Ask Hank 20: Chemical Responses to Other Chemicals, and Cheating
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Kevin Godbee - Jun 20, 2017
- 6 min read
A. Miller
I had a ton of a Virginia/Perique I particularly love that I may or may not have neglected and which eventually ended up dried out. Rather than try to rehydrate—with water I’m never sure is pure enough—I decided to blend it with McClelland 5100, an old staple, and to throw in some Old Joe Krantz for a good kick in the pants (not a coincidence the two rhyme).
I’m now surveying my perfectly mowed lawn (a first for me to complete to this high of standard) and enjoying a bowl of it in a pipe I made myself. The combination makes me feel like a big deal except that I’ve never grown a tobacco plant and might never be competent enough to do so myself (read: exceedingly brown thumb). But a self-made blend in a self-made pipe is a glorious thing. Both taste better in the presence of one another.
And this lawn looks really very good, I don’t care what my neighbors report to the HOA.
Now, on to the questions.
Dear Hank,
I use Bic lighters for my pipes because I’m lazy, matches are hard in the frequent wind I experience, and I feel like a pipe lighter is just an expensive way to buy a Bic lighter. I’m a huge fan of Bic pens. But are the fancy lighters all they’re cracked up to be? Am I missing out?
Fear Of Missing Out—John on Long Island
Dear FOMO John on Long Island,
Have you ever used a really expensive pen? Have you ever noticed that both are capable of writing?
There are three kinds of people in this world:
1) Those that purchase affordable items so they can own their things.
2) Those that purchase outlandishly expensive items so they can be owned by their things. (This isn’t inherently wrong mind you, just a different worldview).
3) Those that want to feel a tinge of guilt when they spend the weekend at their friend’s cabin in the woods and only notice after they drive several hours back to their house that they left their lighter at said cabin. Also those whom want to experience an emotion when they realize they just backed their car out of their driveway and smashed their favorite lighter with their brand new tires.
Since I fall neither in to category two or three (there are enough um… darn emotions in life to manufacture them over foolishness in my humble opinion), I am a Bic man, through and through.
That said, yes the fancy lighters are better.
Using the second or third best as long as I can remember,
Hank
Dear Hank,
I’ve recently moved from cigars to pipes and found the change to be quite enjoyable, though not as much easier on my pocket book as I had expected. But this weekend I ignored a new expensive artisan pipe I recently purchased and chose to enjoy an Arturo Fuente [a cigar] of which I’m quite a fan tonight.
When I do this I feel like I’m cheating. Am I cheating? Are there any pipe blends that have a true cigar-like taste?
Francesco in Rome
Dear Francesco in Rome,
I would like the be the first to call you terrible names and mock you mercilessly for your lack of faithfulness. While most of the people who do so are just doing so to make themselves feel better, I do it for the same reasons. So… stop being a cigar-sucking son of a motherless goat.
Now to move on, maybe you’re cheating, but the only way to truly know if you’re a cheater is to look around your home for regular household items and roll them in roll-your-own-cigarette paper. I suggest starting with the contents of a Lipton tea bag. If you find yourself coughing and dragging yourself across your kitchen floor screaming, “I just want my pipe back,” then you’re not a cheater. If you escalate to pieces of paper towel mixed with your dried tamale leftovers from your uncle’s retirement party, and then moving on to rolling the filament from that broken fluorescent lightbulb in your basement, then yes—you have a problem and your cheating knows no bounds.
One option (to be perceived as a pipe smoker instead of a scummy cheating McCheater) is to just buy a few cigars and use your cigar cutter to make small slices which you can either pack directly, or rub out before you stuff your pipe. To carry this out to its full effect, purchase a rope of Gawith and Hoggarth’s Happy Brown Bogie—just enough you can peel off the outer layer or two of it and wrap your pipe bit in the leaf. Otherwise you’ll find that little in the pipe world quite correlates to the feeling of chewing on the tobacco directly. But when in a pinch, you’ll find this is a good workaround.
Keep in mind, all of us occasionally partake of a cigar, nicotine patch, or tobacco flavored sunflower seeds when we’re incapable of finding the real thing.
Chewing on some of my favorite flake because…. well why the hell not,
Hank
Dear Hank,
Sometimes I eat a little too much for dinner and I smoke my pipe late in the evening to help with digestion. Is this normal? Are there others that do this too?
My wife says I’ve lost it,
Bloated Aubrey in LA
Dear Bloated Aubrey in LA,
It’s actually a long-held belief that a pipe helps you digest, and I think you’ll find it widely practiced amongst those of us who love briar (or cob, or clay, or… whatever). Actually I feel like most of my life is using chemicals to control the feelings I’m experiencing as a result of other chemicals.
Just the other night I decided to treat my kids to a 1/4 pound of candy from a fancy candy store and thought I’d stock myself up on Spree and Runts while I was at it. I devoured them constantly on the way home and found myself done with both before we made it back. I almost never eat candy and the sugar high was making me uncomfortably twitchy. To offset this I headed to the porch with a full bowl of Five Brothers, a long time favorite for when I need a serious kick of nicotine. I find a pipe hastens the spike and then subsequent crash of my blood sugar—which, obviously, is what I was going for. Unfortunately the brothers proved slightly too potent and I found myself walking in to the house sweating and feeling almost dizzy from such low blood sugar.
This led to my pouring myself a tall glass of bourbon to even things out. Eventually my body breaks the alcohol down to simple sugar (probably not much better than the Spree and Runts of earlier in the same evening), but first it causes a tremendous calm to come over me. Then to avoid waking up in the middle of the night with a sugar high, I simply drank much more bourbon.
