Your First Smoke?

hmhaines · Sep 19, 2016

As a new smoker, it isn't difficult to recall my first experience with a pipe.
Got a handmade briar in the mail, practically jumped the mailman the day it came. Waited three long, horrible, grueling days until my friend/mentor would be working at the local shop. Went in, we both loaded up a pipe with Gatsby Flake, and just chatted for a while.
Honestly, I did not love the first bowl. Too wet, too sweet, too much of everything unpleasant. Aside from the company, which was great.
Then the second bowl was better. And the third better than that. And now, every bowl is pretty damned good.
How about you folks? What was your first like?

weedsnager · Sep 19, 2016

First smoke- Middleton cherry

First like- Prince Albert

pagan · Sep 19, 2016

Smoky and hot, had to learn to sloow down, sip not puf, all the new guy mistakes, luckily I had a mentor and way too much time on my hands to learn to smoke without thinking about it, just enjoy the experience

jackswilling · Sep 19, 2016

Captain Black for 25 plus years of not so serious and intermittent smoking. Had one Italian briar which is MIA and a few cobs. Was clueless that there was so much more to all this. A few years back started looking at tobacco reviews and then found this site. Whole new world of pipes and tobacco. Here's to Captain Black, have not smoke it for a while and may have to revisit someday.

pitchfork · Sep 19, 2016

My first smokes were with some kind of aromatic from a jar (possibly a Lane product). It was pretty horrible as I just couldn't keep the damn thing lit.
Years later, a friend re-introduced me to the pipe via Dunhill Nightcap and I was hooked. I only had to relight a couple of times and the flavors were unlike anything I'd ever had before. A really great experience, actually.

reverendsasquatch · Sep 19, 2016

My first smoke was a blacker than black cavendish called "Midnight". This was 16 or 17 years ago. It was all I smoked for probably the first few years of smoking. I loved it the first time I had it, but it made me sick to my stomach and I ralphed later that night. Don't know why, but I pushed through, and kept smokin'!
The closest thing I was able to find was C&D's Black Cavendish.

mrwestminster · Sep 19, 2016

My first smoke? A $5 (equivalent) basket pipe with Troost pipe tobacco. I finished the pouch without cleaning the pipe, then bought some Borkum Riff licorice that I binned after 2 bowls. Then I decided, hey, why not boil the pipe to clean it and get this putrid taste out? Well, you can guess how that one ended. Glad I made this cretinous mistake with the basket pipe and not my Peterson Sterling Silver which came next!
Looking back, perhaps I should not have undertaken any form of cleaning after a few sturdy tumblers of William Lawsons.
EDIT: By the way, if anyone can get their hands on a tin of Troost Slices, apparently it's worth doing. To be honest, I forget what the pouch was like but the tin is meant to be really good. Alas, I digress.

tobakkvarer · Sep 19, 2016

I took what the pipe shop recommended: Caledonian Melange No.10 Highland Cream. I don't remember much from it but that's probably a good thing because it is easy to tend towards remembering the bad things than the good. It is the first tin I finished without thinking too much about it. I never bought another tin... maybe I should.
My first like was Orlik Golden Sliced and still is.
My first English like was Nat Sherman 536, but that was soon replaced by Frog Morton Cellar. I consider discovering English blends a separate and worthy milestone.

voorhees · Sep 19, 2016

My first smoke was trying to smoke the left over cigar nub. Terrible idea. Moist acrid cigar flavors. Bleh.
I learned.

foggymountain · Sep 19, 2016

Terrible first pipe smoke. I was a 14 year old cigarillo smoker and was having trouble coming up with the quarter that a pack Of Robert Burns Cigarillos cost. So I tried a pipe and 15-20 year old drugstore tobacco that my father had abandoned.

lifesizehobbit · Sep 19, 2016

Savinelli bent billiard and Half&Half...like I imagined smoking a piece of furniture would taste like.

pipesmokingtom · Sep 19, 2016

First smoke was a no-name vanilla cavendish in a Brebbia bent billiard

First like was a tin of Balkan Sasieni. That was a holy crap moment.

ray47 · Sep 19, 2016

First smoke was Middleton's Cherry Blend in 1967. Can't remember what type of pipe. After 2 bowls I gave up smoking a pipe until 1983. Seems like it took that long to get rid of the tongue bite.

skraps · Sep 19, 2016

First smoke was some of my uncles BCA in a pipe that he had gifted me. I think I was around 15. Captain Black randomly after that until I started back up full time in my early 20's. First smoke I really enjoyed was Crown Achievement, though the first time I smoked it I said it smelled and tasted like dirty gym socks.

Sjmiller CPG · Sep 19, 2016

The butts of my higher end cigars that I smoked on occasion in MM Freehand cob. Tasted fine to me but then again I only smoked the "good" butts, never the butts of the cheap ones I smoked every day.

warren · Sep 19, 2016

Pall Mall in 1958. Red Man in the early sixties. First pipe blend in 1965, Cherry Blend or Middleton's Walnut something. That covers first smoke, first chaw and first blend. I've yet to try snuff. I keep waiting for a nicotine IV setup.

tinsel · Sep 19, 2016

Middleton's Cherry. Burned the hell outta my tongue.
Eventually moved on to PA, CH, and and then tinned blends.

cossackjack · Sep 20, 2016

Middleton Cherry & Paladin, then Brokum Riff & Capt Black in drug store Dr Grabow & Yello Bowl pipes.

First quality tobaccos were Balkan Sobranie Flake & Germain Special Latakia Flake in a Danish freehand which was lost or misplaced somewhere along the way.

carver · Sep 20, 2016

Haha I love to read that we are all really really into this hobby that we all sucked at at first. This hobby that hurt us, burnt us.

Just amazing.

Same her, first bowls weren't really nice. But that's the spirit though, isn't it? You read so many other people who love this that you gotta think "there's fomefing I'm doing wrong here, let'f tfry again when I can tafte my mouff"

One fing led to anover, and we all learn about the pleasure of pipe smoking.

Which then makes me think of this: we are all non-conformist, perseverant and stubborn people.

Chasing Embers · Sep 20, 2016

'91, seventeen years old, and smoked Prince Albert Cherry Vanilla in a Dr. Grabow Omega. Very hot, and very flavorless.

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