Sweet Natural by Smoker Friendly

[Briar Lee]

$4.99 for 1 1/2 ounce pouch

Bought at Smoker Friendly store

After court this morning I stocked up at the Smoker Friendly store in Versailles, Missouri, which offers a large selection of over the counter pipe tobaccos.

I’d not noticed a new Smoker Friendly blend named Sweet Natural before, and put a pouch in the sack with my Carter Hall and Velvet.


This tobacco looks exactly like Prince Albert. But it doesn’t smell like PA. It smells like pure, sweet, high quality burley tobacco.

I could detect no toppings, no casing, no sauce of any kind. I think it’s straight up aged burley.

Sweet Natural is a full bodied, rich, sweet as a nut smoking pleasure. There’s plenty of nicotine. It gives off a very pipey, old men in the barbershop aroma. As the bowl goes down it gets stronger. An all day, lifetime smoke.

I want a big bag of this.

Highly recommended.

 

[Grangerous]

Now you’re talkin dirty! I wonder if there are any reviews?

Ok. I’m back! None found! I can’t even find it for sale.

Ok. I’m back again. It’s made by Sutliff and there are several varieties. But the “Sweet Natural” must be a new one.

 

[Briar Lee]

Now you’re talkin dirty! I wonder if there are any reviews?

Ok. I’m back! None found! I can’t even find it for sale.

Ok. I’m back again. It’s made by Sutliff and there are several varieties. But the “Sweet Natural” must be a new one.

Indeed the weed is quite Grangeresque, except it’s crimp cut instead of cubed by Wellman’s Method.

One difference. Granger has just a hint of a play dough like cherry casing. If there’s any kind of flavor other than straight burley in Sweet Natural it would take our friend Jim to detect it.

By the way, it’s addicting, just like the package says. Unlike most other store brand “natural” blends this one has a nicotine kick.

Pardon me while I smoke some more of it.

 

[Grangerous]

How does it compare to 5 Brothers or Smokers Pride Rich Taste, the Red Bag? I’ve had both of those.

 

[Briar Lee]

How does it compare to 5 Brothers or Smokers Pride Rich Taste, the Red Bag? I’ve had both of those.

Smoking Five Brothers is kind of comparable to downing shots in a dorm room.

You brag how manly you are afterward

This stuff is delicious. It starts off mild and builds strength. And there’s no “rough edges”. It’s just plain good burley, minus any proprietary flavorings I can taste.

 

[Briar Lee]

The smoke shop in Versailles had a 12 ounce bag of Smoker Friendly Sweet Natural at $20.



You want this, and might not know you do.

 

[canucklehead]

Sounds good to me! If it is made by Sutliff I wonder if it is, or how it would compare to, this Sutliff bulk:

https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipe-tobacco/Sutliff/j4---burley/product_id/70448

 

[Briar Lee]

Usually these bags CONTAIN NICOTINE-NICOTINE IS AN ADDICTIVE CHEMICAL - (and our friend) but this one only causes cancer in California.



The tax ID is TP-VA-15009

That might indicate Sutliff’s factory in Virginia, but Sutliff doesn’t list Smoker Friendly (but does Super Value) in their product list.

Sutliff Tobacco - America’s Oldest Pipe Tobacco Company

QualityPipe Tobacco since 1849 America’s Oldest Pipe Tobacco Company – Setting the standard since 1849

sutliff-tobacco.com

I agree the bag looks rather Sutliffiseque like a Super Value bag.

Whoever made it this is delicious looking, wonderful smelling, sweet natural tobacco.



The lady that owns that store sells this, five 12 ounce bags (60 ounces) for a hundred dollars.

Next time I’m there I’ll ask if she’d discount a full case if I paid up front.

This is why burley tobacco is grown in Kentucky, and the best is aged at least two years.

If I knew I was smoking my last pipe, it would have to be Old Speedy full of Sweet Natural.



You cannot own too many pounds of this.

Get it, before I do.

 

[canucklehead]

It would appear that they are in fact the same blends as the Super Value line under slightly changed names:

» Product Categories » Premium Pipe Tobacco

 

[LeafErikson]

$4.99 for 1 1/2 ounce pouch

Bought at Smoker Friendly store

After court this morning I stocked up at the Smoker Friendly store in Versailles, Missouri, which offers a large selection of over the counter pipe tobaccos.

