I too have been frustrated with this blend for the same reasons and then some... but I really like it at the core... it was just making me suffer for it to reveal it's mysteries to me. I was inspired by Nate's review it not long ago and really wanted to like this one. Last night I tried again... I took a flake and pulled it apart strand by strand, dried it about a half hour, cut it in quarter inch lengths, rubbed the hail out of it, let it sit again, trickled it into the pipe for a lighter than usual pack, and exe.burn. Frustration at first... but then I discovered, partly by accident, that a way slower, more deliberate smoking cadence started to work wonders. When this blend began to blossom, it was UTTERLY EXTRAORDINARY!!!! All the immense blessings, joys, and characteristics of a brown VA flake, and then the "brown sugar" began to kind of slightly steamily smolder forth, and the end result was nectar and ambrosia! This was about my 6th bowl of experimentation... it still took more relights than anything else for me... but that became just a happy means to the end of letting it sing... and sing it did! I was extremely happy and impressed! More experimentation is mandated!! BTW, I flipped over to spc and it's GONE!!! What happened? Will they make more?? Will we still be able to get it? Or is it another victim to be folded into the extinction spasm we are now facing? Sigh...