Ruminations Regarding the Proper Cake
- Thread starter Briar Lee
- Start date
H
HRPufnstuf
Guest
You might have too much cake there. Want me to take care of it?
H
HRPufnstuf
Guest
Ok. That leads to my next query, is slower accumulating and denser cake a better protectant?
H
HRPufnstuf
Guest
You have to keep up on the cake maintenance, or ill will grow quickly.
Nah
Nah, cheesecake is the only cake. All other cakes are dead to me. Although once, at a fancy restaurant, I ordered “blue cheese cake”, this was a mistake that will haunt me for life.
Cake is not the best term for what we want from any tobacco.
We want a thin, oily film of resin.
When I see actual carbon cake in the bowl out comes my sharp pocketknife as a scraper.
Hard cake doesn't build like soft cake. If you wipe out the chamber every time you smoke, it will retain rather thin hard cake. If you just smoke away with ash not cleaned out, good chance you will get soft loose cake. As to what exactly cake does, no real idea. Been told it's good for the pipe and protects the chamber. But not sure if that the reality or another part of the pipe lore.
As far as protecting the briar, I'd imagine any kind of cake will do the job. A tarry cake with bits of unburnt tobacco in it might even be superior because it'll absorb excess heat to carbonize before it can combust. But I assume that a dense, dry, charcoal-like cake would be better at absorbing excess moisture.
Pipe smoking is such a rich source of endless debate because the sweet spot of conditions that work well enough is pretty wide.
All of my pipes - briar, pearwood, maple, and corn cob - smoke just fine with no cake. I never have moisture problems unless I smoke outside on a cold, rainy day (in which case, I'll use a cob and the problem is solved). I never have an issue with any of my pipes (besides my clay) getting hot since I stopped puffing like a train engine. All of my pipes taste good and smoke sweet because they're kept clean. I have no reason to try to build up cake.
Pipes, like a cast iron skillet, get better with use and "seasoning" but that doesn't mean one should let a thick layer of of burnt-on crud build up on it. Thick cake on a pipe just seems nasty to me.
Pipes, like a cast iron skillet, get better with use and "seasoning" but that doesn't mean one should let a thick layer of of burnt-on crud build up on it. Thick cake on a pipe just seems nasty to me.
I don’t allow cake to build. I always use twisted paper towels after every smoke to thoroughly clean the chamber. Yep.
Speaking of cast iron skillets... I smoke exclusive meers which I wipe out with a paper towel after every smoke. The pure carbon coating that develops in the chamber reminds me most of a well seasoned cast iron skillet or a seasoned low carbon steel wok.
When you read all the old pipe magazines and books and instruction manual from the Golden Age of pipe smoking, when 10 million men in America smoked briar pipes and the market was for thirty million new imported briar pipes a year, the makers seemed to be worried about the customer burning out his pipe and blaming them for it.
All makers except Bob Marx, though.
Marx advised to break in his pipes from the bottom up, starting at one third of a bowl, and to remove “most of the cake” as it formed.
I’ve seen little paper slips in boxes that guaranteed a Marxman pipe against burn out for the life of the customer.
Meerschaum won’t burn out and cob pipes got smoked up and tossed,,,,so did nearly all of the fifty cent briar pipes of the era.
Today the average pipe smoker uses his pipe to relax. He gets his nicotine, but not in a hurry:
The traditional carbon cake the thickness of a dime was to protect the reputation of the pipe makers.
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Also, it’s been my experience that cake (the soft, spongy, thick buildup) seems to form from smoking OTC aromatics, but hard carbon seems to be a byproduct of Virginia forward blends (at least that’s been my observation). I’ve never gotten a Virginia only estate pipe that had spongy cake and all of the estate pipes I’ve received that had spongy cake, all had a heavy aromatic ghost as well. Just an observation from 27 years of buying, cleaning and smoking estate pipes.
Riddle me this.
I bought my first “estate” (dead man’s pipe) about thirty years ago, a huge Bari Wiking at a pipe shop in Springfield Missouri.
In the thirty years since I’ve cleaned and reamed at least a couple of hundred used briar pipes.
Some had cake so hard it took days to get it off. Most had cake softer than that.
All but a tiny handful were not smoked at all the bottom quarter inch. I get to try out very old briar when I smoke them all the way down, not habitually, but to completely break one in.
Today I bought Big Boy number seven for $29 plus $5 postage.
Why, do old Marxman pipes, every last one made in New York City, clean up as easy as a Teflon skillet?
That one will look brand new, with a bare brown bowl, five minutes after I unbox it.
And after all the cake nearly falls out at the touch of a sharp knife used as a scraper, and the top rim cleans up with a paper towel and Everclear, that pipe will color noticeably each time I smoke it.
Before long it will color to look like this.
And when I smoke that Big Boy all the way to the bottom, I’ll get only the smallest taste of burning briar one bowl, and not the second, and it will turn black all the way down the first smoke.
And it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a very early Marxman or a later one, a large or small, they all clean up easy and color quicker than a meerschaum, and break in on the first bowl.
Why Dey Do Dat? .
To be honest, I don’t know? I’ve never owned a Marxman pipe so I can’t verify what you say. As for tasting burning briar at break in, I’ve never experienced this either. Perhaps I will purchase a cruded up old Marxman and put your admonition to the test…provided you don’t buy it first.
There is something nasty about break in.
Everything you can find to read about smoking a briar pipe and every pipe maker that ever sold a pipe talked about break in.
I own over a hundred Lee pipes and I can’t remember a one smoked all the way down to the air hole when I bought it.
A new Lee must be broken in. It will get hot and sweat like other pipes, even snap and crackle. But the break in smokes taste sweet. It’s repeatable and fascinating how Lee accomplished that trick.
The worst pipes in my experience to break in all the way down are Nordings. Not so a much other brands of Danish pipes but not pleasant, either.
I’m completely convinced that the heat is what breaks in a pipe not the carbon coating a cake provides. Clean one up and they don’t need another break in period.
Marx used a certain grade of Algerian briar, that other makers did not use.
Probably because it was so hard to get a perfect, beautifully figured pipe free from defects from.
But it was nearly fireproof, and colored faster than all other grades of briar, and needed the least break in.
About thirty years ago I bought a very old pre smoked large Dr Grabow Grand Duke from an old spinster in Lead Mine Missouri who found it cleaning out behind a cabinet in her ancient general store. She charged me the $9.98 it had on the tag.
That pipe needed no break in.
And, it was and remains a truly dynamite good smoker today.
The more a pipe cost back in the golden era the better it smoked.
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“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” 1 Cor 1:27
Quite possibly, the least pretty, least flawless briar is the best smoking?