When does it become relaxing?
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The advice here is all solid. The three keys really are:
1. tobacco's the right moisture (it can help with aros to have a tray where you can spread the tobacco out to dry for 30 minutes or so);
2. a properly packed pipe (three step is one great technique); and
3. smoking slow and steady (as has been said, after the lighting (when you might puff pretty aggressively to get a good cherry burning) then SIP. Much of the moisture you are experiencing is likely condensation caused by smoking too hot. Hot air from the bowl enters the stem where it cools and then water vapor can condense to liquid).
I'm sorry for the OP becuase there is almost nothing I do that is as calming and relaxing smoking a pipe -- I wish the same for you someday soon.
1. tobacco's the right moisture (it can help with aros to have a tray where you can spread the tobacco out to dry for 30 minutes or so);
2. a properly packed pipe (three step is one great technique); and
3. smoking slow and steady (as has been said, after the lighting (when you might puff pretty aggressively to get a good cherry burning) then SIP. Much of the moisture you are experiencing is likely condensation caused by smoking too hot. Hot air from the bowl enters the stem where it cools and then water vapor can condense to liquid).
I'm sorry for the OP becuase there is almost nothing I do that is as calming and relaxing smoking a pipe -- I wish the same for you someday soon.
As a relative newcomer to pipes myself, and as a fairly regular 1Q smoker, the advice about drying is well worth taking. I keep a pouch filled with 1Q in my pipe bag, and as I only smoke once or twice a week normally, it gets fairly dry from time to time (I periodically top it off from my jar at home), and it does tend to smoke better after it has sat in the pouch for a while than it does straight out of the jar.
OTOH, after two years I still end up occasionally overpacking or underpacking, relighting more often than other pipe smokers I see at the local B&M, and even burning my tongue once in a while. I still find the whole process relaxing because I'm not particularly worried about any of the above - it happens, you move on, you fix whatever you did wrong when you realize it's going sideways or else you wait and fix it on the next bowl. It's not the end of the world if you use half a box of matches (especially if it's windy out), or if one bowl fails to smoke down to fine, gray ash - it's just a pipe. :
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OTOH, after two years I still end up occasionally overpacking or underpacking, relighting more often than other pipe smokers I see at the local B&M, and even burning my tongue once in a while. I still find the whole process relaxing because I'm not particularly worried about any of the above - it happens, you move on, you fix whatever you did wrong when you realize it's going sideways or else you wait and fix it on the next bowl. It's not the end of the world if you use half a box of matches (especially if it's windy out), or if one bowl fails to smoke down to fine, gray ash - it's just a pipe. :
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Lost and found is on it in that last line
I think the problem is experience, has anybody taken a moment to actually sit with the OP and shown him a pleasurable smoke?
I had no true concept of what pipe smoking was when I started... I believed I should bellow huge clouds of smoke like puff the magic dragon because that's what the movies and cartoons tell us. I didn't realize that even soft draws to a cigarette smoker are way tooooooo hard for the pipe. Who would have known? Its hard to have something to compare to if there isn't a readily available standard in which to reflect upon.
I think the problem is experience, has anybody taken a moment to actually sit with the OP and shown him a pleasurable smoke?
I had no true concept of what pipe smoking was when I started... I believed I should bellow huge clouds of smoke like puff the magic dragon because that's what the movies and cartoons tell us. I didn't realize that even soft draws to a cigarette smoker are way tooooooo hard for the pipe. Who would have known? Its hard to have something to compare to if there isn't a readily available standard in which to reflect upon.
I am going to go with lighting as the problem. You are not lighting a cigarette. Don't just touch the flame to all the tobacco on the top of the bowl once and then go. You can try the charing light thing. But I would recommend going around the bowl two maybe 3 times with light puffs. Then let it go. I notice when am relighting alot every minute or so its usually because I am just touching the flame one around the bowl and expecting it to stay lit.
Light puffs on the charring light, you are just singing the top layer. Tamp it lightly with a quarter twist of your finger or other tamper then, apply flame with movement, sucking the flame deeper into the pack than you did with the "charring" burn.
I just finished my third bowl ever. I work 24 on and 48 off. Just got home from work and sat on the back porch watching my chickens, wild birds and thinking about my grandad who's pipe I was smoking.
It was very enjoyable and relaxing. Who cares if you have to relight? I had to relight several times and I really don't care. What's so hard about relighting your pipe? Heck I kinda like relighting it.
It was very enjoyable and relaxing. Who cares if you have to relight? I had to relight several times and I really don't care. What's so hard about relighting your pipe? Heck I kinda like relighting it.
The Problems listed here reminded me of me 35 years ago.
my advice would be:
1) Open your container and let the tobacco breathe a little before you pack it.
2) Pack the bowl loosely. My big problem when I started was trying to back 15 grams of tobacco in a 10 gram bowl.
3) It is easier, I think, to light a pipe with a BIC lighter than book matches. I think a charing light is easier with wooden Matches than book matches. Switch to a BIC or wooden matches if you are using book matches right now.
