This twist, being thin, curls like a pig’s tail - hence the name. The uncut rope has a bitter, woody pungency characteristic of dark fired Virginias. When cut into thin coins and rubbed out, the strong, peaty aroma intensifies and deepens, and you can get a brief and mild nicotine hit simply by sniffing it. There's also a detectable odour of maple syrup casing there.
It is very moist and so requires a deal of air drying time. After 5 hours' drying it still needed many relights and left a damp dottle. Leaving it out to dry overnight - bearing in mind that I am writing during a week of very moist weather in England in mid February - seemed to work best, but even then it needed loose packing. For those who don't like or want to spare the time for the ritual preparation of cutting, it is also available in ready-cut slices that just need a rub and a dry.
Thus dried, at first light, the smoke is voluminous and blue, and envelopes you a cloud of cigar-like vapour and the first inhalations are mouth-filling with lots of body. The taste is what I would describe as hot, in a spicy sense, which some might find harsh. It could almost be called peppery - the dark fired Virginia effect. Don't be tempted to puff too hard to keep it going, as it will bite. Slow and steady gets the best out of what few nuances it has. It mellows a bit after the first quarter bowl, and becomes less two-dimensional by the second half. Some sweet grass hints there, but mostly old barn hay notes start to be detected, and there's plenty of bold flavour. I found the nicotine hit strong but - despite what the GH blurb says - not as strong as the Black Irish XX Twist, nor as complex or pleasurable.
I first tried in in a Zulu, which was a mistake, as the conical chamber and bent stem encourages the collection of moisture and a gurgling, un-re-lightable dottle by the time you're nearly done. The second time I tried it in a long 19th Meerschaum, and it certainly suits a long-stemmed pipe with a near-cylindrical bowl far better than a short-stemmed pipe with a Dublin bowl. A longer airway gives a cooler smoke whereas in the previous trial it was borderline harsh. This second smoke was a glorious hour of euphoria.
For the third smoke I used a briar ‘cutty’ with a 5.5 inch stem and shank - and still wished it had been an inch or three longer. Again it was mellow and cigar-like, but relatively unvaried in flavours. Some salted caramel was evident during second half of bowl, which I suppose is the maple sugar casing, and quite pleasant. A retrohale clears the sinuses. Slow-burning, long-lasting. You might want to remind yourself that it is not compulsory to smoke an entire bowl at one sitting.
A manly smoke, for the company of other men. It occurred to me that, if the older GH blends in their present composition really do go back two centuries or more, the addition of rose geranium or tonquin in those Lakeland blends and 1792 might originally have been mainly to make the room note less unpalatable to ladies, whereas the GH twists are unapologetically robust in their aroma. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, pipe smoking had declined among the upper classes for chiefly this reason, snuff being the preferred method of tobacco consumption and, to a lesser extent, cigars (which may also explain the cigar-like quality of this blend).
As a fairly seasoned smoker and of the addictive type, after half an hour’s smoking I began to have spelling difficulties whilst writing down my impressions in my notebook.If this weed were beer, in would be what the Scots call ‘a ninety shilling ale’: not something you would want to consume all the time but as a relaxing, heady reward after a morning’s or an afternoon’s heavy, physical work, or a few puffs snatched in the course of a brief rest.
Imagining myself back in the 19thC, I can’t see gentlemen or clerks smoking it, but mariners, soldiers and labouring men. After all, you want a smoke that will last you a fair while until the next opportunity. How they ever smoked it in a broken-off short clay ‘cutty’ I don’t know, but I suppose one can get used to anything, and of course a smoke of any kind is better than no smoke at all. I can also understand how it could lend itself to a quick, five-minute smoke in a small pipe, or if in a large pipe, simply pocketed when it went out and relit at some later opportunity for another quick hit.
