Struggling to taste tabacco

[Filippo]

Hello, I have been smoking a couple of bowls since I got my pipes and I mostly smoke in my two Savinelli, half bent and bent pipes.
I stopped for a bit because I was "tired" of smoking but now I am back, ready to finish the tobaccos I have before purchasing new ones.
I am trying to smoke as slow and cold as possible but I really struggle to pick the "My Mixture 965" flavour. I remeber the first time smoking it, it was so strong with such a leather taste I felt quite nauseated after smoking a whole bowl, now I do get the hint of the flavour but mostly in my nose rather than in my mouth.
I packed loose with the gravity method and adding a pinch on top.
I think I did way better with the Early Morning one as I tasted some kind of burnt and nutty? pop corn flavour with the end of the bowl feeling fuller in taste but also fresher, a bit soapy, like some kind of marsiglia soap. Did I at least taste it correctly?
I can't retroinhale yet properly and I am also worried I inhale in my lungs from time to time. I smoke at max a full bowl a day in one session, about 40 minutes of smoking.
Am I doing too much? Could I smoke more bowls daily or do I need to smoke less to better taste the tobacco?

The tobacco I just smoked is rather dry and it has been a few months since I opened it but I think it's alright

 

[HeadMisfit]

when I started smoking a pipe 20 some years back, this retrohale crap did not exist.

The whole point was to keep the tongue in the back of the mouth to keep any smoke from going down the throat. Pull some smoke through the stem, hold in mouth, savor the flavor, then exhale.

No one tastes the same way. No one can. Each batch of tobaccy is different from all other batches in a single year of production, and each year is different.

When I started out, I was a member on the pipes.org forum. There was a guy who brings an important point up on taste reviews of tobacco.

He was a new smoker, was all excited, and had got suckered into buying any and all gadgets sold for pipe maintenaince. Good intentions but.... he had this funny issue that ALL tobacco tasted like mint. He went from raging about contamenation of tobacco at factory, at store, to wondering if someone had done something to his pipes at the factory.

It turns out in the end, he had bought that yello bottle of mint oil and alcohol "pipe sweetener" to use. He used it IN the tobacco chamber AND in the stem. Once we had him NOT use it at all, it took a week or so for his pipes to not taste like he was smoking life savers.

 

[ziv]

This sounds similar to my experience when I stopped tasting much of anything at all in English blends. To fix it, I put them aside for a while and focused on other types of blends, like VaPers, DFK, burley, etc.

Do you have any other blends, besides My Mixture 965 and EMP?

 

[Pypkė]

Are you asking us about the "taste" like how some some tobacco reviews list all kinds of tastes that they perceive, and why you are not tasting the same thing?

 

[Fooberticus]

If you opened the tins a few months ago and didn't transfer the tobacco to a ball jar or similar airtight container, it may have dried out and lost its delicious goodness.

If you pinch it between your fingers, does it feel dry / crispy / crumbly?

 

[Filippo]

This sounds similar to my experience when I stopped tasting much of anything at all in English blends. To fix it, I put them aside for a while and focused on other types of blends, like VaPers, DFK, burley, etc.

Do you have any other blends, besides My Mixture 965 and EMP?

I also have the Clan and the Borkum Riff Ruby which is my favourite one of all time. As my first tobacco I had the Skandinavik Vanilla which was so good, but I was probably allergic to it as it fully dried my mouth for a whole week. I haven't smoke vanilla since then

 

[Filippo]

Are you asking us about the "taste" like how some some tobacco reviews list all kinds of tastes that they perceive, and why you are not tasting the same thing?

I am asking why I am struggling to taste that leathery and burnt leaves tastes I recognised the first time I smoked it

 

[Filippo]

If you opened the tins a few months ago and didn't transfer the tobacco to a ball jar or similar airtight container, it may have dried out and lost its delicious goodness.

If you pinch it between your fingers, does it feel dry / crispy / crumbly?

It's not extremely dry but it is surely dryer than it was when I opened the thin quite a few months ago

 

[Fooberticus]

It's not extremely dry but it is surely dryer than it was when I opened the thin quite a few months ago

I'm guessing that's the issue, unless you had a traumatic tongue injury since then

 

[anotherbob]

could be many things including just you. What I mean by that is sometimes you just aren't as sensitive to certain tastes as others.

 

[Sig]

Don't worry too much if you're doing it "right". There is not ONE way to smoke a pipe. Play around with different packing densities, and different puffing cadence.
Your tobacco may be to dry. In my experience Latakia blends need a bit of moisture to get the leathery, campfire tastes. That 965 should have plenty of flavor, its no weakling.
Does it taste better towards the bottom of the bowl?
Moisture will build as the pipe progresses. I usually get better flavors about halfway down.

 

[Filippo]

I'm guessing that's the issue, unless you had a traumatic tongue injury since then

No, luckily not at all

 

[Filippo]

Don't worry too much if you're doing it "right". There is not ONE way to smoke a pipe. Play around with different packing densities, and different puffing cadence.
Your tobacco may be to dry. In my experience Latakia blends need a bit of moisture to get the leathery, campfire tastes. That 965 should have plenty of flavor, its no weakling.
Does it taste better towards the bottom of the bowl?
Moisture will build as the pipe progresses. I usually get better flavors about halfway down.

