A&C Petersen
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Kevin Godbee - Jul 14, 2014
- 11 min read
Alan Schwartz
From the moment you walk in to the A&C Petersen factory, you know these guys don’t just make tobacco, they live it. On the horizontal support beams that cross the room are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of tobacco tins collected over the years by the Petersen brothers, Hans and Jens -including many older American specimens that tobacco museums and collectors would envy. All around the office are other artifacts – antique machines for pressing, cutting, and mixing tobacco are standing accents, along with cigar store Indians, old smokeshop signs, and display posters.
The conference room is set up like a smokeshop, with counter-height glass cases containing pipes and tobaccos, old and new cigarette packs that have visual or historical interest, and humidor sections full of cigars. The walls are covered with tobacco posters and prints and woodcuts from old books on tobacco plantations in the “New World.” In short, the room is a microcosm of the tobacco universe of the past and present.
The display is neither just for show nor for the personal pleasure the Petersen brothers feel by surrounding themselves with the visible history of their craft. “If you don’t know where you come from, then you don’t know where you’re going,” Hans says. “That’s part of the reason for accumulating this stuff, in addition to the plain fun of collecting. But there’s also a practical side. I get a lot of ideas about packaging, about brand names, even about new blends from all this. And some of the older machines we come across help us to design new ones.”
The Petersen brothers are not only collectors of tobacco history-they are part of it. Their great grandfather started a tobacco, cigar, and snuff factory in Horsens, Denmark, in 1865; his sons took over around the turn of the century, and then one of the grandsons, the father of Hans and Jens, started his own factory in 1932. In the 1970’s, having done their apprenticeships in England, Germany, and the U.S., Hans and Jens began to operate the A&C (Alfred and Christian-their respective middle names) Petersen factory on their own, still in Horsens, in the “Midwest” of Denmark. Like most educated Danes, they speak fluent English and German, the languages spoken, not so coincidentally, in their largest markets.
Whether it is a classic natural or lightly aromatic Danish blend, a deeply flavored black Cavendish that is favored by American and German smokers, a full-bodied traditional English mixture with Turkish and latakia tobaccos flavoring the Virginia base, or the latest flavor innovation in the global market, the Petersen’s make it, either for their own brands or for someone else’s. For variety and sheer tobacco making experience, A&C Petersen is tops.
Our journey begins in the warehouse, accompanied by both Hans and Jens. While both Petersen’s are extremely knowledgeable, the labor is divided such that Jens is the tobacco man and Hans does the marketing and administration. Jens’ responsibilities include purchasing all the leaf, overseeing the blending, and running the testing and development laboratory. Hans develops ideas, globetrots to service accounts, and supervises the retail and franchise operations of the Paul Olsen “My Own Blend” smokeshops.
Jens cuts open a quarter-ton box to show some Virginia leaf grown in Zimbabwe. “Excelllent tobacco,” he says, “but look at this, from the Piedmont district of North Carolina.” He takes a leaf from an opened bale piled on a skid. The American leaf is a richer, almost lemony, yellow color. "Much higher nicotine content in this, and really fine tobacco, but too strong to use by itself, so we blend it with Rhodesian leaf (like most tobacco men, Petersen uses the old name for Zimbabwe), which is high in natural sugar."
How does Jens know about the specific nicotine and sugar content in the tobacco? Is every bale checked? "We spot-check in my laboratory, and you can tell by the look and feel of the bale," explains Jens.
"We depend on our brokers," Hans adds, "and we’ve been doing business with some of them since my grandfather’s day. They know what we buy and send us only what falls within the specifications we want."
"Anyway," Jens adds, "the chemistry varies slightly from crop to crop, as with any natural product, depending on the annual rain fall, days of sunshine and so on. The art of the blender is to under stand that and make minor adjustments in the blend proportions to compensate for natures tricks."
From the warehouse, where the leaf is stored at its shipping state of 10 to 12 percent moisture, the tobacco is taken to be steamed and moisturized so that it becomes pliable and workable. Then it is threshed in a large (car-sized) cylinder with pitch fork blades to cut the tobacco and remove the stems. An internal air blower pushes the lighter leaves up and out while the stems fall to the bottom, and are gathered for flattening and use, mostly in cigarette tobacco, which A&C Petersen also makes for the huge European roll-your-own market. "Nothing wrong with stems," Jens says. "Got a lot of taste."
