Most of these are taken from conversations on the Gab Pipe Smoking Group or the Fediverse, where people still post about pipe smoking, fountain pens, guns, fireworks, fast cars, gardening, pets, programming in a dozen languages, running, hiking and other cool stuff that you or those you know may enjoy. I could go for a good hike in the highlands today, or at least that sounds cool, which is good because we have a “heat dome” (pronounced “heat dumb” in Texan; “dumb” is pronounced with the “b” to make it sound, well, dumb). Anyway this big heat dump is screwing everything up, everyone is irate, confusion is reigning, so it is time to Taco Bell (heh) some old posts onto here.

For today, a parfait — layering of two or more blends, or just like me dropping them both on the desk, then wadding them together to stuff in a pipe — was on the menu thanks the ouija board that is this house, which may be possessed by spirits either benevolent, malevolent, or Lokian depending on what day it is. The “cellar” is an anomalous big-ass walk-in closet in our “guest room” slash exercise room slash storage dump, and I put stuff in there, usually without labels, until the closet chooses to disgorge them to me.

Today I did the usual and slammed the wall next to the door, then heard something plop onto the carpet so I opened the door and without looking in at the horrible mess of fishing gear, Walmart furniture, clothes, hunting gear, books, electronics, old ISA video cards, family heirlooms bought on vacations long forgotten, camping gear, bulk spices from Costco, ten thousand cables for gadgets that broke and were thrown on the window on the way home to buy their replacements at Directron or MicroCenter, a few crates of tax records no one will hopefully ever have to read, posters for 1980s bands, and so on, reached in and pulled out the jar.

This time it was two, a GH “Black Twist Sliced” and an unmarked jar of what appears to be C&D “Virginia Flake.” The closet knows... and I tend to follows it recommendations, so I loaded up a pipe with a parfait of these. The Virginia Flake is probably three years old at a minimum, and the Black Twist Sliced probably almost that. The result is like a UK plug, Virginia sweetness melded with smoky goodness, tasting like molasses maple syrup with lemon juice in it on toasty French bread outside on a spring morning. Would recommend, but you guys gotta get over here to try some.

Newminster No. 702 Light Burley Is Pretty Cool

Switched it up to Newminster's No. 702 Light Burley, blended by MacBaren. I originally adopted this as an alternative to “Prince Albert,” which everyone thought was going away at the time, but for whatever reason, this blend tastes like an M&M: good milk chocolate flavor, some depth, spice at the edges, but basically a good Burley flavor although I suspect more dark Burley than white Burley. Maybe a nudge past moderate strength. Ready-rubbed, so smokes roughly like a flake for a long-lasting smoke that lends itself to breath-smoking.

Power Smokes: Dark Flake with 507-c

I like powerful smokes, but I also like a little sweetness, so I combine Gawith Hoggarth Dark Flake with Sutliff 507-c, more of the former than the latter, for a UK plug style power smoke. This one burns like wood, meaning that it smolders for hours down to the very bottom of the pipe, leaving that light grey dust that we all seek as the result of a thoroughly-smoked bowl. This “parfait” bowl is a bit heretical because I am mixing fancypants tobacco with budget Virginia, but 507-c is worth it if you have six months or a year to cellar it because it ripens into a golden honey on wheat toast flavor that is worth pursuing.

Deep into the Void: Coniston Cut Plug

Smoking some Coniston Cut Plug (GH) in a 320 Vittoria. They tell you to rub it out, but my advice is the opposite, just pack light on the sides because it expands like one of those little sponge bath animals. Perhaps the perfect smoke: Burley warmth, Virginia sweetness, full strength, and just enough of the frankincese, myrrh, peat, and dragon's blood they put in the Lakeland Essence to give it an incense-like quality. It takes a little work to get it lit but it's worth it for a couple hours of really intense but surprisingly gentle smoke.

How do you “miss” a Dunhill clone?

