Does Cut Matter or is it Just Aesthetics?

For me, the more the tobacco is reduced from its flake form, the less intense the flavor will be. For example, I find Orlik Dark Strong Kentucky to have a heartier flavor when smoked as a flake than when it is rubbed out. Just my .02.

Oh for Pete's sake this is a tobacco thread....I thought we were going to find out if wyfbane was circumcised or not in this thread??? :rofl:
Sorry jmatt, I couldn't help myself.

For me,

plugs are best.
I don't know why manufacturers even need to bother with slicing them,

the plug form is supreme in my book!
I wish some of the flakes I love were available in uncut form!
::
A good discussion here:

http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/same-blend-flake-versus-plug
:!:

For me it's got more to do with ease of prep and burn rate. Whole flakes properly loaded burn low and slow. Ribbon a little faster but easier to pack, shag seems to burn quick and hot if I'm not too careful. Plug tobacco I rub out and usually dry a bit and it seems similar to a good ribbon cut in regards to burn time. I don't smoke much shag cut. Some American and overseas blends are more of a coarse cut and they tend to make for a good long smoke when packed right. This is my opinion only, ymmv.

I love flakes, plugs are nice too.

"Does Cut Matter or is it Just Aesthetics?"
I believe that cut most certainly matters for it affects a tobacco's rate of burn and, hence, its taste and (probably) aroma. To my palate a folded-and-stuffed flake is typically more flavorful than one which is thoroughly rubbed-out.

I think flake retains more of the tobacco flavors and delivers a livelier rendition of any particular blend. A number of my favorite blends are loose tobaccos of one kind or another, but flake always starts with that advantage, in my opinion. It's a little like whole or less ground spices that release their flavors when ground or crushed. I do like the ease and speed of packing loose tobaccos, so that can buoy my frame of mind if I want a bowl right now. Then I can puff as I rub out or otherwise prep some flake.

jkrug!
BWA HA HA HA HA HA!!
:rofl:

:mrgreen:

It's certainly not (just) about aesthetics.
Think of it as a result of a process, rather than merely a presentation. It's how these tobaccos are manufactured. Some of those flakes you mentioned are pressed and stoved. I understand that this changes the taste considerably.
Here's another reason for pressing tobaccos in different formats.
I had pondered why is it that most flakes are virginias. Then I read an article by Russ O in which he said that VA leaf generally has a fairly thin leaf structure and pressing it into flakes (or coins etc) provides a slower burn rate when smoked. Makes sense to me. We all know VAs are most delicious when smoked slow, and coarser cut does burn slower. I think the burn rate of tobaccos is very much part of the smoking experience and, I'm sure that blenders use different cuts of tobaccos as a big part of the whole design.
BTW, which blends are available in ribbon and also in pressed format? I could think only of Grousemoor (ribbon) and Grousemoor plug, which I guess could be argued are two two different blends.

I was also wondering what the difference is between flake/ribbon cut. For example - MacB Modern Virginia comes in a 100g tin of ribbon vs a 50g tin of flake - which would last longer?

Cut matters. Plugs and flakes smoke cooler, slower and richer than ribbons and shags. GL Pease Jacknife comes in plug and ready rubbed form. Try back to back bowls. First bowl ready rubbed, the second smoke the plug. Try it again starting with plug. You'll be a believer.

I'm sure you know more about this than I, but as plugs are made by laying a single leaf atop the next, and though I also don't know the answer to this, I would bet that those leaves are alternated so as to evoke the blend. When plug is cut into flakes or rubbed out, the pieces rendered are chunky, and thus even the pieces are pieced together as the blend. When smoked the leaves in that piece burn together, rendering the blend. How is that any different than loose blended tobacco which offers the simultaneous burn of the constituent tobaccos?
My point is that both flake and loose tobacco offer a simultaneous burn of the tobaccos of which it is comprised. The only difference is that the flake or plug pieces have less space between the leaves of the disparate tobaccos than would loose tobacco, and thus less oxygen. Now oxygen affects burn, and burn taste. So maybe that's it.
For those with diminished sensory capacity, such as myself, who cannot taste the wood in briar or the corn in the cob, who regularly smoke a RC and say that the smoking experience afforded is the same, that is, a RC is as good as a Coke, or a briar, to me, etc., etc., the difference more oxygen makes in the burn of loose tobacco vs the compressed pieces of flake and plug is not detectable.

