Smiticus on PSDstarted making Ton 618and 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. ...

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 And lastly Memphis Plug. Unfortunately I ran out of that incredible Tennessee Dark Fire and subbed in Kentucky Dark Fire. Still a good stout smoke. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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 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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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 issue.

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 the oven at 200F for 4 hours. After 4 hours I turned it off and retrieved it 2 hours later. Let cool outside before extracting. Smells like rye bread. Will slice up after a few days to settle down.