Pipe Therapy
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G. L. Pease - Jun 15, 2023
- 4 min read
Last week, I had one of those days when things just don’t go quite right. I’d ordered some specialty coffee from a supplier I’d heard good things about. Specifically, I ordered a pound of Sumatra Mandheling in a dark roast, one of my faves. I ordered whole beans, as I always do, or at least I thought I had ordered whole beans. Perhaps from overly enthusiastic fingers, or maybe it was just because it was still early and I hadn’t yet fueled up on high octane and my neurons were misfiring, I pulled the “Buy Me” trigger without carefully reading the description. Two days later, nicely packed and delivered to my door was a pound of pre-ground coffee.
I don’t buy pre-ground coffee for a couple reasons. First, as soon as the beans are ground, flavor and aroma begin a race against time. Some of the carbon dioxide (CO2) created during the roasting process is trapped within the bean. This actually has the beneficial side-effect of slowing down oxidation. Once ground, this trapped CO2 will dissipate quickly, and the coffee will begin to oxidize. Additionally, many of the aroma and flavor components trapped in the beans are volatile, migrating out of the grounds more quickly than they do while still encapsulated by little chemical shells within the bean. Sadly, this combination of oxidation and dissipation of volatiles results in ground coffee losing much of its more delicate and interesting character fairly quickly, and there’s nothing to be done to stop it. Time always ultimately wins that race.
Equally important, at least to my weird brain, is that whim often takes the driver’s seat in the morning when I’m choosing which method I want to use for my morning cup. Chemex? French press? My cherished mini Bialetti? Each method works best with a different grind, and with pre-ground, I’m stuck with whatever granule size I would find in that bag. Right, then.
I called the company. They listened compassionately, and very kindly offered to replace the unopened bag of pre-ground with one of freshly roasted whole beans, once returned, but, considering it would cost me postage plus the time packing it up and making a trip to the post office, I decided it didn’t make economic sense. And, I was perilously close to running out of beans, so, I just ordered another pound, this time of the right stuff, and decided to give the pre-ground a go. Freshly opened, it was quite nice in the press pot, less so in the Moka. We’ll see how long it holds onto its goodness.
If you’re questioning my sanity at this point, you’re in good company; I often do. But, I know coffee heads who are far more obsessive about their brew than I am. Why not get a Keurig and be done with it? Not going to happen. There’s something deeply comforting about my morning coffee ritual—preparing the apparatus, bringing a measured quantity of water to temperature, weighing and grinding the beans. It’s one of the little routines that anchors me to the reality of waking consciousness, especially on those mornings when the night’s dreamscape was particularly vivid and fascinating. (To be truthful, I’m really not a morning person. In a chat with an east-coast buddy, I was amused by the fact that his 3am rise time is about two west-coast hours before I’m even thinking about sleep.) Plus, in today’s world of immediate gratification, instant communication, and so many things being driven into a frenzy by technology’s incessant interruptions, I enjoy things that slow life’s pace a little. Like making coffee. Like cooking. Like smoking a pipe.
Admittedly, I’m equally impassioned with my pipe smoking rituals. I like to take time selecting the pipe that I want to smoke, and pondering the blend I want to fill it with, sometimes selecting a different pipe if the first one doesn’t “feel” like the right fit for the blend. This process sometimes goes through a couple more iterations, and on the most indecisive of days, can take almost as long as smoking the thing. Bonus if the tobacco happens to be a flake, or especially a plug, since I then get to think about how to prepare it, and in the case of plugs, it’s a good excuse for playing with knives. It’s all part of the process, part of the experience that makes each smoke just a little bit more special.
As pipe smokers, we’re pretty fortunate. We’ve always got a go-bag at the ready when we need a temporary escape from the Island of Instancy. Pipe smoking is not a hurried thing. It’s something we can count on to bring moments of sanity and solace in an increasingly crazy world. It gives us a good excuse for taking a little time to focus on pure pleasure. It’s a delicate thread that connects us abstractly with a long and colorful history, with many great thinkers, artists, scientists, literary giants, and with each other. It’s a little bit like magic.
Sometimes, it even helps us forget that we pushed the wrong button.