I commend it to all of you who have a sense of history - and do try it in a long pipe - a churchwarden or something similar. It's unsubtle, compared with less ancient blends, which an original habitue of Brown Pigtail might well have considered effete; but if you like a good, strong, hearty smioke, the Brown Pigtail is your man.
It is very moist and so requires a deal of air drying time. After 5 hours' drying it still needed many relights and left a damp dottle. Leaving it out to dry overnight - bearing in mind that I am writing during a week of very moist weather in England in mid February - seemed to work best, but even then it needed loose packing. For those who don't like or want to spare the time for the ritual preparation of cutting, it is also available in ready-cut slices that just need a rub and a dry.
Thus dried, at first light, the smoke is voluminous and blue, and envelopes you a cloud of cigar-like vapour and the first inhalations are mouth-filling with lots of body. The taste is what I would describe as hot, in a spicy sense, which some might find harsh. It could almost be called peppery - the dark fired Virginia effect. Don't be tempted to puff too hard to keep it going, as it will bite. Slow and steady gets the best out of what few nuances it has. It mellows a bit after the first quarter bowl, and becomes less two-dimensional by the second half. Some sweet grass hints there, but mostly old barn hay notes start to be detected, and there's plenty of bold flavour. I found the nicotine hit strong but - despite what the GH blurb says - not as strong as the Black Irish XX Twist, nor as complex or pleasurable.
I first tried in in a Zulu, which was a mistake, as the conical chamber and bent stem encourages the collection of moisture and a gurgling, un-re-lightable dottle by the time you're nearly done. The second time I tried it in a long 19th Meerschaum, and it certainly suits a long-stemmed pipe with a near-cylindrical bowl far better than a short-stemmed pipe with a Dublin bowl. A longer airway gives a cooler smoke whereas in the previous trial it was borderline harsh. This second smoke was a glorious hour of euphoria.
For the third smoke I used a briar ‘cutty’ with a 5.5 inch stem and shank - and still wished it had been an inch or three longer. Again it was mellow and cigar-like, but relatively unvaried in flavours. Some salted caramel was evident during second half of bowl, which I suppose is the maple sugar casing, and quite pleasant. A retrohale clears the sinuses. Slow-burning, long-lasting. You might want to remind yourself that it is not compulsory to smoke an entire bowl at one sitting.
A manly smoke, for the company of other men. It occurred to me that, if the older GH blends in their present composition really do go back two centuries or more, the addition of rose geranium or tonquin in those Lakeland blends and 1792 might originally have been mainly to make the room note less unpalatable to ladies, whereas the GH twists are unapologetically robust in their aroma. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, pipe smoking had declined among the upper classes for chiefly this reason, snuff being the preferred method of tobacco consumption and, to a lesser extent, cigars (which may also explain the cigar-like quality of this blend).
As a fairly seasoned smoker and of the addictive type, after half an hour’s smoking I began to have spelling difficulties whilst writing down my impressions in my notebook.If this weed were beer, in would be what the Scots call ‘a ninety shilling ale’: not something you would want to consume all the time but as a relaxing, heady reward after a morning’s or an afternoon’s heavy, physical work, or a few puffs snatched in the course of a brief rest.
Imagining myself back in the 19thC, I can’t see gentlemen or clerks smoking it, but mariners, soldiers and labouring men. After all, you want a smoke that will last you a fair while until the next opportunity. How they ever smoked it in a broken-off short clay ‘cutty’ I don’t know, but I suppose one can get used to anything, and of course a smoke of any kind is better than no smoke at all. I can also understand how it could lend itself to a quick, five-minute smoke in a small pipe, or if in a large pipe, simply pocketed when it went out and relit at some later opportunity for another quick hit.
I commend it to all of you who have a sense of history - and do try it in a long pipe - a churchwarden or something similar. It's unsubtle, compared with less ancient blends, which an original habitue of Brown Pigtail might well have considered effete; but if you like a good, strong, hearty smioke, the Brown Pigtail is your man.
