Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Pike Pricks Podcast with your hosts, John and Matt.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to episode two of the Pipe Pricks Podcast.
We're glad that you came back after episode number one.
And we are John and Matt.
And Matt.
And how did the name come about? Well, that's a good question. We were sitting here and Matt had the great idea of doing a pipe podcast, but his name for it was the Pipe Studs. And I said, no, actually, we're the Pipe Pricks.
And it stuck.
So today we're sitting here and I'm smoking some Edward G. Virginia, and I'm
[00:01:08] Speaker A: smoking some Sulani Silver Flake.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: And the pipe I'm using is a Geez, I gotta read this darn thing. And my eyes aren't that good.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Well, I'm using it's a dawn smoking a Becker looks like a little bent pot kind of deal. And I'm smoking a Jody Davis sandblast volcano slash freehand.
And before we forget, thanks to just the tip cigars for hosting us and
[00:01:41] Speaker B: the cowboy owner for putting up with our baloney.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: So I got. Just got the Sulani Silver Flake this week, and there's a great pipe culture story behind it. I hadn't talked to the owner of Monjora International, Steve Monzora, for maybe 15
[00:02:04] Speaker B: years, and I've met Steve at various pipe shows over the years, and he is one gentleman of. Of the pipe industry.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: And so I messaged him and said, hey, Steve, how you doing?
Do you have any Salani Silver Flake?
Within an hour, he replied and told me the price, asked me how many tins I wanted, and asked if I was still at the same address and same phone number, which I thought after not talking for 15 years was a pretty amazing thing.
I told him I wanted three tins, and he said he'd ship them out Monday and call me and get my credit card information later.
So, very trusting man, a very great guy to remember me.
After my fiance passed, he actually got me in our door with the pink stem, which is usually usually reserved for employees and representatives of our door, but he made it happen for me.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah, Steve is definitely one of the gentlemen of the pipe community.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: He's one hell of a great guy.
So the next thing we want to talk about is last weekend. Last weekend. Two weekends ago.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Weekends ago.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Two weekends ago was the Chicago Pipe show, which is the largest in the United States.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Yes, it is. It is the largest. And I've been attending it since about 2000. Used to go with Bill Kotick, and I was his donkey. I carried all of his pipes into the show.
And it took us about five years till we learned that the heck was carrying the pipes through the show. That all he had to do was park his, his van outside the front door. And it made it one heck of a way easier.
So the Chicago show is probably the biggest pipe show in the country.
It brings together many of the people in the pipe smoking, pipe collecting community.
It is a great place to purchase tobacco and pipes, just size wise. If you look, Columbus has about 120 tables.
The Chicago shows has about 300 tables.
And if you can't find a pipe there, you're not going to find it.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: So what was your best pipe find at the Chicago show, John?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: That's a good question. I mean, there's been so many.
I guess the last time I was there, which was last year, I didn't go this year was I bought a couple of the Lord of the Rings pipes that were made based on the Tolkien movies.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: And for those of you who don't know, John is a huge Lord of the Rings fans.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I got the swords and everything.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: They're hanging in a small smoking room at his house is five. Five of the swords. Six of the swords.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah, more. Probably more than that. Yeah, I also got one of these, the sword from the Highlander series.
So, yeah, the Chicago show is the biggest show.
Now granted, I've only been to very basically two shows, which is.
Well, I've been actually more than that. I've been to the Richmond show. I've been to the one in West Virginia, and I've been to Chicago in Vegas.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Right?
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah, And I've been to the Vegas show.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Let's picture John in Vegas for a moment.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: John doesn't go to gamble. He goes to buy pipes and tobacco.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Same, same difference.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Well, So anyways, the Chicago show is the probably the largest show in the country and it's also one of the best. And they have a separate smoking tent, which is huge.
And last year they also had a portable cigar bar outside if you wanted to partake on cigars.
But there's plenty to do. They have activities there.
One of the gentlemen we were with took their basic pipe carving class, which they have a basic class and a more advanced class if you want to make your own pipes.
And a lot of the pipe carvers who are out there today have taken that class and have gone on from their. Yeah.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: So what was your best tobacco find? I'm guessing it involves 5,100 of some kind.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: I'd say my best tobacco find at Chicago Was.
Well, actually, actually it was a pipe thing. I won a pipe last year and I also purchased a big pipe and I found a very nice Costello pipe at the show.
