Ok guys here it is!
Evening Flake! Upon opening the package, I could see four rows of neatly stacked flakes in the bag, with the bag taped to form a nice sturdy brick. Kudos to smokingpipes for how they package their flakes. The bag note is very very basic, just bread, grass and a little bit of wood. Not really any sweetness, a contrast to LNF or LTF. The flaked themselves are lighter in color then LNF and look almost identical to comoys cask #4.
I dried out a flake on top of my coal stove (speeds the process up quite a bit) until just below crispy. The flake rubs out into broken pieces rather then ribbons and I gravity loaded it just as they were. Lighting was a little finicky, probably because of how chunky I left it, but it wasn't a chore. After getting it settled in I started to concentrate on it. Off the bat, this tobacco surprised me in how sweet it was. From the bag note I was expecting bland grass and hay, but boy it is sweet. Because this is not topped as far as I can tell (I'm judging by the bag note here) I suspect this is higher quality leaf then the PS bulk offerings to achieve that sweetness. It is so sweet in fact, that I don't detect the perique at all. If I didn't know any better, I'd think I was smoking a straight VA. The next thing I noticed was a slight sour maltiness that I taste in capstan blue or dunhill flake, once again leading me to believe they use a high quality VA. Beyond this, it's a normal VA with notes of bread and hay, but really dominated by a sweetness, but it's a natural sweetness. It is one dimensional, but I like my VA that way. If you are looking for perique, I would stick to LNF or comoys cask 4 ( for bulk variety). I like this very much and will be getting more. It burns slow and easy, absolutely no bite. It's a winner!
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