Why Can't I Make it to the Bottom of the Bowl?!

Wow. This is a doozy. There are many variables almost all of which are really hard for me to describe. This said, I'm a firm believer in dumping when the smoke is no longer enjoyable. I don't always smoke to the bottom and it's never affected my enjoyment nor has it damaged my pipes in any way. The best I got is to make sure your tobacco is dry (drier than you think it should be... think bone-dry), packed properly (pack it looser than you think it should be), and sip slowly (imagine sipping from a straw). Hope this helps!
-Jason

How is the tobacco tasting the last third of the bowl? If it is harsh and has bite, I wouldn't worry about finishing it, just for

the glory of white ash. If it is still tasting good, dump off some of the loose ash, tamp the unburned tobacco down a little,

not too tight, and relight. As soon as the taste deteriorates, though, I'd dump it. A pipe is about flavor.

You smoke until you are enjoying yourself, there is no reason to smoke to the bottom.
Aromatics are usually impossible to smoke to the bottom - just too much goo and the flavor changes to shit at the bottom.
The cut of the tobacco will also influence it. Shag tobaccos are the easiest to smoke to ash, so are fold-and-stuff flakes.
Oh, and re-tamp. Some people talk about just dropping the tamper on the ash, but I actually tamp like a man I smoke Nightcap from top to bottom on single light just by tamping good every now and then. When you feel the draw becoming too loose - tamp.
But if you smoke aros, just don't bother with smoking to the bottom, there is no reward there, just disappointment.

Don't fret over it - in the grand scheme of things it really isn't that important. I finish when I am done, no matter where I am at in regards to the bottom of the bowl.

I can't improve on the excellent advice that the foregoing posters have given you, but I will add a trifle. First, a little bit of nomenclature: that last bit of tobacco is called the dottle, and some smoke it and others don't. One thing to keep in mind is that the dottle acts like a filter. How so? Because every puff you take passes through the tobacco remaining in the bowl, until it becomes what we call dottle. Now, as you might imagine, the dottle is going to be a bit moister, but it's also going to have a lot more tar and nicotine than it did when it started out a short while earlier as dry tobacco in your pouch. For some stout-hearted fellows, this is no problem--they love it, and smoke it all the way down--depending on the type of tobacco. As previously mentioned, it's just about impossible to do this with an aromatic, though some manage it. If I have a pure virginia, I can do it. Add Perique to the mix and I can't. English tobaccos--well, it depends.

You see, there's no need to feel bad about not smoking dottle. If you've been smoking aromatics, chances are the dottle is way too moist to take a light and keep it going. Also, lots of people let their tobacco sit out for a while to dry before they smoke it. As Jason said, "think bone dry." If it crumbles to dust it's too dry, but ideally it shouldn't be too far from that point. If, by the time I get down to the dottle I find the taste getting a bit strong or less than pleasant, or I feel too much Vitamin N coming through, I set the pipe aside. Other times I'm able to smoke down to a clean white or grey ash. It really depends on which pipe and which tobacco. But here's the thing: if I smoke it all the way down to the last puff, I don't feel a sense of triumph. Similarly, if I reach a point where I decide that more wouldn't be fun, I don't feel a sense of failure. Pipe-smoking is about your pleasure--nothing else. If you're enjoying the bowl up to the dottle, that's great--you've won! You might try drying the tobacco out a bit to see if that helps, but some tobaccos are just about impossible to dry out, because they contain humectants, which means they draw moisture right out of the air, so that's a fight you're not going to win.

Here's the deal--if you can smoke 3/4 of the pipe and feel that you enjoyed the experience--that's all you need. Trust me on this one--I've been smoking a pipe for just a few weeks shy of 55 years, and sometimes I go all the way to the bottom, and sometimes I don't--and I consider myself a reasonably experienced smoker. Sometimes I know--or think I know why the pipe went out on me, and let me tell you--there have been plenty of times when I smoked it all the way down and wished I hadn't. Let your taste buds guide you.

OK--that's a small amount of information crammed into a lot of space, but it's good to know stuff, and it piggybacks onto what the others have told you. Remember Rule 1: Enjoy your smoke!

^^ Well put Eric, and a great perspective on it. I used to try my damnedest to smoke to the bottom, but I've long since given up on the idea of 'smoking down to a white ash' that some allude to. Granted, at times I've done so but more often than not it was something that just happened at times, and most times not. Makes no sense to try and achieve something that really doesn't relate to the 'pleasure' of smoking as opposed to achieving 'something' just for the sake of it. As you so aptly put: Rule 1: Enjoy your smoke!

Just echoing what everybody above says. My general observation is that aromatics are best enjoyed from top to mid-bowl while my precious balkans become more flavorful from the last half to the very end.

I'm a newbie to these pages, and this was one of the first threads I encountered. I'm glad I read this one. The comments are spot on and I agree with practically all of them.

I fondly remember Dunhill Three Year Matured Virginia. I had always favored English blends exclusively, but learned from TYMVa that there are other taste pleasures out there. What is the closest equivalent to the Dunhill version? I heard that it had pear juice added, when the older Dunhill blending staff retired and the taste couldn't be duplicated by the newer guys. I didn't care. Rule 1 rules.

Good advice. I smoke until it is no longer easy to. The I dump the bowl

I'm in the same boat here as well. Once past the the halfway point of the bowl, I have to relight much more often and tend to burn the hell out of my fingers in the process. That's about the time I call it quits.

I am glad I read this post cause I have been wondering for a while if I was the only one dumping the last 1/4 out. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong but it just wasn't enjoyable after that point

I have wonder if it isn't just a certain personality or a lack of resources (like money). Have you ever seen people that smoke a cigarette until their lips look charred and their finger or yellow & brown? I think pipe smoke gets hot when relighting less than half a bowl and it can start to taste bad. So bump it on the bottom of your boot and refill it. It isn't like kids in China are doing without pipe tobacco.

The shape of the bowl and the way it's drilled can affect how far down a pipe can be smoked.

I've enjoyed reading the great advice here. Sometimes, when I get to "that point," I will dump the ash and even out the top of what's left and let the pipe sit to cool and dry for thirty minutes or so. Often, once it has cooled and dried a bit, it relights great and smokes nicely. If it doesn't, I give up and dump it.
Best of luck,

Bill

Wanting to avoid the nicotine hit from that last bit of baccy, I usually dump the last 10-20% of the bowl. Same reason I never make it to the end of a cigar, at some point, you begin smoking more nicotine-laced tar than actual tobacco, and to that mix you can add a lot of biting steam if the tobacco was too wet.

Dump the baccy and use it to top off another bowl at a later time.

I just dump it when I'm finished. No point in making yourself smoke longer than you want to, plus that bottom bit usually isn't much good anymore because so much smoke has been drug through it, it is damp in moisture at the bottom and it requires too many relights because there is hardly anything left to keep it burning with consistency. Dump it and forget about it.

It makes sense to dump the dottle, the way smoking a pipe works you don't necessarily want to go all the way to the bottom.
The reason "sipping slowly" usually gives better flavour is there's a certain range of temperature where you extract the most flavour from the tobacco. The fact that it's on fire is actually detrimental to the experience. Thus, when you get to the bottom and the only tobacco left is burning, it's probably not going to be very good.

Aromatics seem to take this a step further and once the topping is gone you're left with something almost rancid. I tend to dump those about halfway through, as soon as the flavour turns bitter.