Rouseco Buoy Gold

[Briar Lee]

Cost $6 for six ounces.

Also in one pound bags for $12.

Highly recommended,





I’ve tried over a half dozen of the RYO grade Red, Blue, and Yellow varieties of cheap tobacco and was surprised to find every brand and style delicious, good smoking.

Rouseco seems the Cadillac of the cheap smoke shop blends. It costs a little more. It’s blended and packaged in North Carolina and none of the bags have percentages of foreign tobaccos. It’s pure tobacco, no additives.

All of the Yellow bags of every brand I’ve tried are Virginia bright leaf forward blends.

To me, Rouseco Golden Harvest Yellow is amazingly good, comparable to the old cotton sack bright leaf blends like Our Advertiser and Bull Durham.

Buoy comes in an almost identical package to Golden Harvest.

But ramp up the comparisons to include Capstan.

Virginia blends don’t get better than Buoy Gold.

This is strong, well aged, straight up bright leaf, at a fraction of the cost of Capstan. It’s a little different but in the same general class.

 

[alaskanpiper]

Virginia blends don’t get better than Buoy Gold.

Smoked quite a lot of Virginia blends have you?

I would never expect a full accounting of course, but can you rattle off maybe 8 or 10 Virginia blends you have smoke in comparison to come to this conclusion?

 

[Briar Lee]

Smoked quite a lot of Virginia blends have you?

I would never expect a full accounting of course, but can you rattle off maybe 8 or 10 Virginia blends you have smoke in comparison to come to this conclusion?

No, not a great deal, but Capstan Blue and Gold, a raft of Va Pers, Cornel and Diehl Virginia, Kendal 7, Virginia #1, Luxury Twist Flake, and Happy Brown Bogie come to mind.



There’s not a nickel’s difference between well aged Virginia in a little can and a big pound plastic bag.

The RYO makers also add some burley, but not much in the Yellow blends. Straight Virginia without a touch of burley is bitey.

I’ve rolled a king size cigarette with Buoy Gold and it’s just over the top delicious. There just isn’t a better cigarette than the ones you can roll for under a dollar a pack.

All the stuff you read about new mown hay and citrus are in my nightcap smoke. If you are old enough to remember Player’s Medium Navy Cut this is every bit as good.

Virginia and Burley tobaccos are commodities. They must be aged before sale. The makers add flavorings and blend varieties but it’s all just, commercial tobacco.

Rouseco only uses leaf tobacco, no reconstituted leaf and no additives. It’s about 20% more than the cheapest RYO brands.

Most of the bagged RYO brands offer a $1.25 one ounce package, and I’ve tried a bunch and all are good smoking.

Spend your first dollar on Bouy Gold and see what you get.

If you don’t like it, you don’t like Virginia blends.

 

[Chasing Embers]

If you don’t like it, you don’t like Virginia blends.

It's relabeled cigarette tobacco to avoid higher taxation. As such the tobacco was processed the same as tobacco meant for the cigarette market and little Virginia flavor remains. Please stop posting opinion and anecdotes as facts. We have newer smokers here that are looking for help not colorful embellishment.

 

[Briar Lee]

It's relabeled cigarette tobacco to avoid higher taxation. As such the tobacco was processed the same as tobacco meant for the cigarette market and little Virginia flavor remains. Please stop posting opinion and anecdotes as facts. We have newer smokers here that are looking for help not colorful embellishment.

I thought it was relabeled cigarette tobacco until I actually bought a bunch of one ounce packages.

It’s ribbon cut, it’s not easily inhale able in a pipe, and the best thing we pipe smokers can imagine is happening every day in those cheap smoke shops.

New smokers are buying a new pipe and a pound of pipe tobacco.

We need more new pipe smokers in brick and mortar shops.

And if you’d risk a dollar I’ll bet you like any of the cheap blends.

The yellow ones have a Virginia taste, which is why I suppose they are yellow.

Windy City sells Golden Harvest:

Their Virginia tobacco is carefully grown and harvested in the fertile fields of Virginia, known for producing some of the finest tobacco leaves in the world. Golden Harvest uses a unique curing process that enhances the natural flavors and aromas of its tobacco, resulting in a truly exceptional smoking experience.

Golden Harvest Pipe Tobacco 1lb (16oz) | Best Price

Golden Harvest Tobacco makes high-quality Virginia-sourced pipe tobacco, has a large flavor choice, and has some of the highest-quality tobacco leaves available!

windycitycigars.com

—-

It’s really a lot better than I imagined.

 

[HeavyLeadBelly]

I feel that the people who are interested in pipe smoking are coming from either the cigar world, quitting cigs, or from the land of Go for and flying dragons. Regardless I’m sure they have the means to procure better product than the bulk RYO. Most of the country has access to the web these days to access online shopping if they do not have a B&M around.

 

[alaskanpiper]

No, not a great deal, but Capstan Blue and Gold, a raft of Va Pers, Cornel and Diehl Virginia, Kendal 7, Virginia #1, Luxury Twist Flake, and Happy Brown Bogie come to mind.

I understand your penchant for thrift, and while this buoy tobacco may be better than some might expect, it is my guess that somewhere in the neighborhood of 99/100 experienced virginia pipe smokers would adamantly prefer any and all of these blends as compared to the buoy.

It’s cheap, and maybe not so bad to some people, and that’s a good thing, but proclaiming that VA doesn’t get any better, or that if you don’t like this you don’t like virginias, is wildly contrary to the opinion of an overwhelming majority of pipe smokers.

