Post Covid Tasting Change

[Choatecav]

Since the "Chinese Flu" hit these shores a few years ago, I have successfully dodged catching it and thought I had cleared the gauntlet. But recently, I went to my last surviving Aunt's 90th bday party in Atlanta and was around a lot of folks. A few days after I returned home, I began feeling a scratchy throat and thought I'd be cautious and did the Covid test. Well...... it was positive. The experience has not been too bad but I have been very tired and been doing a lot of serious napping. I had heard about the loss of taste and smell, but have retained those two senses and food tastes ok.

Today, I tried my first bowl of a nice Virginia and it was as flat as a flitter.....

Have any of you who have gone through the Covid shuffle experienced a disappointment in how your pipe tasted afterwards? If so, how long did it take before it came back to you?

I'm not planning on jumping out of any windows or anything drastic, but this is a downer.

 

[mortonbriar]

Anecdotally, people get taste/smell back after a couple of days, or weeks, or months...it seems like it is all over the place as a side effect.

 

[puffnshoot86]

After the last time I had covid, my Latakia heavy english and balkan blends tasted rather ashy for a week or so . If your tastes are off, try giving it a little time see if it comes back.

 

[OzPiper]

It seems like a lottery - some have very few symptoms to speak of.
Others with long Covid symptoms lasting months

Wishing you a fast recovery from your symptoms

 

[bullet08]

I think I had it twice. Mild symptoms, and no issues with smell or taste. It's one of those things. If unlucky, it's the end of the trip. Only lost my uncle. He had a lot of complications and covid was added on to it.

 

[dino]

I've had long Covid tongue for over a year. It affects the taste buds at the tip of my tongue, but I can pretty much taste everything, with a bit less intensity. It's just annoying, not critical. I can still enjoy a bowl, all the aroma and most of the taste.

 

[anotherbob]

Since the "Chinese Flu" hit these shores a few years ago, I have successfully dodged catching it and thought I had cleared the gauntlet. But recently, I went to my last surviving Aunt's 90th bday party in Atlanta and was around a lot of folks. A few days after I returned home, I began feeling a scratchy throat and thought I'd be cautious and did the Covid test. Well...... it was positive. The experience has not been too bad but I have been very tired and been doing a lot of serious napping. I had heard about the loss of taste and smell, but have retained those two senses and food tastes ok.

Today, I tried my first bowl of a nice Virginia and it was as flat as a flitter.....

Have any of you who have gone through the Covid shuffle experienced a disappointment in how your pipe tasted afterwards? If so, how long did it take before it came back to you?

I'm not planning on jumping out of any windows or anything drastic, but this is a downer.

I got it when everyone was wondering if it would get here. Was like the worse flu I've had except it lingered for a really long time. Afterwards pipe tobacco all tasted acrid and ashy with no other definition. It all tasted the same. Slowly the senses started coming back and now it seems like it was before. But worse then that was the constant hot flashes for a few months that slowly became infrequent hot flashes over a few years.
The two nastiest things about it by the way are that it effects people wildly differently and that it spreads fast. I've had the whole office get a flu but it filtered through people over time, almost everyone got it with in a few days.
Fun fact why mild can be bad. Ebola is about as easy to transmit, but if you got that you're staying home.

 

[Michigan_Bill]

Everybody is different. For some people the taste changes reverse after a few days or weeks. For others it can take months. I had the virus about 18 months ago and my sense of smell is still different than before. Previously Virginias and mild English blends tasted wonderful to me. Now they taste like wet cardboard. But now I enjoy aromatics, which I didn’t like before.
The moral of the story: be patient.

 

[ThomasS]

It’s different for everyone. I’ve had every vaccine booster, but I’ve still tested positive three times.
For me, it starts with all taste being muted into mush - not “no taste”, just everything exceedingly weak. After that, my taste of sour comes back first. EVERYTHING is exceptionally sour, even plain water. Not a good time for a pipe, but actually sour things taste nice. I had several glasses of quite refreshing lemon juice. Then one morning it’s back to normal, lemon juice is intolerable, and I stop soaking all of my pipes in alcohol and salt.

 

[badbriar]

Agree with OP. Despite keeping up to date will all of the available boosters, I came down with a mild case of covid a month ago - like a case of the flu. As a type 2 diabetic, I fared pretty well. Taste is still rather muted, but getting better. It's the little nuances that are missing. I anticipate that all will be back to normal in a few months. My daughter had that bug at the same time. She did not get all of the boosters and had a bit worse time of it than I did. She's a millennial - go figure!