-glp
Photos by G.L. Pease
Written by G. L. Pease
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I remember the first time I heard someone else say it. “How many pipes do I need? Just one more.” It’s glib, sure, a bit of a joke, but it also rings a bell of truth, at least to me. I certainly have “enough” pipes, but pipes are seductive little things. Just when we think we’re all set, we have enough, another will come along that tempts us beyond any sense of reason. I suppose it’s the same way with any sort of collecting. There’s always another white whale we’re in pursuit of. When we finally track that one down, though, another will almost inevitably breach the surface, taking its place as the new object of our desire, enticing us to change course and set sail once again. But, there’s a potential problem with having a lot of pipes. Maybe. The more pipes we may have, the harder it can be to keep them in rotation. It makes sense. We tend to gravitate towards our current faves, the ones that most appeal to us for whatever reason, and sometimes, maybe they stay in rotation longer than they really should. The side-effect of this, of course, is that another favored pipe might end up too-long forgotten. That’s exactly what happened recently. Exhibit A: The Castello pictured is one that has been long overlooked. It’s a Trademark shape #55. It’s a really nice example of the shape. The red pearlized stem is beautifully done. The wood isn’t really anything special to look at, but it’s evenly covered, without any bald spots. When I look at it, I wonder why it wasn’t done in the more typical dark ruby-red finish that adorns most Trademarks. I’ve seen a great deal of variation amongst the grade over the years, including one really nice bent-bulldog that left the factory with a brown sandblasted finish. (For those who don’t know, Trademark has long been the lowest Castello smooth grade, usually finished in a dark red.) Was this a stamping/grading error, or is there just more leeway in the grade than we’ve come to expect? I might never know. This example is from the early 1970s, maybe even the late 1960s, identified by the upper case Ks in the grade designation. (On Sea Rock and Old Antiquari pipes, the Ks reflect the size, while with the smooth finishes, Trademark, Castello and Collection, the Ks represent the relative grade.) It has been living in a different rack than the one housing the majority of my #55s. I don’t recall why I put it there, but as many of us can relate to, rack space is often at a premium. I stumbled upon it while looking for something completely different. “Oh, you? Why are you there? I remember you smoke pretty well.” Yeah, I sometimes talk to my pipes – one of many quirks, I suppose. I won’t begin to worry until they start talking back. I grabbed it from the rack, dusted it off, and decided to give it a fill with a bowl of a slightly aged VA/perique blend, Telegraph Hill, from 2018. What a delightful smoke! At five years, the tobacco is expressing a lot of the complexities of aged Virginias and the perique adds a delightful fruitiness. When young, the composition is a bit brighter, maybe a little spicier, but time has polished any edges, and amplified the sweeter notes. Like the pipe, I’d forgotten about this blend for quite a while, but one evening in March, after chatting with my good friend Nate, who is quite a fan of it, I decided it might be time to revisit it. I got a couple of fresh ones, and excavated a couple older tins from the library. I normally reach for Fillmore when I want a VA/perique thing because of its boldness and depth, but in revisiting this one, I’m finding something soothing and comfortable about it that I’ve really been enjoying, both young and aged. Sticking with the theme of the forgotten, and as a perhaps interesting tidbit to the photographically inclined, I shot the pictures for this month’s column with my old Nikkor-O 35mm/2.0 mounted on my trusty Nikon Df. The last time I used this lens, it was adapted to one of my Fujifilm bodies, and I didn’t care much for the results, so I put it away and pretty much forgot about it. But, I’ve recently been exploring some of my old kit, deciding what to keep, what to pass along, and this one once again came to my attention, kind of like that old Castello. On the Df, there’s something about its vintage rendering that I find truly appealing. Another forgotten treasure, and just like with that old pipe, it seems that, at least today, everything old is new again. If your collection is on the large side, are there pipes or tobaccos that you’ve all but forgotten, only to come back to them one day to find yourself wondering why? Maybe it’s just another fun dimension to this endlessly fascinating journey.
