Haunted’s Horrible Tobacco Reviews: GH&Co Dark Plug

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hauntedmyst

Lifer
Feb 1, 2010
4,006
20,750
Chicago
So it’s time to review another horrible tobacco from my favorite horrible tobacco company, GH&Co. As we recall, Gawith, Hoggarth & Company is a small, multi centuries old tobacco company located in the town of Kendal in the lake district of England. As you daydream about this romanticized business you may picture a picturesque old brick building with a medieval castle like form in the middle of a gently rolling, sheeps-a-grazing meadow nestled along the River Kent Well, snap out of it. In reality it’s housed in a nondescript industrial park nestled unmarked snugly between Cumbria Pumps (a water pump supplier) and Momma’s Foods (a frozen food company). Across the street is a KendalWall, Lakeland Climbing Centre so it’s nice to know if you are local, with just one stop you can do your imaginary mountain climbing, pick up dinner and a sump pump while you get some tobacco.

It is here they make, along with dozens of other blends, their creatively named Dark Plug. They could have called it Dark Brick. It’s dark and hard as a brick. Karam recently wrote an outstanding review of Dark Flake Scented that you can read on this forum. Dark Flake Scented is basically Dark Plug that has been sliced and hosed down with an old English grandmother’s perfume & bathwater (otherwise known as the soapy Lakeland essence) until it permeates every portion of the tobacco to the point of simply having it in the same room as your pipes will cause them to become usable for any other style of tobacco and make your friends wonder if you have a thing for elderly British hookers. For those unfamiliar, plug tobacco is tobacco that has been put into a press and squeezed for weeks until it’s essentially a big, rock hard brick of tobacco. Seriously, you can spray this stuff with clear coat, grab some mortar and build a chimney if you want to. It’s not that falls apart with the slightest touch, candy ass Crumble Cake so popular today. It’s hard as hell. Back in the days before the industrial revolution, before the godsends known as central heating and air conditioning, plug tobacco stayed fresher longer and made it convenient to carry a good amount whether walking, on horseback or at sea. Oh sure, you need a knife with the sharpness of a Samurai sword to cut it but back then everyone carried a sword or knife. This was because real handguns hadn’t been perfected yet and in the event of a battle, what they did have was good for only one shot and you would not only feel like an idiot if you missed but if you didn’t have a knife, you would have to stand there and watch as someone stabbed you to death.

Given that GH&Co’s genesis was around 1792 and they still have the equipment, they still make plugs. Why? Who knows? I mean, they have the flake slicing machine sitting right there next to the presses! It’s just sitting there but for some inexplicable reason, they don’t use it. Maybe it’s because they save money on electricity by not turning on the slicer. Maybe its because some pipe smokers enjoy old timey things like the ritual and challenge of trying to shave the brick into flakes while trying to avoid doing the same to their fingers. These are the same middle aged guys that enjoy civil war reenactments. They reenact a war they know the end result of (so 50% of them know ahead of time they are going to lose!) while camping in the sweltering heat of the summer and wearing old, itchy wool clothes. I don’t understand it, but I don’t judge. Ok, I judge a little. For Pete’s sake, pick up a paintball or airsoft gun and have a real simulated battle where the winner is undetermined at the start! Nothing matches the thrill of guerilla warfare than ends in you plastering your friend in the nuts with a multi-colored array of paintballs. (Ok, now I’m judging myself, I’m a grown man damn it, it shouldn’t still amuse me that much.)



Anyways, it’s 2021 and plug tobacco is without doubt the least convenient form of tobacco. If you get some of this strange weed, you can do what I did and avoid the finger cutting by dropping pieces of mine into a coffee grinder until it’s the size you like. Thanks GH&Co, you just cost me an extra 2 cents in electricity to have a smokable form of tobacco. SmokingPipe.com’s description of it says:

“Gawith, Hoggarth & Co's Dark Plug combines equal proportions Malawi Dark Fired leaf, which lends it a smokey flavor, and Indian dark air-cured leaf, which lends it a sweeter, yet still strong 'cigar type' flavor.”

Other sites echo this description. I found this horrible tobacco to have the rich, dark, smokey taste they describe but it’s not cigar like to me. Steve, otherwise known as Pipestud says of it on Tobaccoreviews:

“Flavor presentation: Anyone want to smoke a nicotine laden camp fire?”

Yes! That’s what this glorious, horrible tobacco is like. It’s like smoking a delicious smokey campfire. You can make it even more camp firey good by adding in some Latakia, which I usually do. You don’t need to but it adds an interesting dimension. No matter where you are in the world, when you light this up you are transported into the woods with the flames a crackling and with a mouth full of deep, delicious campfire. Now, for you novices out there, here is a warning: You may think you’ve had a lot of nicotine in your tobacco before but for the uninitiated, this is on another level. It brings it by the truck load. I think the only more nic laden blend I’ve heard of would be HH Rustica. So if nic affects you, put on some Depends and get a big glass of water to help kill the hiccups the first few times you try it.

But the bad news is, your chances of trying it are limited which is why I don’t recommend you think about trying it. People snatch this up the minute it’s in stock. With 7,000 other blends to also make, GH&Co doesn’t make a lot of it. After all, why make a tobacco that sells out every time you make it when you can make a Peach flavored shag that sits on the shelves for years? I don’t think most of the people buying it are smoking it. It only appears occasionally in the ***What Are You Smoking*** thread. I think most people that buy it try a little bit and have the same reaction they have the first time they went overboard with Jägermeister. They forget to eat before hand and the next thing you know, the room starts spinning and the hurling is eminent. They never push through the pain to the smokey oasis that is a bowl of Dark Plug/Flake. They buy it and think “I’m gonna cellar this for one day when I’ve built up my immunity to it.” They forget it’s stored in the basement next to old photo album where it isn’t found until their kids clean out the house after their funeral. Then the kids throw it away because they are thinking “Why on God’s green earth would anyone keep an oily, old, hard as a rock brick around stored in a Mason jar?” without know how horribly delicious it is. Damn kids.
 

condorlover1

Lifer
Dec 22, 2013
7,994
26,608
New York
That about summarizes anything involving Plug tobacco. If that is all you have smoked all your life then the prep time is pretty quick. Back in the U.K my cottage had no central heating, gas lighting, out door crapper and every room had a coal fire place. The sash windows rattled and it was cold during the winter but I have very happy memories of drying my clothes by the kitchen range and smoking my pipe.