Pipe Smoking Myth #1
- Thread starter stanlaurel
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I'll claim to have done it a time or two without relights. A number of times with relights. But that's not my "normal" experience.
I found my smoking enjoyment improved once I accepted relights as part of the overall piping experience. Just relight and care not.
I found my smoking enjoyment improved once I accepted relights as part of the overall piping experience. Just relight and care not.
I have a couple of relatively small Dublins which, when smoking Virginia blends, will SOMETIMES burn to ash but most of the time there is doddle that is not worth trying to smoke.
The right pipe, the right leaf, the right humidity, and it has certainly happened to me on a number of occasions. So what? If it doesn't taste good, the smoke is over so far as I'm concerned. The amount of leaf that's left unburned is mostly insignificant, usually even less than I suspect. This white ash myth is not only an exaggeration, but boring one. So you have three particles of leaf left in among the white ash versus a little bed of thirty pieces of leaf. Only the psychiatrically anal retentive could notice or care. It's kind of a daydream to light up an advertisement, but otherwise, meaningless. If you always have this experience, more power to you (?).
Never without relights. But in certain pipes I can smoke it down to ash with little to no dottle.
Fine white ash, I have gotten now and again. I have had bowls where no relight was needed but it's certainly the exception to the rule. I've been able to smoke down to basically no dottle, some times. I would be shocked if any smoker is getting this experience out of every smoke.
Even having 'no relights' and 'down to fine white ash' as goals is a hindrance for new pipe smokers I think. Learning to accept relights and give the pipe cool down time in the process rather than puffing like a steam train to keep it good and wet was something I learned the hard way my first couple of years (not particularly quick witted I know). Sometimes I smoke down to a grey ash, but I generally know when a bowl is close to done, and I dont usually push it to the ash because it spoils the experience getting a mouthful of soot.
Isaac
Isaac
The only fine white ash I get is maybe about half way down. Occasionally I've smoked to the bottom, but never checked how it looked. I try not to do that anyway, as I don't like inhaling any of that stuff.
I get down to pure ash occasionally in a calabash, I think because of the draft hole on the very bottom. Never had a bowl with no relights.
That's because most of those revues are written by ash holes that couldn't find their own and are only emulating other reviews where they have read the exact same thing. They somehow have come to believe, from reading others reviews, that: 'smoking down to a fine white ash with one light' somehow is a determining factor as to what a good tobacco is.
That's not to say it can't happen as it does on occasion, but it's most definitely nothing to strive for. I don’t believe I’ve ever given any attention as to whether the ash left in my pipe was white, grey, off white, dark grey, etc. as each tobacco, depending upon the blend will leave a different color and doesn’t mean squat. Besides that, why would anyone wish to end up sucking up a ‘fine white ash’ into their mouth, no matter what the color may be?
tarak pretty much summoned it up when it comes to reviews in one sentence:
I have been dabbling in virginia flakes and virgina-forward blends, and it's only these where I ever see a fine white ash at all. No re-lights? It's not even supposed to happen in pipe smoking, and although others here would know more than I, I have come to believe that most pipe styles make it physically impossible. You can only tamp so far down until the ash accumulation requires a dump and relight if you want to smoke the remaining tobacco down to the draw-hole. Maybe if you smoke it in a wide, low-depth bowl (I think they call that a "saucer" format)?
I often burn the tobacco to ash, but only with a very few thin cut blends like Daughters & Ryan or SWRA - and not very often even then - have I managed to do it with no relights. You can do it with shag cuts that aren't very moist or are bone dry, in smaller bowls, but I prefer to just smoke and not worry about it. In my reviews, I occasionally mention whether or not a blend requires a lot of relights, but I only do that for descriptive purposes. It's not like it means much if you like what you smoke, though some will disagree with me on that. I smoke at a moderate pace, so I'll always have relights. Fast puffers lose a little of the fullness of taste and the experience of relaxation by worrying about it.
I'm glad several of y'all mentioned "mouth full of ashes." The ONLY time I ever "smoked all the way down to a fine white ash," it was both accidental and tragic!
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