Ask G. L. Pease (Volume 26)
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G. L. Pease - Jun 17, 2013
- 7 min read
G. L. Pease
Amongst pipe tobacco aficionados, there seems to be no end to tightly held beliefs, some of which may have at one time had a basis in reality, some of which seem to be just frivolous flights of fancy. We are participants in a pastime rich with both history and romance, and the intersection of these presents an interesting playground for speculation and folly. Usually, it’s all in good fun. We love the colorful stories of briar and burl and leaf and smoke and the many characters that surround them, and some stretching of truths only seems to add to the mystery. With that in mind, let’s dive in to this month’s first question.
From Jan: My general question arose from a discussion with a fellow pipesmoker about basic tobacco manufacturing processes and who better suited to resolving this than a professional blender such as yourself? He stated that all tobacco is pressed during the first fermentation immediately after harvest and that as a consequence, all the tobacco we smoke has at one time or another seen the inside of a press at least once and most of it even twice (in what used to be called the cavendish process). I disagree and tried to make a guess as to what percentage of the total volume of pipe tobacco winds up in our bowls without ever being pressed: 30% would seem believable to me. Would you agree with my (not-so-dear-anymore) friend, or is my assumption reasonably correct?
A: A great question. I hope you don’t lose a friendship over this, but the answer is that you’re both a little right. How can that be? Once harvested, we know that the leaf must be cured, either by air, by heat (in the case of flue-curing) or by sunlight, which kills the leaf, dries it to the correct moisture content, and makes it ready for subsequent processing. Additional steps, such as the smoke fumigation of dark-fired and latakia types, may then be performed. Following this, the leaf must be fermented and aged to mellow it out. Usually, this whole process takes a minimum of 18 months, and can be as long as several years.
The fermentation that occurs during the initial aging is most commonly accomplished by stacking the cured leaf into pylons of 100 pounds or so, which are wrapped and tied in burlap, and allowed to sweat, the internal temperature and humidity closely monitored, for several weeks. As the internal heat rises, the stacks will be broken apart and re-stacked several times to prevent the leaf from decomposing. During this critical process, ammonia is released and sugars are converted, resulting in a more palatable product. After this, the stacks of tobacco are dried and further aged until they reach their optimum flavor and aroma, at which point they’ll be ready to blended and/or cut.
Your friend is partially right, in that nearly all tobacco at one time in its manufacture visits a press, though usually, only very briefly. During the cutting process, the bulk tobaccos are conditioned to the right moisture level for handling, then pressed into fairly loose blocks in order to be fed through the cutting machinery. Some machines in larger factories perform this pressing automatically as part of the production line, in other cases, it’s a separate step. Either way, this pressing step is purely mechanical, having nothing to do with altering the characteristics of the leaf. In other words, it’s not really pressing in the way that we normally think about it.
In some cases (such as in my Old London Series) the blends are assembled from whole leaf strips (leaf with the midrib removed), pressed into cakes, and allowed to age a bit before being cut. This is a method that was once common in some of the blending houses of the UK, but is rarely done today. Here, the pressing is more than just a way of holding the tobacco together for the cutter. It allows for a secondary fermentation to take place, while also increasing the integration of the various components of the blend into a more cohesive whole.
Pressing and cake-aging are most commonly seen in plugs and flakes, though, as you mention, there is also the so-called “cavendish” process, in which the leaf is sometimes sugared, and pressed in heated, usually steam jacketed presses before being aged and cut. This causes a significant darkening of the leaf, and the mellowing and deepening of the sweetness. But, if all tobacco were treated this way, it would present a pretty monotonous landscape. And, some tobaccos don’t respond well to this treatment. Orientals, for instance, lose much of the delicate perfume if hot-pressed.
Take your friend out for a beer and a great smoke, tell him you’re both right, and have a laugh over it.
Tony excitedly exclaims: Hot Damn! JackKnife RR got a review on PIPESMAGAZINE! 8oz. tins on the way? Yeah, I know it’s got to sell a bit first but I have hope. Putting a 8oz. tin of that wonderful herb up for a while excites the heck outta me. I can ‘see’ the tins in my mind’s eye. “@” Look real hard in the middle here…you’ll see them. I saw the 8oz plug at Smokingpipes.com. nice move. Can you get Pipesandcigars.com to handle it? I’d rather deal with them exclusively like I have been for the past year or so.