Large hoppers are filled with strip (leaf with the stalk removed) proportioned to make "base blends." Weighed out in 600- or 900-kilo loads, depending on inventory needs, the tobacco is steamed and then tumbled in a cleansing drum the size of a construction-site cement mixer to remove impurities such as sand and stalk residues, then "cased" (sprayed with water, or with a mixture of water and various flavoring agents) in another huge drum. A&C Petersen has twelve base blends, the building blocks of all their other tobacco products. Each one is treated on its own, cased, stored, and aged according to recipe.
The basic twelve, in a variety of combinations and proportions, allow for a huge number of possibilities, especially when condiment tobaccos such as latakia and perique are used in small proportions, or a different "top-dressing" (a compatible flavor using the same elements in the base blends, which can be neutral or very intense) is sprayed on the finished product to meld or "marry" the different ingredients.
"Casing is a process [that is] often misunderstood," Jens explains. "All tobacco is cased. Water is a casing, as is a water-based mixture of flavorings, from the most neutral sugars to the most elaborate confections. For the natural, unflavored tobaccos, such as the traditional English mixtures and classic Virginias, we use only water. For the others we use a range of natural flavorings, from plain, neutral sugars to complex recipes of aromatic essences." The vast range of tastes and aromas available in modern pipe tobaccos, and demanded by today’s pipe smokers, would he impossible with out casing.
Additionally, the Petersen’s proudly point out that they use only natural ingredients for their casings, such as licorice, brown sugar, fruit, and spice essences. Hans leads us to a room the size of a house, filled with cold-storage bins containing big chunks of pure licorice and pressed cakes of brown sugar. Barrels of prune and other extracts and boxes of vanilla beans and cocoa are piled high.
At this point in the process, the tobacco is still in its rough stage. Not yet cut to smokeable proportions, each blend is nonetheless ready to be further processed. From blending boxes as large as an automobile, the tobacco is fed into a machine that cuts it to a size that is smaller, but still not yet ready for pipe stuffing. At this stage some base blends will be stored and allowed to mature for weeks in the bins. Others will be "stoved," or conveyed through an oven, to both speed up and control the fermentation process. Still others may require only a day or two in the bins before they are ready to use. A few of the base blends have been designed to be pressed into "cakes." Poured into an approximately two foot square mold, the loose tobacco is then pressed flat into a cake about two inches thick, then removed and placed in a high, vertical press with twenty or more similar cakes, and kept under intense pressure for days or weeks. Some of the cakes will be "stoved" after pressing, and then go back into storage for two to three months, when they will be cut by a guillotine into slices (like sticks of chewing gum). Thus is made the product known to the pipe smoker as "flake," a type of tobacco that needs to be crumbled or "rubbed out" by the smoker before putting in a pipe. Other cakes will be stored for shorter periods, then tumbled in a "breaker" machine to partially separate the cake (the layers of leaves still adhere from the original pressure) into "ready-rubbed," ready to smoke pieces.
An alternative fate for the base blends at this phase of manufacturing is the making of "twist" or "spun" tobacco. In a process somewhat akin to rolling a cigar that is six feet long, the desired blend is placed by hand in long leaf wrappers and twisted together into a continuous strand, in effect, a rope of tobacco. Here, some of the central leaf stalk that was removed at an earlier stage of manufacture is added back in to serve as a stiffener. When the strand is complete, the pressure placed on the "twist" is intense, not unlike that put on the "cakes" in presses, as described above. A long or short storage period for the tobaccos in the strand, to age arid fully mature, is required, and then the twists are sliced in a guillotine cutter across the grain into individual "coins," each one showing the tobacco in cross-section, with the stem pieces as little round flecks known as "birdseye." This sliced twist tobacco, sometimes called "spun cut" or "curlies," is then spread out Lo dry and then packed in tins ready to smoke, or kept in bins to be used in complex blend recipes that require some "twist" along with the loose and ready-rubbed tobaccos.
At this point, the tobacco is ready for the actual blending into the mixture that the consumers will finally put in their pipes. The Petersen’s walk us to the blending area, where the "mixtures," a term that actually means a blend of blends, are prepared. The equipment here is pre-industrial, mostly shovels and rakes. Bins of tobacco have been weighed out according to the recipe for the mixture being prepared, brought to the spotlessly clean mixing floor on hand trucks, and dumped, in volume order, the largest to the smallest. As this is being done, two or three workers with rakes and shovels turn over the tobacco, rake it across, turn it again and rake it again until the mixture looks even. The tobaccos are still in large pieces, about three to four inches long and an inch or so wide. Included in these mixtures, depending on the recipe, are chunks of the pressed and then ready-rubbed "cake" tobacco, and sometimes sliced "twist" or "curly cut" tobaccos, as well as the straight, unblended condiment tobaccos such as perique or latakia, if required by the recipe. This is the way tobacco has been blended for hundreds of years.
