In the past few days I have noticed a few threads on Virginias, and most included elements referring to tongue burn. I thought I would share some images, and a brief description of how I match my personal pipes to Virginias, in hopes to provide you with a better smoking experience. As with all things pipe related this is my personal opinion, and it might be absolute rubbish to you, but it is a start to appointing a pipe to a blend.
Let's start with the perfect pipe for Virginias. It is large, sandblasted, slightly bent, and can hold a lot of tobacco. This Randy Wiley Meteor is good for a two hour smoke of my favorite Virgina blend.
Notice the large diameter of the bowl, and the pipes general size. This hunk of briar stays cool, and keeps the smoke nice and flavorful.
As you can see the bowl is also deep, which to me provides more flavor since the smoke has to travel through the tobacco, which imparts its sweet flavors to the smoke before entering your mouth.
In general I prefer the pot shape for smoking Virginias. For this purpose I believe few makers can out do GBD on this shape here are several examples of Pots that I employ for Virginias.
GBD Pots, and all pre Cadogen pipes in general feature a rim cut into the bowl canted towards the center which makes for easy loading. Notice how wide these bowls are in relation to the overall pipe.
This to me allows more surface area to promote less relights, and a more even burn.
While I am a GBD hack, I do often employ some Savinellis as well. The ones pictured below were purchased due to bowl depth, and have served me well.
Paw Paw asked a viable question below;
"What if you do not like 2 hour smokes"
Well I can understand the need for a quicker smoke, but I do not think that a Virginia is what you would want to enjoy for this purpose. When I am rushed for time I employ the Peterson below;
It is a 303 System pipe with a P-lip. The features of the System pipe, and P-lip can allow for a quicker smoke, as can the smaller, but still wide bowl. I do think you miss some of the natural flavor when using this pipe, but it will allow for a quicker, less than an hour smoke.
I hope this information is helpful, although as I said at the beginning it is only my opinion, and might not work out for you. I do think that by starting your smoke with the right pipe for the right blend, you will have less relights, less chance of tongue bite and a better overall experience. I close out with a picture of what I feel is the perfect english blend pipe a GBD 9438.
