AceFour's Notebook

Amateur pipe tobacco blending and pressing

About

Site difficulties

Sunday, Apr 27, 2025

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.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Press the rest

Tuesday, Mar 4, 2025

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.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Let's make some Red Queen

Friday, Feb 28, 2025

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 Bright Virginia. When I de-stem I pull from the top of the leaf, one half of the leaf. I pulls apart easily from the top.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Open community - let's see what happens

Friday, Feb 21, 2025

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, no politics nor slighting groups of people. This place is meant to be about enjoying life. If you want to bitch about people, politics, religion you can go enjoy Twitter/X and have the internet troll fight there.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Recipe Index

Sunday, Jan 26, 2025

Angel of Izmir (Virginia / Oriental / Latakia)
Basma Bastard (Virginia / Oriental / Latakia)
Burley Plug (Dark Fired Kentucky / Burley / Virginia)
God of War (Virginia)
Grateful Plug (Virginia / Burley)
Memphis Plug (Dark Fired Kentucky / Virginia)
Monkel’s Best (Virginia)
Orlik DSK clone (Dark Fired Kentucky / Virginia)
Ranger (Burley / Virginia / Dark Fired Kentucky)
Red Queen (Virginia / Perique)
Ton 618 (Stoved Red Virginia)

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Let's have some fun

Monday, Jan 20, 2025

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 / Virginia / Dark Fired Kentucky

I did stove for 2 hours at 200F and let cool

This plug is legit even with no age, butter with smokey goodness!

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Burley plug

Monday, Jan 20, 2025

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 the main feature. I bought some burley and dark fired Kentucky from LeafOnly . Great quality leaves but I will warn you they do not vac seal the tobacco. I think I will go with the molasses/cacao hull casing for the burley and the tonka casing for the Virginia. The dark fired Kentucky does not need casing.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Mac Baren / Sutliff / STG

Saturday, Jan 18, 2025

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 City Cigars , Iwan Reis , L.J. Peretti , Ulhle’s and even in my neck of the woods to a lesser extent, Pipe’s By George .

The cigar world had a big boom in 1997 and during that is when I converted to be a pipe smoker. The cigars quality dropped and rolled and shipped as fast as possible. You buy a box and smelled like a litter box from all the ammonia being emitted. Cigars declined, Cigar Aficionado had great writers and articles that went the way of the do-do.

@ AceFour

4 minute read

Holiday Blend

Monday, Dec 16, 2024

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 Butterscotch
Sutliff SP24 Nougat
Sutliff B20 Cavendish
Sutliff TS9 Maryland

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Dix & Whiskey Dix Tobacco

Monday, Dec 16, 2024

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 when Carter Hall briefly disappeared off the market.

Original Dix formula was:

42% Sutliff Maryland
21% Sutliff J4 Burley
19% Dunhill 3 year Virginia and later replaced with McConnel 5 year Virginia when Dunhill went bye-bye
19% Sutliff 515 RC-1 Red Virginia

Dix was a really good old codger blend. Of course continued derailment of the forum threads that we came up with Whiskey Dix, the aromatic version of Dix.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

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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.”