Smoking some Villiger Early Day, a decent Early Morning Pipe (Dunhill) clone with a sweet low-Lat English formula. It's in one of my favorite pipes, a basket pipe that just happens to smoke like a dream. This tobacco is now well over a decade old, having been discontinued in 2012, and has gained quite a bit of sweetness over the years.

Vape Landfill

Apparently the powers that be want to legalize dope and ban tobacco if some sources are to be believed:

Politicians have been making noise about banning vaping, calling for the Food and Drug Administration to regulate or ban the product outright. But why, when they’ve subsidized the growing of tobacco for generations? Even money to combat COVID-19, ironically a respiratory virus, went to tobacco growers.

I don’t know if vaping is harmful or not, but I haven’t seen anything that suggests it’s worse than the well documented dangers of smoking. Is it because Elf Bar is company based in China? If that’s the case, fine, but don’t put scoring political points ahead of people’s health.

Also, don’t pretend to care about the respiratory health of the American people when you’re advocating for the legalization of marijuana which, last I checked, was largely delivered to the bodies of users through unfiltered combustion.

To be fair, half of the terms and allusions in this article went over my head. However, it seems to me that when people smoked pipes and cigars, they were happier and healthier. There also was not the landfill explosion caused by use of disposable vapes:

Up to 2.7 million single-use vapes were littered in Scotland last year, a Scottish government report estimates.

The study estimates that there are 543,000 users of e-cigarettes in Scotland and predicts that without intervention that will rise to 900,000 by 2027.

Just smoke a pipe. Low waste, low muss, and you can pass your briars and cobs on down to future generations. The downside is that since it takes hours to smoke a pipe or cigar, we have to stop banning all smoking in restaurants, bars, offices, and shops. Then again, right now, we are getting hid in the face with vape wash that has that faintly meaty and humid smell of unhealthy lungs, so perhaps it would be better to deal with a little cigar and pipe smoke instead.

As one of our users — “CrankyOldMan” as he calls himself — likes to say:

It's true, you know, they would. It's one of the things that drives me nuts quicker than anything else I can think of. Demonize tobacco and popularize marijuana! Or demonize vaping. I don't know whether vaping is perfectly safe or not. I suspect not. But how likely is it to be worse for you than sucking cigarette smoke into your lungs? Of course, you can make a case that the best decision is a little moderate pipe or cigar smoking, but for sure, I don't trust government to be making such a decision for me.

There is another factor we should mention here which has to do with the grim fact that anything is addictive. Eating is addictive, in addition to the fun stuff like sex, gambling, drugs, alcohol, and buying guns of course. You can actually swap out “computers” for “guns” if you want, since the same thing seems to be true of gear, and we both probably already have our eyes on a new Raspberry Pi or Pinephone or some other gadget that we probably should not get because in eight years it will take up permanent residence in the closet with the unmarked pint jars of tobacco that proliferate whenever one has “spare” disposable income. (They say disposable, right? It's the only disposable thing I like, and I take the name seriously and get rid of it as soon as possible).

That factor is that cigarettes and vapes hit you with a fast blast of nicotine, a rollercoaster comprised like an ocean storm wave of an intense crest followed by a nasty trough, where the wave pattern of pipes and cigars is more like a calm day at the beach, gentle ripples where the highest the wave gets is not far above its low point. If you breath-smoke a cigar or pipe, you end up with a nice steady stream of nicotine for a few hours, where a cigarette or vape gives you five minutes of blazing insanity followed by a craving which leads to addiction:

A woman who became addicted to vaping at the age of 16 has warned of the struggles she has faced, claiming e-cigarettes have ruined her life.

Belle Moore, now 19, from Bickerstaffe, Lancashire, said she felt she has “no control over it” and now needed to vape every couple of hours.

“I start to get shaky and it's almost all I can think of,” she said.

Whatever that madness is, it sounds like zero fun, and by my yardstick should therefore be avoided as much as possible. A pipe will be your companion and work with you, but it sounds like these nico-blast methods are like refined sugar, too much of a hit in too short a period of time, and they make the rest of life pale in comparison which makes them addictive.

