Everything I screwed up about pipe smoking (an ongoing list)
People like me seem to enjoy wasting our lives typing information about pipes and tobacco into the internet. We do it mostly from belief: we believe that life is good, and smoking a pipe is good, so we should pass on what maximizes that goodness, both for those who already like it and those who might be lured away from less salubrious practices. That, and we've screwed it all up before.
Trust this if nothing else: behind every bit of solid pipe advice is a legacy of screwing up. We listen to the lore, which is equal parts gossip and time-honored knowledge, and attempt to figure out how to do this weird thing of keeping a fire-stick in the mouth, and get most of it wrong. Over time, that percentage declines, but never really erases. This is called “learning.”
I present to you the short but ever-expanding list of everything I have ever done wrong with a pipe:
- Did zero research heading in. I went to Walgreens, bought a pipe, filters, cleaners, and tobacco based on what seemed to be on offer. Did I pick up a book? No. Search the internet, which existed even then? No. I just went to figure it out, and ended up with a Dr. Grabow Grand Duke and Blender's Gold Golden Burley. This meant that I smoked one of the most difficult tobaccos to keep lit in a decent but tiny pipe, which obliterated the idea of nice long contemplative smokes. Had I possessed even a homeopathic inkling of a clue, I would have gotten myself a cob and some Prince Albert, Carter Hall, or Sir Walter Raleigh, all of which are brain-dead simple to smoke for hours on a regular size corncob bowl.
- Destroyed a few pipes. One Dr. Grabow went to the hereafter in an unfortunate washing machine accident, and another perished of aggressive tapping it out, since at that time my only “pipe tool” was the ignition key to my 1993 Geo Prizm (this car belongs in a separate list of screw-ups). A few cobs have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the cause, including one that is still floating in the Gulf of Mexico to this day, probably providing home to whatever barnacles enjoy Erinmore Flake.
- Didn't breath-smoke from the get-go. Most people who grew up around pipe smokers do this intuitively. You stick the pipe in your mouth and breathe very slowly, letting the air pressure of your breathing create a natural slight but incessant draw on the pipe. This fills the mouth with smoke without jerking on the airflow, and keeps the fire smoldering as opposed to burning or going out.
- Didn't realize this is a technique, not things. My first few years of discovering the wider pipe world involved focusing on having the right pipes, blends, tools, and settings (the environment in which I smoked, including mental state of mind). None of that was wrong, but you wake up one morning and realize that you are nowhere that you were not with a cob and a pack of Carter Hall. Filling, lighting, breath-smoking, tamping including ember-chasing, and breath regulation comprise the biggest part of smoking a pipe.
- Forgot the wisdom of “smoke what you like, and like what you smoke.” One of my favorite images is the grindcore band Napalm Death hanging out around a rock on which has been spray-painted CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Smoke what you like; unless it is terrible, you can find a way to enjoy it for that moment or moments of your life. But make sure you really are smoking what you like, and that when you smoke it, you actually enjoy it instead of participating in FOMO-YOLO culture regarding Unobtanium and tin notes of forgotten summers followed by the taste of leather, yeast, and banana croissant. If you smoke something because you think you should like it, but do not, CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
- Did not understand pipe maintenance. On first blush, it's a pipe: you put tobacco in it and smoke it. The bigger picture is that you can enjoy this tobacco more if you clean it regularly with alcohol and cotton, let your pipes dry out every now and then, and trim cake. Everyone worries about how to build cake, since they are afraid of burning their pipes, but really that only happens when you pack badly and draw too hard, creating a real tenement fire in the bowl that eventually damages it. People should focus on how to trim cake and remove ghosts from the stem, not the bowl, because an awful lot lives in the stem including some icky microbes that can make you very nauseous very fast (sort of like the last Star Wars film).
- Bought the wrong things. When I first started out, it was considered sage advice to tell new smokers to find themselves some 1-Q and then sample a bunch of exotic tobaccos. When you are new, none of this stuff will make sense to your palate, and if you start on 1-Q you will probably not continue out of frustrating, since sticky aromatics made translucent with humectants like that best-selling blend are only good for keeping others from complaining, which is why they are widely liked. You will gurgle, hack, suck, curse, and relight frequently, but at least the wife or friends have quit their whining. Hint: go to the garage, and smoke what you like instead.
- Didn't understand cellaring. When I first found the “internet pipe smokers community,” they understood cellaring as squirreling away rare stuff so that they could haul it out later and be cool. I get that. The nü-skool internet pipe community likes to have 387 sample jars of exotic tobaccos to sample with their pipe collection, each one of which is either massively expensive or has an interesting backstory. I get that, too. Your average functional pipe smoker — a guy like me who wanders around with a pipe in his mouth for much of the day — goes to his favorite mail order joint three times a year to order five pounds of Superior Navy Flake, Virginia Slices, Virginia Flake, Old Joe Krantz, Golden Extra, or other all-day blends for experienced smokers. He smokes a little over ten pounds a year, so every year he puts away three or four pounds for the future. Sometimes he goes to his B&M and picks up a new interesting tin to smoke or samples the bulk, but basically, he orders a lot of what he likes and keeps it stashed for lean years or the coming collapse of Western Civilization when the UFOs come down and tell humanity that we're actually idiots and will henceforth be serving in the Martian rhodium mines.
- Didn't keep a notebook. I wish I'd kept a diary, too, despite thinking that such things are sort of like scrapbooks and belong to the demesne of twelve-year-old girls. Some will tell you to have a tasting journal, others to keep a blending log... I say combine the two and add a smoke diary. Note down what you have learned, what you're thinking, what you have enjoyed. Looking back, it is like reading the biography of a different person, and might tell you about more than your pipe smoking habits.
I have forgotten most of the other screw-ups, but maybe you can imagine them for me. It took me ages to learn that “packing” the pipe is the wrong verb and leads to the wrong assumptions; you want to fill the pipe, then gently push down any extra. It took me aeons to figure out breath-smoking to the point where now I do it without thinking, which is the point where pipe smoking is the most enjoyable. But in the end, I just hope to pass along what I learned from my pains so that you do not have to, since this way you'll enjoy it more. As they say: smoke what you like, and like what you smoke.