Thuoc Lao Tien Lang Vietnamese Tobacco

[jpberg]

 

[anotherbob]

it's certainly not meant as a savored tobacco to sit down and have a bowl of. It's from what I've heard really much tastier if smoked like a big puff off a cigarette. Even the flavor profile is nicer that way.

 

[anotherbob]

@Ahi Ka - You're not trying to kill him are you?

dude he's a misanthropic psychopath. His goal is to kill all of us and not just the humans. Only guy I've met that starts his day by the telling off the sun and telling it that's too big of a damp kitty (self censored that one) to wipe out earth with a solar flare.
So long story short YES he is.

 

[MisterBadger]

it's certainly not meant as a savored tobacco to sit down and have a bowl of. It's from what I've heard really much tastier if smoked like a big puff off a cigarette. Even the flavor profile is nicer that way.

That's the only way, I reckon. It's never going to be a pipe smoker's tobacco, because of that godawful aftertaste of over-boiled cabbage and over-barbecued chicken leg. I tried infusing the stuff with rum for a fortnight. It did alter the flavour - the same old cabbage and burnt chicken leg notes were still there, just rum flavoured. A really bad way to ruin a decent tot of rum.

 

[Ahi Ka]

You should try adding some clan to it. Surely that wouldn’t make it even worse

 

[Gerald Boone]

This is the infamous, almost legendary Vietnamese weed, supposedly a Rusticana variety packing three times the nicotine punch of US and African tobaccos, and of which not very much information that's useful to a pipe smoker is available on the internet. It's sold in the UK by a very small number of speciality East Asian grocery stores, in 100-gram ziplock packs, attractively priced at about one-third of any regular pipe tobacco.

An initial disappointment on seeing the bag when delivered, is that it is a fine cut shag, like a hand rolling cigarette tobacco. The leaf is a more or less uniform dark brown, the colour of dark, plain chocolate. The bag note that greets the nose on opening is grassy but like old barn hay that's about to moulder.

Bearing in mind the warnings from many sources about just how strong this weed is, I selected a small-bowled Meerschaum for a test smoke. It was too easy to pack it too tightly, the fine cut compacting easily in the bowl - and I did use more pressure than I normally would, fearing that, because of its fine cut, it would burn hot. I needn't have worried about that: even to char, it needed several lights, which not even the soggiest Gawith and Hoggarth blends straight out of the tin require.

The first few puffs - never more than about three, in between relights - offered first a taste of mouldy hay, quickly developing into a discord of acrid notes like a chicken leg that's been burned on the barbecue.

Despite several interventions with the Czech pipe multitool, at no time did the bowl stay lit long enough for me to establish a regular smoking cadence, but even so, there was no detectable tongue bite. That was almost unfortunate, because my taste buds continued able to savour that burned chicken-skin taste without any desensitisation.

The nicotine hit was there all right. I've never crumbled a cigarette butt and an old cigar stub into a pipe to smoke, but when I did manage to taste the tobacco it suggested strongly that the experience would be very similar. It reminded me of a really nasty, cheap Virginia. This weed has clearly neither been cased nor topped with anything at all, and If ever a tobacco deserved to be flavoured with Tonquin bean or Deer Tongue - this would be it.

Two thirds of the way down the bowl, the burnt chicken-skin miasma was joined by a hint of cabbage and the fleeting notion that the old, cheap cigar stub had been mixed with a little rose petal pot-pourri - but the chicken that had been forgotten and left on the grill too long, predominated.

I can confidently say that, of all the tobaccos I have ever smoked, this was the most unsatisfying yet nicotine-high smoke I've ever had, but with Gawith's 1792 Flake coming a close second. If there were no other tobaccos left in the world, and with a choice of only these two, the 1792 would be the tobacco of choice every time.

