Learning New Tobacco

Are you smoking them straight out of the tin? Sounds like it might be partially a moisture issue? If so let it dry for a little bit first. Just pull out about how much you're going to smoke on a piece of paper and kind of spread it out. And I can say packing frog morton at first an be a little weird. I remember starting off smoking it, the leaf just seems to not want to pack as easy as quite a few others. But the frog mortons are wonderful smokes.

B

I will say that the cut of the FM blends, or something, makes them pack up tight and need a relight or too. I can't seem to avoid it either.

Protestantpipe has this spot on. FM will pack very tight if you apply a method to packing it, at least in my experience as well. I usually fill the pipe, lightly push it down and then just fill and level off. Sometimes lightly is as little as a 1/4 inch in some pipes. Any time I have applied the 3 step or air pocket or any other method it is always packed too tight and ruins a really good tasting tobacco.

Good luck - and congrats on moving out into new types of tobacco. Latakia is a whole new world.

I use a hand-made pottery bowl we picked up at a charity event to spread out tobacco to dry it

before packing the bowl. Or sometimes I'll pack the pipe the night before. Drying most tobaccos

out a little smooths out the smoke a lot. The pottery bowl also works for mixing tobaccos, if

you like to do that. It takes at least a little know-how, but you can get some pleasant combinations

without attaining the level of a tobacconist. You learn a little about what works. A small quantity,

like 2 oz, of Latakia makes a nice blending tobacco. If you are mixing with some fairly fine cut, you

can use scissors to reduce the Latakia leaf so it burns evenly with the other tobacco(s). Don't try to

do all this at once; these are just some ideas about how you can develop your sampling.

I smoke mainly Latakia forward blends, and, like many VA flakes, they do need to be dried out first. I also have small unglazed pottery bowls that I use for this purpose. Sometimes, the night before, I'll place about a quarter to a third of a 50g tin out to dry. The next morning the first bowl may still be on the moist side and burn wet, but come the second, third through fifth bowls, these will be spot on. Another option is to load up your tobacco pouch, leave it unzipped overnight, zip it in the morning, then as the next three days progress the tobacco will have a chance to dry out as you load successive bowls. Often my best smokes will be the last few bowls out of my tobacco pouch. In my opinion drying tobacco out is a critical step that rarely gets mentioned, with so much focus placed instead on proper packing. Wet tobacco will produce steam no matter what packing technique you use.

Over the years I have been where you are now. To a great degree I have enjoyed the challenge of trying different different tobacco blends and experimenting. Keep an open mind and beware of the moisture content, bowl packing, lighting and other characteristics of each blend and tobacco manufactures and enjoy the experience.

A word of advice from a fellow learner. Let it dry more than you think wise. It's only a bowl full. You'll learn for each tobacco your own preference for moisture level.