Early Morning "Smoke"

My impression is that morning blends are usually milder blends intended for "all-day" smoking, or

suitable for all-day anyway. Nighttime blends are often full strength, like Nightcap. I don't think

any of the mentioned blends are imitating or trying to match EMP, since it is widely available and

available in bulk.

My early morning smoke is the bowl I didn't finish the night before. Works for me. :D

"Funny though as I want/need a full strength blend first thing in the morning. I don't pay any attention to the recommended time of day and will smoke what I want when I want."
Me too, Booker. 8)
Having Billy Budd for breakfast this morning. 8)

If I'm just getting started, it depends on my mood, but one of my 3 dependable codger blends is often first choice. I may smoke 3 or 4 bowls of these a day. I change it up from bowl to bowl, smoking some nice cav aro, or some lat, or something I've mixed up. As my tins empty out, I'm using their contents less frequently and smoke mostly bulk blends.

I usually smoke either EMP or Mississippi River with my morning coffee. I am a shift worker ( leave home at 5 am and don't come back til almost 9 pm) so when I have to go to work, I can only smoke when I get home. So I know I have a day off when I get a taste of orientAls and Latakia. It gives my coffee a sort of caramel sweetness. Later in the day, I smoke Virginias and Vapers. Never got into Burleys. Perhaps that is something I should explore this year.

I almost never smoke one of the morning blends in the morning. But, it does seem as if these latalkia/oriental mixes that are labelled as morning blends are wanting to tag onto Dunhill's coattails. Don't forget GLP's Chelsea Morning.
Me, I prefer an aromatic/virginia hybrid in the morning. Vanilla Flake, Deep Hollow, Dan's Liberty, Fire dance, something to accompany the tastes and aromas of breakfast, plus the subtle flavor of Virginias in the mix for my pleasure. I used to just smoke whatever Virginia or VaPer I wanted in the mornings, and then my girls complained that their friends at school said they smelled like they were out at an all night poker game. So, being the thoughtful father that I am, decided to compromise.
I've grown to look forward to that first smoke and a cup of coffee, wafting fragrances of vanilla, java, fresh fruits, pancake syrup, sausage, eggs, etc... My girls now say that they love the morning smells as well. And, it passes the peer test at school.
However, I find that I am not all that excited to smoke an aromatic at any other time of day. Unless we are talking about a coconut rope as my last smoke of the day.

Yeh, my dad's thing was cigarettes, and always in the car, so I constantly smelled like smoke. Darn kids these days, ha ha.

This thread brought to mind the following quotation from a story titled "The Quest for Theodore Gordon" by the late Sparse Gray Hackle from his book titled "Fishless Days, Angling Nights":
"Then it was morning, "the great start," the spiritual setting forth, with fires rekindled and the pungency of coffee summoning the sleepers to add to it the fragrance of that best smoke of the whole day, the pipe before breakfast."
This is what I think of when I have that early-morning smoke.