Clove Pipe Tobacco

[WVOldFart]

Title edited for caps. Rule 9 Please read! -jpm

I know that the FDA banned clove cigarettes back in 2009, but why is there no clove pipe tobacco? The last true clove pipe tobacco, as far as I know, was Iwan Ries King's Oriental. I would think that there would be a market for clove pipe tobacco since there seemed to be many people that liked the clove cigarettes. The reason the clove cigarettes were banned was that they were considered "flavored" cigarettes that would appeal to the youth. This somehow did not include cigars and persumably pipe tobacco. So why hasn't some company filled the void with a clove pipe tobacco? This is just a curiosity question to encourage discussion. Thanks for any feedback.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I know that the FDA banned clove cigarettes back in 2009, but why is there no clove pipe tobacco? The last true clove pipe tobacco, as far as I know, was Iwan Ries King's Oriental. I would think that there would be a market for clove pipe tobacco since there seemed to be many people that liked the clove cigarettes. The reason the clove cigarettes were banned was that they were considered "flavored" cigarettes that would appeal to the youth. This somehow did not include cigars and persumably pipe tobacco. So why hasn't some company filled the void with a clove pipe tobacco? This is just a curiosity question to encourage discussion. Thanks for any feedback.

I'm pretty sure that the only people who liked clove cigarettes were prostitutes... :::cough cough::: I mean... working women. I don't think I ever heard of a man smoking cloves. Even the packs back in the day had flowers and shit all over them. YMMV, but I have no interest in smoking cloves.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Friend of mine used to smoke them in college for a time - we gave him rations of crap and he was slutty, so there you are!

 

[seanv]

I enjoyed Djarum regular and black quite a bit. Had a nice flavor....but I also enjoy Ennerdale and the sort.. . so take that for what it's worth

 

[Chasing Embers]

Bosun Cut Plug and Bosun Plug.

 

[Ahi Ka]

Yep what the captain says. I find if you get those two crispy dry then the clove becomes a primary player and not the background scent holding the blend together.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Leave it to GH&c to cross-gender up all of the flavors we American hashed out years ago.

 

[pantsBoots]

I'm pretty sure that the only people who liked clove cigarettes were prostitutes... :::cough cough::: I mean... working women. I don't think I ever heard of a man smoking cloves. Even the packs back in the day had flowers and shit all over them. YMMV, but I have no interest in smoking cloves.

Goths smoked them too, at least they did in the 90s in metro Detroit. Also, they are still available for sale.

 

[hawky454]

Did clove cigarettes have tobacco in them though? I always thought they were just stuffed with ground up cloves? I tried them once or twice, those things didn’t hit like they had tobacco in them, they made my lips taste like they were covered in sugar. They were always for the kids that wanted to look cool but weren’t brave enough to try a real cigarette.
My brothers and I used to roll coffee grounds up and smoke those, haha, ya get a good caffeine hit.

 

[pantsBoots]

Did clove cigarettes have tobacco in them though? I always thought they were just stuffed with ground up cloves? I tried them once or twice, those things didn’t hit like they had tobacco in them, they made my lips taste like they were covered in sugar. They were always for the kids that wanted to look cool but weren’t brave enough to try a real cigarette.
My brothers and I used to roll coffee grounds up and smoke those, haha, ya get a good caffeine hit.

Hahahahaha! Brother and I tried smoking ground nutmeg in high school.

As for cloves, they do indeed have tobacco within, but I do not know what kind and where it is sourced from. I fondly remember these little tins we'd get, packed with 3 filterless clove cigarettes each. They looked very much hand-rolled, but were a legitimate product from Indonesia, I think. They were rolled in a very definite spliff shape, and my buddy Charlie and I would sit on the streets of Royal Oak, smoking them and watching the freaks and geeks pass by, waiting for a police man to roll up and harass us. We never got harassed.

 

[musicman]

Bosun Cut Plug and Bosun Plug.

This is the way. Not to mention the fact that there is some fantastic leaf undergirding the clove flavoring.

 

[anotherbob]

yeah lots of guys smoked cloves which are tobacco with clove essence added to it. Probably wouldn't be hard to make a pipe tobacco adding essence or ground clove to a straight base of tobacco. And the sweetness on the lips is because they put sugar on the filters.
I think there just isn't a demand for it in pipes in a large part because of ghosting.

 

[mso489]

I think clove flavoring in pipe tobacco would be cloying to me, a little like the omnipresent cocoa in Prince Albert, to my taste. However, as a kid I tried cloves as a breath freshener and found it pleasant, better than the processed candies made of who-knows-what. I did like the old time Sen-Sen too.

 

[Architeuthis]

Clove oil is easy enough to get your hands on. A little goes a long way so you might want to make an emulsion with water or cut with a carrying oil if you spray on your own baccy.

Heck, once you've got some, you may find lots of other uses for it around the house- like numbing a toothache or spicing ciders/beers/teas. And, something that few are likely aware of, it has long been used as a clearing agent to prepare tissues for microscopic study.

 

[mingc]

Clove cigs originated in Indonesian and are generically called kretek there. The Javanese guy who invented them supposedly did it to alleviate smoker's hack! I liked them when I use to smoke cigs though I did not smoke them regularly. The paper is infused with something sweet and the smoke crackles from the burning cloves. The smoke also numbs your mouth. There is definitely tobacco in them. As I understand it, some of the the manufacturers have circumvented the ban in the US by making them into little cigars, supposedly not as strong as the cigs.

Besides Bosun Cut Plug and Bosun Plug, RB Plug also has cloves. However, as far as I can tell, GH and SG use clove essence rather than the actual ground up spice. These Kendal products also have a lot of other flavors added as well, so the clove in them is nowhere as prominent as in the Indonesian cigs.

I don't think we have any active Indonesian members on this forum, but I wonder if the Malaysians and Singaporeans here have come across Indonesian pipe tobacco with cloves added. @tklee @rmatuag @davidsaulmarshall have you?

 

[dctune]

I used to love smoking clove cigarettes in the early to mid 90s. Middle school and school. I also enjoyed smoking Bidis, though they weren’t clove.

Clove is my all time favorite flavors. I always loved the clove candy at Cracker Barrel. Then they stopped carrying it. I’ll never forgive them. They got rid of the clove, but kept the horehound. ?

As for Bosun Cut Plug… I was on a search for clove pipe tobacco. Everybody led me to that. The tobacco is excellent. But the clove is merely an afterthought in the taste. I like it. But I was hoping for more clove.

Clove can also be a problematic spice for asthmatics, I’ve heard. Maybe that’s why it’s not used much in pipe tobacco. At first glance, I’m inclined to wonder about how many asthmatics actually smoke pipes though. (And of course, I say this as I put down my pipe and reach for my inhaler. Guilty as charged.?)

 

[kcghost]

Clove tobacco doesn't sound very inviting to me.

 

[philobeddoe]

Smoked Djarums a couple times in high school and got a headache each time. I do like clove flavored candies now and then though.

 

[Ahi Ka]

We use a few drops of clove oil in about 100ml of water for cleaning around the house. If you have an old burner you’re not worried about, you could perhaps try “pre-ghosting” the pipe with a similar mixture and then see how much clove flavour comes through when smoking a blend you think clove would add something too?

 

[anotherbob]

I remember in the 90's looking at a pack of clove cigarettes and seeing that they were labeled as cigarillos.
II think it had more to do with import duties and such then laws against flavored cigs. Then again you have to ask how much you trust my memory.