This meant the morning started off slow. I’m old enough to know how to supplement my alcohol with water so I never have a headache in the morning, but I still found myself groggy and anything but quick. Nothing a little dip in to my kids sugar stashes (while they were still asleep) couldn’t solve….
Anyhow. Yes it’s normal. I’ve heard the digestive aid is as simple as swallowing the extra saliva your mouth produces while smoking. But don’t believe that hogwash. Never try to understand our mythical leaf or it will lose its mythical powers. I simply choose to believe that the solution to almost all of my life’s problems can be solved with a little burning of gloriousness in a bowl.
Not at all hopped up on anything at all right now, I swear I’m completely feeling fine and mellow and relaxed and everything right now, I swear it, not hopped up at all,
Hank
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Before we begin, I should tell you: this tobacco review is being written by an A.I. Not the fancy new GPTs or their ilk; no, this is last century’s meat-and-bone, all-organic model. To be fair, a large part of what we call knowledge is merely the accumulated perceptions and impressions gathered from a life wandered through, synthesized into a spongy mass of what-it-is-that-we-think-that-we-know. The algorithm for this prompt is simple enough: pump thousands of bowls of smoldering plant matter into a gaping maw, cross-reference the chemical sensations with all other matter previously ingested or inhaled, sieve it all through the diffuse and fractal twin lens of memory and emotion, and churn out a panoply of adjectives that attempts to convey the sensations to someone who hasn’t experienced it yet. Odds are that a diligently trained monkey could succeed half the time; if this reviewer nears fifty-one percent then that would qualify as an unrivaled success. There must have been some similar musings perambulating through the mind of Per Jensen when he began his mad scientist routine at Sutliff with the Pipe Force project, which brings us to the current mixture under the microscope—Sutliff’s Pipe Force: Episode I. Here again are the unusual ingredients that engendered the series, with the stoved Rustica being the defining voice in this composition. From the tin: The Latakia-forward English mixture offers plenty of smoky flavor from the fire-cured leaf, which is artfully harmonized with floral, earthy Stoved Rustica. A mixture of high-grade Virginias imparts a natural sweetness. Katerini, the sole Oriental component, offers herb and spice notes bringing complexity and nuance to the flavor profile. It’s certainly Latakia-forward, with the stoved Rustica doubling up on the rhythm section like a second bassist. A first whiff from the tin releases the aromas of shoe leather and hide glue in a base of clay soil with a campfire wafted over it like last night’s beach party. Once it’s been accustomed to oxygen again, subtle hints of sweetness poke through from the Virginias: lemon rind, light milk chocolate, the dregs of a peaty Scotch, and muddled cherry. Old regulars like fresh-sawn oak and tilled earth are there, of course, with distinct notes of truffle, creosote, damp peat, and pine bark mulch. As an aside, I’ve been re-potting my camellias and the similarity of aroma to the ericaceous soil mix is notable; the Katerini really brings the unique depth of its vegetal complexion when supported by the Rustica and afforded more voice in the mix. The smoky Cyprian Latakia, in turn, is backed by equal earthiness from the Rustica, which overall exhibits a profile similar to dark-fired Kentucky; it leans more toward the woody and vegetal end of that spectrum, echoing and amplifying those traits of the other constituents. The tobacco is presented pressed and cut into a couple of thick, hearty flakes in the tin, lightly moist and easily crumbled to prepare—I prefer mine with a bit of drying time. The out-of-this-world tin art for this episode in the series is Major O’Meara smoking a cavalier. In the absence of confirmation, I’m going to hazard a guess he’s of the Ithklur species. The first taste from the light is sweet, with hints of that milk chocolate dancing around the edges. The Virginia leads the smoke through the top of the bowl, and orchestrates it well. Thoroughly smoky with lemony, grassy highlights from the Virginia spectrum, it soon segues into the mid-bowl profile: heartier, smokier, with the flavor leaning to the mildly acrid and tangy tinge that is the campfire-esque signature of English blends. Caution advised, it can turn overly bitter if pushed—this is where one’s sipping technique is required to maintain the fullness of flavor through to the heel. I did tend toward a lot of relights, though it may have as much to do with technique as with the blend. Pacing is also important as the nicotine starts to manifest; though the Rustica’s contribution has been tempered well by the stoving, it can certainly upend an empty stomach. At the end of every bowl, the mouthfeel somehow gets better. The balance of sugars in the tobaccos would seem to be spot-on in this regard. I started out my tasting in cobs, then cut short an unpleasant bowl in a meer, and finally landed on my best instrument with the lovely Dunhill 4427 pictured, a quaint group 4 shell briar with a gentle curve and Cumberland stem supporting a perfectly executed acorn bowl. It surprised me here, as I’ve learned through the years that I generally have the best experience with English blends in large, wide bowls. With this blend it seems that to get the best out of the Katerini’s somewhat diaphanous influence the smaller bowl fared much better. Room note is very English, so the company you keep will either love it or hate it, and it doesn’t linger too much. I find it paired best with a strong coffee; Sumatran beans complement the flavors well, as do Ethiopian if a lighter brew is preferred. Overall impressions of the blend are that it’s a curiously interesting take on the English genre, almost a reductive reconstruction of the theme using the unique components. This blend, if nothing else, expanded my vocabulary of sense perceptions with the uniquely treated leaf. While the average human can distinguish approximately one trillion (1,000,000,000,000!) different aromas, multiplied by seven basic tastes, and wholly dependent on variables from body chemistry to atmospheric conditions, our overworked and underpaid simian brains can’t effectively catalog them all. Our pet adding machines are exceedingly good at this, however, and someday soon they’ll be the ultimate and unequivocal authority on what something tastes, smells, looks, or even feels like. Until that time, friends, revel in the moments that can be stolen to savor over a bowl of Pipe Force: Episode I.