4) Once lit, smoke slowly.
5) Make sure you use a pipe cleaner on the inside of the pipe, ideally, after every smoke.
That is my advice.
my advice would be:
1) Open your container and let the tobacco breathe a little before you pack it.
2) Pack the bowl loosely. My big problem when I started was trying to back 15 grams of tobacco in a 10 gram bowl.
3) It is easier, I think, to light a pipe with a BIC lighter than book matches. I think a charing light is easier with wooden Matches than book matches. Switch to a BIC or wooden matches if you are using book matches right now.
4) Once lit, smoke slowly.
5) Make sure you use a pipe cleaner on the inside of the pipe, ideally, after every smoke.
That is my advice.
There are some great tips here that people have posted that if followed, should help you to improve your technique and hopefully bring out some joy into your foray into pipe smoking.
What pisses me off to no end is when someone (who perhaps isn't even exclusively a pipe smoker) would suggest you just give up! If you were that prone to just quitting altogether you would have done so by now and your OP wouldn't even exist.
The guy is here for some advice, some guidance, not to be told he doesn't "get it" and should take up another hobby. Why even reply if you don't have something constructive and positive to bring to the table?
To the OP, as stated previously pipe smoking itself can't teach you to "relax", what it can do is act as a catalyst to help teach you "how" to relax. It is truly an art and must be worked on by you and only you. Put yourself in a calm, distraction free environment and use what your learning about pipe smoking to help build the skills needed to get a truly great smoking experience. If you focus on just doing that I can almost promise the stress will start to flow out of you. As you learn and grow with the pipe that "ah-hah!" Moment will come and when it does you'll realize why we are so passionate about our seemingly insignificant hobby. Concentrating on the pipe and tobacco will let your mind slow down, you'll come to the understanding that some of those big stress inducers are nothing but petty BS. I wish you the best and please keep posting your questions.
What pisses me off to no end is when someone (who perhaps isn't even exclusively a pipe smoker) would suggest you just give up! If you were that prone to just quitting altogether you would have done so by now and your OP wouldn't even exist.
The guy is here for some advice, some guidance, not to be told he doesn't "get it" and should take up another hobby. Why even reply if you don't have something constructive and positive to bring to the table?
To the OP, as stated previously pipe smoking itself can't teach you to "relax", what it can do is act as a catalyst to help teach you "how" to relax. It is truly an art and must be worked on by you and only you. Put yourself in a calm, distraction free environment and use what your learning about pipe smoking to help build the skills needed to get a truly great smoking experience. If you focus on just doing that I can almost promise the stress will start to flow out of you. As you learn and grow with the pipe that "ah-hah!" Moment will come and when it does you'll realize why we are so passionate about our seemingly insignificant hobby. Concentrating on the pipe and tobacco will let your mind slow down, you'll come to the understanding that some of those big stress inducers are nothing but petty BS. I wish you the best and please keep posting your questions.
Not much more I can contribute as everyone has made some very solid recommendations... but one stands out above the rest to me.
Tuold hit the nail on the head... The pipe and tobacco are just tools to help you get to that "relaxation" point... but its most definitely not the source. I cannot agree more with what tuold stated. 8)
The "char, tamp, light" routine is part of life sometimes. Your first light will not get into the tobacco enough to keep it lit, so gently tamp until you have a flat surface, and then light that. That will get the tobacco bolus to smolder so you can draw quietly. Consider trying a dry tobacco like Five Brothers or Dunhill.
I leave OTC blends open to the air since they're so damn wet. I put a portion in an old tin, about half full and never close it, even overnight. It smokes much better than when "fresh". Also I pack in a maybe unconventional way: feed the tobacco in the bowl pinch by pinch till full, then press down lightly. This way, it's not layered like you get with some methods, although this may not matter. Anyway, this works for me.
You found the right place for help in working through these problems which most of us are prone to when beginning, these guys are the best! Like me, you are a beginner until you learn how to avoid these problems while smoking enjoyably. It really isn't difficult, you will get there! Here are some of my thoughts and ideas which are working for me, at a few months after being where you are now:
1. Pack the bowl gently, and fill three times. Fill once just allowing the tobacco to fall in, poke down light as a baby would. Fill again, and then a third time, press a little harder with each fill until it's compact, but springy. You should find when sucking air through the stem that there is a little bit of resistance, and believe me that little bit graduates from just perfect to way too much very fast! So test it once, and then test it again after pressing with a little more pressure. If the air that you draw doesn't whistle through the draw-hole, and you don't have to suck in your cheeks, then you should be fine.
2. Light while drawing, watch the top layer expand, let it die, tamp, and then light again. This initial charring light is SOP, it gets the rest of the bowl ready for burning.
3. Tamping should be done more gently than you think is necessary. You can always tamp a little harder, but a bowl too tight to smoke is a messy PIA!
4. Tamping compresses the burned ash down even with the still-hot embers, this should enable an easy re-light if the ash/tobacco proportions aren't too high - at some point you may need to dump the ash before you can continue enjoying the remainder of your bowl.