It honestly tasted better at the first puffs

 

[sablebrush52]

Hello, I have been smoking a couple of bowls since I got my pipes and I mostly smoke in my two Savinelli, half bent and bent pipes.
I stopped for a bit because I was "tired" of smoking but now I am back, ready to finish the tobaccos I have before purchasing new ones.
I am trying to smoke as slow and cold as possible but I really struggle to pick the "My Mixture 965" flavour. I remeber the first time smoking it, it was so strong with such a leather taste I felt quite nauseated after smoking a whole bowl, now I do get the hint of the flavour but mostly in my nose rather than in my mouth.
I packed loose with the gravity method and adding a pinch on top.
I think I did way better with the Early Morning one as I tasted some kind of burnt and nutty? pop corn flavour with the end of the bowl feeling fuller in taste but also fresher, a bit soapy, like some kind of marsiglia soap. Did I at least taste it correctly?
I can't retroinhale yet properly and I am also worried I inhale in my lungs from time to time. I smoke at max a full bowl a day in one session, about 40 minutes of smoking.
Am I doing too much? Could I smoke more bowls daily or do I need to smoke less to better taste the tobacco?

The tobacco I just smoked is rather dry and it has been a few months since I opened it but I think it's alright

So, a few things come to mind? Did you have Covid and did you notice any loss of the ability to taste?

Moving on from that, a number of things could affect one's ability to define flavors, such as different abilities to taste flavors, too moist tobacco, too fast a cadence, too tight a pack can affect one's ability to experience flavors.

Too much moisture masks flavors for me, so I've done a lot of experimentation to find what best works for me. That's part of the learning curve if flavor is an important part of the experience.

Slow your cadence down so that the bowl is barely simmering, that cherry is barely lit. That also offers improved flavors. If the pipe goes out, who cares? There's no prize for smoking a bowl without a relight. If it goes out, just relight. Smoke slowly and coolly and you'll get better results. Just remember that it takes some practice until it all comes together.

About retrohaling, with respect to the newbie with only 20 years of pipe smoking under his belt, when I picked up the pipe 53 years ago, exhaling through one's nose was very much a practice. Since you're smoking indoors, some of the benefit that a retrohale can provide is already happening.

After all, you're sitting in a room full of smoke and smelling it when you inhale. There are more flavor receptors in your sinuses than in your mouth, so more flavor nuances get picked up. BTW, I retrohale all the time, because I only smoke outdoors, and it doesn't require you to inhale the smoke into your lungs, just to push it out from your mouth through your nose.

 

[PaulTheScandinavian]

Based on Your location You are in Italy, ? if so,then I'd suggest to put them English mixtures aside and switch to a more Burley forward bleds such as Amphora and domestic Italian blends ,namely Comune Morbide and Italia Classico,

 

[abecox]

A lot of good advice in this thread, sometimes other things like diet, humidity, heck what you ate for breakfast can affect how a blend tastes. I don't have any advice for regaining your taste, sometimes it just be like that, but keep smoking and you'll find something.

And I'll always hammer this point out, slow down your smoking and then when you think you've gone as slow as you can go slow down some more. If the tobacco is barely lit you'll find more notes than if you're puffing away like a fast train.

 

[HeadMisfit]

those blends are not exactly the bestest flavor wise. Despite the fact I smoked alot of original murrays made early morning pipe.

Your pipes are made for filters. have you been using the filters, have you been changing the filters?

 

[bullet08]

Retrohale is just blowing smoke out of your nose. People's been doing it forever. Thing is, olfactory sense will detect certain things better than the taste sense in the mouth.

As to not picking up the blend notes, give it time. It will pop out at you sooner or later.

 

[Sig]

So, a few things come to mind? Did you have Covid and did you notice any loss of the ability to taste?

Moving on from that, a number of things could affect one's ability to define flavors, such as different abilities to taste flavors, too moist tobacco, too fast a cadence, too tight a pack can affect one's ability to experience flavors.

Too much moisture masks flavors for me, so I've done a lot of experimentation to find what best works for me. That's part of the learning curve if flavor is an important part of the experience.

Slow your cadence down so that the bowl is barely simmering, that cherry is barely lit. That also offers improved flavors. If the pipe goes out, who cares? There's no prize for smoking a bowl without a relight. If it goes out, just relight. Smoke slowly and coolly and you'll get better results. Just remember that it takes some practice until it all comes together.

About retrohaling, with respect to the newbie with only 20 years of pipe smoking under his belt, when I picked up the pipe 53 years ago, exhaling through one's nose was very much a practice. Since you're smoking indoors, some of the benefit that a retrohale can provide is already happening.

After all, you're sitting in a room full of smoke and smelling it when you inhale. There are more flavor receptors in your sinuses than in your mouth, so more flavor nuances get picked up. BTW, I retrohale all the time, because I only smoke outdoors, and it doesn't require you to inhale the smoke into your lungs, just to push it out from your mouth through your nose.

I was gonna say kinda the same thing, but didn't want to be impolite. Im only 30 years in, but retrohaling was a thing back then. Also, you're not inhaling, and in improves the flavors from a tiny bit, to WOWZERS for most people. I have known plenty of pipers where retrohaling bothered their sinuses, but that's another story.
Another thing many pipers dont even realize is that many pipers retrohale without even knowing. Ive "argued" with several guys who are blowing smoke out their nose while explaining that they would NEVER do such a thing.

 

[dunnyboy]

You mentioned loading the bowl by gravity feed and packing loosely. You might be packing too loosely. A potential problem with packing too loosely—especially if you're not delicate when applying the flame for the charring light—is that it's easy to scorch the tobacco (and your taste buds). Once that happens, you won't be able to taste any flavors for the rest of the day and the smoke will be unpleasant even if you were to smoke slowly after that.