Thoughts on AceFour's Notebook

Red Queen Pressing (a pictorial)

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Resealing open circular tins

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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

First pressing of 2026, a pictorial

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Final pressings of 2025

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Dr. Grabow Tour - Sparta, NC

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

How thin can you go?

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Follow-up on Red Ribbon experiment

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Press the rest

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Open community - let's see what happens

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Let's have some fun

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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!

Mac Baren / Sutliff / STG

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Wrapping Old Boy in Leather

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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 Stem & Briar recommended me to Sick Saddles. I finally jumped on this recommendation and wow, does Sick Saddles do nice work! He gave a wide selection of choices for the leather. Highly recommend

Why do I not sell these blends?

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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 revenue!

But let’s say I can get someone to write the bond 15K a year. I take a lb of tobacco for $19/lb and make 7 two ounce flakes packages factoring in waste and stems and sell at $20/each. That is $140 - $19 - $1 (packaging?) or $120 profit. I would have to sell 125 lbs of raw leaf to product to break even or put it another way, 875 two ounce packages. This does not include building rental, or paying for a real press and slicer that is industrial. Believe me I am not going to be doing 125 lbs on a frame press from Northern Tool. After that then I can pay me? Thanks, I already have a day job. Now if some big blender wants to use my recipes, have at it. Just give credit where credit is due.

2024 Halloween Plug Massacre

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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 case of 16oz wide mouth Mason jars full of flakes. All the images below are straight Virginia’s except the last 2 images. Those are either Angel of Izmir or Basma Bastard.

2024 CORPS Pipe Show

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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. I was able to pickup 2 Walt Hettinger pipes and some old McClelland and P.S. Navy Flake as well as the limited edition CORPS tin.

2023 Year End Thoughts

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It certainly was a fun year of pressing tobacco. Still trying to figure out the elusive straight Virginia recipe. I have gone through a couple of my old straight Virginia plugs to see how they develop. The first one I did was a Bright/Yellow Virginia plug and it is not bad. Not grassy and more of rye bread. I will try a few more odd ball ideas in 2024

Logo’s were fun and made a few t-shirts of Grateful Plug logo and gave those away in various tobacco bombs. Also made a Zippo Grateful Plug logo lighter. That was a bit of annoying interaction and will just leave it at that.

Wet Plugs

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, for unknown reasons, I had a batch of Red Queen plugs that were very wet. Not sure the exact reason for it but humidity while pressing might have hand in it. The plugs were full of juice running and the flakes, when sliced, were very flexible.

Since I don’t soak tobacco like the commercial guys with PG for mold control the only real solution is either stove it for a couple of hours at 200F or slice and air dry before bagging. I like to stove under pressure so in this case I just sliced up and let it dry for a few hours before moving to jars/Mylar.

Ways to pressing pipe tobacco

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There are several ways to pressing pipe tobacco and as elaborate as your budget will allow. Why press? It melds the flavors better of the tobacco no matter if you are doing raw leaf or using an existing blend. Many folks like make tobacco cakes and plugs.

Blend pressed without prior drying

Moisture content will affect how the plug compacts. One experiment was pressed right our of the bag and another press where the tobacco was microwaved for 20 seconds and tossed it like a salad to get the excess moisture out. The straight out of the bag pressed for 3 weeks quickly expanded like a crumble cake after 3 weeks. Not a lot of color change. The microwaved tobacco came out as a black plug as dense as Salty Dogs. The dense plug was cut into flakes and was a sweet mellow smoke that went for an hour and 45 minutes with no relighting.

Blog on amateur pipe tobacco blending

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am an amateur tobacco blender. I make personal blends and blends for Afterburner Cigar Lounge in Lillington, NC. I don’t really make any money on it but it does give the local shop something unique to sell and a way for others to obtain some of my blends. I do it for fun, not for money.

The goal of this site is to inspire others and credit those that have helped me in this hobby. One of my first blends was various iterations until Red Queen V was created. From there I started playing with pressing tobacco. Lately I have been experimenting working with whole leaf tobacco.