Danish Sir Walter Raleigh
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About thirty five years ago I toured a cigarette factory in Kentucky near Louisville.
The aroma of cured and aged tobacco was overpowering to some of the tour group but I was in heaven.
They actually let us have two packs of cigarettes but they cautioned us, they’d not be really good unless we opened the package and let them gas off the fermentation aroma or, let them sit a week.
In Missouri SWR is $35 for a 7 ounce can and Velvet and Half and Half are $25.
I’m smoking some fresh SWR this morning and I’m buying more.
The do gooders are after us, you know?
We aren’t like the drunks that love craft bourbon.
I wonder if there are different levels of vinegar people are experiencing. Maybe it’s batch dependent. If you open the can and put your nose close and breath in lightly, does it burn your sinuses, and make your eyes water? I put some on a plate overnight and was still repulsed by it. I didn’t dare smoke it. When I first opened the can my wife commented on the vinegar smell from 20 feet away.About thirty five years ago I toured a cigarette factory in Kentucky near Louisville.
The aroma of cured and aged tobacco was overpowering to some of the tour group but I was in heaven.
They actually let us have two packs of cigarettes but they cautioned us, they’d not be really good unless we opened the package and let them gas off the fermentation aroma or, let them sit a week.
In Missouri SWR is $35 for a 7 ounce can and Velvet and Half and Half are $25.
I’m smoking some fresh SWR this morning and I’m buying more.
The do gooders are after us, you know?
We aren’t like the drunks that love craft bourbon.
I’ll admit I opened my fresh can of SWR and it did give off a vinegar aroma,,,,but so does Anniversary Kake,,,the same aroma. So does a five pound aged bag of Buoy Gold when I open it.
Scandinavian is a major tobacco company with no soul or conscience. Every part of the process is taken down to the last particle of science.
They aren’t going to make any bad $70 a pound tobacco.
What we are getting is the 1937 formula.
As codger burley blends go, SWR was about second to last, developed in the late thirties. Carter Hall was 1956.
Fifty years ago, Prince Albert had the most shelf space in any grocery store, then Velvet, then Half and Half, but SWR was right after those, then Carter Hall.
The original formula was likely straight, aged, white burley cased in hogsheads for two or three years.
SWR has always been a good blending and break in smoke.
As I smoke it this morning, the last half of this pipe is so good I want to eat it.
BTW, Scandinavian Granger is wildly better than previous Granger offerings.
And they cannot change the formula of a Pre 2007 blend.
But they can and they do use older, better tobacco.
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I have been smoking a lot of Old Joe Krantz Blue lately. It has a light vinegar aroma and I love the stuff. I would not call what I experienced a vinegar aroma. It was more of an overpowering vinegar stench. I think that there is something going on that is causing batch variation with new SWR. Glad to hear that you are able to get some good stuff.
Aged Buoy Gold, for us confirmed addicts, is beyond description good in a cigarrete.
So while stuffing up some Buoy Gold I wondered how SWR would work for cigarettes.
Fifty years ago, there was a box of free papers for Prince Albert, Velvet, and SWR at the grocery stores (and the old men paid a nickel for OCB instead).
Oh me, oh my, SWR makes a good cigarette.
Stronger and a straight burley flavor than Buoy Gold, and five or more times costlier, but soooo good.
I can’t get any of the codger blends to stuff, but a cheap hand roller or hand rolled SWR is a rare treat.
If you’ve already developed a taste for such low living things.
Sing one, Porter Wagner !
Skid Row Joe
So while stuffing up some Buoy Gold I wondered how SWR would work for cigarettes.
Fifty years ago, there was a box of free papers for Prince Albert, Velvet, and SWR at the grocery stores (and the old men paid a nickel for OCB instead).
Oh me, oh my, SWR makes a good cigarette.
Stronger and a straight burley flavor than Buoy Gold, and five or more times costlier, but soooo good.
I can’t get any of the codger blends to stuff, but a cheap hand roller or hand rolled SWR is a rare treat.
If you’ve already developed a taste for such low living things.
Sing one, Porter Wagner !
