Thoughts

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. ...

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 ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...