So those, those were the fines. I don't go to that show looking to buy pipe tobacco because I have more than enough pipe tobacco. I go looking for pipes.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: In a future podcast, we will discuss John Cellar and how it was, how it was created. But I'll give you a sneak hint. He has more tobacco in his house than most pipe shops I've been to.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: I'd say probably somewhere between 2 to 3,000 jars and tins of, well, 8 and tins were all purchased between 2005 and 2020.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: So what's the culture like at one of these pipe conventions? Is it a lot of camaraderie or Extremely.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: A lot of camaraderie.
Like I said, they have a very huge smoking tent in Chicago. And the.
And the thing with these shows, and I've been going to Chicago show for about 20 years, is not so much the pipes and the tobacco, but it's the people that you meet and share tobacco with. For example, we were at one show one time and one of the people brought out some 40 years old Virginia cigarettes made of pure Virginia tobacco.
And I even tried one of those and it was excellent.
So you just don't go for that, but you go for the camaraderie.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm sure you've met a lot of great people through those shows and developed some friendships over the years and.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Yeah, well, Steve Monjour being one, Law Dog being another one.
Law Dog is one of the nicest people and easiest people to deal with if you want to buy a pipe or trade a pipe or whatever.
For example, I made a big purchase of pipe tobacco and Law Dog asked me some of it was the tobacco from the old Smoker's Haven from many years ago.
And it was the large cans. And I had about 25 of the large cans. Law Dog asked me send him all those cans and he could sell them through contacts he had for about $300 a tin.
And so when it was all done, I had about.
And after he took his part, his fee, I had about $5,000 credit and I bought two very nice Danish pipes which I still smoke to this day.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: And they are quite small for your taste.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: They're very small for me, yeah. Since I like the larger type, larger
[00:10:49] Speaker A: pipes, John, the bigger the pipe, more John's gonna like it.
He showed me an Astor Astor Ardor. Ardor Magnum he has. And I forget what that Costello is, but it's one of the biggest pipes I've ever seen in my life.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
So next I guess is on our list of topics for today.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yep. And just before, before we move on, I want to mention that John will definitely be attending the Columbus show this year.
I'm hoping to. And we'll be able to give you a first hand accounting of that show. We were hoping to get somebody we knew to dial in today and talk about it. But talk about Chicago show from this year. But they're all previously. Previously committed or should be.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Committed.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Or should be. Maybe we should be too. So one last question, John, without naming names, did you ever meet any real pricks in the pipe community?
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Yes.
And basically there are certain people I just will not deal with. I don't care how good of a deal they give me on a pipe or whatever.
But one thing I've learned, once you get a reputation, that reputation sticks with you.
And let's just put it this way, if you screw a person on a purchase, you're never forgotten.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: I assume that the pricks are few and far between. Between the genuine people in the industry.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Very few and far between.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good news and that's good for our community as well.
You know, John and I are both very big on building the pipe community here. John helps run the Washington, Pittsburgh Pipe Club area local pipe club that we have and you know we come down here every Saturday and invite people to come smoke with us and hang out and we share different tobaccos that are either aged or hard to find and just try to share the wealth of our knowledge and the wealth of our tobacco sellers with people that'll put up with us.
With people that will put up with us. So the next thing I wanted to talk about was some tobacco blending experiences.
John and I have both attempted it.
John's we know the result of mine is still baking but John, why don't you tell us about your Lemper Leopoldo Leopoldo blend of pipe tobacco back around 2000i.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: I used to be in these little West Virginia towns with nothing to do.
So I started writing a series of and I noticed there was a deficit in information or stories that combined pipe smoking, pipe collecting and science fiction. So I wrote a series of stories called the Emperor Leopoldo series which are
[00:14:18] Speaker A: linked from the About Us page on our website, the pipebricks.com yeah, they
[00:14:26] Speaker B: are on Pipedia and so as of right now there's 20 some stories in the series.
So our local club, we Decided to do a pipe blend for the club.
And we called it Emperor Leopoldo's favorite blend.
And it was based on Emperor Leopoldo. You'd have to read the stories, but his. His likes.
And so around 2015, we got together with Mary McNeil at McClelland, and we wanted a blend of 5100, which is their Virginia, and 5105, which is their stove Virginia. The problem was we weren't sure what percentages we wanted in the blend.
So Mary put together three sample tins for us.
One was like 60, 40, 65, 35. And basically three different proportions of the mature Virginia and the Stowe Virginia.
