I was talking with a pipe smoking buddy earlier today about our cellars and stocking up on blends, and it occurred to me that after almost 4 years in the hobby and 3 years of smoking a pipe at least once a day I'm in the somewhat odd position of having never found a blend I liked enough to want to stock up on it.
I've tried over 150 blends at this point and still haven't found anything that really clicked with me. I've tried all manner of Virginias both bright and red, burleys, English blends, dark fired blends, Lakelands, all the codger blends, and both American and European style aromatics in every flavor under the sun; and still just never really found anything I liked the taste of enough to want to smoke it all the time.
It's a funny problem to have considering that I've been a cigarette smoker for 26 years and have never tired of my everyday RYO cigarette tobacco blend Golden Harvest Yellow (which tastes great to me as a cigarette but is strangely awful in a pipe), and before I started smoking a pipe 4 years ago I was a daily hookah smoker for half my life until my favorite everyday shisha tobacco blends Nakhla Strawberry & Nakhla Single Apple went off the market; and I never tired of my preferred hookah blends either. For some reason though with the pipe I just can't seem to find a tobacco blend that I really like.
I very much enjoy the act of smoking a pipe and find it peaceful and relaxing, so I continue to smoke my pipe once or twice a day with whatever blend sounds reasonably appealing that day, and I'm still trying new blends all the time in the hopes that one day I'll find one that resonates with me. I know how to smoke slowly to draw all the flavors out pipe tobacco, I just don't particularly like any of them! It's a shame there's not much of any strawberry or apple flavored pipe tobaccos on the market since those were the flavors I always enjoyed with the hookah, but none of the fruit flavored pipe tobaccos I've tried ever scratched that itch quite the same.
The closest I've found to blends that could be keepers for me have been Lane RLP-6 and Smoker's Pride Cherry Cavendish, which I do enjoy the flavors of for awhile but still find myself tiring of them after smoking them for more than a few days in a row. I have gone through about half a pound of each of them at this point though, which is a lot more than I can say for most blends since I usually don't get through more than an ounce of anything before deciding that I've had enough of it.
On that note, to keep my cellar from getting overly cluttered with Ball jars full of 1 or 2 ounce samples of blends I don't particularly care for, every 4 months or so I go through my cellar and sell off all the blends I know that I have no desire to smoke again. At this point I've whittled my cellar of 150'ish blends down to 37, and I'd like to get it down to under 10 at some point. I think if I do ever find a blend I like enough to want to smoke all the time I would stock up several pounds of it, but that day sure hasn't come yet.
I've tried over 150 blends at this point and still haven't found anything that really clicked with me. I've tried all manner of Virginias both bright and red, burleys, English blends, dark fired blends, Lakelands, all the codger blends, and both American and European style aromatics in every flavor under the sun; and still just never really found anything I liked the taste of enough to want to smoke it all the time.
It's a funny problem to have considering that I've been a cigarette smoker for 26 years and have never tired of my everyday RYO cigarette tobacco blend Golden Harvest Yellow (which tastes great to me as a cigarette but is strangely awful in a pipe), and before I started smoking a pipe 4 years ago I was a daily hookah smoker for half my life until my favorite everyday shisha tobacco blends Nakhla Strawberry & Nakhla Single Apple went off the market; and I never tired of my preferred hookah blends either. For some reason though with the pipe I just can't seem to find a tobacco blend that I really like.
I very much enjoy the act of smoking a pipe and find it peaceful and relaxing, so I continue to smoke my pipe once or twice a day with whatever blend sounds reasonably appealing that day, and I'm still trying new blends all the time in the hopes that one day I'll find one that resonates with me. I know how to smoke slowly to draw all the flavors out pipe tobacco, I just don't particularly like any of them! It's a shame there's not much of any strawberry or apple flavored pipe tobaccos on the market since those were the flavors I always enjoyed with the hookah, but none of the fruit flavored pipe tobaccos I've tried ever scratched that itch quite the same.
The closest I've found to blends that could be keepers for me have been Lane RLP-6 and Smoker's Pride Cherry Cavendish, which I do enjoy the flavors of for awhile but still find myself tiring of them after smoking them for more than a few days in a row. I have gone through about half a pound of each of them at this point though, which is a lot more than I can say for most blends since I usually don't get through more than an ounce of anything before deciding that I've had enough of it.
On that note, to keep my cellar from getting overly cluttered with Ball jars full of 1 or 2 ounce samples of blends I don't particularly care for, every 4 months or so I go through my cellar and sell off all the blends I know that I have no desire to smoke again. At this point I've whittled my cellar of 150'ish blends down to 37, and I'd like to get it down to under 10 at some point. I think if I do ever find a blend I like enough to want to smoke all the time I would stock up several pounds of it, but that day sure hasn't come yet.
