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. ...
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 ...
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...
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.
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. ...
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!