To Coat or Not to Coat

[Fralphog]

@Sanzini, I came across this thread while looking for a repair technique for an estate pipe I bought that has some spider webbing.
In my internet search, I come across this video on making “pipe mortar”:

Thought the video was well done and provided good insight on using the mortar on repairs, modifying a pipe bowl or as a bowl coating.
I’ve got to finish some prep work on the inside of the bowl on my pipe and then use this pipe mortar to fill in spider webbing and coat the rest of the bowl to enable even lite cake buildup. I’ll post the before and after report on a new thread.

 

[Briar Lee]

Ok fellas - especially all you old-timers - help me with this one.

Pops smoked a pipe for about 30 years and swears that coating the bowl with honey and a bit of whiskey helps build up cake and makes for a better overall smoke. I've read mixed reviews on this practice.

Thoughts?

I’ve heard of using water, or whiskey (half water if 100 proof) would also work. What I’ve done for almost fifty years on new cobs and briars is dip the tip of a finger in honey, and spread that thinly and evenly in the bowl. I was told to do it. I think it was good advice.

First, it hurts nothing at all. We’re about to light a fire inside a piece of cob or wood. That’s not natural. It’s abusing the thing, when you really think about it.

The honey does just a tiny bit, to help the carbon (cake) to start. It caramelizes as it burns.

And it counteracts a little the bitter taste of new briar. New cobs, aren’t bitter at first, but it doesn’t hurt a new cob to have honey in it.

In my experience new Danish free hands are made with young briar, and I might put honey in the first half dozen bowls of those, or until they quit tasting hot and nasty. Most briars or cobs, I only coat the bowl with honey once, maybe twice.

I’ve convinced my family I don’t drink the Everclear I use to clean pipes.

But if I used bourbon, some might get the wrong idea, you know?

Besides who’d want to keep whiskey around, as a temptation for young folks to steal..

THE PRICE OF THE BOTTLE

 

[anotherbob]

Just to help prove that any forum dedicated to taste and olfactory preferences is at best a subjective muddle, I prefer cake because it adds flavor. Kind of a umami thing goin' on. Or, if not that, the overused word nuttiness comes to mind, for more reasons than one.

I have to agree. It doesn't quite taste right without it. I also feel like cake is pleasing just in the making a pipe look well used and loved.

 

[jwussow]

So I will say that I broke in my first pipe without a bowl coating a few months ago. It is a Butz Choquin pipe that I won during a charity auction. I loaded the bowl and smoked it. The first time the flavor wasn't great. Well, the first time, it was pretty awful. By the time I finished the third bowl a few weeks later, the pipe was wonderful. Now it is a "go-to" and smokes like a champ.

On the flip side, I have been fortunate enough to purchase some new Neerup pipes. They all have bowl coatings. Every one of them has smoked perfectly and deliciously from the first bowl/light.

No true recommendations here, but perhaps it depends on the seasoning/age of the briar, and the briar itself? I believe it is trial and error.

All that being said, I have never tried the honey approach, but I may consider it if I try to break in a new pipe that is not cooperating.

 

[Briar Lee]

So I will say that I broke in my first pipe without a bowl coating a few months ago. It is a Butz Choquin pipe that I won during a charity auction. I loaded the bowl and smoked it. The first time the flavor wasn't great. Well, the first time, it was pretty awful. By the time I finished the third bowl a few weeks later, the pipe was wonderful. Now it is a "go-to" and smokes like a champ.

On the flip side, I have been fortunate enough to purchase some new Neerup pipes. They all have bowl coatings. Every one of them has smoked perfectly and deliciously from the first bowl/light.

No true recommendations here, but perhaps it depends on the seasoning/age of the briar, and the briar itself? I believe it is trial and error.

All that being said, I have never tried the honey approach, but I may consider it if I try to break in a new pipe that is not cooperating.

Fifty years ago, Yello Bole sold new, coated pipes. The advertisements said they were honey coated. I suppose they put some amount of honey in their coating, but also a lot of yellow food coloring, and sugar.

The coating did seem to mitigate the pain of breaking in a new briar, quite well. I coated those with extra honey, from a jar.

The oil cured Lee pipes I’ve grown to love, also go through a break in process. The difference is there’s a sweet taste to them that fades after break in, not a bitter, harsh briar taste.

I’m convinced that breaking in a briar pipe does two separate beneficial things.

Whether or not honey, water, whiskey, or a proprietary coating is used, a carbon cake begins to form in the chamber that protects the bare wood behind it. A coating may help this process begin.

The second part of break in is the extreme heat of combustion cooks and cures out the remaining sap and tannins in the briar. This explains why big, cheap Danish pipes require more smokes to break in. What a coating does for the heat curing part of break in is mask the flavor of new briar.

One thing is sure and certain.

If kept clean of sludge and goo, and rested occasionally so it’s not smoked to death, the more you use a briar pipe the better it gets.

Few other things in life, improve with use.

 

[Bowlsmoker67]

I like cake . I get a better cooler smoke

 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

I coat when the weather warrants and sweater otherwise

 

[cigrmaster]

I was told by an old timer and from a guy who carved pipes to just fill the pipe to the top and smoke it to the bottom and doing this for a few weeks to a month and I would get a nice hard cake that made the pipe smoke cooler and with more flavor if I dedicated my pipes as well. One guy told me flakes built the best, hardest cake of all. I normally smoke a brand new pipe every other day until a cake formed. I have listened to those old timers for over 20 years.

 

[hauntedmyst]

Anyone who says you don't need to coat it is a filthy, filthy liar. Like a garbage truck bay the day after emptying out the dumpsters behind seedy strip bars after Mardi Gras in New Orleans filthy. Filthy! Or maybe its just a personal opinion thing. Do what you want.