Dedicated Pipes

[MisterBadger]

It’s true, price doesn’t always equate to a better smoking pipe. But it also depends on someone’s tastes/likes. Because if someone is smoking a simple blend, or one dimensional, then it’s not going to matter much, unless someone had an extremely bad pipe for whatever reasons. Or someone’s palate isn’t very refined to appreciate the complexity of a complex blend.

And, very important, depending on the blend, you might have to adjust the preparation, drying packing, and changing the smoking cadence.

As an example, blends that are delicate, subtle complex blends, have to be sipped/smoked slowly easily, and keeping the fire heat to a minimum.

To much fire/heat destroys complexity, this is the reasons I don’t keep my pipes lit. Barely lighting, a few sips, letting it go out, cool down and repeat, will yield maximum flavors in complex blends. You have to be like a Wine Taster, sipping and hunting and going slowly.

Herein is wisdom. Verbum sapientibus, etc. Thank'ee, @PipeIT: I am beginning to understand this. Makes the weed go further, too, and inculcates patience and thoughtfulness

 

[PipeIT]

Herein is wisdom. Verbum sapientibus, etc. Thank'ee, @PipeIT: I am beginning to understand this. Makes the weed go further, too, and inculcates patience and thoughtfulness

Lest us also not forget, or the wild weed, that is hastened to quickly, might bite us fouly, those who rush widly in, puffing full steam ahead…

 

[LeafErikson]

I generally dedicate my pipes to blend families, which I think is pretty common. I have a few pipes that have seen nothing but burleys or nothing but Virginias for hundreds of bowls. If I smoke a burley tobacco in a Virginia pipe I can absolutely taste the difference and vice-versa. If you are 'blend hopping' in a pipe you might not ever run into ghosting (unless you smoke an English or an aromatic), but the pipe may never accentuate and compliment the tobacco nuances in the same way that a dedicated pipe often does.

 

[badbriar]

No, but I use the shitty pipe to test a new tobacco. If the tobacco is shitty, it gets regulated to the shitty pipe.

Makes good sense...Shitty tobacco for the shitty pipe! Too Funny!

 

[BenMN]

I've only dedicated pipes these days for heavy ghosters, ie a cob that I only smoke with Big N' Burley and Picayune. And I wouldn't have done it, but those tobaccos demanded it. I could smoke paper shavings out of that cob, and they would taste like those two tobaccos. When I first started smoking, before anyone talked of doing this, I only smoked Escudo out of a certain pipe because it was the perfect size for two coins, and I found that to be the perfect length of smoke with Escudo. I wanted everything else I was smoking to last much longer, so it was about bowl size. It had nothing to do with isolating flavors to this wood or that.

And like GL Pease has written, I happen to like when the nuance of past tobaccos shows up in other bowls. They're a seasoning of the pipe, not a bogeyman. I was smoking 507-C the other day out of a pipe I don't smoke that often, and in the bottom quarter of the bowl, I got a couple minutes of a latakia hit, most likely from some old Crown Achievement I smoked in it last year. In experimental music, they refer to that as accidenz. Maybe if I was doing tobacco testing like Jiminks, I'd want to stay clear of such happenings, but I'm not. I find the unexpected like that to be fun, and I smoke for pleasure. Theory be damned.

Worth linking one of Pease's more recent pieces on ghosting:

Ghost Busting

“O, begone ye ghosts of tobaccos past! Out, out, I say!” Obviously, I’m not talking about treasured memories of long-gone blends, but of the sometimes everlasting impressions left in the […]

pipesmagazine.com

I always enjoy his columns

 

[filmguerilla]

I have a basic system: Cobs for aro's, Bones pipes for Lakelands, and briars/meers for everything else. Only two pipes are reserved for specific blends; I have a Bones Calabash that I always smoke 1792 in and a Rattray's olive wood Dublin that is for LJ Peretti's Oriental #40.

 

[punkeedo]

I never used to dedicate anything, being i only smoke bur/va blends. But recently I've become stricken with C&D Burley flake 4, which has latakia in it. And I found my bent SMS meer to be the best for that blend. So unintentionally it became dedicated to only that blend.

I know this is a deviation from the main topic, but I'm very interested in VABurs. Is that what you mean when you say bur/va blends?

 

[seanv]

I know this is a deviation from the main topic, but I'm very interested in VABurs. Is that what you mean when you say bur/va blends?

Same thing just in reverse

 

[seanv]

I am a dedicated pipe guy. I have some of my pipes dedicated to specific blends but more predominantly I have them dedicated to genres.

 

[didimauw]

I know this is a deviation from the main topic, but I'm very interested in VABurs. Is that what you mean when you say bur/va blends?

It's the same I just like to say Bur/va. Lol sounds better to me lol

 

[Chasing Embers]

It's the same I just like to say Bur/va. Lol sounds better to me lol

Virbur

 

[Chasing Embers]

Thinking about it, at this point nearly all of my pipes are blend specific.

 

[Sobrbiker]

I never have, but now a couple years into this journey both my palate has improved and my favored tobaccos are narrowing down.
I may begin to do some semblance of dedication.
My biggest problem is I smoke outside at work most often, and like to select from up to 5 tobaccos in a day while I only tote a couple of pipes with me.

 

[Butter Side Down]

I have only one pipe dedicated to a specific blend. It's for my all time #1, skiff mixture. I smoke it in other pipes as well, but it's always magical in that one specific pipe and I don't want to mess with that mojo.

Beyond that I have a haphazard blend type dedication. Some pipes are only for Virginias and VAPers. One is for aromatics. One meer for trying new things. The rest are for Lat and burleys, which I don't mind smoking in the same pipe.

 

[Peterson314]

<- This pipe for BCA and Black Cavendish blends
A Savinelli 413 for Lakelands
A cob for everything flavored and new
And a free-for-all for the rest.

 

[Danish Estates]

I generally dedicate my pipes to blend families, which I think is pretty common. I have a few pipes that have seen nothing but burleys or nothing but Virginias for hundreds of bowls. If I smoke a burley tobacco in a Virginia pipe I can absolutely taste the difference and vice-versa. If you are 'blend hopping' in a pipe you might not ever run into ghosting (unless you smoke an English or an aromatic), but the pipe may never accentuate and compliment the tobacco nuances in the same way that a dedicated pipe often does.

I follow the same system. I generally smoke my favorite blend in one pipe. Then I have another for other english blends, one for virginia periques, two for aromatics (because I typically only smoke 2 aromatics), one for burley blends, and one for tasting (meerschaum).