Why, one might ask, is this unattractive, rough beast sold in the UK at all? Well, I can only imagine that there are some long-term Vietnamese expatriates who long for a taste of The Old Country, much as a Sri Lankan expat treats himself to the occasional bottle of coconut toddy, a vile concoction that looks like old washing-up water, smells like a blocked drain and kicks like a Mocow Mule.

To be fair, Thuoc Lao isn't designed to hold a light or be smoked in a pipe, of course: Vietnamese folk smoke it in a bamboo bong, filling their lungs from a single fill of a tiny bowl, in one mighty blast, burned up in a single light, and take delight in the sight of foreign tourists taking a big, long toke then falling over. But if I were going to assault my lungs withthe smoke, I'd want to cut it first with dried peppermint leaves.

I'm writing this about an hour after the smoke and I'm still stoned from the nicotine, but not in a good way: with no pleasant taste or continuity, the nicotine hit was not at all relaxing. The taste is still with me, even after drinking a pint of Rooibos tea to try and wash it away.

And the room note? Imagine an old heap of grass cuttings which has overheated and started to smoulder.

So... I still have about 98 grams of the stuff left: what am I to do with it? Would it benefit at all from an infusion of rum? I may try. Will I perhaps keep it to enliven some blends I like that are deliciously mellow and complex in taste, but are too weak on the nicotine for my liking? I may try this, too, taking care that there's not enough in the mix for the charred chicken to come through. But I shall also be happy to dispense it in 5-gram sample bags to anyone in UK who cares to PM me their mailing address and wants to be able to say they've tried it.

As Jim Inks, master of euphemism, might say: "Has a few rough edges. Not an all day smoke.".

Perhaps not even a pipe smoke at all.

After reading your review I tried (unsuccessfully) to see if I could order some; just because it sounds so exotic. Even though it sounds akin to that awful smelling cheese that is filled with maggots as part of the cheese making process I would like some. Definitely not something to something I would buy a lot of but something interesting to try.

 

[MisterBadger]

After reading your review I tried (unsuccessfully) to see if I could order some; just because it sounds so exotic. Even though it sounds akin to that awful smelling cheese that is filled with maggots as part of the cheese making process I would like some. Definitely not something to something I would buy a lot of but something interesting to try.

If you care to PM me your mailing address, I'll send you a sample.

 

[Gerald Boone]

Thank you, I appreciate your generosity but I already did a lot of research and found a commercial venue and ordered some. This tobacco is supposed to have greater than 3 times the nicotine content of regular tobacco :0 I'm already regretting the purchase. I was warned, plenty of times.

 

[MisterBadger]

Thank you, I appreciate your generosity but I already did a lot of research and found a commercial venue and ordered some. This tobacco is supposed to have greater than 3 times the nicotine content of regular tobacco :0 I'm already regretting the purchase. I was warned, plenty of times.

Not generosity on my part, I assure you, Sir: I was merely trying to get rid of the awful stuff. Now I shall have to wait until this year's Pipes Magazine Secret Santa potlatch, to bestow it anonymously on some poor unsuspecting recipient. I hope that turns out not to be you. Anyway, against all expectation, there is a minuscule possibility that you might even enjoy its unsubtle hit, and its distinctively robust aroma of a chicken farm on fire next to a ten-acre field of mature Brussels sprouts. But whatever the outcome, I shall salute you as a hero.

 

[MisterBadger]

You should try adding some clan to it. Surely that wouldn’t make it even worse

You are a perverse and a wicked man. Now you want me to torture myself with a second acme of nicotinian purgatory. No. Instead, I think I shall burn it as an incense when exorcising demons.

 

[quantumboy]

Thanks for the great review! I like Tambolaka, and when I first saw the title of your post I thought "Cool, I might want to try this too!" After your review, the idea of burnt chicken legs and cabbage changed my mind. LOL!

 

[OzPiper]

cabbage and burnt chicken leg

Guess what I got served up for dinner last night ?
And it was leftovers.
And no, it did not taste better the second time around