Buoy Silver by Rouseco

[Briar Lee]

$5.70 for 6 ounces, $10.50 for 16 ounces

Highly Recommended

Hands down the best blend for beginners I’ve tried yet.




There are maybe twenty or more Silver blends of cheap pipe tobacco, and this is the first one I’ve tried.

The store clerks steer veteran smokers away from the ultra mild silver blends. Some stores carry Red, Blue, Gold, and Green (mint) blends but little if any Silver.

Being a curious sort, I spent $5.70 for a six ounce pack of Buoy Silver.

Cigarrete smokers will find this blend tame. I rolled a cigarette and it tasted like a mild commercial filter cigarrete. I’d smoke several packages a day if this was all I had, but I’d like it. This is a Virginia forward blend that likely only uses the bottom leaves. The flavor is Virginia bright leaf. There may be some Burley added but it’s not noticeable.

Where Buoy Silver shines is in a pipe.

This is as mild as Carter Hall.

But the flavor is what commercial Virginia pipe tobacco blends all strive for, mild, fragrant, hay and citrus, just a delicious smoke.

But this one wouldn’t bite a beginner and he’s not going to get overloaded with nicotine.

As it burns it gets a bit stronger, more complex, and all around better.

I cannot imagine a pipe smoker not liking Buoy Silver.

It’s the plain vanilla ice cream cone of cheap pipe tobaccos.

 

[jpberg]

Obviously you haven’t been paying attention.
No one will want it if it’s inexpensive and plentiful.

 

[Simmerdown☕️]

Man, your solicitor tricks are making me think I’m missing something…bypassing quality like this makes us all look dumb. ️

 

[Bbailey324]

Inexpensive and plentiful sounds good to me. I may have to give the Buoy line a try.

 

[Briar Lee]

My Grandfather chewed, dipped, snorted, and smoked cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and rolled his own from 1886 when he was six until he died from infection from an ingrown toenail when he was 92 in 1972.

He’d save his chewing tobacco cuds in a coffee can and smoke those.

His cotton sack smoking tobacco blends were Bull Durham, Our Advertiser, and Country Gentleman. All three had close to the same taste but my girl cousins could smoke Country Gentleman and like it.

And when my mother wasn’t around to scold her my grandmother would smoke Country Gentleman in a cob.



It’s been about fifty years since I’ve had Country Gentleman but it was the mildest of the bright leaf sack tobaccos.

Let’s see how well Buoy Silver grinds up in a coffee grinder.

Might remind me of Paradise, a song grandma taught us grandkids.)

 

[Jacob74]

RIP Mr. Prine...always on the lookout for a man in a light blue sedan whenever I'm driving near a 4 way stop.

 

[Briar Lee]

Grinding Buoy Silver down to cotton sack tobacco grind improves the blend for a pipe. The flavor kicks up a bit, the burn is cooler, it’s just a better smoke, I think.

But the real improvement is in a hand rolled cigarette. I have to use a Top roller, I could never master hand rolled cigarettes, especially not with granulated tobacco.


My grandfather used to sit over in the corner of the big parlor (living room) and sing along with us, and he’d always request my mother to sing Jealous Heart.

She had a voice like a caroling angel, and when she sang it just destroyed my Daddy who’d always comment he was only glad she wasn’t in Nashville, and there on the farm with us.

If I’m not a good man, there’s no way I can blame my upbringing.

 

[Gandalf The Grey]

 

[condorlover1]

 

[Brendan]

Was going to be a right smart-arse and post something sarcastic but I remembered the old adage 'smoke what you like - like what you smoke'

I'll never get the chance to try these budget RYO blends but would love to put it up against my ziplock of really dried out Union Square.

My parents raised me better then that, you know?

 

[Briar Lee]

During the Depression there were a staggering one billion small cotton sacks of North Carolina bright leaf sold a year, at a nickel a sack,,, that’s just the cheap stuff.

And the Missouri corn cob pipe industry made about 100 million new pipes a year, about 25% of them by Missouri Meerschaum.

Take six dollars of tobacco and a coffee grinder and see what your grandfathers smoked 90 years ago.

They weren’t bad off, I promise.

 

[Green Hill Hermit]

Talk about beating people into submission.

 

[condorlover1]

@Briar Lee : Have you ever had or tried Bull Durham? Sadly it went out of production before I came to the U.S but I am told it was almost like a powder. Any thoughts?

 

[Briar Lee]

@Briar Lee : Have you ever had or tried Bull Durham? Sadly it went out of production before I came to the U.S but I am told it was almost like a powder. Any thoughts?

Yes, I bought several packages in 1988 when they stopped.

Bull Durham was probably whole leaf North Carolina bright leaf, aged several years.

It was about the consistency of coffee grounds, and so were Our Advertiser, Country Gentleman and Old Hillside—which was the last to go about twenty years ago.

I’ve never heard any really good reasons the cheapest tobaccos used a cotton sack and a powdery fine grind.

I do know this. Straight burley isn’t all that good, without flavorings, casings, or toppings. Bright leaf is good all by itself.

All over the nation in the middle 1800s there were flour and grain mills that ground flour and feed and then it was put into sacks. It would have been easy to do the same with bright leaf.

There is no way in the world somebody could make better smoking tobacco from their garden than aged North Carolina bright leaf, and it was only a nickel a bag.

Bright leaf has to be flue cured for about a week, and then aged, like bourbon. There are really no shortcuts possible. And today good bright leaf is only about two dollars a pound.

Essentially that’s what cheap tobacco is today, only it’s ribbon cut. They use the middles, the bottoms, and the tops in blends, and they might add some burley or orientals, even flavorings.

