Kendal Twist is interesting stuff. I ordered a tin of it from 4Noggins a while back, because I was intrigued by its preparation. As the name indicates, it's a Kendal Twist. To be precise, it's an extra thick stoved black rope tobacco that comes unsliced. In the tin, it sits there black, heavy, and menacing. Many reviewers write that it looks like something you'd find in a litterbox. There's a certain amount of truth to that.
Using my cigar cutter, I sliced off a few thick coins and rubbed them out. It was dense, and surprisingly hard to cut. I left the tobacco on a sheet of paper to dry for a half hour. Rubbed out, the tobacco is dark, oily, and quite moist. It swelled considerably on the charring light, generating incredibly thick, ever so slightly yellowish smoke. I tamped it back down and re-lit. I had to re-light several times, which is probably a good thing, in that it spaced out the nicotine delivery a little.
The taste? Acrid, raunchy, wild, almost rank. It makes Royal Yacht seem like a light aromatic. In cigar terms, it makes C.A.O. Brazilias seem like lite menthol cigarettes. If Escudo is a nine course meal in polite company at a fine French restaurant, this is a two inch steak of musk ox liver, slapped down bloody onto live coals to char, and eaten with bare teeth and a bowie knife in the middle of the tundra while you snarl defiance at the circling wolves.
This is by far the strongest tobacco I have ever smoked. And I like Brazilias. How strong is it? Well, the back of my head slid off about five minutes ago, and scuttled off to hide under the sofa where it is hissing at the cats and pretending to be a facehugger from Aliens. I'd do something, but I'm paralyzed from the knees up and my chest hair is trying to throttle me.
I think I like it.
Using my cigar cutter, I sliced off a few thick coins and rubbed them out. It was dense, and surprisingly hard to cut. I left the tobacco on a sheet of paper to dry for a half hour. Rubbed out, the tobacco is dark, oily, and quite moist. It swelled considerably on the charring light, generating incredibly thick, ever so slightly yellowish smoke. I tamped it back down and re-lit. I had to re-light several times, which is probably a good thing, in that it spaced out the nicotine delivery a little.
The taste? Acrid, raunchy, wild, almost rank. It makes Royal Yacht seem like a light aromatic. In cigar terms, it makes C.A.O. Brazilias seem like lite menthol cigarettes. If Escudo is a nine course meal in polite company at a fine French restaurant, this is a two inch steak of musk ox liver, slapped down bloody onto live coals to char, and eaten with bare teeth and a bowie knife in the middle of the tundra while you snarl defiance at the circling wolves.
This is by far the strongest tobacco I have ever smoked. And I like Brazilias. How strong is it? Well, the back of my head slid off about five minutes ago, and scuttled off to hide under the sofa where it is hissing at the cats and pretending to be a facehugger from Aliens. I'd do something, but I'm paralyzed from the knees up and my chest hair is trying to throttle me.
I think I like it.