So Much for My Career As a Scientist
-
Kevin Godbee - Nov 12, 2012
- 5 min read
Russ Ouellette
I recently had an idea (which is usually a sign of impending doom) regarding how we perceive the taste of pipe tobacco and cigars. I was aware of the theory of taste bud “zones” on the tongue, with sweet sensed on the tip, salt on the front sides, sour on the middle sides and bitter on the back of the tongue. Additionally, harsh spice seems to be sensed most in the back of the throat. This thought has recently been modified to include savory flavors (often referred to as “umami") being detected in the center of the tongue (see illustration).
The initial problem is that not everyone agrees that these zones even exist. If they do, then it should be possible to change the tasting experience by directing the smoke stream at different parts of the tongue. If these zones, however, are just imaginary, then the concept won’t work. Since I don’t have the equipment, a number of testers to work with and/or a set of protocols to use as a guideline, I used what, for me, passes as logic.
For the purposes of this test, just about any pipe will work as the aperture of the stem for virtually every model on the market is small enough to easily direct the smoke at a small area. Cigars are a bit more problematic as the ring gauge and the size of the hole will impact the result. For that reason, I only used a lancero or panatela and I punched them with a golf tee (which I would normally never do, but I did for the purposes of this test).
My pipe tobaccos were– a straight Virginia (McClelland’s 2010), a Latakia blend (Hearth & Home Magnum Opus), a Virginia/Perique (Hearth & Home Louisiana Red) and an aromatic (Cornell & Diehl’s Autumn Evening) . My cigars were a Joya de Nicaragua Lancero, a Punch Largo Elegante, an Ashton Panatela and a CAO Moontrance tubo. I used tepid green tea to cleanse my palate between puffs, and bread and cheese between cigars or pipes.
My methodology was simple, I held the opening of the pipe or cigar in front of one of the zones and took 2 long slow draws with the smoke hitting the area proscribed by the chart. I would take a sip of tea and would repeat, a total of seven times with each cigar or pipe to allow the smoke to hit all the zones. I would write my observations, have some bread and cheese and proceed to the next smoke. I set up my tasting schedule so that it alternated between cigars and pipes, starting with the mildest and moving toward the strongest flavors.
After completing my tastings, I analyzed my notes to try to put together a decidedly unscientific conclusion. Frankly, the result actually caused me to have more questions than answers. But I’ll give you the rundown.
When directing the stream of smoke at the tip of the tongue, the smoke definitely showed a change in flavor, but not necessarily a sweeter flavor. Certainly elements of sweetness were there, but it didn’t dominate. The salty zones revealed little, but I had surmised that that would be the case as saltiness isn’t commonly found in cigars or pipe tobacco to any degree. The sides of the tongue did detect sour notes, but, once again, the sourness didn’t dominate the taste, which I had expected (or hoped) it might. I picked up bitterness in the back of the tongue’s surface, but because of the proximity to the throat, the “catch” that one gets in or near the throat was more noticeable than the bitter. I did get some savory tones from the center of the tongue, but not enough to call this conclusive.
It then occurred to me that the problem might have more to do with the fact that smoke is made up of particles suspended in a gas, which means that the flavor-producing bits move around too easily to isolate. To that end, I tried small drops of sugar water, salt water, vinegar, Angostura Bitters and the liquid part of chili to test the same areas. Unfortunately, this didn’t fare much better as the flavor isn’t very noticeable until the tongue touches the palate, which pushes vapors up the back of the throat and into the sinuses, so when the tongue hits the roof of the mouth, the liquid spreads around, and the results become mostly inconclusive.
Did I notice a difference in flavor from one zone to another? Yes. Could I describe the differences? Not really. This was the frustrating part- I had a result but couldn’t give it a name. Frankly, I now tend to lean toward the camp that disbelieves the zone concept. The reason is that, for example, I detected more than just sweetness from the tip of my tongue, so my assumption is that, while it’s possible that the tip of the tongue has more sweet receptors, there are probably tastebuds attuned to other categories mixed in there as well.
At the same time, I found it intriguing to move the direction of the smoke around as I noticed some unusual aspects of the flavor as the smoke hit certain spots, and it made the pipe tobaccos and cigars more interesting as they exhibited characteristics that I had never noticed before.
