Franken-mixture, pretty good!

[markus]

My 4 oz. jar of Franken-mixture (or toaster crumbs, whatever you want to call it) has gotten kind of full and it seems like I might need to start a new jar before too long. Every time I add something, I get a whiff of it and it actually smells pretty good, so I thought “What the hell, might as well give it a shot”. If the aroma translates to the smoke at all, then it should be pretty tasty. To satisfy my curiosity, I mixed it up a little better and loaded a MM Country Gentleman cob with it. I figured that if it was terrible, I didn’t want it to ghost a briar. Low and behold, it’s pretty darned good, which is surprising, because it has a lot of different tobaccos in it. There is some War Horse Ready Rubbed, Bar & Green as well as GLP Sixpence, Quiet Nights, Lane HGL, G&H Bob’s Chocolate Flake, Kendal Flake, Black Frigate, Escudo, SG Navy Flake, Carter Hall and only God knows what else. I'm surprised because I seriously thought that it would taste like hell, but it’s so good I’m going to continue smoking it and meanwhile I’m starting a new jar.

Anybody else have a Franken-mix jar?

 

[lightmybriar]

I have one but it's all Virginia or VaPer. It was a bit dry so i dropped some whiskey in it and shook it up, and I was also surprised at how "un-bad" it was. Although, that ought to have been expected from how similar all the components were. Your's I'd say was a lot riskier, so it's great that it turned out enjoyable for you!

 

[jpmcwjr]

I have one, just English blends. Too small now, and too many others open to delve into it.
However, if your potpourri tobacco jar contains only those you like, the end result should be fine. (No?)

 

[markus]

jpmcwjr, makes sense.

 

[toobfreak]

I always have a franken-mixture going Mark and it is always good, indeed, some of my private blends were born out of just that. It is pretty hard to start with good tobaccos and end up with something bad. As to ghosting pipes, I have never felt that briars ghosted that easily! I used to reserve certain pipes just for Virginia-heavy blends, others for english and yet others just for the gooey aromatics, but in recent months have become more flexible and with no bad results!

 

[mayfair70]

Frankenjars are a pretty standard catch-all in my rotation now. I just finished a Frankenjar and was kinda sad to see it go since it was so tasty. However, I'm starting a new one with scraps of Warhorse Bar, a SG Black Twist and possibly some FVF. Good topic Markthelad.

 

[theloniousmonkfish]

I don't throw out any tobacco, all the ends from packing a bowl and crumbs in the bag/tin etc. go into a jar. If it's all good tobacco you enjoy going in the jar it'll likely be as good as the sum of it's parts or better. Letting them sit a while doesn't hurt either, worst case scenario a splash of rum or something else can help unremarkable frankenblends.

 

[markus]

toobfreak, like you I'm starting to be more flexible in regards to pipe dedication. I used to dedicate my pipes by blend type, some for Aro's, some for English blends, etc. Now I only separate the Lakeland pipes, of which there are only a few and one of those is a cob.
mayfair, thanks!

 

[ophiuchus]

I've got two little maraschino cherry jars that I toss all my leftover scrap into, usually whatever's on the drying tray that didn't fit into the pipe. This can include anything from Virginia/Perique to Kentucky plug, from Dunhill Royal Yacht to Paladin Black Cherry. Anything! I smoke out of one jar while the other one's slowly being filled. I've gotten some really weird (but not unsmokable) bowls out of this, but usually it's pretty good. I visit the "mix" jar often, particularly when I can't make up my mind what to smoke. Fun stuff! ::

 

[kane]

Ah, the Ol' Pensioners Blend! Love it. I treat my jar like a 'baccy compost pile. As the only stuff that gets added is stuff that I like, it's all good, like Gumbo.

 

[mso489]

For some reason, I tend to combine odds and ends as I go along, so I don't have a residual supply, like a pocket-change jar for coins. I think it's luck what a random combination tastes like, all the way from wonderful to not. I've had great grab-bag smokes. On the other hand, even one or two blends in tins I've tried with many constituent tobaccos have not been good. They brag about their having fifteen or thirty kinds of tobaccos, and they are nondescript in flavor and harsh-harsh-harsh. I bet a mixture jar would have good to awful bowls in it, unless it is thoroughly mixed, and the homogenized mixture might not be so good. But yes, sometimes a hodge podge is really good.

 

[texmexpipe]

I have a quart size jar that is just now too full, and it catches blends that have a little left over or that get tired of. I'm about to start a new one as that one is full but I've been wondering when I'll break into it. Maybe sooner than later now!

 

[ophiuchus]

Well, I did it again. I dipped into the "mix" jar, and after a short dry spell, loaded up my beater Bjarne Viking Copenhagen. Nice and dense, with good strong sweet tobacco flavor backed up by a whiskey rum-punch fruitiness with hints of figs, prunes, pepper and vanilla, undercut by Cyprian Lat/Kentucky smokiness. An absolute mess, but I'm totally digging it. ::

 

[deathmetal]

The odds and ends jar here leans heavily toward natural tobaccos, so tends to work out quite well, sort of like a light English with lots of Burley.