Breath-Smoking and Flakes

Speaking of breath-smoking, looks like the religion is spreading because Chuck Stanion is writing about it at Smoking Pipes, where you can learn how slow capillary action smoking works better than dragging, puffing, sucking, and other alternatives to the time-honored tradition of breath-smoking:

Breath smoking is a technique accentuating slower, shallower, and more meditative puffing, thus enhancing a broader spectrum of tobacco flavor and promoting a more comfortable experience. Many of us occasionally enjoy smoking at a faster pace, with billows of satisfyingly thick smoke churning from the bowl. Sometimes we simply prefer lots of smoke, and pipe smokers who are early in their careers often puff quickly because it's the most intuitive way to keep the tobacco lit.

You may have seen a few of the articles around here (and at related sites) over the last couple years praising breath smoking. It was probably the original way that people smoked after their first few months, since it provides the best experience. I have to disagree with Chuck on one point however: breath-smoking works best for strenuous activity, including driving. The discipline you learn with your breath will serve you well in meditation and every other area of life. There is some evidence that smokers in the past were breath-smokers generally.

I have to differ with the consensus on flakes as well. I see alot of propaganda to tell you to rub our your flakes, plugs, coins, etc. They write this because it makes it seem easier to smoke, but you miss out on the benefit of smoking compressed tobacco, which is a slower burn and more flavor, not to mention more consistent and even smoother dosage of nicotine.

To smoke your flakes like some guy who lives under a bridge in a van but it is a deluxe van with floor-to-ceiling carpet and even a television and cooler full of Lone Star at exactly 42 ° F as God intended, pick up enough flakes to fit in your pipe. Fold them lengthwise — this means the fold is halfway down the longest dimension of the flake — and then give that a good twist so that it flares a bit at the ends. Slide this into your pipe. It should slide easily, with some room to spare on the sides.

Gently pile some of the shake that you find at the bottom of the tin or jar on top, give it five minutes to dry slightly on the top layer, then light gently and tamp. Then give the real fire for just a few seconds while drawing gently. After that you can breath smoke it like anything else.

Smoking compressed tobacco is a great joy because it burns slowly, is full of flavor, and doles out nicotine in a constant stream. Expect a few hours from this pipe. This is for breath-smokers of course, since this is all I know at this point!

Brexit in a Briar

Today's smoke: Briar Shoppe “Brexit” with cube-cut Dark Flake added to make it punchier. Quite a nice smoke, obviously a combination of a few aromatic, English, and Burley blends for a full flavor. This reminds me of the luxury Englishes of days gone by from the little shops that would make you a custom blend, realizing that a smidgen of Burley there or a dash of a few aromatics could fill out an English blend and make it even more complex, perfect for lonely nights on the porch watching Sputnik or muttering incantations in forgotten languages.

English Summer

I forgot how much I love English blends. I know you are “in theory” (says who) supposed to smoke them in winter, but sometimes you crave that smoky spicy Latakia. I am smoking a blend I made myself... it is a Lat-bomb, probably 25%, with layered Virginias but also strong Burleys, a touch of White Burley, a smidge of dark fired Kentucky Burley to tame the Lat, some tasty Brown Twist, and a fair amount of Perique.

Twisted and Dark

I like MacBaren Dark Twist better than the various #403s — Luxury Bullseye Flake, Superior Round Slices, Navy Flake, Comoy's Single Coin Sliced, Flake Medallions — because the Mac Baren natural Cavendish made from Dark Fired Kentucky Burley is better than the overly sweet sugar-roasted sun-dried Burley normally used and the Virginias here cover a range of flavors and the fermentation caused by the rope process makes them fermenty like Perique.

Homebrew

A few months back, I got ahold of one of those pasta presses that can compress tobacco into dense cake. I mixed up some Dark Fired Kentucky Burley with a smaller amount of bright Virginia, red Virginia, and white Burley, then crammed the heck out of it for a month. Today I carved up the cake, which behaves more like a plug than cake, and have to report a sweet and rich success.