Do Cigar, Pipe, and Cigarette Tobacco Taste Different?

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Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,762
13,786
Humansville Missouri
Title shortened.

I was already hooked on cigarettes in 1973 when Winchester little cigars came out. Winchesters were a quarter and Winstons were forty cents and my plan was to save money.

I found out when I opened my first pack of Winchesters they tasted like cigars. Nothing wrong with cigars, but I wanted cigarettes, which tasted differently.

Then a little later on, Middleton came out with a tipped cigar they claimed tasted like pipe tobacco. I tried them and their cigars did taste like Middleton’s Cherry Blend pipe tobacco, because that was the filler. Nothing wrong with Middleton’s Cherry Blend, but when I want a cigar I want it to taste like a cigar, not a pipe.

American Spirt makes cigarettes with no additives. All good hand rolled cigars and most higher end Va Pers and straight Virginias are straight up pipe tobacco.

The tobacco leaves must taste differently, especially in the case of cigars.

How dey do dat?
 
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warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
11,699
16,207
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
Cigars have many different tastes dependent on the tobaccos and wrappers. Cigarettes have different tastes depending on the tobaccos also and how they are processed. A Polish manufactured Malboro tastes nothing like an American made Malboro. I'm guessing to make them palatable for Europeans the tobaccos are differently processed. Also, most likely they use different tobaccos, at least regionally.

I smoke "luxury" cigarettes only which do not have chemical infused paper and the tobaccos are air dried as I understand it. American cigarettes use artificially dried, heat applied, tobaccos. At least that was what I was taught many, many years ago.

American cigarettes are manufactured with chemically infused paper which make them burn while sitting in an ashtray the smoker must light another. Luxury cigarettes will snuff themselves when left to sit.

Different brands of cigarettes have different tastes mostly due to the type and quality of tobaccos used and differences in processing is ll I can really attest to.

Two leaves from the same plant destined for a pipe blend will come to taste differently depending on processing. I've been told where on the plant the leaf was harvested from can affect flavor. So, there are too many variables
to even begin to explain the differences in cigars, cigarettes and so forth.

I didn't even mention growing conditions, soil and such of identical plants.

And, you must consider that all the info I've passed on to you might be bullshit as I have no idea how reliable my sources are/were. O can also relate that all of the above was gleaned long before there was an internet. So, there is that.
 

OzPiper

Lifer
Nov 30, 2020
5,756
30,563
71
Sydney, Australia
It's been a long time since my last cigarette.

I started smoking a pipe in the early 1970's to get off cigarettes.
Pipe tobacco never reminded me of cigarettes.

I smoked cigars exclusively for 15 years.
Never flavoured cigars, which in my opinion, is the antithesis of smoking a fine cigar.
In that time, I've never had a cigar that tasted like a cigarette. Ever.

Pipe tobacco offers a totally different spectrum of flavours to cigars or cigarettes.

You're comparing apples with oranges.
 

JOHN72

Lifer
Sep 12, 2020
5,136
51,569
51
Spain - Europe
Cigars, like pipe tobacco, if you are lucky or fortunate enough to have a good variety of generally good tobaccos, you will love both. It seems that the more time passes, the worse the qualities get. Or that's my feeling, with tobacco, liquors, or distillates. Yesterday I was smoking a cigar, and in the living room there was a strange smell of corpse, rotten eggs, I went to the kitchen if there was something I neglected, and it is rare in me to leave something like that. It really was the cigar, maybe it was stung, It was covering up all the sweetness of my whiskey in the glass. I smoked two thirds of it and then sent it to the same shit.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,762
13,786
Humansville Missouri
As I understand the process, once used bourbon barrels from Kentucky are sold and exported to Scotland where they are used to make Scotch whiskey.

I’ve never tasted a bad bourbon (although some cheaper bottles have more burn) yet I’ve tried and even the best Scotch tastes bad to me.

What the heck? Both are distilled grains put up in oak barrels, often the same barrel.

When they raised Platte County Burley near Weston Missouri I saw the fields and toured the auction barn. It was burley tobacco used as chopped filler for machine made cigars.

The vice merchants know their trade well.

I just wonder how much is different plants and how much is different processing?
 
