House blends...

[rotschefeller]

I am a pretty new pipe smoker, I started doing it regularly this year, 2012.
Since then I have tried about 10 types of pipe tobacco. My first few blends were house blends of a tobaccanist and since then I have always been a little disappointed in the brand name tobaccos. Maybe I've tried the wrong ones?
I live in a very populated part of Germany so there are lots of "local" tobaccanists in surrounding cities. I've decided to tour them all and buy a few types of tobacco from each one.
What do you all think? Are house blends often of better quality? Am I right to temporarily give up on the brand name tobaccos?

 

[matchstickman]

What do you all think? Are house blends often of better quality?

Living in Germany, you probably have access to different house blends than we do in the states. Most of the house blends are made by companies like Lane Limited, Tinder Box, or Altadis, whereas in Germany it might be something like Peter Stokkebye or MacBaren or something along those lines. Are they of better quality? Maybe, it depends on a lot of different factors, such as the quality of leaf and the amount of topping/casing used on the blend, but the highest quality leaf means nothing if you don't enjoy smoking it. My advice to you would be to branch out and try a little bit of everything. You never know, you might find something that you like buried in the pile of all the tins and bulk blends available on the web and in your tobacconist, so always keep an open mind and trust your taste buds.

 

[rotschefeller]

We have a lot of the Danish brands here.
So far I have tried tobaccos from Danske Club, Stanwell, Holger Dansk, Exclusiv Royal (German)
But so far, although some of them weren't so bad, nothing I have tried has come close to the bags I bought at a tobaccanist while visiting a friend of mine with simply numbers scribbled on them indicating the type.
I have heard good things about MacBaren, but haven't tried any yet.

 

[hfearly]

Nothing wrong with house blends in Germany.ppfeifen Schilde, Pfeifen Huber and Peter Heinrich are 3 of the great blending houses. Schilde and Heinrichs make some exceptional Va and VaPer blends, and Hubers English Balkan is traded as the reincarnation of the original Balkan Sobranie. Some distributors in Switzerland and Austria carry most of the US blends as well. Find the YouTube streams of users "Ralligruftie" and "dieterniehrman" for great tobacco reviews in German language.

 

[rotschefeller]

I'm visiting Peter Heinrich's in Köln next week and will be the first pipe shop on my tour. Good Va, you say?