Pipe and Tobacco Myths

[Mr_houston]

Well, some wisdom works, but doesn’t work for me.

For ex. When smoking multiple bowls, smoke your lighter blends first, then your richer blends. This would be similar to the way you would drink different wines over a dinner. My lighter blends are VAs and richer blends are English. If I smoke my VAs first, then I can’t taste the VA flavorin the English blends and they don’t taste right. So, I smoke my English blends first.

 

[brian64]

Yeah, American meerschaums and Turkish cobs are now my preferred smoking tools.

View attachment 75870

It was not very long ago I feared you were lost to the White Goddess forever. It's good to know the prodigal has found his way back into the fold.

That IMP has colored quite a bit already considering how new it is!

 

[Toast]

Pipes are 'macho' - I struggle to think of many more fussy, cleaning obsessed ways to spend one's time (like beards in that respect - it might look it from the outside, but once you've tried one...).

Tobacco needs to be dry. Too wet is bad, but so too is too dry.

 

[sablebrush52]

I never understood using honey to coat a bowl. It imparts a flavor that takes a little time to get past. I find it very unattractive. I want to taste the tobacco I put in there without an imposed flavor.

Probably the sugar content carbonizing. Still crap.

 

[Chasing Embers]

That IMP has colored quite a bit already considering how new it is!

60 smokes in.?

but so too is too dry.

No such thing.

 

[rajangan]

Myth : Latakia is smoked with pine.

 

[telescopes]

Common sense tells you you get what you pay for. It makes perfect sense that a $500 pipe will smoke better than a $100 pipe.

It makes perfect sense but it is untrue. Retailers do their best to perpetuate the myth, and and I and most others spent more money on these pipes until we proved to ourselves that it is untrue.

Finding this out is called the Grand Disillusionment.

One retailer doers a write-up on every one of their pipes in a paragraph, and in the loftiest language possible they describe the pipe. Sometimes I find this language useful, sometimes not, but in the end I find it a cloying retail-oriented constant.

But you may find it educative.

I never equated expense with quality, especially when it came to cigars.

 

[sablebrush52]

So many myths, so little time...

1. Smoke up every strand to the bottom of the bowl. - This was probably invented by pipe sellers to increase the damage to pipes in use, resulting in the sale of more pipes.

2. Shake the ash to build a cake. It will build a cake, a soft, flaky cake, contaminated with unburnt bits of tobacco, a cake that will flake off. A hard layer of carbon does the job as an insulator as long as the smoker isn't imitating a steam engine going 80.

3. Narrow tall bowls for flake and Virginia, and wide bowls for complex blends. I've smoked everything in everything and they all work well.

4. 30 seconds to a minute of flushing a pipe with water will destroy it, but 45 minutes to 2 hours of pulling superheated steam through a pipe will not.

5. Dunhill makes better pipes than anyone else. - I have a bridge over the East River that I can sell you.

6. It matters if you can't smoke a bowl on a single light. - Only to idiots.

7. You get great billowing clouds of smoke if you're smoking properly. - Some blends give off a fair amount of smoke, most don't. The amount of smoke has nothing to do with technique or flavor.

8. Pipe smokers are more intelligent and contemplative than others. Refer to #4...

9. All tobacco blends improve with age. - Tobacco blends CHANGE with age. Whether that change is an improvement is up to the individual smoker to decide.

10 Tobaccos will last forever if tinned or jarred properly. - Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

11. The best advice comes from You Tube. - See response to #10

12. Thick walled pipes smoke cooler. - Thick walled pipes absorb more of the heat so they feel cooler, right up to the point where your pipe suddenly explodes in your hands. Want to get better at smoking cooler? Practice, using thin walled pipes.

13. High end Danish pipes smoke better than all other pipes. - Bridge? East River?

14. Aromatics are for beginners. - It takes some skill to get the balance between moisture and optimal flavor.

15. Never, ever remove the stem for cleaning because you will lose the fit. - Embrace the eventual sour stink from the uncleaned mortise. This is BS.

16. Sandblasts are inferior to smooths. - Only to inferior minds. Smoke what you like.

17. Wide open draws are better than traditional draws. - Damn Brits were clueless for the last 150 years of pipe making.

18. Straight grain pipes are structurally stronger. - Nope.

19. Handmade pipes are superior to machine made pipes. - Let me get that stone axe ready for your heart surgery.

20. The older the briar, the better. - When you get to a certain age in life you realize just how stupid is this concept. Everything in nature peaks and fades.

21. A $10,000 pipe will smoke 100 times better than a $100 pipe. - It may or may not smoke better. Likely it will, but not 100 times better. Depends on the construction.

