique
Dark air/ Dark fired
Caribbean Cigar Leaf
Burley
Maryland
American Cigar Leaf
Orientals
VA Bright Cavendish
VA Red
VA Bright

For me, the neutral spot are somewhere around the orientals and American cigar leaf.
As I said, my own experience is very limited, but I would really like to get a good overview of this for future blending experiments!

Anders

 

[deluxestogie]

Bravo, Plöjarn! Your list is remarkably close to how I would rate them, but with one substantial difference. I believe your separation of American Cigar Leaf from Caribbean Cigar Leaf is not meaningful. Perhaps your personal experience with samples from the two geographic areas is consistent with separating them. My own experience, with scores of varieties from both broad locations (together accounting for over half the arable land in the "New World"), is that there is no significant difference in their pH, as a group. Of course, select varieties from either location may be more acidic or alkaline than others. I guess I would combine the two broad groups, and place them in your list at the same ranking where you listed Caribbean Cigar Leaf--and just generalize it to "Cigar Leaf".

In addition, each crop--and sometimes each bale--of tobacco of a specific variety, even from the very same field, differs from its generalized character in subtle or obvious ways. So there is always an element of experimentation required of a pipe blender, when following a tried and true recipe.

I think that the expert blenders of famous cigar factories earn their reputation, not by creating a recipe and following it for years, but by remembering the "original" taste of a blend, and manipulating the recipe, batch by batch, to adjust for the unavoidable differences in the character of the stated ingredients. As with my pipe blending recipes, their cigar blend recipes are merely a starting point.

Bob

 

[Plöjarn]

Thanks Bob! I'm happy I got it kind of right.
Separating "American" and Caribbean Cigar Leaf was based on your thread "Deciding on Varieties to grow for pipe blending and cigars" where you describe different groups of cigar tobacco. I was thinking of my homegrown Little Dutch, which is the only one in the group "wood and leather" I have tried. To me, Little Dutch is noticably less alkaline than the regular caribbean-derived types. Do the same apply to the other tobaccos in the group (Dutch, PA Red, Long Red)?

Do you think I should place these in their own category (named "American wood and leather filler" or something else) or should I simply remove them?

By the way. Is there a way of editing my old post?

 

[deluxestogie]

I would group Little Dutch, Dutch Ohio, PA Red, Long Red, Glessnor, PA Seedleaf varieties and Swarr/Swarr-Hibshman together, with regard to pH. The "Dutch" and "Red" varieties do have that distinctive "wood and leather" taste, while the others do not. In addition to those, there are numerous "Havana" types that have been developed and grown commercially in the US for over a century. So, your operative term, "Caribbean-derived types", is perhaps more applicable than their contemporary source.

As to placement, it comes down to how granular a list you want.

Bob

Editing old posts is not permitted, since it often renders subsequent posts confusing.