So, my conclusion is this- I learned some things that I hadn’t noticed before, like just how impactful the role of the sinuses play in being able to taste different flavors and that moving the tongue across the roof of the mouth while tasting creates a variety of flavor notes that I hadn’t really paid attention to. But, ultimately, I wasn’t able to fine tune a technique that would allow me to enhance or dull a particular type of flavor element, which was my focus. But it also showed me that other sensations, like the tingle and burn in the back of the throat from a spicy cigar or dark Burley can really enhance what my taste buds are actually sensing.
Throughout my life I’ve been repeatedly told to “stop analyzing everything and just enjoy it” or I’ve been asked “why do you always over-think things?” Maybe the people who nagged me about these things were right after all. But I’m sure as hell not going to give them the satisfaction of saying so. Now all I have to do is to keep them from reading this.
|
Russ Ouellette is the blender/creator of the Hearth & Home series of tobaccos for Habana Premium Cigar Shoppe and www.pipesandcigars.com in Albany, NY. He has been a pipe smoker and blender for over 30 years, and enjoys feedback from the pipe smoking public. You can reach Russ at russo@pipesandcigars.com or by calling 1-800-494-9144 on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 am to 5 pm and Friday from 1 pm to 5 pm. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
10 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
48 Fresh Ropp Pipes |
12 Fresh Estate Pipes |
107 Fresh Savinelli Pipes |
2 Fresh Tine Balleby Pipes |
24 Fresh Rossi Pipes |
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
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.
Good one Russ. People always wonder how I get some of the flavors I do out of a smoke when they read my reviews. One reason for this that you seem to have proved is that I’m a retrohaler and a French inhaler. I even did this back when I smoked cigarettes and it was probably something I learned because cigarettes, aside from maybe Nat Shermans and the like have less real flavor of their own. Good to know I’m not completely bonkers and if I am, at least I have company.
Russ, I’ve tried this technique too and found that different flavors can be achieved from the front of the tongue and the back of the tongue. I’ve also noticed a much more enhanced flavor by sipping the tobacco rather than puffing. I detected more flavor from the back of the tongue perhaps because you can push the smoke up through the sinuses. Also, peppery tobaccos like Perique do “hit: the back of the tongue and throuat. I prefer English/Balkan blends and have defintely found that by being a patient sipping smoker, one can achieve a remarkable smoke. If I’m in a hurry and puff more I don’t pick up all of the flavors of the blend.
Russ, as always, is very entertaining.
Interesting. Personally I enjoy “over-thinking” pipe smoking. Thanks Russ.
The myth of the “tongue map” is over a century old, and is more tenacious than the bite of a bad tobacco. It resulted from a mistranslation of a misinterpretation of some anecdotal data resulting from informal experimentation in 1901. Pfew. Now, over a hundred years later, people still believe what they read in their high-school biology text, and ever more elaborate and “sciency” pictures of the mythical map of these taste territories have appeared, none with any more validity than the previous. Yet most people, when queried as to whether or not they’d ever experienced this “mapping” of tastes experimentally, will say no, adding that they must have done the experiment incorrectly. There is a very slight difference in the threshold sensitivity to different characteristic tastes over different regions of the tongue, but there is no difference in regional sensory intensity to these tastes.
So, it’s little surprise that you didn’t detect much flavour difference over different regions of the tongue. In fact, any differences that are perceived are likely the result of temperature, diffusion of the smoke stream, relative solvation, and the resulting distribution of taste and aroma molecules. The mixture is relatively homogeneous when it emerges form the stem, but as it expands, cools and swirls, reacting with the moisture in the mouth, different molecules will present themselves more or less intensely in different areas.
There’s no end to the complexity of this seemingly simple pastime. For those of us who “overthink” things (is there really such a thing?), it’s endlessly fascinating, and contributes to the overall enjoyment.
Great article, Russ; and great comment, GLPease.
.
🙂 I think you two guys should stop hanging around together. 🙂
.
This sounds like the gourmet’s version of phrenology, or foot reflexology mapping.
Good on you Russ. You did science. As a scientist, you will have to be content with being incorrect most of the time. It is those rare times when scientists get their anticipated results that makes it all so valuable.
Russ,
Recently started down that path, then, by accident, discovered that you CANNOT taste tobacco (pipe or cigar) if you hold your nose. NOTHING, NADA. Only residual spice burn, if present.
Try it.
– Bill
Adding on to what BillN said, try smoking a pipe in a totally dark room, and see how well you taste and enjoy the experience!
Not be be an enabler… but Russ, did you try covering the other parts of the tongue with something like saran wrap? Maybe that would help you isolate where you’re picking up certain tastes. I don’t know, just curious myself