AceFour's Notebook

Amateur pipe tobacco blending and pressing

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Red Queen Pressing (a pictorial)

Friday, Mar 27, 2026

I always need Red Queen. It is my desert island blend. So here we are going to make 900g! That would be four 200g plugs to stove and one 100g plug not stove.

Started stripping Red Virginia. Seems like some yellow Virginia slipped in on the 1lb from Whole Leaf Tobacco shipment.

Stripping the stem from Red Virginia

Next I am using Ripe Virginia Flue Cure. Normally I use Bright Virginia but variety is the spice of life.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Resealing open circular tins

Tuesday, Mar 10, 2026

Sometimes I don’t want to jar up every tin I open. This works with circular tins and sometime square tins but probably not for the new tins used by SG and GH.

How to reseal an opened tin? Get a vacuum jar that is big enough to hold the tin. This jar I can do five tins at a time and found it on eBay. Simply put the tins in the jar

@ AceFour

1 minute read

First pressing of 2026, a pictorial

Saturday, Jan 24, 2026

Smiticus on PSD started making Ton 618 and it looked so good I pulled out my jar and then I noted I had only one jar left! Oh noooooss! Pulled 1lb of Red Virginia and it was some pretty leaves in this batch.

Made quick work stripping the vein

This time instead of making two piles and casing one with blackberry and the other with tonka, I just did half and half in the atomizer and misted the whole lot.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Final pressings of 2025

Friday, Sep 26, 2025

I don’t really make blends when fall kicks in because mold spores a abundant when the leaves start falling in North Carolina. So I did a mad pressing of some blends.

First up was two 100g plugs of Red Queen . Actually I put them back in the press after this picture but fun picture anyway.

Red Queen

Next up is three plugs of Apertif Clone

Apertif Clone

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Ton 618 - Stoved Red Virginia

Wednesday, Aug 20, 2025

This all red Virginia de-stemmed and cased with tonka/blackberry and stoved for 10 hours.

Red Virginia prior to destemming

Tonka casing

200g Molasses
100g Water
Handful of cacao nibs
1 whole tonka bean
1 cap full of white vinegar

Blackberry casing

100g water by weight
100g suger by weight
1 tablespoon of Brewer’s Best Blackberry
1 cap full of white vinegar

Both casings are brought to a boil and kept there 5-10 minutes and then let cool. I put half tonka and half blackberry in a 1 ounce atomizer and cased the 1 lb of red Virginia after it was de-stemmed.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Dr. Grabow Tour - Sparta, NC

Sunday, Jun 22, 2025

Meet up with Pipe Smoker’s Den and Dr. Grabow Collectors forum members to tour the factory in Sparta, NC. Sparta is a quiet little town and next to the Allegheny Inn was a Laconia Ale Works . Great beers and on Thursday was open from 4pm to 9pm.

We met Rick Wooten, VP and General Manager of International Pipes & Accessories LLC at the Dr. Grabow factory. At the height of manufacturing they were producing over a million pipes a year. Now that a lot of drug stores stopped carrying smoking products their biggest customer is the Army PX.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Ranger - Va/Bur/Dfk

Thursday, Jun 5, 2025

Things are warming up around here an I have a hankering for a new burley plug. I used burley cased from this recipe . The Virignia was cased with plum casing.

Recipe

87g Burley (53%)
58g Virginia (35%)
20g Dark Fired Kentucky (12%)

Ranger Ranger

So I did somethings differently. The image above is only 1 day after pressing the plugs. Earlier this week I pulled some Red Queen Plug that was wrapped with foil and put in mylar and had some books and case of mason jars sitting on it for six months. You can see how dark the plugs became.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Making a new Burley Casing

Wednesday, Jun 4, 2025

Getting ready to make a new burley plug and tweaked the burley casing recipe.

Ingredients (by weight)

200g Molasses
100g Water
Handful of cacao nibs
1 whole tonka bean
1 cap full of white vinegar

Bring to a boil while stirring and then let it boil for 5-10 minutes. Take off the heat and let cool before transferring to a container. I use a strainer to filter out the nibs and tonka bean.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

How thin can you go?

Thursday, May 29, 2025

So I wanted to see if I took the time to calibrate the cutter, how thin you could you go cutting up a plug. Started with an all Virginia plug that I believe is all red and brights.

The cutter is a cheap Amazon meat slicer that does better than an antique cutter. The reason is there is a measuring guard that you push the plug up against. Slowly make the cut and perfect. The trick was setting the space between the guard on the back of the blade. There are two screws that determine the thickness of the cut. I used the guard itself as the size of the thickness. I took the guard off and put it between the screw and the blade and bring the nut snug. Do that with both screws and then add the guard and knob screws.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Follow-up on Red Ribbon experiment

Monday, May 19, 2025

Update from https://blog.acefour.org/red-ribbon-experiment/ article. Smoking a bowl in the Talbert now and it is an absolute joy.

You can see the top of the whole leaf perique that is fished through the jar like a Zippo wick in cotton. The perique leaf is quite dry now as it seems the rest of the ribbon has sucked the moisture out of the leaf.

The jar aroma is getting that vinegar twang to it and I will probably remove the perique leaf at this point.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

About this site

AceFour’s Notebook is an independent publication launched in June 2023 by AceFour. “I don’t advertise, I don’t do affiliate sales, I don’t sell anything. This is for you, the pipe tobacco community.”