AceFour

Dr. Grabow Tour - Sparta, NC

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

Ranger - Va/Bur/Dfk

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%) So I did somethings differently. The image above

Making a new Burley Casing

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

How thin can you go?

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

Follow-up on Red Ribbon experiment

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

Site difficulties

I was trying to look up the article on dating tins when I noticed after going to the next page of articles you could not go further. Slight technical glitch has been fixed and you can now page back to all the older posts. Sorry if you ran into this

Press the rest

Had left over cased Virginia so I dropped in my 6" x 3" x 3" stainless steel tube and pressed it 2 days ago and transferred it from the frame press to a c-clamp. Today I wrapped the whole mess in aluminum foil and dropped it in

Let's make some Red Queen

Red Queen is a Va/Per and the whole leaf recipe can be found at Red Queen V This is basically a two day process. First step is strip the stems from the Bright Virginia and Red Virginia. The Red Virginia had some nice leaves Red all done Next the

Open community - let's see what happens

I created a discourse server (online community) that folks can join and chat about tobacco. I am not many tobacco forums and this allows folks from other forums to be able to chat about blending whole leaf, commercial leaf and enjoyment of the leaf and good life. Rules are simple,

Let's have some fun

Had some Virginia left over from the Burley Plug and decided to try a 120g Dark Fired to 60g Bright Virginia. The kick? Well I layered it like the days of Orlik Dark Strong Kentucky. I packed the plug in the short tube with a layer of Dark Fired Kentucky

Burley plug

Being irritated that the Mac Baren HH line is going away I decided to try and make a mellow burley flake substitute. Probably won't even be close but all that matters is it is enjoyable smoke. So HH Burley Flake is burley, Kentucky and Virginia with burley being

Mac Baren / Sutliff / STG

Let's face it, the pipe smokers are a rare breed. Go to any brick and mortar and either they cursory offer some pipe tobacco and basket pipes or nothing at all. There are exceptions to that rule such as The Country Squire, J.M Boswell's, Watch

Holiday Blend

This one I never sold at the local shop. I did make it and gave out to a few friends. Once again, with Sutliff/MacBaren being knocked out at the end of January I am releasing the recipe. I can be blended up with equal parts of: * Sutliff Z79 Creamy

Dix & Whiskey Dix Tobacco

Dix tobacco blend started out as a joke for me to derail tobacco forum threads. I will not expand on the derailment but it was always successful. Of course everyone said I need to make the actual blend. So I literally tossed some things together and everyone loved it, especially

Wrapping Old Boy in Leather

If you are going to buy and IM Corona Old Boy, don't buy a painted one. I got a nice blue Old Boy and then one day tossed it in my pocket with the keys. The paint chips and it started to look ragged. My buddy Jamie at

Red Queen V

Scandinavian Tobacco Group purchased Sutliff Tobacco and they will be moving the operations overseas. When STG did this with Lane's Tobacco they cut the tobacco line. Red Queen V was the first blend (well fifth iteration) I made with commercial components. Given it will be unknown if the

Why do I not sell these blends?

For one, I am not a licensed tobacco manufacturer. To do so would require a one million dollar bond on raw tobacco storage and one million dollar bond on the blending room and keep meticulous records of poundage going in and out of each room. Uncle Sam wants his tax

2024 Halloween Plug Massacre

Decided to pull all the plugs I still have and flake them out. Plugs that I stoved in the oven were still moist and easy to slice. Plugs that stoved in a hot truck for 5 days was like trying to flake a 2 x 4. Ended up with a

Basma Bastard

Happy little accidents! I tried to make 2 more Angel of Izmir plugs and when I pulled them they seemed small. Thinking back I actually forgot to add Izmir to the blend. Head slapfrom Head slap The end result is a pretty smooth smoke without the citrus of Izmir. Blend

Red Ribbon Experiment

At the CORPS pipe show we open a jar of Red Queen plug flake that has been sealed for 6-8 months. Boom ketchup! What happened here? My theory for a couple of months has been tobacco vinegar is what makes this famous smell. This jar of Red Queen plug is

2024 CORPS Pipe Show

Attended the show and my hats off to a great event by Conclave of Richmond Pipe Smokers club. They did a great event at the Keystone Museum I got there Saturday morning and the folks were swarming every table in which I hope was a good sign for the vendors.

Angel of Izmir (Balken)

Blend for 175g plug * 24.5% Latakia (43g) * 20% Basma (35g) * 20% Izmir (35.g) * 35.5% Red Virginia (cased with Tonka) (62g) Stoved while under pressure in the truck cab (about 130F) for a few days. Update: 8/8/24 Sliced off a flake and smoking in the 1974

Monkel's Best (Virginia)

Monkel's Best is basically a bright Virginia with two different casings. I strip 2 lbs of bright and half I case with blackberry casing and the other half with tonka bean casing. I have found it to age well after stoving under pressure for 4 hours at 200F

God of War - Red Virginia

The Virginia experiment continues and several months later the Bright Virginia plug that is cased half with Tonka Bean and half Blackberry just keeps getting better and better. I wonder what Tonka would do for red Virginia leaf. Well here we are. De-stemmed a pound of red Virginia and cased

Grateful Plug - Tonka variant

After doing the Virginia tonka experiment I thought, "Man, I bet this will match perfect with Grateful Plug!" Well say no more! It is done! Tonka/molasses version of 200g Grateful Plug stoved for 7 hours at 200 F This is a blend of 100g Bright Virginia cased