So we sat down one night, the Pittsburgh pipe club at Bill Kotick's house. And many people will remember Bill Kotick. He used to be at all the Chicago shows.
And we tried all three blends, and we took a vote by the membership, and I think it was the 60, 41.
And that's what we had tinned. And we had. My granddaughter drew up the
[00:16:18] Speaker A: COVID art for the tin.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, the artwork on the tin. And Mary McNeil had some old paper that she thought would be perfect on the tins.
So we ordered like three orders of the. Their minimum, which at that time was 80 tins.
And I still have about 8 tens to this day.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: And I, thanks to John, graciously have a tin of it.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's a very good Virginia blend.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: It is a very solid Virginia straight Virginia blend. I. I rather enjoy it. And everyone I've let try my secret stash of it has enjoyed it as well.
Anything else on the history of the emperor Leopoldo?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: One I used to. You can still find them at a show, but they're very hard to find
[00:17:13] Speaker A: and very expensive when you do find them.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. But they're basically a mixture of 5100 and 5105, if you remember the old McClellan numbering system.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So my experiment is a little more recent. Well, a lot more recent.
I bought some blending tobaccos from c D and smoked each of them in my mirror Shawn. To get a nice clean taste of what they are. No, you know, no ghosting with the mirror Shawn. And just able to taste the flavor of each blending component.
And I've jarred my first batch of what I'm calling the liberty tip blend.
There's a post explain how you got the name. Yes. So liberty tip comes from a combination of a local distillery called liberty pool spirits and just to tip cigars. Because I had the. The idea of creating this blend while at a Sunday Funday event hosted at Liberty Pool.
And what I did was I took some charred white oak and infused it with one of their bourbons.
And then I'm letting the tobacco mature with that, those charred white oak pieces in the blend.
So this past Wednesday was one week of aging. So in three and a half weeks, actually get to taste my. My new blend and let other people try it and see if it's any good or not.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Also, we're planning. I have the equipment to press pipe tobacco.
Unfortunately, when you. When you press it, you use a lot of tobacco, getting it down to a small puck and.
But there's basically two ways you improve the pipe tobacco. The first one is by stoving it. And our friend Homer has that down to an art.
And he will record how much time he takes his tins. He has a calibrated oven and he may put it in there like at 190 degrees for three hours. And he marks each time tin. Now that's a sealed tin. The tin will puff up and that's without the plastic top.
And then he leaves it in there until it comes back down and then leaves it sit.
So stoving is one way to improve the or. Cooking is one way to improve the pipe tobacco. The other one is by pressing. And here you use.
You put the tobacco in a press and you start with a lot. And as you work your way down and compress it, it marries the flavors of the individual tobaccos, but it puts it into sort of like a puck when it's all done.
And of course, you have to rub it out and all that, but then you let tobacco age even after that for a period of time.
And we have some plans on doing that down the road. So that's another thing we're looking at.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And my blend is a Virginia Prique blend with some red Virginia Cavendish and some dark Burley in it to just give it some body.
I just posted on the website posts about it, or you can see the 10 labels and get the descriptions of it and everything. And, well, the jar labels.
I doubt this will ever be a product any of you can try, but I've always wanted to try blending my own tobacco. And with some advice from John and some other people, I went ahead and went for it. So also I will tell you, Chat GPT understands tobacco blending to some extent and has given me some advice, but it was minor tweaks and mostly information I gave her and she fed me back. And she can actually, she actually created a runbook for my tobacco so if I ever want to make it again, I have step by step instructions for it. So very happy about that.
So the next thing I wanted to talk about is our Ask the Pricks segment.
There is a form on our website. There will be a link in the show notes to our website, of course, but there is an Ask to Pray tricks forum. We ask that you, if you have questions that you want answered, go fill out the form and John and I will answer them on a future podcast. But I see you have a question for this segment. Yes, I have a question for John. I, I've been, I haven't, I just sprung this on in this morning. So he's not, he doesn't even know the problem yet. So we're going to get his initial reaction.
So John, I, I took one of the pipes I smoke a lot and put some salonic silver flake in it.
1 Tonight I got it and it tasted sour.
So I've heard of sour pipe before.
My question to you is twofold. What causes it and how do you fix it?
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Okay, well first of all, I would say it depends on the pipe. It's depends on also the tobacco you smoke in it and it also depends on your smoking habits.
Now my one friend Homer, after every time he smokes a pipe, he doesn't ream it out, but he, he cleans the pipe real good so that he makes sure that he doesn't have any ghosting. Now ghosting is a term when you are tasting a previously smoked tobacco in a pipe.
