Briar Taste

I've experienced unpleasant tastes when breaking-in a new pipe -- what I would describe as raw, green, and wood-like in a bad way;

but that has always dissipated over the course of 5 or 6 bowls. I'm at a loss to understand what's going on in the pipe you described.

Maybe there's a burn-out in that pipe's near future.

Sounds like tannins releasing from a bad piece of briar to me. Otherwise, if it were a result of a piece of poorly cured briar I imagine it would have started earlier? That is unless it came with a bowl coating, which I've heard can temporarily cover the taste of tannins in a piece of poorly cured briar. My guess is it's just a bad piece of briar if it came from a reputable maker that wouldn't use poorly cured briar.

Any chance the vulcanite stem has oxidized?

I have had only one pipe that tasted bad due to an oxidised stem and that was on a pipe nearly forty years old. On a pipe two years old I seriously doubt this is the problem but just for the sake of elimination why not give the stem a polish. If the pipe still tastes bad it does seem to indicate the curing of the briar being at fault. This is assuming that the inside of the stem is clean and that the bowl hasn't had anything nasty accidently put or spilled into it. Might be worth giving the bowl a ream and another alcohol treatment just to be sure.
Fred Hanna talks about the taste of the briar being important to the quality of the smoke and I think he is correct. If this is true, and if the briar has not been cured correctly, then I suppose it could also taste bad after a while. There was and still is a lot of emphasis on curing briar correctly.

I've tasted briar when I had to remove all of the cake from an estate, but that subsided as new cake formed and I paid attention to not let it get too hot.

I would suspect any off flavor from wood would have been apparent from the start, but stranger things have happened I guess. What blend do you smoke in the pipe ?

What is the off flavor like ? Burning wood ? Sour ? Sewer ?

I would think uncured wood, or a generally bad piece of wood, would have been an issue at the get go. What I think of is the tobacco residue getting a little rancid with time. Or maybe your cat was paying you back for letting the food bowl go empty, and sprayed the pipe when you left it out ?

I had a Peterson that did that. It started off fine, well, it started of ok, and then got worse from there. Badly corroded vulcanite tastes like tractor grease to me. But, green briar is a sour aroma that is not pleasant in the least. I pawned that sucker off on the first person who would take it. I knew that if the flavor ever left that I would most likely still taste it in memory and probably never smoke that pipe. Giving it away was worth it for me, let someone else suffer through that gawd-awful flavor.

Rancid and green are different, but hard to describe the differences.
But mine was a Peterson, and not a reputable pipe maker. So maybe the problem with yours is different. :wink:

Majority of my pipes are British and oil cures so I don't have that problem.

I often times worry about the curing of the briar used by pipe makers that pride themselves on design. I had a new pipe once that tasted awful right out of the gate. I had to get rid of it. It had definitely not been cured properly. I recently acquired an estate pipe from an artisan that has begun to worry me. I smoked a bowl tonight that tasted awful. I had to dump it because it was so bad. It was that tannin flavor that I recall tasting from that other pipe. It's a taste that is hard to describe, but once you've tasted it you don't forget it. I was surprised to see one of this makers pipes on the artisan market at a very fair price point. I'm starting to wonder? I'm going to give it more time, but when a pipe tastes that bad you don't want to smoke it again. It's a shame that pipes like these seem to just get recycled throughout the pipe smoking community. I will be making contact with the maker in the event this pipe does not improve. This way the maker is aware and can have input as to what should be done with the pipe. I wouldn't want a horrible tasting pipe to keep getting passed about, letting people down each time it's smoked, while the makers reputation suffers.

I will be making contact with the maker in the event this pipe does not improve.

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I think that's important, no matter how they choose to handle it. The maker should get a chance to remedy an issue before it turns into a reputation. People may think they're being courteous by not mentioning an issue, but they could be doing a big service by just picking up a phone or writing.

Some blocks just don't want to be a pipe, no matter how it's cured.

The only pipe that I've ever had a problem with as far as poor taste goes was my Savinelli 320 KS Trevi. Its the only pipe I own that came with carbonized bowl. It took me a long time and many smokes to get rid of that awful taste.

Might rapidly building up cake solve the problem?

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Good thought. I'll run some Carter Hall through it over the next couple of weeks and see if it helps.