Enough

 

[peregrinus]

So many myths, so little time...

Some great ones here and some are personal favorites of mine.

Here are a few more from my personal Weltanschauung:

1. Straight-grain/crosscut/sandblast/carved/smooth et al. smoke better/cooler/more flavorful than any afore mentioned.
2. Virginia’s, particularly flakes, are more difficult to smoke than... whatever tobaccos. Not true if you learn to properly dry, pack and sip with an emphasis on drying, drying, drying and gravity filling.
3. If you weren’t here 10 years ago you missed out on the golden age of tobacco. There are currently more great tobaccos available than I’ll ever be able to enjoy. Although I admit this may be a peak time on the sheer variety angle.

 

[olkofri]

"Pipe smoking is not healthy".

 

[Chasing Embers]

If you weren’t here 10 years ago you missed out on the golden age of tobacco. There are currently more great tobaccos available than I’ll ever be able to enjoy. Although I admit this may be a peak time on the sheer variety angle.

True but 10 years ago most of what is considered unicorn now was widely available and less than half the price.

 

[elasmo]

The one that gets me is the fascination with old...."aged" tobacco. Not going to pay more because someone else forgot to smoke it for years. I will age everything I have by myself, because I don't have time to smoke it. If its oop, then that's a different story.

 

[Chasing Embers]

The one that gets me is the fascination with old...."aged" tobacco. Not going to pay more because someone else forgot to smoke it for years. I will age everything I have by myself, because I don't have time to smoke it. If its oop, then that's a different story.

I notice a mellowing in aged blends but no day and night change. Never bought them aged it just happens when they hide in the closet and I haven't smoked them yet.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Myth: Never Use A Torch Lighter.

Myth: Tobacco Tastes The Same After Drying.

Myth: Relights Don't Matter.


Torch Lighters won't affect your pipe if you know how to aim.

Drying out your Tobacco releases a large percentage of the aromatic particles that you would have tasted if the Tobacco were kept moist.
Everyone knows a Cigar is practically ruined if you let it dry out, logically the same would apply to Pipe Tobacco.

Relights do matter because lighting Tobacco requires heavy puffing to pull the flame into the Tobacco and that will give you tongue bite, unless you use a Torch Lighter, in which case relights are fine and you'll never need to dry out your Tobacco because a Torch will light just about anything.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Myth: Tobacco Burns The Same In Narrow And Wide Bowls.

A pipe with a 1" Diameter Bowl has DOUBLE the Surface Area of a 0.7" Diameter Bowl.
The 1" bowl requires you to puff twice as much to feed the same amount of oxygen to the ember in your pipe.

 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

Thanks everyone for posting your experiences. When it comes to most things, there is more ways than one to skin a cat.

Regarding pipe smoking, I suspect most of the men in my rural community got their pipes and tobacco at the drug store. They smoked it until they couldn't. I remember one man having a Falcon type.

I like getting into the weeds as much as anyone, but I suspect it can produce information that is not true for everyone.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

It's all a myth! It's all whatever you want to make of it. Some Neanderthal a hundred years ago was smoking his pipe in a cave somewhere, turned to his buddy who was having a hard time keeping his pipe lit and said, "UGG UGG ug ug!" The other Neanderthal was insulted by this Ugg ugg, and bashed him on the head with a club. And so, began the idea for a pipesmoker forum.

 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

It's all a myth! It's all whatever you want to make of it. Some Neanderthal a hundred years ago was smoking his pipe in a cave somewhere, turned to his buddy who was having a hard time keeping his pipe lit and said, "UGG UGG ug ug!" The other Neanderthal was insulted by this Ugg ugg, and bashed him on the head with a club. And so, began the idea for a pipesmoker forum.

The story I heard was the two were smoking their pipes and some young one was carving one and doing a poor job at it. The problem was he was also cooking breakfast and just using his free hand.

Some guy walked in and went ga ga over it and exclaimed, oh my, a custom freehand and paid him handsomely in cave people money. Thus the beginning of... well, now you know the rest of the story...LOL!!

 

[shikano53]

I'm with Rushx9 and Jim; smoke it like you stole it!
Really: it's a pipe + tobacco + match = smoke it and enjoy.
No break in, no one third, two third or honey. Just smoke it.
Unbelievably, a person at the local B&M where I bought my first two pipes handed me a "How to break in a new pipe," pamphlet. In it, it stated to 'coat the bowl with a finger rub of honey.'
Glad I found this forum before I went much further along in my journey.

 

[coming to_falling too]

Pipe smoking is a myth.