And here again, I'm not sure if ghosting was your problem.
So to that extent, in general, most people, if they smoke Virginia's Latakias English blends, all your different blends, they you want to have separate pipes for each of the tobaccos. In other words, to minimize the effects of ghosting.
So for me it's really easy since I smoke Virginia, I very rarely ghost a pipe.
But then again, if you're smoking, you want to take certain tobaccos and smoke them in certain pipes broken out by the main types of tobaccos. You do not want to take a English pipe, English tobacco that's been smoked in a pipe, and take that pipe and then without cleaning it out and then smoking a Virginia or some other tobacco in it because you don't want it to ghost the taste.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah. So this wasn't ghosting so much as having just a sour flavor. And what little I could read up on it was it's caused by they, most people say excessive moisture in the pipe and it not Drying properly.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: So a rule of thumb is that at least for me, if I smoke a pipe, I let it sit at least after I empty out the ash, I let it sit for at least 25, 24 hours before I will smoke another blend in in the, in that pipe.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think, I think, yeah, I think the sour pipe thing is hopefully something I can get out of that pipe because I really like it. It's that little Brigici nose warm sandblasted nose warmer I have.
So hopefully I can fix that because I really enjoy that pipe.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's either that or you dedicate certain pipes to certain tobaccos and you religiously stick adhere to that program.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely don't smoke aromatics in non aromatics in the same pipe. But I haven't gotten to the point where I have Virginia pipes versus English pipes, English tobacco pipes for example.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Well, I smoke mainly Virginia, so I don't have a problem.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: I do need to because my tastes are expanding and minor limited. Yeah, John's are pretty set in stone at this point because John's set in stone.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: When you hit my age, you kind of get fixed in what you, what you like and, and how you deal with it.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: All right, well that wraps up our, our first real episode. Even though we're calling this episode two, which is the episode that makes you think why did I come back?
[00:26:54] Speaker B: I would, I would recommend that you. At the end of my bio is a link to Pipedia.
And for those that are not familiar with Pipedia, every pipe smoker should be.
And that's where all the Emperor Leopoldo stories are available and any other thing that I've written or I and others have written jointly in different publications.
And so that's what we put it on the Pipedia page.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So pipe media, for those of you who don't know, is kind of Wikipedia for pipe tobacco, pipe carvers, all things pipe and pipe tobacco. So we, we definitely recommend you check out that site if you need information.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: And I believe it's pipedia.org yes, it is.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Pipedia.org I'll, I'll include a link in the show notes for people.
So that wraps up our first episode. We want to thank everybody for listening.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: We want to thank the librarian for putting up with us in this room today.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Inside Duke, inside the JTT Silo joke.
We, we stole the back room today.
And but yeah, I think this recording went pretty well.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: If you got questions as a form there, you can submit your question.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yes, definitely go to the website, ask the pricks. We Only ask your level of pipe knowledge because we want to be able to tailor our responses to you. So if you're a beginner, don't feel bad about asking a question. If you're an experienced pipe smoker, bring them on.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Which brings up another point.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Hopefully you can stump the pricks.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: So I have been a pipe smoker since I started at age 17. I'm now 77 and Matt's got equal amount of experiences.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Well, I got about 30 years. I'm a little relative newbie, kind of to John. But you're much younger than me too. That is true. By the time I get to John's age, you'll be a prick. Well, some people already say I am, but please visit the website. Please use the Ask the pricks form.
We encourage your questions whether you're, like I said, whether you're new or experienced. Bring them on and we will provide
[00:29:31] Speaker B: you with our opinion.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Remember, it is an opinion.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Yes, it'll be our opinions on the facts.
Please don't ask any health related questions because we're not going to get into that.
We're not touching that, that topic with the 10 foot pole, so to speak.
But yeah, thanks everyone.
Thanks again to Sam and just the tip Cigars for letting us do the podcast here.
And we'll see you next time.
Have a good day.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah, talk to you later.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: 73.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: 73.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Just to keep it consistent, John's a ham radio operator as well. So 73 is apparently over and out.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Well, it's better than 88. 88 is love and kisses.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Oh, boy. Yeah, no 88 for you guys just yet.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: 73 is best regards.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: 73 is best regards with. Well, best regards, everyone. Have a great weekend and we'll see you next time where we might have a special guest interview. Hopefully. We're trying to line that up now.
All right, talk to you soon.