 

[burleybreath]

Everyone relates a slightly different experience. My taster went off for over a year. Even now, I sometimes re-discover a taste that I had forgotten, whether in food or tobacco or whiskey. It's like my brain is re-wiring itself after damage or something. For a more professional explanation, I'd recommend contacting the great Dr. Anthony Fauci, sometimes referred to as "Sphincter Boy." He knows everything, I'm told.

 

[kcghost]

Truly in asking people you going to get reactions that range from no problem to a year or more of loss of taste. I guess we can take solace in the fact that very few people are dying from that damn disease.

 

[Lumbridge]

I've had issues with the taste of tobacco that have nothing to do with Covid. I know this because it started well before the pandemic did. First, I noticed that my single malts started tasting salty, metallic, and sour.

I had taken a break from Latakia blends for a while and went to light one up one day. No smokey campfire taste - the flavor of the blend was just ashy cardboard. Tried a different English in a different pipe a few weeks later - same issue. Burley, VA, perique, aros, etc. all taste normal. Again, this was several years ago and before Covid hit.

To this day, I still can't taste latakia very well. I get maybe 5-10% of the smoky flavor, but the ashy stale taste overrides all other flavor in the blend. I've kicked up my dental hygiene regimen and seen a dentist, and the problem persists. I'm wondering if I'll ever be able to enjoy latakia again.

 

[ophiuchus]

Since the "Chinese Flu" hit these shores a few years ago, I have successfully dodged catching it and thought I had cleared the gauntlet. But recently, I went to my last surviving Aunt's 90th bday party in Atlanta and was around a lot of folks. A few days after I returned home, I began feeling a scratchy throat and thought I'd be cautious and did the Covid test. Well...... it was positive. The experience has not been too bad but I have been very tired and been doing a lot of serious napping. I had heard about the loss of taste and smell, but have retained those two senses and food tastes ok.

Today, I tried my first bowl of a nice Virginia and it was as flat as a flitter.....

Have any of you who have gone through the Covid shuffle experienced a disappointment in how your pipe tasted afterwards? If so, how long did it take before it came back to you?

I'm not planning on jumping out of any windows or anything drastic, but this is a downer.

Sorry you had to experience this at all. To answer your question, yes, my taste with tobacco and coffee were affected. It took a couple months to recover my taste with tobacco. With coffee … it took several months before it tasted right to me. (This didn’t stop me from consuming either, though. )

 

[Sigmund]

It took me a few weeks (3-6) to get a sense of taste/smell back. When I did smoke I just smoked cheap tobacco or stuff I didnt like because it all tasted the same...literally. Lat bombs tasted the same as burley etc... I hope you fully recover soon.

 

[BingBong]

Can take a while and the cause is not necessarily Covid. I had a lot of industrial strength antibiotics after bouts of sepsis 2021-2023 and after each episode, taste recovery took ages. I stopped the pipe because I was upset that the nuances were gone, it didn't seem worth the trouble. After the last lot, I rehabbed with a tin of Skiff and that did the trick.

 

[JOHN72]

There were a few weeks when tobacco seemed like shit to me. I was worried, I thought I would never smoke again. Then my senses of taste and smell returned to normal, I don't know what percentage. It was frustrating. Now for the moment I enjoy, and I feel again that pleasure of smoking. I wish you a speedy recovery, my friend.

 

[Streeper541]

It was a combination of covid and some other issues, but I have completely lost my sense of smell.

I have adapted, meaning my nose functions a different way now... but I cannot smell in the traditional sense. I can tell if something is sweet, I can tell if something is sour, I can tell if something is foul, and I can pick up density and moisture changes in the air... but I can't smell a thing. It's terrible.

My nose has been this way for about 2 years now.

Obviously, the lack of smell has affected my ability to taste... It is dulled down a bit, but I can fortunately pick up flavors. I can't pick apart subtleties like I once could, and everything is quite a bit more bland, at least I can still taste.

I'm scheduled to have some surgery on my nose and coming months and I'm hoping this might relieve some of the problems.

 

[Pecos Dill]

COVID completely killed my sense of smell and taste for about a year (truly NO smell or taste whatsoever), and even then I had issues with things tasting and smelling not quite right.

When I was able to regain some of my senses, everything had a slight hint of decay, a rancid moldering misery that was all in my head.

One of the worst was the smell and taste of coffee, whose alluring aromatic qualities are renowned worldwide, now suddenly smelling and tasting like what I can only describe as wet, dead, dog. This was extremely difficult for me because I was working in a retail setting where coffee was ~80% of our daily profits…

After struggling with regaining taste slowly and retraining my palate to remember what things tasted like, one day it was like the lock opened and my normal sense of smell came flooding back to me. I celebrated with a new tin of Balkan Sasieni.

 

[Sigmund]

I need to get a booster. I was afraid it would take a long time for my taste to return. I dont want to play roulette.