5. Re-lighting a pipe mid-bowl is perfectly normal and should not cause any problems with flavor when 1-4 are put to practice.
6. If you experience gurgling in your pipe, you need to do something about this! Get a pipecleaner and run through the stem down just into the shank, but not the bowl, then pull it out. Do this as often as necessary. Gurgling is guaranteed to produce tongue-bite!
7. How wet is your tobacco before you load it? If it leaves visible moisture on your fingers, then it should be dried out first. If it doesn't, then it should probably be dried anyway, unless it's already dry like paper. Like with everything else, others here can provide better advice on how. I've seen advice ranging from dry time of an hour to all day, but I being lazy like to put a bowlful in a toaster-oven pan and bake on 350 degrees for a few minutes. If you try that, don't scorch it!
8. How hot does your pipe get? When it goes from warm to hot in your hand, slow down your cadence! A hot pipe which burns a wet aro almost invariably has the wet gurgling going on. Draw lightly in small sips - pipe smoking is to be enjoyed and savored, while ring-blowing is for cigar smokers. When the bowl is hot, the tobacco which you are burning is too hot, and will release moisture into the bowl faster than it can evaporate out with the smoke. The bubbling of this in liquid form in your stem is not good for the flavor, and will burn your tongue. This won't happen with a dry tobacco in a pipe which draws well, or with good control of the heat level.
9. Try different tobaccos, especially non-aromatics. Most aros are difficult to enjoy for taste because they are so wet, especially the top-dressed cheapies which smell great when burning, but those watery dressings boil away faster than the tobacco burns, therefore you taste only the cheap burley. Good aros do exist, but they require meticulous mixing of quality burleys, and they have penetrative casings. Russ Oulette of H&H produced a great aro (Classic Burley Kake), but he subsequently announce that he would not produce any more new ones in that category because it was so difficult to make the flavor similar to the aroma (this one took him two years to get right).
10. Relax, and don't worry!
1. Pack the bowl gently, and fill three times. Fill once just allowing the tobacco to fall in, poke down light as a baby would. Fill again, and then a third time, press a little harder with each fill until it's compact, but springy. You should find when sucking air through the stem that there is a little bit of resistance, and believe me that little bit graduates from just perfect to way too much very fast! So test it once, and then test it again after pressing with a little more pressure. If the air that you draw doesn't whistle through the draw-hole, and you don't have to suck in your cheeks, then you should be fine.
2. Light while drawing, watch the top layer expand, let it die, tamp, and then light again. This initial charring light is SOP, it gets the rest of the bowl ready for burning.
3. Tamping should be done more gently than you think is necessary. You can always tamp a little harder, but a bowl too tight to smoke is a messy PIA!
4. Tamping compresses the burned ash down even with the still-hot embers, this should enable an easy re-light if the ash/tobacco proportions aren't too high - at some point you may need to dump the ash before you can continue enjoying the remainder of your bowl.
5. Re-lighting a pipe mid-bowl is perfectly normal and should not cause any problems with flavor when 1-4 are put to practice.
6. If you experience gurgling in your pipe, you need to do something about this! Get a pipecleaner and run through the stem down just into the shank, but not the bowl, then pull it out. Do this as often as necessary. Gurgling is guaranteed to produce tongue-bite!
7. How wet is your tobacco before you load it? If it leaves visible moisture on your fingers, then it should be dried out first. If it doesn't, then it should probably be dried anyway, unless it's already dry like paper. Like with everything else, others here can provide better advice on how. I've seen advice ranging from dry time of an hour to all day, but I being lazy like to put a bowlful in a toaster-oven pan and bake on 350 degrees for a few minutes. If you try that, don't scorch it!
8. How hot does your pipe get? When it goes from warm to hot in your hand, slow down your cadence! A hot pipe which burns a wet aro almost invariably has the wet gurgling going on. Draw lightly in small sips - pipe smoking is to be enjoyed and savored, while ring-blowing is for cigar smokers. When the bowl is hot, the tobacco which you are burning is too hot, and will release moisture into the bowl faster than it can evaporate out with the smoke. The bubbling of this in liquid form in your stem is not good for the flavor, and will burn your tongue. This won't happen with a dry tobacco in a pipe which draws well, or with good control of the heat level.
9. Try different tobaccos, especially non-aromatics. Most aros are difficult to enjoy for taste because they are so wet, especially the top-dressed cheapies which smell great when burning, but those watery dressings boil away faster than the tobacco burns, therefore you taste only the cheap burley. Good aros do exist, but they require meticulous mixing of quality burleys, and they have penetrative casings. Russ Oulette of H&H produced a great aro (Classic Burley Kake), but he subsequently announce that he would not produce any more new ones in that category because it was so difficult to make the flavor similar to the aroma (this one took him two years to get right).
10. Relax, and don't worry!
Along with all the above advice on technique I find attitude and appreciation of the occasion is important. This is why I smoke a pipe exclusively...
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