Sour Pipe --- Sometimes?!?!?!?!?

[newfie]

Bit of an update here.
After doing the whiskey treatment as noted above, I let the pipe dry for 24 hours. Then it just smelled like funky rotten whiskey.
So I said WTF and tried a bowl of Half & Half, and the tobacco smoked normal. So a couple of hours later I tried a bowl of something in my regular rotation, PS Balkan Supreme I think and that smoked fine too. Funny thing is the smell was going away, but that foul smell never came over to the taste of the tobacco. I don't have a great sense of taste, but that smell was so bad it would be impossible to miss IF it was coming through in the smoke.
Now, the pipe normally smells fresh. At times I get a bit of a whiff of something bad in the bowl, but not nearly as bad as it was.
Don't understand it at all.

 

[blackbeard]

The bowl of a pipe generally smells bad to me after a smoke, wouldn't expect it to smell good. When my pipes soured...it made me very sensitive to anything bad involving my pipe. So, you may be going in with it in your head. Go buy a cheap cob, smoke it...pay attention to the same things and see if your just over analyzing it. You said whiskey treatment....what exactly did you do? What kind of whiskey? I tried cleaning my pipes with wild turkey 101, only dented the issue and masked it.

 

[newfie]

Tyler, right after smoking a bowl, I agree. But this was a day or more between bowls. No other pipe did this.
I used Canadian Rye, with the procedure outlined above. But as noted, the smell eventually went away and hasn't appeared in that pipe or any other. All is good except for my curiosity!!

 

[hawke]

I deal with a lot of Estate Pipes and encounter the ghosting issue often. I'm sure many were sour, they have just dried out. I find a

1. cake removal,

2. good cleaning,

3. a retort cleaning,

4. then salt treatment,

5. and finally a few bowls of Latakia makes for a whole new piping experience.
I can then convert to Virginia or Burley with regular maintenance procedures until the Latakia ghost is gone and there is now a bit of new cake formed and the pipe's transformation is complete.
Homemade Retort:

 

[newfie]

Thanks Hawke, but your post brings up something new. Why intentionally ghost the pipe with Latakia? Just curious.

 

[hawke]

Well, the Latakia will trump out everything else that might be left. Its a blend component I enjoy so it pleases me while overshadowing the previous ghost in the process. Just my method is all.

 

[captpat]

I had a similar experience, I cleaned the pipe, reduced the cake, did a salt treatment, cleaned the stem thoroughly -- pipe is fine and was fine. Turns out it was the tobacco that tasted sour and moldy, trying the tobacco in a Meer confirmed it, oddly enough it was great on the charring light and for the first few minutes after the real light, then yuck....