Skippy's Blend of the Week

[ThermionicScott]

Hey Skippy! As you’ve probably noticed from your notifications, I just did a speed run of this thread and have really been enjoying it so far. I’d be interested to hear your take on C&D Opening Night, if you get a chance. It’s much like Union Square, but more focused on the red Virginias.

 

[Skippy Piper]

Hey Skippy! As you’ve probably noticed from your notifications, I just did a speed run of this thread and have really been enjoying it so far. I’d be interested to hear your take on C&D Opening Night, if you get a chance. It’s much like Union Square, but more focused on the red Virginias.

Thank you for the kind words and I'm glad you've been enjoying my ramblings! Opening Night is one I've been meaning to try and I will be placing a little order for some G.L. Pease JackKnife Plug and JackKnife Ready Rubbed to try later this month; so I'll see if I can sneak a tin of Opening Night in there too.

 

[Lucro]

Hey there Brook! You're actually the first person to request a review so I'm kind of in uncharted territory here! Believe it or not I've never tried any version of Plum Pudding before, and given the fairly unobtainable status of Seattle Pipe Club blends at the moment with the closure of their blender Sutliff I don't think I'd be able to get my hands on any.

I sure appreciate the request though and I'll keep it in mind if they ever resume production with a new blender!

I have some jarred and could send you a cut if the plug in another jar if you’re interested. It is nearly impossible to find now.

 

[Skippy Piper]

Well... crud. Unfortunately I have to tap out on this one and skip the Nightcap review. Those who have been following my reviews likely know that Burley has a tendency to sometimes bother my throat, but the one type of tobacco that really messes up my throat every time is Perique. I thought the amount of Perique in Nightcap was small enough that I could handle it, but alas the last time I smoked Nightcap was 3 days ago on Tuesday and my throat is still sore from it!

It's a very particular type of sore throat I get from smoking blends with Perique in them. Have you ever swallowed a potato chip or tortilla chip without chewing it well enough and had it scratch the inside of your throat on the way down? It feels like that. A sharp sore feeling down the inside of my throat, just below the lymph nodes on each side of my lower jaw.

The lymph nodes themselves swell a little too, so I'm guessing it's some kinda allergy. I know I'm deathly allergic to penicillin and the penicillium bacteria in blue cheese, so I suspect my body just doesn't like whatever bacteria results from the fermentation process used to create Perique. It's not bad enough to make it difficult to swallow or cause my voice to become hoarse, but still annoying and uncomfortable enough that I tend to just avoid blends with Perique in them since there's so many other blends that don't give me a sore throat I could be smoking instead.

Burley has a long history of bugging my throat too, but it's a different feeling with Burley. It's more of just a mild scratchy tickle in the back of my throat with no lymph node swelling when I smoke Burley, and most of the time it can be prevented by just sipping the pipe slowly and gently to keep the tobacco burning cool; and dumping out the bottom third of the bowl if it starts turning harsh. Usually I can still enjoy my favorite Burley blends like C&D Pegasus, Five Brothers, and Gawith's Kendal Dark / Dark Plug without any discomfort if I'm mindful of my smoking cadence. Sadly such is not the case for blends with Perique though, and no amount of slow mindful smoking makes it any less bothersome to my throat, so unfortunately Nightcap must go in the sell/trade bin and I just have to move on to the next one.



Next week's blend of the week is...


G.L. Pease Navigator

 

[ThermionicScott]

Hopefully you'll have much nicer smokes in the future, now that you know what to avoid!

 

[Skippy Piper]

Hopefully you'll have much nicer smokes in the future, now that you know what to avoid!

Thanks Scott! I've known what to avoid for awhile now, at least a couple years, but knowing and doing were different matters when I had so many tasty blends in my cellar containing Perique.

I'd smoke one once in a blue moon and my throat would feel a little roughed up afterwards, but it wasn't until I tried smoking one several days in a row for the review process that I really had a problem; and unfortunately I always wait until the very end of the week after I've smoked a blend at least 6 times to start writing a formal review about it so I just don't have much to share on Nightcap.

What I can say off the top of my head though is that to me Nightcap is in the very center of "Strong" on the Mild to Extra Strong scale. It's got a bit less Vitamin N than something like Irish Flake that I put at the upper end of Strong and significantly less than any of the Extra Strong blends like 1792, Dark Flake, Kendal Dark, HH Bold Kentucky, or War Horse Bar. Considering it's reputation I found Nightcap to be surprisingly approachable and thought it would make a good introduction to strong blends for someone who has never dabbled in them before.

