Relighting a Cold Bowl?

For me, some blends re-light well, but most do not. Many people intentionally light a bowl and let it go cold for an extended period of time just to obtain the flavor that a re-light produces. It's referred to as DGT, delayed gratification technique.

DGT has rarely worked for me. If I am pressed for time I will purposely use a smaller pipe so as to avoid re-lighting later on.

I've never re-lit a 'cold' pipe, I either use a smaller pipe if I only have 45 minutes or so, or a larger one if I can take my time.
So many things are variables when it comes to my lighting and smoking technique, I don't need to introduce another.

I'm mostly with thomasmartin & Cortez on this, although I often do relight a partial bowl. Seldom below 1/3, though; as thomas said it's kind of a cruddy ashy taste, & yuck, just yuck. The odd thing is that I have a number of pipes with bigger bowls that don't give me that unless I'm near the dottle. I often smoke on the way to/from work or other drives, which are normally only goo for 10-15 minutes max, so I do wind up restarting a bowl a fair amount. Usually the first relight isn't bad, but second or third, uh, no, probably won't.

I do it all the time.

Nope, I love it, especially with Virginias and Vapers, but I enjoy it with a few Latakia blends also. I will sometimes rack a pipe that was half smoked and then I enjoy trying to figure out what the blend was that I had been smoking when I pick the pipe back up a day or so later. It doesn't taste ashy, nor stale to me, and usually produces a more tasty and cool burning smoke.

I don't do this with most latakias, especially Balkans with their incense-y orientals, nor aromatics (except for the aromatic flakes that are tobacco forward).
But, every night before I go to bed, I will load up three pipes and char them, so that at least my first three pipes of the day will be DGT. But, I tend to smoke 12 to 15 bowls a day, so I cannot do that for all of them.
One of the perks of not being cigarettes or cigars is that you can always relight a bowl and carry on. I will extinguish the bowl and put the pipe in my pocket to go into a store, only to pull it back out and light it to finish what I started before going in.
However, if someone else doesn't like it, they can do what they want, a fresh bowl each time. There's no rule saying that you have to like the same things as someone else.
We used to have a forum member, Lawrence, who subscribed to Sherlock Holmes's technique of saving the dottle in each pipe and drying them out to save up to pack into a pipe and smoke again. It wasn't just Sherlock who did this, but it was the way many guys smoked back in the turn of the century. It is just a stoved tobacco, so it does smoke sweeter than it did initially when saved and dried out again.

Yeah, back then it was harder, & good blends scarcer. These days we're lucky, having so many good blends easily available, even considering McClellands & other recent soldats morts . :

I don't know, tobacco wasn't really all that scarce, except maybe during the big wars. I wasn't talking about way out in the mountains, but gentlemen of the cities, back when pipe tobacco was mere pennies. It's just that many of us find it to make the tobacco taste better than it does straight out of the tins, even McClellands which I like very much fresh. But, like I said, tastes vary. I don't save dottles, which is kind of odd, but I can understand why they would.

I often leave a bowl to finish later, not a problem. Find the flavour fine.

@cosmic, yeah, I get you. I was thinking more on the lines of multiplicity of brands. BITD so many more people smoked that there *had* to have been a greater amount than we have today, just maybe not so many yummy choices as we have today.

I often smoke the same bowl on and off throughout the day, quite often at work, with no issues.

I’ll often come back to a bowl. In most cases I’ve found the taste to be fine, - though different from if the same bowl was smoked completely through. There are times when a relit bowl just didn’t taste right so I ended up dumping it. On the other hand, once a cigar goes cold it is a goner. This difference is one reason I prefer pipes to cigars now, though I smoke both.

I do it all the time.

Click to expand...

Same here.
As we see in this thread some do, some don't. In my case I walk away from a half smoked pipe all too often. I'll spark it up and if it tastes bad I'll dump it, otherwise I smoke it.

I don't find the flavor of a re-lit cold bowl consistently good or bad. Usually, when I relight a cold bowl as I often do, it is as good, or gets better. I don't think the cold bowl makes it better, but maybe the fact that it has been tamped and charred does. A little more drying occasionally improves things. Anytime a bowl goes acrid or sour, that's the end of it, but it seems to me that can happen with a continuously smoked bowl as often as with a bowl re-lit cold.

mso489, I have to agree. The going sour or odd is somewhat random. I do find, however, that the DGT leaves me with a bit of a nic hit. I've gotten hiccups far more often from DGT, but I tend to smoke pretty heavy blends anyway. That may be why.

I don't do it often or on purpose. But it does happen from time to time. I see it as a significant advantage over cigars which are awful if left unlit for 30 minutes. When I do put a pipe down and pick it up much later, I haven't experienced any issues. Seems like the tobacco has dried a bit more and it smokes great. As a note, I mostly smoke Virginias and VaPers/VaBurs.

I wish I just smoked the entire bowl as relighting the next day usually compromised flavor. but I'd smoke it up anyway out of meanness.

I often do this with aromatics as well

Not on purpose but love to be able to walk away from a bowl and pick it up later and finish off

I usually tap out the ash give it a quick light tamp and fire it up

Always find that the flavor is on par and sometimes even a bit sweeter which I don’t mind

Hmmmm Come to think of it ... I know I have a half a bowl around here somewhere....