Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Pipe Pricks podcast with your hosts John and Matt.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to the Pipe Pricks Podcast episode four.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: I'm Matt and I'd like to thank just the Tip Cigars for welcoming us and we are, as John would say in wild, wonderful South Park, Pennsylvania just to tip cigars this morning.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: And I'm John and I'm smoking a real nice Costello straight grain with hu Virginia tobacco.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: The Edward G, I believe.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: And I am smoking a brand new. Well new to me.
Well brand new actually. J.S. breyer's sandblast poker.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Was that J.S.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: j.S. Briars.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: I didn't make it.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: You're funny. He's a newer carver up and coming out of Texas. We'll put his socials in the in the chat. And I am smoking some plum pudding bourbon barrel age which is a pretty and it's the sutliff error if you guys know the difference. So it's a pretty rare tobacco to get your hands on and I was fortunate enough to find a 10 this past couple weeks.
So one of our first topic today is going to be guidance for new pipe smokers. And Jimmy, Jimmy K. We'll call him, was a friend of mine in high school and John and I had him for in home physical therapist for various reasons and he sent us a question that we thought deserved more than a casual answer.
So we're going to talk about advice for new pipe smokers and you know, what kind of pipes do we recommend starting out with?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: I really can't talk about corn cobs since I really never smoked corn cob.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: So the first one I listed was a corn cob from your local brick and mortar or Missouri Marichon makes really good ones and pretty inexpensive. You can get a nice starter COB for around 20 to $25 and they come with a hardwood plug in the bottom. And the nice thing about a corn cob is they don't ghost flavors. And dawn, do you want to sit explain what ghosting of flavor is in a pipe?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Well, a briar pipe, once you smoke it a number of times, it will tend to keep the flavor and so on of previous tobaccos that were smoked in that pipe. And that is called ghosting.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Okay. And just for the record, while they're called Missouri Mirror Sean, they don't actually sell any Mirror Sean pipes, which I think is kind of ironic.
But I actually did pick up a new corn cob from then this week that I'll be smoking after the after the pipe after the podcast here.
My second recommendation is to look for a cheap basket pipe.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Sorry?
[00:03:40] Speaker A: To pick up a cheap basket pipe. I'm trying to figure out why my iPad is recording everything I'm saying right now.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: So is mine.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Okay, this is weird. Anyway, so picking up a cheap basket or wall pipe, you can usually find one in the, what would you say, sixty to eighty dollar range? John.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's appropriate.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: The big thing you want to look for in a basket pipe is making sure it doesn't have any big divots or fills in it. Although even with that case, they should smoke just fine. John, do you want to explain what a fill would fill? Fill is in a place.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Well, a fill is when there's a flaw in the actual wood itself.
And a lot of the pipe makers will use a putty which we will then coat over with their finish.
And the putty is usually a weak spot in the, in the briar. And the ideal. You want a pipe that has no fills.
But then you should. New smoker should not discount having pipes with fills in them.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
Fills while ugly or not detrimental to your smoking experience.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: It depends on how big the fill is.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: And where it's at.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Very true.
And then when you have friends like John, you can always, you know, go the gift from a friend route.
You know, look, look for a local pipe club and maybe somebody new to you, new to will help. Be willing to help somebody new get on their feet.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: I've given away a number of pipes to new smokers to try to encourage them to advance in the hobby and get full enjoyment from the tobacco they smoke.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So once you have your pipe, the next big thing is tobacco. And you know, there are a variety of tobacco types out there.
I'm going to lump all aromatics together because what I classify as an aromatic is any, any tobacco that has a topping or casing that gets a flavor. So this is like if you remember smelling your grandfather's vanilla's vanilla pipe smoke or cherry pipe smoke. That's that, that, that's an aromatic.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Do you, do you know that at one time they actually sold a blend in a. A. I think Kentucky Club made it and it had a menthol in it.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Oh wow. Menthol Pipe tobacco.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Pipe tobacco. Yeah.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: That would be not good.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Ah, well, it sold well. Obviously I didn't say I smoked it, but it sold.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: So then we get into to the other categories and the next one is John's favorite and that's a straight Virginia blend.
So if you were going to come to say just the tip, you might Want to pick out Winchester out of the bulk section.
That, that is a really good straight Virginia that John and I both smoke.
The next one we have is what's called a Virginia perique blend or a vapor.
And an example of something Sam has off the top of my head would be like Bayou Morning, I believe is a. Is a straight vapor and then.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Or an English blend.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Well, that's the next on the list is our English blend is a Latakia forward blend. And that'll have a real smoky campfire taste to it, kind of like an Islay scotch.
And then we get Balkans, which are the last one we'll talk about tonight. And that is an oriental forward tobacco. So oriental tobacco is forward.
What I would, what I would recommend buy an ounce of each at your local shop or I would not recommend
[00:08:11] Speaker B: going to a local pipe club meeting where people usually put out a ton of different tobaccos and, and try them all.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yes, that is, that is another good suggestion is find your local pipe club, which we're going to talk about in a second.
Go to a pipe club meeting and say, hey, I'm new, I want to try in English.
And I will bet dollars to donuts that somebody in that group is going to pull.
Here's my favorite English blend. You got to try it.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta try this Dunhill 965
[00:08:43] Speaker A: or something that you can't get anymore.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: But yeah, you can't get anymore. Right.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: So buy, buy an ounce of anything you think you might like. So smell them.
