Does summertime mean more dottle?

bassbug · Jul 18, 2017

This is my first summer smoking a pipe. I've noticed that as the weather got warmer, which around here means stupid high humidity, I'm getting more dottle at the bottom of the bowl and its much wetter than anything I have gotten before. its happening with all 4 of my pipes and all 4 of my regular rotation blends.
Anyone else get this?

pipesmokingtom · Jul 18, 2017

Ooo. Seems like a prime opportunity for speculation and pseudoscientific conjecture! I'll be back to you after dinner!

hobie1dog · Jul 18, 2017

Not for me.

didimauw · Jul 18, 2017

More dottle yes, but only cause there's more smoking going on in the summer!!!

nevadablue · Jul 18, 2017

Please explain 'humidity'. :D

warren · Jul 19, 2017

Not that I've ever noticed.

bassbug · Jul 19, 2017

Please explain 'humidity'.

Its 28 C (80F) with 70-75% humidity

nevadablue · Jul 19, 2017

Just teasing about the humidity. When it gets to 25% here, we nearly die. Tomorrow's forecast is for 87F and 8% humidity. Thank goodness.

jpmcwjr · Jul 19, 2017

It means more dottle for those who don't take into account local weather! You many need to use a microwave to get it dry enough before loading.

halfy · Jul 19, 2017

Time for a deep cleaning...I remove the cakes from all my pipes in humid months...

balkisobrains · Jul 19, 2017

I've been thinking about using a hair-dryer and a wire-mesh flour sieve to gently dry bowlfuls of tobacco just prior to packing and smoking. I hate it when I want to set out a bowlful to dry a bit, but I can't because I know that it is too humid for that to happen! I've done the microwave thing before, wasn't happy with the flavor results. But, I generally don't have dottle problems in any case because I put some meer chips in the bottom of every bowl anyway. If it's really humid and the tobacco is damp, I still may get some visible moisture below the chips, but the tobacco is far away from any of that noise. : puffy

:

jndyer · Jul 19, 2017

Living on a high desert means summer temps in the mid 80's to upper 90's with the humidity staying under 15%, so I find that my tobacco burns wonderfully, and as an added bonus, I do not have to set it out to dry for very long.

jpmcwjr · Jul 19, 2017

Perfect for drying!
I've just moved to a place where the Summer temps rarely exceed 75º and the humidity is well over 75% a lot of the time, though indoors we seem to average around 60%, a fine target for most of my tobacco blends. And where I moved from recently had some 105º days, with an RH of 5%. (True there was a wildfire nearby that helped drive out moisture).

hillbillyjosh · Jul 21, 2017

Humidity causes stuff not to burn. Hard to get a friction fire going with humidity

mso489 · Jul 22, 2017

Plenty of heat and humidity here for the experiment, and my "data" shows no increased dottle.

bassbug · Jul 22, 2017

I"m now getting more mixed results. Last night was very humid and I was smoking outside in the park. I was not paying too much attention, but that familiar, last puff before it starts tasting like ash came to me. As I always do, I let the pipe sit for a couple of minutes and then poked at the bowl with my pipe tool. I was quite surprised to see that the entire bowl smoked down to ash. I think maybe it was just the first few bowls from a tightly sealed jar that was packed to the brim.

Does summertime mean more dottle?

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