A: Starting with the last point first, though I make recommendations to retailers based on popularity of specific blends, I can’t really “get them” to stock things they don’t want to stock. Honestly, they’ll listen to their customers’ requests a lot more attentively than they’ll listen to my ultra-suave sales pitch. “Is this the pipe shop? Are you the manager? This here is the real G.L.Pease – you mighta hearda me. You might better get some of this JackKnife Plug in the big cans, or I’m gonna have to come on down there and whup your ass. My boy’s gonna come on down with me, and he’ll whup your ass, too, just for good measure. So, how many cans should I put you down for today?”
As to the JKRR in bigger tins, we’ll throw it at the wall at the next shareholders meeting, and see if it sticks. (Seriously, it might be just about time to do it. )
Kevin drops and rolls under the flames to pen: How could I get a pipe so hot as to burn the wood inside the bowl, but not experience any discomfort or foul taste while smoking? At least until I tasted the wood burning.
A: Pipes are mysterious objects. I’ve had pipes get so hot in my hand that I had to hold them by the shank, yet deliver a remarkably cool smoke with not even a hint of burnout, and pipes that felt cool to the touch, but emitted from their nozzle something like the exhaust gasses from a Saturn V rocket rather than cool, tasty tobacco smoke. In other words, I don’t have a freakin’ clue, but I have a suspicion that you’re just the sort of smoker waterglass bowl coatings were invented for. Did you see the memo about this? Yeah. I’ll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo, okay?
Tonyy writes: Gregg can you tell us something about what the Castello Sea Rock finish is and how it is made? I purchased a Castello estate for a song and just because of the price and the fact that I wanted a Castello someday I went for it. Smooth is obvious and Sandblast, a decent one usually shows the grain pattern. But Sea Rock? I don’t have a clue.
A: The Sea Rock is a type of rusticated finish that is done by hand using a tool that chips out pieces of the briar. Rather than exhibiting the grain in relief the way a sandblast would, rustication of this form gives the pipe maker more leeway in determining the pattern of the pipe’s surface. The Sea Rock finish has taken different forms over the years, starting out with a very interesting, craggy form similar to rough corals smoothed through years of tumbling in the ocean (hence the name), and more recently, a tighter, more even style. An interesting variation of the Sea Rock finish is the “∏” (pi) variant, which incorporates smooth areas. (On older examples, this variant is indicated by the digit 3 proceeding the regular shape number.)
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PipeGazette did a wonderful video interview with Castello’s Franco Coppo in which part of the process can be seen (2:25).
That’s it for this month. As always, keep those cards and letters coming. What are those burning questions (groan) you’ve always wondered about? Send them in! I love a full mailbag.
-glp
Photo Credits:
Castello Pipes and opening photo of pipe shadow on book by G. L. Pease
Pressed tobacco taken at Cornel & Diehl Factory by Kevin Godbee
 Since 1999, Gregory L. Pease has been the principal alchemist behind the blends of G.L. Pease Artisanal Tobaccos. He’s been a passionate pipeman since his university days, having cut his pipe teeth at the now extinct Drucquer & Sons Tobacconist in Berkeley, California. Greg is also author of The Briar & Leaf Chronicles, a photographer, recovering computer scientist, sometimes chef, and creator of The Epicure’s Asylum. See our interview with G. L. Pease here. |
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. 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With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Vegas Baby The show started out strong on the 14th floor hospitality suites hosted by the Vegas Pipe Show and Smoking Pipes as well as room hopping to carvers, estate sellers, and vendors to pre-game for the festivities. If you’re interested in what that looks like I’ll refer you to last years pipe show round up. I circled with Brian Levine to get the totals in comparison to last year: This year’s show numbers: 108 Exhibitor tables, 445 attendees, 3,250 Raffle Tickets, 100ish dinners, 172 Rooms in the Hotel. Last year, by comparison, 107 exhibitor tables, 425 attendees, 2,200 raffle tickets, 104 dinners, and 175 rooms on Friday and Saturday nights. We were at capacity, basically, when it came to vendor tables and the dinner, so there is no physical room for growth at this point except for attendees. That said, we filled that smoking lounge to the brim. New Carvers Spotlight Garret Woo (Pipes by Woo) How long have you been carving? Garret: I’ve been carving since 2021, and I’m guessing your next question is probably how’d you get started carving? James: Yes. Garret: In 2021 I took a break from my full time job – that included machining and assembly work and I thought maybe it was time I made something that I would like and I started looking at youtube and Instagram and putting together my shop. I did struggle on the stems to start and there was a lot of failure at the beginning. James: How many pipes have you made so far? Garret: I number my pipes, so I just finished up 186. James: What is your favorite shape you’ve been making? Garret: I really