Burley Trouble.

[jpmcwjr]

Not liking Burley is no problem to me, though I feel almost un-American saying this.

 

[gervais]

I have to sip burley extremely slow, that is the only way I enjoy it. Otherwise it irritates my mouth and tastes "hot".

 

[Swampdragon69]

It's not the Burley it's you.

?

It is a toxic relationship.

 

[didimauw]

I have to sip burley extremely slow, that is the only way I enjoy it. Otherwise it irritates my mouth and tastes "hot".

That's how I am with Virginia's.

 

[puff_not_snuff]

I bought my first burley yesterday Mac Baren’s XX Burley Flake. At first I thought it was a nice change of pace but after my second bowl last night I felt a bit disgusted by the lingering taste, grassy is a good descriptor. Also, according to my girlfriend my reek was stronger than usual.

 

[PaulTheScandinavian]

I like the smell of good Burley tobacco especially that of Kentucky, best smelling Burley is Tabac de Semois, reminds me of Bistros /Bars in France which used ' to have that odor' some period ago when we still were allowed to smoke inside

 

[Kozeman]

I have to sip burley extremely slow, that is the only way I enjoy it. Otherwise it irritates my mouth and tastes "hot".

I find this to be true for pure Va and Burley. This description from Robert Goff in his book found free at Blend Your Own Pipe Tobacco - Download the FREE Color Book - https://fairtradetobacco.com/threads/blend-your-own-pipe-tobacco-download-the-free-color-book.8487/ seems to describe my experiences with tongue bite well. The pertinent section is presented below:

Tongue Bite-
Pipe tobacco blends, as well as some pure varieties of tobacco can cause two distinct and meaningful (for blending) sensations. The most common meaning of “tongue bite” is a burning sensation near the tip of the tongue. There are two general causes of tip-of-the-tongue tongue bite. The first is from smoking cased, commercial tobacco. The glycerin and polypropylene glycol added, in various concentrations, to all commercial pipe tobaccos now, cause a chemical tongue bite. In the same manner, most tobacco flavorants (e.g. hazelnut, cherry, vanilla, etc.) are manufactured and sold in water-soluble solutions of polypropylene glycol. While similar flavorants may be available as an oil, which may or may not cause tongue bite, their use requires that they be first dissolved in alcohol. The second cause of tongue-bite near the tip of the tongue is from tobacco smoke with a relatively higher acidity (lower pH). Pure flue-cured Virginia Bright is notorious for this. Most published remedies for this Virginia tongue bite is to “sip the smoke slowly”. What that accomplishes is adequate time between small puffs for saliva to bathe the tongue, and neutralize the acidity. If your preference is for the “edgy” Virginia tongue bite from your pipe, then that is the only approach to mitigation. A key to understanding the effect of particular Virginia tobaccos on tongue bite is to realize that the higher the sugar content, the greater the potential tongue bite. And this is directly related to the stalk level from which the Virginia is harvested. With the exception of the very bottom leaf (“first priming”), which has little sweetness, the lower leaf is sweeter than the upper leaf. So on a progression from sweetest (greatest tongue bite) to least sweet (least tongue bite), flue-cured Virginia can be ranked as follows: SWEETEST [ Lemon | Bright | Double-bright | Virginia Red | Virginia Red Tips ] LEAST SWEET
The impact of this is that Lemon Virginia offers more tongue bite than Virginia Red. And blending of Lemon and Red tends to average the respective tongue bite of each component. If, instead, you would like to use blending to eliminate tongue bite altogether, there is good news. That is where tongue bite that occurs at the sides and rear of the tongue (I’ll call it “back-oftongue bite”) enters the picture. While lower pH (acidic) burns the tip of the tongue, higher pH (alkaline) causes back-of-tongue bite. Both are caused by pH imbalance, and those causes are the opposite of one another. If you can drive the acidity more toward a neutral pH, there simply is no tongue bite. Relatively alkaline tobaccos, such as Burley, Maryland, dark air cured and Perique – especially Perique, cause back-of-tongue bite. These are tobaccos that typically have little sugar in the leaf lamina at harvest. When you smoke a bowl of any tobacco blend, paying attention to the location on your tongue of tongue bite that you may experience will inform you as to how to improve the blend by eliminating that particular tongue bite. The simplest example is a straightforward Virginia and Perique (VaPer) blend. It’s possible to achieve no bite with any Virginia mixed with any Perique. But as previously mentioned, each category of flue-cured Virginia has its own level of sweetness—that is, its own likelihood of causing tip-tongue bite. Similarly, differing batches of Perique sometimes vary in their alkalinity – differ in their likelihood of causing back-of-tongue bite. So, with our VaPer example, if it burns the tip of your tongue, add more Perique; if it burns the sides and back of your tongue, reduce the Perique. My