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James8855

Might Stick Around
Sep 23, 2019
52
27
I heard that if your pipe bowl goes sour, you have to clean it with rum and remove all of the cake and break in the pipe again. If you do this repeatedly all the time will it damage the pipe?

I’m new to pipe smoking.
 

trubka2

Lifer
Feb 27, 2019
2,470
21,640
Yeah, that sounds really extreme - probably just need to clean it. Sometimes if you just run some hot water through a pipe, wipe out the bowl real good with a paper towel, and run a couple cleaners through it, it'll perform dramatically better (after drying out and resting, of course). Not everybody likes doing that, but a lot of people do. It works great for me, personally. If it still tastes really bad, and you're sure it's the pipe, you can also try putting wet coffee grounds in the bowl for a couple days before moving on to more drastic measures (alcohol and cotton balls, etc.).
 

luigi

Can't Leave
May 16, 2017
456
1,265
Europe
I'm doing it exactly the way as OP is asking. It works for a better taste but it does damage a pipe's chamber a little.
You better go with thorough cleaning than playing with a reamer ar this point. The cheapest reamers (the known set with 4 heads made of plastic) are bad, I broke mine 2 times.
 
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writingraav

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jul 11, 2018
233
574
I don't know who turned me on to the coffee ground trick but it is a great way of deghosting a pipe.

Cleaning the entire pipe, not just the inside of the bowl, is important too. Some use special tools to clean away in there, I just use a few vodka soaked pipe cleaners.
I wonder if used loose tea leaves work just as well? We don't do coffee.
 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,077
Carmel Valley, CA
I'm a fan of coffee grounds if needed. (Most neighbors would be happy to donate used grounds to you!) But the hot water flush seems to obviate the need for harsher methods of cleaning. (and it will also flush the grounds out after they've done their job.)

EDIT: The emoji above won't delete! The word was "harsher" and deleting the emoji doesn't work, as it comes back on "Save".

Next edit: The word is "h a r s h e r". Very odd.
 

gatorlope

Part of the Furniture Now
Feb 5, 2019
503
196
South Florida
I'm doing it exactly the way as OP is asking. It works for a better taste but it does damage a pipe's chamber a little.
You better go with thorough cleaning than playing with a reamer ar this point. The cheapest reamers (the known set with 4 heads made of plastic) are bad, I broke mine 2 times.
I knew I had a good reason for buying “vintage”!puf
 
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olkofri

Lifer
Sep 9, 2017
8,033
14,644
The Arm of Orion
Yeah, a bit (or a lot) of a silly question, but how can you tell you have a sour pipe? How does it taste? (I don't think I've ever had that happen to me, and I'd like to know how to tell. Heh, just one more thing to worry about now, I guess...)
 
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jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,077
Carmel Valley, CA
S h e r, maybe a short form of Sherlock?
Sher Well, now there's no emoji, perhaps because it starts with an uppercase letter.

Harsher
We'll see!

Hsher asher xsher

Well, ok, I guess this is it: s h e r turns into sher when it's part of a word or by itself. Not preceeded by a capital. Whew.
 
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Reactions: jhowell
Jan 28, 2018
12,955
134,673
67
Sarasota, FL
I don't see a pipe "souring" unless it isn't cleaned properly, the smoker smokes really wet or there are mostly heavily laced goopers being smoked in it. I can see a pipe being ghosted if different blends types are smoked in it. If you smoke heavy latakia and/or Lakeland blends in a pipe and then try to smoke a straight VA in it, I suspect it could taste rather sour while what you're really tasting is the ghost.

I've been using the hot water rinse for over a year now and haven't deep cleaned a pipe since then. I've also had very, very minimal reaming required. To be fair, I'm rotating well over 50 pipes so it isn't like any one of them has been smoked 100's of times.
 
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