Ruminations on Error of Smoking Quality Theory

[Briar Lee]

About thirty or so years ago, the owner of the Lead Mine General Store held back for me a Dr Grabow Grand Duke pipe her father had misplaced behind a cabinet in the store about thirty years before.

Marie White sold me that pipe for it’s price sticker of $9.95 and that pipe was the first awesome, over the top, way better smoker than the ordinary pipe I have been lucky enough to own. I’ve aquired a few dynamite good smokers since then

On this forum is a never ending debate between those who hold pipe construction is more important than briar and I’ve been firmly in the camp of it’s the briar.

(Getting the chance to buy a 30 year old brand new pipe at the Lead Mine General store never hurt a pipe’s smoking quality either. Some of smoking quality is psychological, between our ears, a chimera.)

My pencils all have erasers and I use those erasers. I’ve been wrong and will be wrong again about many issues. The hard part is admitting it.

Today I got in a Zig Zag rolling machine for my cheap bottom shelf pipe tobaccos and it has a 6mm and and 8mm size adjustment. The standard American cigarrete is about 6mm. I adjusted my roller to roll fat boy 8mm cigarettes.



Increasing the diameter of a cigarrete rolled with cheap pipe tobacco 25% makes a profound difference in smoking quality.

I used the same paper, same tobacco, the only change was construction, there is no briar to factor in.

Since increasing the diameter of the cigarrete 25% means the tobacco used increases by much more than 25% the same thing would happen in a briar pipe.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Ancient briar grown way high on a mountain can’t hurt smoking quality, but maybe it’s the chamber dimensions combined with the draft hole that make the biggest differnce?

I’m going to smoke another Willie Nelson size hand roll and ruminate on it some more.

 

[OzPiper]

Equating a bowl of pipe tobacco to a roll-your-own cigarette

 

[Briar Lee]

Equating a bowl of pipe tobacco to a roll-your-own cigarette

Same tobacco, no briar.

The change in flavor and improved smoking quality from increasing the diameter from 6mm to 8mm is just amazing to me.

Here’s the chamber of a very old Bruck Bros Best Briar pipe when I got it in a few days ago.



Same pipe after I reamed it.



That pipe isn’t my best smoker but it’s in the top tier.

I radically changed the chamber dimensions by reaming it.


If it’s the dimensions—construction- of a briar pipe that make the difference between an outstandingly good smoker and a so so or bad smoker, then aged pre 54 Algerian briar as soft as butter and the color of oxblood, only triggers the imagination it’s any better than anything else, and briar quality is not relevant to good smoking.

And a thousand dollar Dunhill and a fifty dollar Rossi stand the same chance of being good smokers.

Sacred cows die hard.

But maybe I’m wrong about briar making the biggest difference.

 

[Briar Lee]

Another point for those who hold its construction that rules smoking quality is the phenomena a pipe might “like” Virginia tobaccos and not “like” burley blends, or vice versa.

The flavors we enjoy and taste is actually from oils released by heat from the ember.

If it’s construction and not briar that govern, the same pipe will burn Virginia at a temperature it likes, and burley may not like that temperature.

So far this evening all I know is i think big fat cigarettes are better smokers.


But why?

 

[OzPiper]

I have smoked a chopped cigar in a pipe, and the same cigar as a cigar.
Completely different experience.

I don’t think you should compare smoking a cigarette and the same tobacco out of a pipe.
Just saying

As I don’t smoke cigarettes, perhaps members who smoke both cigarettes and pipes may like to chip in

 

[Briar Lee]

I have smoked a chopped cigar in a pipe, and the same cigar as a cigar.
Completely different experience.

I don’t think you should compare smoking a cigarette and the same tobacco out of a pipe.
Just saying

As I don’t smoke cigarettes, perhaps members who smoke both cigarettes and pipes may like to chip in

I used to subscribe to Cigar Aficionado and invariably when they’d rate a cigar of different gauges the bigger gauge cigar was a little better, whether a Punch or Hoyo or whatever brand.

They explained that, by claiming the bigger diameter cigars burned a little cooler and released more flavorful oils from the smoldering tobacco.

This new Zig Zag box roller makes 8mm cigarettes and the difference in flavor is just amazing over an ordinary 6mm cigarrete. I’d never tried opening up the roller to a larger size.

I’ve thought for thirty years or more, a really great smoking pipe was the result of the flavor of higher grade briar.

The briar quality, might have little to do with it.

The key might be chamber dimensions.


Anybody else feel free to chime in.

Is it briar, or construction, or some of both, or do we imagine some pipes are better?

Pipes and cigars and cigarretes all have different tastes, of course.

The cigars use cigar tobaccos. Smoke cigar clippings in a pipe and there’s still a cigar type taste.