Buoy Silver is mostly mild , bottom leaves, bright leaf.

Close to Country Gentleman, as I remember it.

 

[Briar Lee]

Obviously you haven’t been paying attention.
No one will want it if it’s inexpensive and plentiful.

Every one of the cheap smoke shops I frequent have one clerk and most have two. They have rent, utilities, and to crack the nut and meet overhead simply must be several hundred dollars a day.

Many sell liquor and beer, and all sell boxed cigarettes.

Honest to goodness, premium pipe tobacco, like PA and Velvet and Captain Black and the moist $20 for 12 ounce blends always have a tiny bit of floor space, one little rack, a few square feet.

The biggest display area in those stores, by far, are for $9-12 a pound plastic pillow sack tobaccos.

There’s a $9 brand that comes in a pound bag that is bigger than a standard bed pillow. All the cheap tobaccos have some kind of “enhanced cut” but some are ridiculously puffed up.

The tobacco in all the cheap blends costs about two dollars a pound. You can read the USDA reports.



The federal tax is $2.83 a pound.

Missouri tax is 10% of wholesale.

There has to be a markup. Those stores would close without one.

Let’s use my favorite, Buoy Gold.

Price 10.50 a pound.

$2 for tobacco and 2.83 tax is 4.83.

Let’s guess a dollar a pound to manufacture it. Round it to 6 bucks.

Let’s say a dollar a pound profit. $7

The Missouri tax is 70 cents.

The store pays $7.70 and clears close to three dollars a bag.

They have to sell a lot of bags to just pay the clerk $13 an hour.

Strangely, the paper tubes that I assume most of the cheap shag gets pushed into always take up a small part of the store display. Most of those are $2 each, but the best are $5.

Those stores are selling the dickens out of shag tobacco and a lot of it is burned in Grabow and Missouri Meerschaum pipes, which always have a large display with missing pipes in the display. I saw a Dr Grabow for forty some dollars, that was a square shank Bull Moose with birdseye grain that was astonishing. Grabows are benefiting from increased demand, and by a lot.

And if you try some, remember that except for Silver blends those shag tobaccos are laden to the gills with our friend Vitamin N.

There’s a hook in those bags.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

 

[condorlover1]

@Briar Lee: I think the little sacks of Bull Durham came with a packet of cigarette papers as well. Occasionally I buy boxes of 1920s cigarette papers on Ebay for a friend of mine in the U.K. Surprisingly the papers were not gummed in those days and relied on the gluten in the rice paper to stick the cigarette together. I was told by an older gentlemen I knew that the reason it was ground was to make it easier to 'tap' out of the bag for rolling purposes. I would assume it would burn pretty fast unless you twisted your paper very tight. I would think it would burn pretty hot in a pipe as well. An interesting perspective all the same.

 

[Briar Lee]

@Briar Lee: I think the little sacks of Bull Durham came with a packet of cigarette papers as well. Occasionally I buy boxes of 1920s cigarette papers on Ebay for a friend of mine in the U.K. Surprisingly the papers were not gummed in those days and relied on the gluten in the rice paper to stick the cigarette together. I was told by an older gentlemen I knew that the reason it was ground was to make it easier to 'tap' out of the bag for rolling purposes. I would assume it would burn pretty fast unless you twisted your paper very tight. I would think it would burn pretty hot in a pipe as well. An interesting perspective all the same.

All the cotton sack tobaccos I ever saw came with papers on the bag.

Bull Durham used Rizla X brand.

I can remember sitting down and trying to follow the instructions on the fly leaf of the papers.

By then Bull Durham had shrunk to a 5/8 ounce sack for fifteen cents.

The coolest sack tobacco in the early seventies was an eight ounce sack of Country Gentleman. It was just loaded with packages of papers behind the paper label.

I would say the majority of roll your own smokers then used Velvet or Prince Albert (much easier to roll) and they paid a nickel for a package of 100 OCB papers, although PA and Velvet had free papers for the asking.

The 150 packs are still sold today, ungummed.

 

[FLDRD]

He’d save his chewing tobacco cuds in a coffee can and smoke those.

 

[simong]

Take six dollars of tobacco and a coffee grinder and see what your grandfathers smoked 90 years ago.

How about you take a check up from the neck up & stop chatting shit?

My granddaddy smoked St. Bruno. Why? Why because like most men of that generation they realised life’s too short to smoke shit. Two world wars & a small dose of common sense will do that to a person, wether they hail from Hicksville or Halifax!

What’s a tin of Bruno flake cost, 20$? Roughly 10$ cheaper than it costs me in the UK or 130$ cheaper than our pipe smoking brothers & sisters down under. Time & time again you post about how blessed you are to have such tobacco’s as ‘buoy’ available to you, where you are, at such a low price. I could live off bread & water if I had to, but I don’t. I could smoke ‘buoy’ if I wanted to, but I won’t.
Pay the price Mr. Lee & live a little. Given the choice between a 20$ tin of bruno & a 6$ pound bag of crap, I’ll gladly pay 20$ a day for a tin of Bruno & twice on Sundays!

Gee whizz, I dunno Mr. Lee. You got a few miles more on the clock than me, how come you none the wiser? Kinda makes a young pup like me think twice about the unabashed, absolute twaddle you profess……you know?

If I can offer you any advice, it would be this;
Don’t smoke the cheap shit, cause that’s the bad shit counsellor. Smoke the dear shit, cause that’s the good shit, see?

If I’ve offended you, I apologise. Here’s a nice song to cheer you up!
Best rooting, tooting country song I ever done heard!
Sung by three Dutch girls (a million miles from the big tussle) & not a poxy pipe by Lee in sight!