Why is all of this necessary, when huge, modern mixing machines are available? "We can get a better quality control this way, because four to six people are doing this, depending on the size of the batch we are mixing, and someone is bound to spot a problem I if something is wrong," comments Hans.
Now the tobacco goes from the mixing floor into a large cylinder where it is mixed and sprayed with water and small amounts of glycerine, to make it pliable for cutting. Because some formulas call for a mixture of finer and coarser cuts, these will be premixed and cut separately and then remixed afterward, as are "curlies" and bits of "flake" that the master blender wants to keep integral.
After the cutting of the larger leaf tobacco and the remixing of separated elements, the tobacco is dried again from the 25 percent moisture level needed to cut it without damaging the leaf, to the 18 percent level A&C Petersen thinks is the proper humidity content for its tobacco. It is here, in the drying chamber, that the mixture can be "top-dressed" with a light spray of an aromatic essence that either unifies the various tobacco tastes or merely creates the "bouquet" that the smoker sniffs when a pouch or tin of new tobacco is opened.
The next and last stage is "lagering" (storage of the final product) in bins for a minimum of one month at a constant 60-degree temperature, and an ambient humidity of 65 percent. Now the tobacco is ready for packing. Flakes and curly cuts are weighed out and packed by hand, lest the tobacco crumble in the process. Loose mixtures are packed in pouches by machine, or in the traditional round or rectangular 50-gram tins, by a combination of machine and hand work. At the end of our visit to the A&C Petersen tobacco factory, we know we’ve had a thorough education in the art and craft of pipe tobacco-making, from a family with tobacco in its blood. There’s a love of the craft and a passion for the product here, and it’s clear why A&C Peterson is a world-class tobacco operation.
PipeSMOKE Summer 1997
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. 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, […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 631. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with pipe maker Dan Keller from Good Made Better. Dan is from South Dakota. Growing up working in the family hardware store where he was always finding solutions to fixing things, he ended up always wanting to make things. He now makes elegant handmade pens, pen holders, portable desks, blotters, blotting paper, book carry cases, and of course artisan pipes. At the top of the show we are continuing the virtual tour of Brian’s pipes with his “f#@k you pipes”.
Kevin,
Thank you for pulling this from the archives and sharing with us one of the most comprehensive articles on the start to finish blending process that I’ve ever read. What I wouldn’t give to have been part of that tour. Two things popped out at me while reading this and number one is that the term “casing” has long been misunderstood and number two, and most disturbing, is that we pipe smokers are prone to loading our pipes with “curlies”. I just hope they are not of the “short” variety. A great read!
Great reading! What really struck me, besides the intense work and elaborate processing, was the whole moisture issue. We always seem to be concerned about how tobacco dries out and how to go about remoistening it, and whether it will still be flavorful afterwards. This article demonstrates that the original condition of the bales of tobacco are too dry to feasably work with, thus remoistening is required. Furthermore, it may again be remoistened during the process. This leads me to the conclusión that remoistening tobacco that has dried out, but still remains intact, can readily be done without any significant effect to the product. Granted the aging process may be inhibited should the tobacco be stored at too low a moisture level, but when it comes to remoistening your tin or pouch, should it get a little dry as the days go by, no major negative effect should be expected.
Er, is this an advertisement?
I have never sampled any of his company’s products I am sure they are very good, but this article seems a bit of a lovefest.
@thehappypiper – Did you notice at the top of the page, and at the bottom of the page that this is a “reprint” from 1997? A&C Petersen was best known as one of the producers of Escudo Navy De Luxe since it has been a very popular pipe tobacco throughout its nearly 100-year history. A&C made Escudo from 1997 to 2000 when they were acquired by Orlik, which is now STG (Scandinavian Tobacco Group).
Definitely a great read, thanks Kevin for digging this one up.
A great read about a great tobacco firm.
What a fantastic, detailed look I’ve gotten from this article.
I had always assumed that this firm went out of business, having given up the rights to Escudo. How then did this happen, given that we all seem to love it, buy it, smoke it and age it? I have 70 tins and wish the number were twice that, and I would were it not twice as expensive as the bulks that I smoke, and love.
There are many alternatives, some less expensive, such as Comoys Cask #7, which smokingpipes sells for $12.37, which I will try. But for a vivid spun cut VA/Perique, dollar for dollar, Escudo has no real challenger.