But on the bottom of the shelves are tobaccos like Buoy that are mostly North Carolina bright leaf. Buoy tastes good in a pipe, and tastes good in a cigarette.

The little $5 plastic rollers in the smoke shops roll about a 6mm cigarette.

This Zig Zag I ordered cost ten bucks, and gives the choice of an 8mm smoke.

It also has a cloth roller instead of plastic and is an all around better gadget to roll cigarettes.

Where this applies to pipes, is this.

The smallest chamber bore on my smallest Marxman pipes is .750”, or 3/4 of an inch.

The bigger Marxman pipes I love so much start at .850” and many go over .900”. Telescopes, or some other 400 owner, has one that’s a full inch, I think.

I might be in love with big chambers, not Algerian briar.

 

[OzPiper]

I used to subscribe to Cigar Aficionado and invariably when they’d rate a cigar of different gauges the bigger gauge cigar was a little better, whether a Punch or Hoyo or whatever brand.

They explained that, by claiming the bigger diameter cigars burned a little cooler and released more flavorful oils from the smoldering tobacco.



Anybody else feel free to chime in.

Is it briar, or construction, or some of both, or do we imagine some pipes are better?

I smoked cigars for some 15 years exclusively before getting back to pipes.
My favourite violas were coronas, corona gordas and robustos
The largest ring gauge I liked was a double corona
PS Cuban vitola names and ring gauges, of course.

While I really like Dominican and Nicaraguan cigars, I do not appreciate their upsized offerings
And I’m saddened to see the Cuban cigar industry pandering to this trend
I suppose market forces rule.

 

[TheIronMonkey]

@Briar Lee

I used to subscribe to Cigar Aficionado starting in the early ’90s; I also subscribed to Marvin Shanken’s Cigar Insider newsletter. Generally, I almost always preferred the larger gauge versions of a given line of cigars. Quite often, it seemed like the bigger gauges allowed for combinations of more different tobaccos and offered greater complexity; thinner gauges seemed less full flavoured to me than their bigger counterparts. Maybe they tasted exactly the same, but my perception told me otherwise.

With pipes, I suspect the perceived flavour of tobacco is affected by many different factors. Chamber size, airflow, humidity, pipe material, cadence of smoking, how you lit the tobacco—so many variables.

 

[Briar Lee]

I smoked cigars for some 15 years exclusively before getting back to pipes.
My favourite violas were coronas, corona gordas and robustos
The largest ring gauge I liked was a double corona
PS Cuban vitola names and ring gauges, of course.

While I really like Dominican and Nicaraguan cigars, I do not appreciate their upsized offerings
And I’m saddened to see the Cuban cigar industry pandering to this trend
I suppose market forces rule.

In Humansville Missouri sixty years ago was the Shady Nook Cafe, which Edgar Buchanan (Uncle Joe on Petticoat Junction and a Humansville native son) remembered as the Shady Rest, which in his day stood on the same spot.

Louise Hornbeck ran the Shady Nook, and her husband John would come in to help her, between milking 50 cows morning and evening and also running the dairy truck milk haulers to Springfield.

John would look over at Louise and say It’s a lucky thing men have different tastes or else every man on this earth would be after my wife.

Louise would take off her glasses and smile coyly at John, when he said that.

And John Hornbeck is right.

If everybody had my tastes a Marxman would cost more than a Dunhill.

My Zig Zag roller came set to the standard 6mm size. If I’d not read the instructions I’d never have changed it, and I had to use my watch maker tools to change it. I had to depress the pin and cuss and fiddle with it until I got it raised up one notch.

The vast majority of these likely die set on the lower pin notch.



But 25% more diameter does make a big difference in a hand rolled cigarette.

Camel Wides probably were 8mm.

 

[anotherbob]

@Briar Lee

I used to subscribe to Cigar Aficionado starting in the early ’90s; I also subscribed to Marvin Shanken’s Cigar Insider newsletter. Generally, I almost always preferred the larger gauge versions of a given line of cigars. Quite often, it seemed like the bigger gauges allowed for combinations of more different tobaccos and offered greater complexity; thinner gauges seemed less full flavoured to me than their bigger counterparts. Maybe they tasted exactly the same, but my perception told me otherwise.

With pipes, I suspect the perceived flavour of tobacco is affected by many different factors. Chamber size, airflow, humidity, pipe material, cadence of smoking, how you lit the tobacco—so many variables.

you forgot pipe magic.