Then I can puff as I rub
MSO see Peck's palm! :rofl:
Jkrug, we stay glued to our seats with anticipation. :lol:
Try back to back bowls. First bowl ready rubbed, the second smoke the plug. Try it again starting with plug. You'll be a believer.

I'll give that a shot, Brass. Thanks

** As my long posts are failing to post, I've broken this into four parts; parts two, three and four are below.**
Cut matters, but not to me. As one afflicted by major palate drift, such that the bowl of Escudo I'm smoking in a not yet venerable MM Mark Twain is about 25% of what this decades long superstar reliably provides, how can I discern such lower level tastes? But for those not so afflicted, I have reservations about the claims that superstars in the pipe arena make about such arcane matters of the pipe, such as tasting briar and its adequate cure, tasting corn from a cob, tasting Izmir in the setting of Embarcadero more like pine resin while in another it tastes like oak, etc., etc.
Now Messrs. Pease and Ouelette are very able blenders, and Mr. Ouellette's current coup of resurrected blends to be released by Standard Tobacco this fall, and in fact his many other blends already revivified, amply attest to the superiority of his palate. But blending skill, which as Mr. Pease has said, needs to constantly reconfigure, as the stand alone flavor of a tobacco can substantially change in combination with others.
But my point is that very little in pipe smoking is a science, by which I mean that the palate expertise of a Pease or an Ouellette cannot be scientifically measured, and this was Todd Johnson's point in the one-back discussion of bowl coating which occurred after Mr. Pease's two articles about it on pm in 2013. I believe Mr. Johnson has two Youtube videos that were designed to yield quantifiable results, but the latter involved the same thickness of briar both plain and coated, suspended over tea lights. He was then able to say that the uncoated piece of briar lasted a number of times longer before burning as compared to the uncoated. Touche. Time is a measurable referent But the reply to Mr. Johnson was that we don’t have the science to discuss much in the pipe world, which is the point of this post.

** Part 2 of 4**
Most of the conclusions of psychology, psychiatry, economics, history, and the list goes on, are so hampered. Those involved in these disciplines argue from inference and the behavioral change of their isolated variables; and in the behavioral sciences (note the lower level use of the term), the more subtle changes of affect. In so doing these disciplines do move forward, yet they do so in the half-light compared to a chemist who in bright light can test the amount of nitrogen at the end of a process subjected to a reagent with known bonding properties. The chemist can claim that his conclusion is indubitable and will remain the same throughout eternity, while the others who lack scientific measurement, and the holy of holies-modern-construction of the scientific method, can never be certain. They are reduced to saying that the result X is found, but only in the company of Y and Z, which is very similar to the Buddhist idea of co-interdependent generation.
Perhaps then the lurking problem in distinguishing between scientific and other methods of establishing cause and effect is that there is no such distinction? That results of science, in an artificially constructed test window, appear to be outside the influence of other factors when in fact they are not? No, science deserves the name because it precisely controls all variables, which the pipe world cannot.

** Part 3 of 4**
The above can be made applicable to tobacco reviews. When smoke is drawn into the mouth very few have the command over describing its taste such as E. Roberts, whose reviews grace pm’s homepage. Yet his fine writing skills substantially vivify his word choice and his ideas express in a beguiling syntax. To write such reviews he is likely a decades long veteran of the pipe and has worked through the impediments of smoking technique and the ability to discern what is for him a fine smoking pipe. These two factors, smoking technique and pipe selection, obscure the perception of the smoke of those with less time and mastery of the path. As compared to Mr.Roberts, writing ability, for most, further obscures whatever words they, as pipe apprentices and journeymen bring to their tobacco reviews. Such is my parsing. Tying to control for these variables would leave very few pipe smokers standing; but trying to control for the variability of the palate of the remaining erect is beyond the reach of current understanding.