Making Cake with Shake that Ash method
- Thread starter ParkitoATL
- Start date
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I may not have been clear, I'm not packing it on top of a big ash pile. After shaking, the bowl gets dumped and whatever stuck to the walls is left. I was wondering if people leave that for the next bowl or wipe out and then pack.
Always wiped out with 1-2 folded over cleaners + scrunched paper towel if necessary.
This results in a thin layer of hard cake.
I love sponge cakes - to eat
That’s exactly how I used to do it for years but as Sable said, it leaves an inferior cake, which is impossible to team evenly because it leaves a lot of soft spots and chunks end up coming off as you ream. I promise you, the build up of cake will seem to happen way too often when you aren’t paying attention to it. Now I do everything I can to prevent cake but it still forms, albeit, much slower and it’s much more dense. Patience is key, before you know it, you’ll have more cake than you’ll know what to do with.
I too thought Shake That Ash sounded like a funky dance craze. Doing the Shake That Ash.
I just wipe out the bowl with a doubled over pipe cleaner. I don’t do this every bowl though and sometimes I just dump the ash, blow back through the pipe to empty everything, and load another bowl. Eventually, when the cake gets too thick, I end up scraping the stuff back to practically bare wood again. I use whatever is laying around to scrape it back. I’ve used nail heads, dull knives, and pipe tools. They pretty much all work the same.
I tried the ash-shaking method several times. I never found the cake to be any different from my other pipes, but I also found that it didn't accelerate cake formation at all. After trying it in several pipes I gave it up and never looked back.
This was done 10 or 15 years ago, therefore I don't remember the exact specifics, but I did the test because a dude called James Beard (I think) on ASP used to advocate this method.
I used 3 or 4 pipes (one I remember for sure was an Ashton) reamed pretty thin, but still with some cake. All the pipes had been used before, but were extensively clean for the test. The method was repeated for 30 smokes (that's the interval I use between thorough clean-and-ream sessions, that's why I remember it). Didn't notice any difference between the cake in those pipes and the others. The others I simply removed the ash, but I don't clean the bowl with paper towels, as some do here, just gently scrape and tap it. I smoked several different blends during that time.
I used James Beard's method: shake the ash in the bowl and leave it there until the next smoke, emptying the old ash just before the next fill.
Did you start by only filling the heel and smoking that all the way down for the first few smokes?
Is your heel usually wet by the end? Perhaps that’s keeping cake from forming at the bottom.
I smoke all the way to the bottom, but I did start packing half bowls and smoking that way to see if that would help. Not much progress so far.
Don't tamp around the edges, only tamp in the middle. I had the same problem until I started doing that.
I saw a video of some dudes doing this on youtube, thought they were taking the piss. Didn't know it was a real thing.
I’ve been converted over the years to the little to no cake camp. I scrub the bowl with a dry paper towel after every smoke. I also lightly sand the bowl smooth (not to bare wood) whenever I notice cake starting to accumulate.
This is probably another of those pipe debates with more anecdotes than scientific method. Do what works for you.
This is probably another of those pipe debates with more anecdotes than scientific method. Do what works for you.
I do exactly that ,but use my finger to go around the inside of the bowl after I dump the ash. Nasty finger until it's washed.
I gave up on this method and started smoking straight to the bottom (stirring the final bit if needed to make sure it all burns). I then wipe out the bowl with a paper towel (still cleaning the airway and mortise with alcohol). I am now really starting to see a slick, shiny carbon in the heel. It seems like it took forever to get started, but now it seems to be building rapidly into a hard and smooth coating.