The Taste of New Pipes

[pipinho]

Who else hates breaking in new pipes? I just hate the wood taste when I'm breaking in a new pipe. I have a new stanwell featherweight and when I get to the bottom of the bowl the taste is awful,

 

[ohin3]

I, on the contrary, love that charring wood taste from a new pipe. It's a sort of sweet spicy campfire taste that reminds me of when I go to pic up a new toasted oak barrel for wine making.

 

[tbradsim1]

Same here OH, I find that taste the caviar of a good pipe.

 

[bigvan]

Hate breaking in a pipe?! Absolutely NOT! A good pipe made from properly aged and cured briar and drilled right will provide a great smoke from the very beginning.

 

[lordofthepiperings]

The only part I don't like about breaking in a new pipe is that bad taste at the bottom of the bowl. Until the cake is formed it just tastes weird.

 

[pitchfork]

I LOVE breaking in new pipes. That Stanwell featherweight probably has a coating (mine did) --that might explain part of the bad taste (?).

 

[kashmir]

When I get a new pipe in, I'll thoroughly clean the bowl and shank with tissues, Q-tips, and cleaners soaked in EverClear grain alcohol to remove any residual stain down to the bare blond wood. This being done, I'll then break in the pipe using whatever tobacco I decide to dedicate the pipe to. I'll refrain from loading full bowls for the first half dozen smokes or so. And I'll try to smoke down to the bottom. While I don't find it a chore to break in a pipe, I'd much rather enjoy a well seasoned pipe with a nicely trimmed cake.

 

[mso489]

I've not run into a taste problem with either coated or uncoated new pipe bowls. I'm fairly picky about taste,

or I wouldn't enjoy the various blends and tobaccos the way I do. Maybe I've been lucky, and/or I am just not

sensitive to that particular taste (burnt wood or bowl-coating). In a recent pipe, a sweet little Parker poker,

the shank kept giving up bowl coating to the pipe cleaner, and I wondered if I should smoke it at all, or clean

it out with alcohol, etc., before going further. But it has broken in well, and taste was never a problem. I've

broken in three unfinished pipes that appeared not to even have wax on them, or the lightest undetectable

coating, and I had no burnt wood flavor from those at all -- two Savenellis and a Cassano. The Cassano was

blessed by my local independent pipe shop owner with a light coating of honey in the bowl, but I don't think

that had any affect on flavor. I accept it as a good old ritual of my very down-home temple of the pipe.

 

[cigrmaster]

I enjoy the taste of brand new briar in a naked bowl and therefore really enjoy breaking in a new pipe. I have never found it to be a chore at all.

 

[john218]

I always considered breaking in a brand new pipe one of the pleasures of pipe smoking.
I've only had 3 pipes over the years that didn't break in well.
I start breaking in a pipe with 1/4 bowls, concentrating on developing a good cake in the bottom of the bowl and gradually working up to a full bowl.

 

[chubbster]

I love the first bowls in a pipe.
Larry Roushs pipes smoke the best, IMO, right from the start.
The only pipe I didn't like was an Eltang Tubos. It had a coating in it, and after 20 bowls or so, dreaded mind you, I sold it.

 

[jndyer]

I look forward to breaking in a new briar pipe that does not have a coating on it. So far my pipe have been estate, precarbed, or are a wood other than briar. I have an idea of what this will be like, but one day I will get to see if my dreams are indeed reality.

 

[metalheadycigarguy]

I don't mind breaking in a new pipe. I've had some that have had a weird taste the first few smokes, but breaking in a new pipe gives me all the more reason to smoke my pipe.