That's about all the notes I had on Nightcap though, and now it along with all the other blends in my cellar containing Perique (Escudo, Elizabethan Mixture, Haunted Bookshop, and a couple others I can't quite remember) have been moved to the sell/trade bin and I won't be purchasing any more blends containing Perique in the future. At least that's one problem I won't have to worry about going forward!

I have some jarred and could send you a cut if the plug in another jar if you’re interested. It is nearly impossible to find now.

I sure appreciate the offer! Unfortunately given the Perique in Plum Pudding I'm going to have to politely decline, but thank you nonetheless! That was very kind of you and I hope you get the utmost enjoyment out of however much you've got left.

 

[ChubbyOldHiker]

The lymph nodes themselves swell a little too, so I'm guessing it's some kinda allergy. I know I'm deathly allergic to penicillin and the penicillium bacteria in blue cheese, so I suspect my body just doesn't like whatever bacteria results from the fermentation process used to create Perique. It's not bad enough to make it difficult to swallow or cause my voice to become hoarse, but still annoying and uncomfortable enough that I tend to just avoid blends with Perique in them since there's so many other blends that don't give me a sore throat I could be smoking instead.

To be a tad nitpicky, Penicillium is a type of mold, not bacteria.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, a swollen feeling in the throat is almost certainly allergy, which can definitely be triggered by exposure to Penicillium or other types of mold. Perique is fermented, likely by a mixture of yeast and bacteria, so it’s probably the yeast that is triggering you—yeast is basically single-celled mold.

I know where you’re coming from with regard to certain tobaccos causing a reaction. The acidity of most types of Virginias gets me—lights up my tongue for about a day. So I stick to pure burleys pretty much and I’m good. It’s good that you know your limit!

 

[Skippy Piper]

To be a tad nitpicky, Penicillium is a type of mold, not bacteria.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, a swollen feeling in the throat is almost certainly allergy, which can definitely be triggered by exposure to Penicillium or other types of mold. Perique is fermented, likely by a mixture of yeast and bacteria, so it’s probably the yeast that is triggering you—yeast is basically single-celled mold.

I know where you’re coming from with regard to certain tobaccos causing a reaction. The acidity of most types of Virginias gets me—lights up my tongue for about a day. So I stick to pure burleys pretty much and I’m good. It’s good that you know your limit!

Thank you for the correction! I'm definitely no expert when it comes to mold and bacterium so I appreciate the informed insight.

Even after 3 years in the hobby and trying just over 100 blends I'm still figuring out what works and doesn't work for my personal mouth chemistry and throat sensitivities. I have a pretty good general idea of what works for me and what doesn't, but sometimes blends still surprise me. I know any amount of Perique is sure to give me a sore swollen throat for at least a day or two after smoking, and most Burleys give me a scratchy tickle feeling in my throat (and resulting cough) for a day or two as well unless I smoke them extra slow; though if the Burley is topped with something sugary and sweet like it is in Lane aromatics then they don't tend to bother me.

Generally speaking Virginias are fine, though they can sting the soft palate on the roof of my mouth a bit unless I smoke them exceptionally slowly. The one extremely annoying thing though is that my throat seems to just absolutely hate anything made by Cornell & Diehl. I'm guessing it's because their blends tend to be made with younger tobaccos that are very raw, natural, and unadulterated but everything I've ever smoked manufactured by Cornell & Diehl (including G.L. Pease and C&D's other sub-brands) has irritated the everliving daylights out of my throat. Burley, Virginia, English, Aromatic, it doesn't matter. If it's made by Cornell & Diehl I can almost guarantee it's going to give me a sore throat.

I still have several C&D and G.L. Pease blends in my cellar to review, including some like Yorktown that I really love the flavors of, but I'll be darned if my throat doesn't hate every single one of them. For that reason I mostly stick to Gawith Hoggarth and STG blends when I'm just smoking for leisure and not working on a blend review, but I sure wish I could comfortably smoke some of Cornell & Diehl's offerings too.

 

[ChubbyOldHiker]

I think your surprise reaction may come from the presence of tobaccos you are sensitive to that are not listed in the description correctly. When I’m searching for new tobaccos, I’ll tell SP to filter out anything with Virginia or black cavendish. A number will still make it through that have one or the other.

Even more maddeningly, sometimes the verbose description at the top will mention the presence of Virginia, but the ingredient list on the side of the page is missing that. The reverse also happens. I realized that when I ordered C&D Snug Harbor, a decent blend that bit me in the same way Virginia’s do…Virginia wasn’t in the ingredient list but was in the description.

Digging a bit further, I’ve found that the errors are on C&D’s website too. Given that C&D and SP are owned by the same company, this makes sense. So far, I haven’t found any blends that have contained Virginia that wasn’t listed in at least one location.

In any case, it’s forced me to pay very close attention when buying tobacco.