You enjoy it, you think it’s good, it’s affordable, all fine things to say. Even saying you prefer it to all other Virginias is fine.

But saying it’s as good as it gets, and discouraging others who may well be new to virginia blends to try anything else if they don’t like it, is a bit absurd, since your opinion here regarding it’s quality as compared to other available virginia blends is in the extreme minority.

What you have said here is the pipe smoking equivalent of saying that meat doesn’t get any better than SPAM! If you don’t like SPAM, you don’t like meat!

 

[PipeIT]

@Briar Lee would you be wiling to send me some samples of some different Rouseco, Golden Harvest, or any others, that you consider their finest blend, and I will sincerely give my honest opinion about this. I’ll even pay the shipping...

I’m certainly not the VA Pro around here, but, VAs/VaPers are all I’ve mainly smoked for the past 3 years, and I’ve smoked quite a lot of them, that I could give a fair assessment to the worth of these blends.

Considering how these blends are packaged, marketed, and the businesses these are sold online, I’m quite sure these are just basic VAs, more akin to cigarettes, one dimensional, like Chasing said, repackaged cigarette tobacco.

Because, if there was anything serious going on, in regards to Rouseco, or Golden Harvest, or any of these repackaged roll your own, ask yourself, why aren’t leading pipe businesses not carrying and selling them.

Let me know...

 

[alaskanpiper]

Their Virginia tobacco is carefully grown and harvested in the fertile fields of Virginia, known for producing some of the finest tobacco leaves in the world. Golden Harvest uses a unique curing process that enhances the natural flavors and aromas of its tobacco, resulting in a truly exceptional smoking experience.

Well, if it’s on the packaging it MUST be true!!!

 

[cshubhra]

I think when these RYO Virginias are mixed with “the thing that oozes out of Algerian Briar, and we are no longer allowed to mention” it would taste heavenly.

You just need a proper Algerian Briar that colors rosy in two smokes to enjoy these.

 

[TheIronMonkey]

If I can find this brand at the shop down the road that has bags of RYO tomorrow, I may have to take one for the team and find out what @Briar Lee is talking about.

 

[Briar Lee]

If I can find this brand at the shop down the road that has bags of RYO tomorrow, I may have to take one for the team and find out what @Briar Lee is talking about.

People have been giving me shit about my hillbilly ways since I was hatched one half mile South of Bug Tussle, a very real place but home of the fictional Beverley Hillbillies.

But we are just naturally curious.


The shop I was in today had the entire north wall devoted to cheap tobacco.

In the center there was an island of Dr Grabow and Missouri Meerschaum pipes.

I asked the clerk what they sold most of and she said Golden Harvest Gold, people smoke that in a pipe instead of just tubes.

There are 23 grades of USDA Virginia tobaccos.

Flue-Cured Tobacco U.S. Types 11, 12, 13, 14, & Foreign Type 92 Cutters C Group Grades and Standards | Agricultural Marketing Service - https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/flue-cured-tobacco-us-types-11-12-13-14-foreign-type-92-cutters-c-group-grades-and

How would a certain grade of Virginia know, it was going into Capstan or Gambler?

And maybe it might like, being a poor man’s solace against the storms of life, you know?

 

[TN Jed]

I appreciate both your hillbilly ways and thriftiness. The current trajectory of humanity will likely cause both to be beneficial in the not so distant future.

 

[King Bulldog]

I may be a doctor. I may have made a decent amount of money. I am cheap. I still wouldn't let that RYO tobacco touch my pipe. If you want quality, you'll have to be willing to pay for it.

 

[TN Jed]

 

[TheIronMonkey]

I may be a doctor. I may have made a decent amount of money. I am cheap. I still wouldn't let that RYO tobacco touch my pipe. If you want quality, you'll have to be willing to pay for it.

If I can find this stuff, I will give it a try. I won’t dismiss it out of hand. I may even smoke it out of an Algerian briar pipe for full effect.

 

[woodsroad]

The amount of vitriol and disdain coming from readers who have never even tried RYO is unpleasantly expected. Briar Lee’s unabashed crusade has touched a nerve. A nerve that is screaming “all that self-esteem wrapped up in overpaying for fancy-assed tobacco, and the contrived sales and marketing stories that go with it, just got hit head-on by an old farm truck full of RYO”

I had no plans to buy any RYO, but now I’m pretty much compelled to do so. I hope the uninformed naysayers are wrong, very wrong, but if the stuff sucks, I won’t hold back my opinion, either.

 

[King Bulldog]

The amount of vitriol and disdain coming from readers who have never even tried RYO is unpleasantly expected. Briar Lee’s unabashed crusade has touched a nerve. A nerve that is screaming “all that self-esteem wrapped up in overpaying for fancy-assed tobacco, and the contrived sales and marketing stories that go with it, just got hit head-on by an old farm truck full of RYO”

I had no plans to buy any RYO, but now I’m pretty much compelled to do so. I hope the uninformed naysayers are wrong, very wrong, but if the stuff sucks, I won’t hold back my opinion, either.

I've had RYO in a fag before and it is horrible. Reason I won't let it touch my pipes.

 

[woodsroad]

I've had RYO in a fag before and it is horrible. Reason I won't let it touch my pipes.

Whatever your sexual predilections are is none of my business, but please refrain from derisive slang usage.

And no matter what you allow to touch your pipe, just be sure to wrap that rascal.

 

[Simmerdown☕️]

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