I’d not noticed a new Smoker Friendly blend named Sweet Natural before, and put a pouch in the sack with my Carter Hall and Velvet.


This tobacco looks exactly like Prince Albert. But it doesn’t smell like PA. It smells like pure, sweet, high quality burley tobacco.

I could detect no toppings, no casing, no sauce of any kind. I think it’s straight up aged burley.

Sweet Natural is a full bodied, rich, sweet as a nut smoking pleasure. There’s plenty of nicotine. It gives off a very pipey, old men in the barbershop aroma. As the bowl goes down it gets stronger. An all day, lifetime smoke.

I want a big bag of this.

Highly recommended.

View attachment 193351
View attachment 193352View attachment 193353View attachment 193354

You’d better stop posting about this blend or I’m gonna have to try it! Looks and sounds tasty. I mostly smoke Pegasus and Sir Walter so there’s a good chance I’d like this stuff. Is it as nicotine heavy as Pegasus or is it more on the Sir Walter end of the spectrum?

 

[Briar Lee]

You’d better stop posting about this blend or I’m gonna have to try it! Looks and sounds tasty. I mostly smoke Pegasus and Sir Walter so there’s a good chance I’d like this stuff. Is it as nicotine heavy as Pegasus or is it more on the Sir Walter end of the spectrum?

Above SWR, but not enough to turn a codger burley lover green.

This is premium burley. It’s been aged.

Surely they had to use some PG and some kind of sweet sauce to render such a wonderful example of drug store tobacco bliss.

Maybe they used Wellman’s Method?.

 

[Briar Lee]

It would appear that they are in fact the same blends as the Super Value line under slightly changed names:

View attachment 203673

» Product Categories » Premium Pipe Tobacco

The fine print says the Smoker Friendly premium blend line is:
——
Manufactured exclusively for Smoker Friendly by Sutliff Tobacco Co.
——

For a long time Coors brewed Papst Blue Ribbon under exclusive contract with Papst Brewing Company.

Their are large chunks of aged sun cured burley and aged fire cured burley in Sweet Natural.



I’m having some now in a MM Country Gentleman, and it’s so delicious I might try sprinkling Sweet Natural over my ice cream, later.



Accept no substitutes and beware of cheap imitations.

Demand Smoker Friendly Sweet Natural.

You’ll not regret it.

 

[Briar Lee]

I’m calculating the cost of Sweet Natural.

Smoker Friendly has stores in who knows how many states, but a lot of stores in SW Missouri where smoking is still popular and some restaurants still bring out ashtrays. Our state pipe tobacco tax is 10% of invoice, cheapest in all Christian Civilzation.



The federal tax is 18 cents an ounce.

The best sun cured burley is probably not 20 cents an ounce, contract rate.

The best fire cured burley is not 30 cents an ounce, contract rate. It’s likely much less.

Aging burley is the cost of interest and warehouse space. Let’s add ten cents an ounce.

For sixty cents an ounce Sutliff could buy all the aged leaf Smoker Friendly specified.

A fair profit for Sutliff is another dime an ounce. Let’s say 70 cents an ounce.

Smoker Friendly likely buys train car loads of any premium blend they like for 70 cents an ounce (or maybe less) and the federal tax is 18 cents, and in Missouri the tax is 7 cents.

Smoker Friendly has about 95 cents an ounce, tax paid, at most in these blends.

Smoker Friendly stores don’t sell booze, and they aren’t head shops. They sell tobacco, and lots of it. You can take your children in the stores and not have to explain that Fireball candy flavored whiskey is not for little kids, nor the fake weed gummy bears.


An ounce and a half package of Sweet Natural is $3.33 an ounce, or $4.99.

12 ounces is $19.99, or $1.66 an ounce.

If you want cheaper tobacco, they sell the cheapest for $12 a pound, or 75 cents an ounce, but it’s not premium pipe tobacco.

But it’s not bad, just not top shelf.

 

[huntertrw]

Briar Lee:

As a Burley fan, this is one I am just going to have to try. Luckily, there are Smoker Friendly stores in my area.

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[Briar Lee]

More ruminations on Sweet Natural.