Skid Row Joe
I smoke D&R 3 Sails shag Virginia and like it quite well. Have you smoked 3 Sails? If so, how does Buoy Gold compare? Is Buoy Gold shag cut?
I haven’t smoked 3 Sails, but I have over fifty pounds of Buoy Gold aging.
BG is a ribbon cut shag. It stuffs a perfect cigarette. It smells and tases like Virginia bright leaf, maybe with a touch of burley and some Maryland to help it burn.
It’s also good, but milder than I prefer, in a pipe.
If it’s Capstan or SWR or Buoy Gold, the makers pay about $2 a pound for the best, choicest, US Dept of Ag graded leaf and age and blend it into pipe tobacco taxed at $2.88 a pound, and sell it for $10 to $160 a pound. The flavorings likely cost more than $2 a pound.
There is so much competition for the 1% of the tobacco market that’s pipe tobacco we are living in a golden age of good pipe blends.
But pipe tobacco is cheaper today than it will be next year or ten years from now.
I smoked SWR before and after the Lane and then STG changeover. It never smelled like vinegar the way people have been reporting. This is a more recent phenomenon going back a few years. It's not fermentation a la McClelland either. Lane/STG has made a lot of changes to the blend over the years so, this argument about how they are legally constrained in making changes is not quite strict.
It looks like a toy train car to me. Cute.
I tried Sutliff's Ultra Lite last year after smoking a Winston Select Light cigarette. The cigarette flavor carried over into the pipe smoke.I can’t get any of the codger blends to stuff, but a cheap hand roller or hand rolled SWR is a rare treat.
If you’ve already developed a taste for such low living things.
Yesterday evening I smoked 5-6 bowls of Ultra Lite in a row. It was so light that smoking all those bowls was feasible. The taste was less cigarette like, and basically like a very light version of classic pipe tobacco with a light sweet Cavendish side. I got it 20 years ago in a big 12 oz freshlock bag. Would you like to try some, Briar?
All the best.
Ha, ha I noticed that after I posted it.
This looks real. I will go with this one
This looks real. I will go with this one
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I too have experienced the pickling of SWR in new pouches and 7oz tins. So....I ventured back to the aromatic. Used to smoke it when stores were sold out of regular SWR. Its really quite nice...not like the original SWR but the aromantic proponent is not overwhelming or perfume. The burley is there and its mild and has received a number of compliments. That all being said...if anyone ventures into the new Danish version of SWR regular and doesn't taste vinegar.... Please Post!
I think I’ve solved the riddle of the vinegar scented SWR.
Brown and Williamson must have had a toaster at the end of the line in 1937 to dry the product.
After two months with the lid cracked open on my Danish SWR it’s almost the same as the American version.
Same recepie, different process.
The machine that toasted the product needs be shipped to Denmark.
Brown and Williamson must have had a toaster at the end of the line in 1937 to dry the product.
After two months with the lid cracked open on my Danish SWR it’s almost the same as the American version.
Same recepie, different process.
The machine that toasted the product needs be shipped to Denmark.
You may have solved one of life’s great mysteries and conundrums. Can you illuminate leaving the lid off? As in uncovered? Sitting it the windowsill?
Just crack it a little.
I’d imagine you could spread the contents out on a baking pan and actually toast it or nuke it in a microwave or leave it in the sun, too.
The Danes might think we like vinegar kind of like some folks like Latakia
It’s intentional, whatever causes it.
If that is the case, that there was a toaster at the end of the production line for the American version, I wonder if you could accomplish the same thing by stoving the tobacco in your oven at home. The boiling point of the acetic acid that gives vinegar it's tang is about 244°F, so if you were to spread the offending Sir Walter Raleigh out on a sheet pan and pop it in an oven set to 250°F for a bit you should be able to cook the vinegar off. The trick would just be figuring out how long to stove it to rid it of the vinegar without otherwise affecting the tobacco.
I love SWRA. Need to order more. My only issue is the tubs are different than the pouches , no idea why. I will be grabbing a 5 count box of pouches and dump them in my tub.
Still have my regular swr jarred, opening it every so often to see if the vinegar has subsided. It has a little bit but not all the way. Probably should air it out some.