 

[bullet08]

Camel has wide cigarettes. So did Gitanes. Something about fat cigarettes and how mellow they smoke. I also believe larger chamber diameter in pipe gives mellower smoke. I definitely enjoy Peterson House Pipe when I have time for it. Maybe I'll smoke some today while picking some quality locks x)

 

[didimauw]

Interesting topic. I just made a few hand rolls myself, with some actual pipe tobacco the other day. I do it once and a while, when I'm too lazy to go to the gas station.
I've had many blends both ways before. However one of my top favorite 3 blends, Pegasus, was just horrible as a cigarette. Figured I had to try it though! Carter hall, is not bad for both.

 

[alaskanpiper]

My pencils all have erasers and I use those erasers. I’ve been wrong and will be wrong again about many issues. The hard part is admitting it.

Don’t swing, Frank. I know it’s T’d right up, buddy but don’t do it. Don’t swing. Don’t swing. Don’t swing………

I gotta say, for once I actually…….FRANK NO!!!!! DON’T SWING!!!!! DO NOT SWING!!!……..

 

[JOHN72]

Interesting theme. As a newbie that I am still in the world of the pipe. I ask this question. A briar pipe that already has its furnace petrified, perhaps the determining factor is a conglomerate of factors. Those that vary the smoke, in satisfactory terms. Like the oils that become encrusted, the constant degradation of that carbon, or petrified slag. Of course, determining and conditioning, the quality of that wood or briar, which makes a good smoke, due to its qualities of temperature, absorption, tightness, durability in a general degradation. In addition to an endless number of tobaccos, with an endless number of characteristics, sauces, and qualities, which condition our brain, in terms of pleasure, or rejection. Well, as I said before, it is a reflection of a newbie, in love with the world of tobacco.

 

[makhorkasmoker]

I smoke the same tobacco pretty much every day: C&D Dark Burley. I bring out its many different qualities by smoking it in different pipes, of different constructions, different materials. Everything makes a difference. Resting the pipe also makes a difference. So does the weather. So do many other things. And I love all those differences.

On those rare occasions when I switch to an English or a dark fired tobacco, or a codger, or whatever, I do not taste the difference nearly so much, which is part of the reason why I go right back to straight dark burley.

 

[MattRVA]

I preferred 6mm cigarettes when I smoked them regularly but I think you’re definitely on to something with the diameter being a huge factor in smoking qualities. I just couldn’t get into wide cigarettes as much and I also prefer narrow bowl pipes. I’m going to check out that rolling machine, it looks pretty sweet.

 

[Briar Lee]

I preferred 6mm cigarettes when I smoked them regularly but I think you’re definitely on to something with the diameter being a huge factor in smoking qualities. I just couldn’t get into wide cigarettes as much and I also prefer narrow bowl pipes. I’m going to check out that rolling machine, it looks pretty sweet.

Fifty years ago, Bugler made a desktop machine that might have equaled or bettered this Zig Zag box roller.



The Zig Zag works using the same kind of cloth belt and the cigarette pops out the top when the box is closed.

But as for the flavor of better briar, Kaywoodie used to advertise their pipes had a “Kaywoodie taste” and Bob Marx sold a lot of ugly pipes for twenty years based on old, aged briar being better smoking.

It can’t be disproven.

But increasing the diameter of a cigarette 25% makes such a radical improvement it is questionable how much better grade briar improves smoking quality.

And it helps explain why today my Brunk Bros Best Briar Superior GIANT isn’t a giant size pipe at all, but about the size of the average Dr Grabow on the racks in the smoke shops.

Bigger bore pipes smoke better.




If all that gorgeous briar makes a difference it only could so long as there was no cake. Once there’s a cake you smoke a carbon lined chamber.

 

[condorlover1]

When I smoked cigarettes I used to roll them by hand. At school it was harder for a prefect to find RYO when they patted you down as opposed to a packet of 10 Woodbines!

 

[canucklehead]

Isn't 8-9mm the normal size for a cig?


Also, science:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230016302586#:~:text=There%20are%20also%20a%20few,100%20mm%20and%20120%20mm.

 

[Cloozoe]

I smoke hand-rolled Va/Oriental cigarettes. Daily. Always good, sometimes better. How tight/how evenly distributed/ how thick/how smoked/mood/current condition of my tongue...

Ad infinitum. The best (or worst, depending on your temperament) thing about these discussions is that they can never be resolved; far too many variables. Like Mays vs Mantle.

I've been smoking pipes forever. I've chased every purported grail. I've smoked cheap pipes, ungodly expensive pipes, all-in-between pipes, famous artisan pipes, pipes from here, pipes from there, pipes made of briar from everywhere it grows and is harvested, old pipes, new pipes, red pipes, blue pipes.

Every pipe I wound up keeping over the years would on occasion provide a sublime, transcendent smoke. Every one also failed to provide a great smoke at times. Efforts to find reliable correlatives have been futile but are ongoing, with new theories continually emerging from my fertile imagination, only to be replaced by others once they fail to hold up to even cursory scrutiny.