Although my family is raving about the room note, it doesn’t taste like it’s an aromatic to me.

It tastes like an incredibly delicious, sweet pure tobacco flavored cigarette. I can easily inhale it. There’s not a trace of bite, rough edges, bitterness, and it burns all the way down cool, dry, and sweet with an ash that looks like a White Owl cigar. It has a decent dose of Vitamin N, more as the bowl slowly burns down.

I’ve smoked this constantly all day, and I could smoke nothing but this for life if I was cornered by the do gooders and had to choose one non flavored blend to smoke.

Off somewhere at Smoker Friendly headquarters there is a man who is the master blender of codger burleys on this planet.

It’s an astoundingly good drug store blend, certainly the best I’ve tried.

 

[Beowoulf]

Smoking my first bowl of Smoker Friendly's Sweet Natural. I got it by luck. I was just down for a vacation in Maine and my cousin wanted to surprise me with some tobacco and chose this by chance. The shop owner at Cigaret Shopper told her this was one of her favorites. Now, I am primarily a dessert blend tobacco smoker, but this stuff is fantastic. Smooth, smooth, smooth. Zero tongue bite - and I mean ZERO - which is quite a claim for a locomotive smoker like me. Would love to get a 12 oz. bag but the most you can take across the Canadian border is 7 oz. before a heavy duty is imposed. Sadly, all I have is a 1.5 oz. bag of this stuff. I'd love to get a bag of this to @Jimlnks for analysis. @Briar Lee's enthusiasm is not misplaced.

 

[makhorkasmoker]

I sometimes see “sun cured” burley and wonder what it is. I’m assuming the leaves aren’t strung up and dried in the sun like Turkish (?) I also wonder about “fire cured” burley. That’s the same as Kentucky dark fired?
I’m interested in this tobacco because I’m always looking for uncased, non topped straight burleys . I’m especially looking for burleys that aren’t all white burley (lower leaves) with all the life toasted out of them.

Right now I smoke mainly c&d dark burley (mostly upper leaves, air cured, and stacked like cigar leaf). I love to find something similar— but different! Hope to give this one a try soon

 

[bent1]

There are times I want a burley blend as you described Briar Lee. Thx for the post & keeping this thread alive. I’m going to go the the local SF & give it a spin.

 

[Puffer of Pipes]

Hello I just read you discussion on the Smoker Friendly Sweet Natural and was hoping to buy 12 oz buy the Smoker Friendly stores do not do phone orders & said don’t sell on the web site. .
Is there anyplace I can order it and have it shipped to me in Calif? I really would like to try this Sweet Natural !!!

 

[macaroni]

. . . I think it’s straight up aged burley.

Sweet Natural is a full bodied, rich, sweet as a nut smoking pleasure. There’s plenty of nicotine. It gives off a very pipey, old men in the barbershop aroma. As the bowl goes down it gets stronger. An all day, lifetime smoke.

I want a big bag of this.

Highly recommended. . . .

@Briar Lee, thank you for posting this. I'm on the hunt for it but failing so far. I called every store in Texas on the Smoker Friendly website and sadly, no one has, "Sweet Natural."

I called the store you mentioned in MO and they have it in stock now but don't ship here (I'm in Texas, but it sounded like they don't do any mail order sales--certainly not out of state).

I called Sutliff and the cust. rep., Sharon said it may be discontinued. She cant find it anywhere. She did find a VaBur blend called, "Natural," for Super Value doesn't know if it's an equivalent -- it's a cavendish VaBur. Smoking Pipes lists it as:

"Super Value: Natural Cavendish 12oz Pipe Tobacco
Product Number: 003-706-0017"

Any clue how a motivated codger in East Texas might get some, or perhaps any thoughts on whether SP's iteration is an equivalent?

Either way, thanks for sharing this and so many other great posts! I enjoy reading your insights and recollections of you family's lineage and history there in MO (especially those snippets from memory of family experiences and anecdotes). Some remind me of mine here in Hopkins County, TX where we only go back 5 generations, which includes our child of course .
Thanks again.
kindly,
Mike
p.s. I gotta post a new photo, no beard and hair's short again after a two year "walk on the wild side"-- so if your passing through, pm me and dinner's on us--but don't look for a shaggy bearded old guy! ))