dig Canadians and pipes with longer shanks and lovat Canadian blends. I like to play with different shapes of stems on the longer shanked pipes. The billiard would be my go-to shape but I want to learn more techniques on freehanded shapes. I like to put brass and copper adornments on my pipes with my machining background it helps. James: What is the craziest thing you’ve seen at this show? Garret: The first thing that comes to mind is the table over there with C-Pipes with the shapes and the size and petiteness and the intricate details they did. You can check out what Garret is working on by going to his Instagram. Stefan Cashwell James: how long have you been carving? Stefan: about 3 years. James: What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at the show? Stefan: The Adam Davidson pipe with the clear shape and the bamboo—I don’t know if it’s 3D printed or what, but it’s amazing. James: What’s your favorite shape to do? Stefan: That’s a tough question. I think they’re all the same shape, but what’s fascinating is that Dublin, volcano, and blowfish are all the same depending on how you turn them. Playing with that, with all its variations, is a lot of fun. My favorite accent to use is also horn; it’s finicky, but it’s a great accent on pipes. You can check out Stefan’s work on his Instagram. Science: Meet Pipes I chatted with Chris from the San Diego Pipe Club; he started off doing stem replacements for estate pipes but also improved the airflow. James: How are you doing 3d printing? What is the thought process? Chris: It’s a 3D-printed pipe with a briar insert. The design is a calabash meets a Peterson system meets a metal Falcon/Kirsten radiator style. It is a bottom draft smoking bowl like a radiator like those metal pipes. The inside chamber is a calabash. The stummel and accent rings in the stems are all 3d printed. The insert is briar, olive wood, or I have the potential to use meerschaum as well. This idea came about through the San Diego Pipe Club, wanting to see if we could 3D print a pipe and being curious about the technology; I have a printer and design ability, so here we are. James: What’s the type of plastic you’re using? Chris: It’s all PLA plastic, a renewable potato starch plastic that is food-safe. The stummels are printed with a plastic that has wood in it 40% wood fiber, bamboo, rosewood, ebony, redwood, and walnut are the woods I’m printing. For the accent rings I just got a new material that I’m printing that has 40% copper, so its real metal that you can sand, and polish the same as wood filament. The stems are 3d printed as well. The concept is renewable and cheap from a production standpoint, with the ability to make a very high quality smoking pipe based on the experience. By combining the calabash system pipe and bottom draft hole and using 3d simulations to see airflow, I can see where I’m having eddies and ripples in my current, and see where my moisture and all the particles are dropping back out from a vapor to a liquid. Most people who have tried these say the stems are clean, and they don’t even have to run a pipe cleaner afterward because everything collects at the bottom. Chris has also been experimenting with color-changing plastics so you can see the hotspots. Chris said he was able to use this to slow down his cadence, which, of course, could mean you could get a slow-smoke training pipe to teach yourself to perform better. If you’re interested in learning more or want to check one out, you can contact him on Instagram: Copper Beard Pipe Works The Negative Space The show was buzzing about one specific pipe, which had everyone guessing how it was made. I chatted with Adam Davidson briefly about it. James: How did this idea come to fruition? Adam Davidson: Smokingpipes.com had an expo back in August open to all of the makers they carry. The theme was to make a pipe utilizing bamboo. Given that the last time we had the expo I made a smooth Almond with three bamboo shanks, […]
Great information as always. Thanks!
I particularly enjoyed you’re mention of “killing the leaf.” I enjoy your articles. Thanks Greg!
Thanks for another informative and nicely illustrated article. They’re always a great read too!
Tony, I’ve passed your request on to our buyer so he can include the 8 oz. JackKnife Plug in our next order.
Russ
Looking forward to seeing Greg & Russ at the KC Pipe Show.
I think the elephant in the room with the first question is the introduction of the Cavendish process into the discussion; the answer implies (expresses?) the fact the Cavendish tobacco requires the addition of a sweetening agent and is not just about stoving – an important distinction?
On a later point, Fred Hanna has covered this in a way that, for me, could not be better expressed; basically, the main concern for the smoker is the temperature of the smoke (and this can never be below ambient unless your pipe has a cooling unit) – the felt temperature of the pipe is irrelevant to the smoking and is entirely dependent on the insulative/conductivity properties of the briar.
Thank you for your very clear and extensive response. With this in hand we might even get to sharing that beer, some day :).
Jan
Firing a bowl while reading your articles always makes for a sweet afternoon. Thanks Mr. Pease.
D
Consistently charming, informative, and fun articles. Q: When are you planning to come out with the hard-bound collection? Paperback?
Very good information as always!
Thanks!