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 639. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Per Billhäll. Per is the owner of Scandinavian Pipes, which is an online retailer of high grade pipes. He started smoking pipes in the 1960s. His first high grade pipe was made by Hans “Former” Nielsen, who is one of the living legends from Denmark. That led to Per becoming a huge pipe and tobacco collector, and show attendee where he became well known. Along with pipe book author Jan Andersson, they started The Pipe Club of Sweden in 1991. Then in 1999, Per started “Scan Pipes”. He is now one of the pipe retailing legends from Sweden. At the top of the show Brian will talk about holiday blends, and other special pipe tobacco blends.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 638. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Fae “The Sassy Pipe Lady” Simmons. Fae is the owner of Tobacco Treasures, which sells new, vintage, & estate pipes, and smoking accessories on Etsy. She has been in business since 2017, and has been surrounded by pipes and tobacco most of her life. Her father and his brother smoked pipes, and so does Fae. Her husband is also a retired tobacconist that worked all over the industry from coast to coast for several different companies in the industry. She has a great story of how her business got started with a great inventory of unsmoked vintage pipes. 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.
Ok, so it’s that time of year, as we all know. Family feasts, houses, yards, and big trees festooned with lights and dangling ornaments, just high enough to keep the cats from reaching a paw into the greenery. It’s also the time of year when your pipe-smoking-significant other makes vast hints about a new pipe. That’s to be expected since he or she was a good boy or girl during the year. Yes, ladies smoke pipes, too. Oh, you want an example? Okay, try Actress Greta Garbo, Millicent Fenwick, Mary Frith, and my late grandmother (who died when she was 93) dipped snuff and smoked a cob occasionally. So now that we have settled that the gentler side of life will puff a pipe too, let’s move on to the upcoming biggest holiday of all. Of course, that huge event is brought to us by the hefty fellow in a red suit, puffing his pipe all the way in a sled filled with presents, being led by a reindeer with a red nose. Or some such. That’s Santa Claus, of course. Becoming a bit more serious, Christmas is such a wonderful time for families and friends. It’s also quite special for pipe puffers. For many of us, this brings up a nostalgic look back to our pipe-smoking or cigar-smoking friends who have died during the current year. A great journalist pal whom I often joined in a local brick-and-mortar pipe and cigar shop. I puffed my pipe, and occasional cigar, as he enjoyed a cigar. He died in October and will be missed. On the happier side of things, Christmas is also a time when mind workers of the world renew their collections with fresh additions. Pundit included. A French passion has overtaken Pundit, from reading more Albert Camus, a heavy cigarette smoker, as were many French intellectuals of a certain time. Instead of cigarettes many of us prefer the more relaxed enjoyment of pipes for that “calm and objective judgment” in the comings and goings of the world. This brings me to French pipes. While visiting France once in the long ago, I happened by a “Tabac” shop in Paris, Tabac Des Vosges. I purchased a beauty of a Chacom bent. I also later bought a Ropp made from ancient briar. To learn more about the dawn of briar pipes and beginnings, take a peek at a well-done piece by Davin Hylton in Pipe Line on April 12, 2023, on Saint-Claude, France, the birthplace of briar. Also in the long back when, on a cold Christmas afternoon, Pundit wandered into an Atlanta bricks and mortar pipe shop to look around. There, resting in an enclosed glass counter was an exquisite Comoy. An older gent, smoking a beautiful bent, asked me if I wanted to look at that pipe. It had a $100 price tag. A college student working for a grocery store chain to help with college tuition at the time, Pundit didn’t have one hundred cents, let alone a C note! I declined and found a $5 basket pipe. A Christmas tradition had just begun. Since that early time, Pundit has made it a holiday ritual to either reward himself, or a special friend, with pipe or tobacco. A Claudio Cavicchi would be nice. Just sayin.’ And now for a couple of December-born Pipe Smokers of the Past: Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on Dec. 30, 1865, and died on Jan. 18, 1936. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble—Rudyard Kipling. Martin Van Buren, born Dec. 5, 1782, and died July 24, 1862, U.S. President, 1837-1841 As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it—Martin Van Buren. And one more note to recall a deceased World War II veteran who loved William Somerset Maugham, the author. Maugham, a pipe smoker, was born in Paris, France, on Jan. 25, 1874, and died on Dec. 16, 1965. One cool afternoon as the veteran and I talked while sitting in his backyard patio, he looked off into the distance as if studying something. Nothing in particular. Just looking. He turned to me and said if I wanted to learn about life, “read Somerset Maugham.” I did. It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know’ –W. Somerset Maugham And now a Parting Shot: Any day with an old friend with pipes and tobacco is a good day.
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