Smell is your best taste, best sense before you buy the tobacco and then you know, buy an ounce or go to a pipe club and try them.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: And when you find one that you like, go back, buy more, get larger quantities and make sure you have enough that to keep you satisfied.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Yes. And take notes. It doesn't have to be anything I taste figs and raisins. It can be.
I smoked Hu Edward G. And I really like the sweetness and the taste.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Or you can actually get software programs that you can record all your experiences in.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: I don't know who would do anything like that, John?
[00:09:39] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Maybe me.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Maybe.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Maybe I have chat GPT talking directly to my pipe database. These now.
Anyway, try them, take notes what you like, what you don't like. And here's the most important thing.
If you continue down the pipe smoking road, say you get into it for five or six years, revisit what you didn't like initially.
Because I found that I used to be a Virginia, Virginia perique guy. And now while I still love those. I'm smoking more and more English blends.
So again, I'm not, I've tried, I've tried them all.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: I've settled on Virginia's and I like my Virginias.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Yeah, well, John's 77. He, he, he's tried everything multiple times and he's set in his ways, which we can't blame.
And then find a pipe club locally or online.
We have in this area in Pittsburgh, we have the Washington Pittsburgh Pipe Club.
We meet the second Tuesday of every month and out second Saturday of every month at Allegheny Smokeworks and the fourth in Blanox and the fourth Saturday, AKA today at Just the Tip Cigars in South Park.
There are some online pipe clubs I met, I am a member of the Average Joe Pike Club and I'll put a link for that in the meeting notes.
We meet every Monday night at 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern, and just video chat and smoke and chat, you know, and there are some forums for the groups for trading and stuff like that as well.
And then there's the United Pipe Clubs of America. You can follow them on Facebook.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: They're an umbrella group.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: They're an umbrella group that will help you locate a local group.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: To you. And they have a Facebook forum, is a Facebook messaging group as well.
So, yeah, I think the big, the biggest thing we'll recommend is finding a pipe club and just talking to other, talking to other smokers.
And Jimmy, if you need help picking out a pipe or something, let John or I know we will.
We will definitely help point you in the right direction of a inexpensive.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Do his pipe rehab.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll do your pipe rehab since you did our physical rehab.
All right, so moving on to a slightly more advanced topic here, We want to talk a little bit about what sellering is and some basics of sellering. So John, you have one of the biggest sellers I've ever seen in my life, probably ever will see in my life.
Why don't you explain what cellaring is and why we do it.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: So the general rule of thumb that I'm sure you heard is if you find a blend you like, buy when you're buying tobacco, buy two cans, one to smoke, one to put away.
I would say buy five cans, four to put away, one to smoke. Right now, many blends will tend to get better with time.
Certain tobaccos get better tasting. Your Virginias will get sweeter and other tobaccos, their flavors will get muted.
And so you might find the difference between a 2020 tin of tobacco and a 2025 tin of tobacco. And that's because of the additional five years of aging that the, that you've let the tin have.
And usually the, the desire is to find and age something that you like.
Although having said that, I would say my own seller has about 90% of stuff that I like and maybe 10% of stuff that's questionable as far as whether I like it or not.
But you got to remember that over time your taste may change and you know, you might want to keep a few of the ones that you, you don't like. At least you don't like right now. A couple years from now you may like.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah. John mentioned the buy one or buy two by five.
My rule for anything that is small batch so I want to get my hands on is I buy one to smoke and two to age.
That way you can try it maybe five years and then 10 years or 10 years and 20 years, depending on how old you are, you know.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: So my rule of thumb is you take a tin of tobacco, you put it away, you open up, say five years from now and smoke it. Now there I'm storing it in the original tin.
Now, there's other ways to store tobacco. What do you do, for example, Matt, if you buy a lot of bulk, a certain blend, it only comes in bulk.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Certain blends only come in bulk. So my, my opinion is nothing beats a good old mason jar for long term aging.
Now, some people buy a vacuum sealer for their mason jars. I'm one of those people. So I remove as much oxygen as I can from it so that it will have more aging ability.
But honestly.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: But you do want to leave a little bit, a little bit of head space in the jar?
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
Some people just jar it up and screw on the top and let it age and they have perfect success.
But ultimately, the.
If you can get an original tape tin that is a sealable tin, that's what you want to keep with, with for example, J.M. boswell.
And they will tell you this when you buy it.
Their tins are not designed for aging. They have a push on top, not a screw on, not anything that seals to keep the freshness in. So they will tell you flat out when you buy tin that it is not for aging purposes because it doesn't seal.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: But on the other hand, if you had other blends from years ago, they were made to be aged and in fact you were encouraged to age them.
The old blends put out by Pipe Collectors Club of America, those were very good put away and open some of those Virginias after they got about 20 years worth of aging.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Oh, and John, guess what I found?
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Oh, what?
[00:17:18] Speaker A: I found a tin of Boston 1776 that I got from your cellar.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Oh, you, you grabbed one out of there? I still had one.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Yeah, so I, I, I found one of those. Maybe I'll bring it over to your 4th of July fiesta and we'll see.
We'll crack it open. If we're allowed to smoke pipes around
[00:17:44] Speaker B: your family, we can do anything we want out on the deck.
Now there's other. Other, that's not to say that other type of containers won't work.
They will work, but they will not work as well.
For example, I stored a whole bunch of tobacco years ago for maybe a 10 year period in the original seal bags. And then I would put it in an old Chinese food container and just put it away. And having opened some, we just opened some Crown achievement the other night. