nicotiana

Shag tobacco offers a good smoke with the convenience of a blend that, since it mostly clings together in the pouch, travels well. On the downside, it also tends to leave a great deal of dottle, since most shag is designed for cigarette smokers and therefore is dry, which means that it soaks up a lot of water quite quickly and then the cherry sputters out before the bottom of the pipe.

To counter this we use an old technique, “wadding,” which consists of taking about the amount of tobacco that fits in your pipe out of the pouch, then compressing it horizontally into a dense wad that can then slide into the pipe as a single unit. This keeps the tobacco from pressing hard against the bottom of the pipe.

As a result, moisture gathers in the little gap at the base and the tobacco burns more like a compressed variety such as flake, allowing for a cool and long-lasting smoke without a little puck of dottle at the bottom.

Dry shag — distinct from wetter shag designed for pipes, like Dark Bird's Eye — soaks up moisture very easily and requires an approach like this. While you can fill from the pouch, if you do not compress in advance, you end up with too light of a pack, which results in a quicker, hotter smoke.

This keeps the advantage of shag intact, namely that you can one-handedly fill your pipe while driving. It took me a few tries to get the wadding technique right, and while it did not improve the quality of the smoke, it avoided the additional complexities of having to dump wet dottle while cleaning a pipe one-handed.