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Part of the flavor profile in cigars, comes from the taste of the leaf touching your lips. This is why you do not get the full cigar experience from cigar blends in a pipe. Cigarette tobacco, originally came from pipe tobacco. Actually, there was just "tobacco" and how you smoked it made it one or the other. Nowadays though, cigarette companies send their tobaccos through a pressing and rehydrating stage that makes it so that they can give each cigarette a precise dose of nicotine, but if you dry and roll pipe tobacco, you "can" smoke it as a cigarette... but the paper and thin profile gives it a totally different taste, sort of like how different diameter pipes will also give the pipe tobacco a different taste profile.
 

woodsroad

Lifer
Oct 10, 2013
11,569
15,218
SE PA USA
Actually, the "tobacco" in most cigarettes isn't tobacco at all. It is a paper, made from tobacco and "other ingredients" that is blenderized into a slurry, rolled and pressed into sheets, dried and then shredded. That may have some influence on the flavor profile.

Cigars are made from different tobacco strains than the usual pipe varieties, and the tobacco is fermented.
 

burleybreath

Part of the Furniture Now
Aug 29, 2019
956
3,328
Finger Lakes area, New York, USA
Actually, the "tobacco" in most cigarettes isn't tobacco at all. It is a paper, made from tobacco and "other ingredients" that is blenderized into a slurry, rolled and pressed into sheets, dried and then shredded.
What?! Is this true? They use homogenized leaf for cigarettes? Like cheap cigar binder? Who the hell would smoke this crap?
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,762
13,786
Humansville Missouri
What?! Is this true? They use homogenized leaf for cigarettes? Like cheap cigar binder? Who the hell would smoke this crap?
As I understand it homogenized tobacco leaf has been used in most American cigarettes since about 1960.

Yet the primary reason for HTL is the same as using burley tobacco, only more so. HTL can be flavored to control consistency in the cigarette.

Commercial American candy bars, chewing gum, and cigarettes are unquestionably the best tasting and most consistently good vices on this earth, designed and engineered that way.

We make the best things on this earth that are bad for you.:)
 

bullet08

Lifer
Nov 26, 2018
8,932
37,913
RTP, NC. USA
Never smoked cigarettes for taste. Gives me nic and that's all there is to it. Altho, after smoking pipes, I'm noticing certain sweetness from the brand I smoke.

Cigar taste is rather unique and all cigars I have smoked has that taste that says cigar. Every cigar has their unique profile, but that background taste is in all of them. Nicely put horse shit smell. I also get this from some European cigarettes.

Pipe smoke is all over the place. Aromatics can even taste like something other than tobacco.
 

PipeIT

Lifer
Nov 14, 2020
4,376
26,150
Hawaii
@Briar Lee you’re being to general, with no specifics...

Today is a different world, so you can’t simply generalize on the differences today, unless you are only thinking about Old School Codger tobacco, and the differences between them, even the differences around the world.

Depending on the country, tobacco/cigarettes around the world had, and many still have big differences.

So what world of tobacco are you talking about, old school, the world today, blends around the world, etc.? hmm 🤔
 
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Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,762
13,786
Humansville Missouri
@Briar Lee you’re being to general, with no specifics...

Today is a different world, so you can’t simply generalize on the differences today, unless you are only thinking about Old School Codger tobacco, and the differences between them, even the differences around the world.

Depending on the country, tobacco/cigarettes around the world had, and many still have big differences.

So what world of tobacco are you talking about, old school, the world today, blends around the world, etc.? hmm 🤔
I mean if you smoke the cheapest machine rolled cigar ever sold it will taste something less but similar to a Cuban hand rolled cigar. It will never taste like any cigarette, nor any pipe.

There is a cigar taste.

There is a commercial cigarette taste

And there are many varieties of pipe tobacco but they all have a certain “pipey” taste

Pipes and cigarettes are sometimes closer in taste.

But a cigar tastes only, like cigar.
 
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PipeIT

Lifer
Nov 14, 2020
4,376
26,150
Hawaii
I mean if you smoke the cheapest machine rolled cigar ever sold it will taste something less but similar to a Cuban hand rolled cigar. It will never taste like any cigarette, nor any pipe.

There is a cigar taste.

There is a commercial cigarette taste

And there are many varieties of pipe tobacco but they all have a certain “pipey” taste

Pipes and cigarettes are sometimes closer in taste.

But a cigar tastes only, like cigar.

It’s like anything, depends on where it’s grown, how it’s produced and manufactured and what the company/blender is trying to accomplish.

This is why I was asking on something more specific and tangible.

If I had to guess, you’re thinking about this only from one side. I was thinking about the history of all these, from around the world.

This is a perfect point about what you just mentioned;
—————————
There is a commercial cigarette taste
—————————-

This just depends on the part of the world you are referring to, this is just a Westernized generalization. Looking back on history, which we know you love to quote LOL, you should understand that a lot of the world followed after American cigarettes, but it’s not to say all cigarettes from around the world are the same.
 
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