Mold?
- Thread starter blametony
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I always find it interesting how many pipe smokers don’t think their life is worth potentially wasting $12 bucks.
That’s mold, and a pretty obvious case of it.
Go ahead and smoke it. Your beneficiaries will thank you.
That’s mold, and a pretty obvious case of it.
Go ahead and smoke it. Your beneficiaries will thank you.
1. It wasn't $12, it was a long aged tin that I purchased from someone.
2. I wasn't sure, so I'm polling the community for my own knowledge and hopefully to educate others.
3. I never said I was going to smoke it. I'm asking out of curiosity and if people suggested overwhelmingly that it was NOT mold, I would have considered smoking it.
If you would have left the black paper insert out of the post the general consensus would have clearly been “NOT mold,” however those black paper hats are an anomaly in of themselves as Sutliff has even admitted to and sought to change after issues peaked with the 2022 Cringle release. I noticed it then but also in several other even more extreme examples with other flakes from them pre 2023 that I decided to jar for a while first to be sure. At least half a dozen times, and never did it turn out to be mold, so I smoked it and was sure glad I did , but I’m a careless critter and often smoke expired tobacco. Proceed with caution and terror if you don’t prefer a lil extra sweet smoke.
it's never mold never. If it's mold you know it and don't ask the forum about it.
If you really want to be sure, get some agar-agar, sterilise a small bowl in a microwave and drop some of the white stuff in there. Wait for a few days, and you'll have a scientific answer. There are thousands of "mold" strains, not all producing smelly metabolites.
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It you read my response carefully you would have realized that it was not specific to you, but to the general range of comments these types of posts generate. And, whether it was a $12 tin or a $120 tin, the basic issue remains the same. Nor does the factor of aging have any bearing on the safety of smoking moldy tobacco. I've had the experience of giving the heave to tins of extremely old and rare tobacco and did so without a moment's pause or regret. Them's the breaks.
A lot of smokers try to strike a bargain with fate, like saying that they'll only smoke the bits that aren't covered in mold, like THAT'S a solution. Once mold is activated in a tin, it's ALL bad, not just the visible bits. And we have had people who have said that they don't care, they're not going to throw away money.
Crystalline mineral deposits, which many mistakenly think are sugar crystals, are almost never bright white. They're usually translucent and textured, and in the case of flakes, almost always follow the layers of strata of component tobaccos in that flake.
The best protection is to follow the maxim, when in doubt, throw it out.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. It was never my intention to smoke it. It’s not worth the risks.
It seems like if it's mold people don't tend to ask and instead throw the tobacco out because it's clearly mold and not going to be a pleasant smoke. It's never mold (asked about.)
Well now, looks like you received The Golden Ticket ! This was part of a promotion we did, way back when, at Standard Tobacco, sending out just one tin inoculated with a rare, deadly mold strain. Whoever finds it gets a personal, guided tour of the Standard Tobacco Company of Pennsylvania World Headquarters. See the Tobacco Well, pinch the Oompah-Loompahs, that sort of thing.
Or they smoke the tin, in which case we are not responsible for what happens next, or the funeral costs.
Or they smoke the tin, in which case we are not responsible for what happens next, or the funeral costs.
I would jar that and see what happens over a month or so. My only experience with mold so far, was a jar of GH Louisiana Flake that I had smoked out of for a few weeks. It looked like a spider web. I knew what it was immediately after i saw it and tossed it without opening the jar.
I knew I might have some shiny Sutliff flake examples still, so I went through my cellar earlier and found two jars with a couple flakes left in each, on the left Sutliff Crumble Kake : Red VA , on the right Cringle Flake, both from 2022, and opened in 2023. Both had black paper hats that were all kinds of jacked up (just like yours was.)
For those that wonder why you would risk your life on this, well sometimes it’s what you can’t see that one should be more worried about.
For those that wonder why you would risk your life on this, well sometimes it’s what you can’t see that one should be more worried about.