Ordered A Variety of GH Blends, Now What?

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shanez

Lifer
Jul 10, 2018
5,188
24,080
49
Las Vegas
Ordered 2 oz each of Gawith Hoggarth:
Kendal Flake

Dark Flake Scented

Rum Flake

Dark Flake Unscented

Brown Flake Scented

Kendal Dark
Also 2 tins each GH Balkan Mixture and Rattray's Dark Fragrant.
81bc9c10-600x450.jpg

Wanted to learn a bout Lakelands and these styles. Started with Dark Flake Unscented and wow!
The nicotine kicked my butt but holy cow was it good.
Now I'm afraid to try the others as I already want to add a ton of this to my cellar.
I'm thinking the Dark Flake Scented next so I can pick just one of the two for my cellar.
Are these going to get that much better with age?

 

scottbtdmb

Can't Leave
Apr 14, 2012
359
5,871
I know we chatted a little on another forum about the GH stuff, but I’ll chime in with my thoughts on how they do with age. The Dark Flake unscented absolutely gets infinitely better with age. I have some fresh stock, some 10 year old jars, and a small amount of 15 yr old stock that I recently acquired. While the 10 year old vintage is great, the 15 year old jar is out of this world. You wouldn’t think there would be that much of a difference between 10 and 15 yr samples, but it was literally night and day and blew me away!
I’ve never had the Brown Flake scented, but the Brown Flake u/s improves vastly with age. It is quite harsh when fresh, but a 10 yr old sample I recently acquired was super smooth and tasty and almost reminded me of Solani ABF.
As for the scented stuff, it is very subjective. I haven’t had most of the ones you mentioned aged, but I can say that stuff like their Louisiana Flake and Best Brown #2 really mellows out with age, and the Lakeland toppings are pretty much undetectable at the 10 yr mark. I remember Coniston Cut Plug being super floral when fresh, and then having it at 2 yrs old, and even at that point the Lakeland essence had almost worn off.
Sorry if these aren’t all specific examples of the particular blends you have, but I think it is certainly applicable
Take care,
Scott

 
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scottbtdmb

Can't Leave
Apr 14, 2012
359
5,871
One more quick thought. I always like to at least try stuff fresh to get a baseline. Ideally, set aside at least a few bowls before jarring up your cellar stash. It’s not a bad idea to keep notes on your impressions of the fresh stuff, so that when you revisit those blends down the road, you can draw comparisons. I did this with a lot of the tobaccos I was trying back in 2009 when I took up the pipe, and it helped me to figure out which stuff to focus on with cellaring versus the stuff that I was better off smoking fresh because it aged poorly. In my experience, I found that I loved Virginia’s and dark fired/Va/burley mixtures (i.e. Gawith Hoggarth) with significant age, while Latakia mixtures worked better for me when fresh. Again, it’s all subjective, so you have to experiment to see what works for you. It’s all part of the fun!
-Scott

 

seanv

Lifer
Mar 22, 2018
2,958
10,405
Canada
Brown flake unscented is great and should get better with some age.

Rum flake is good. It is very sweet. Not one I could smoke daily. It is an occasional smoke. Not sure how well it will age.

 
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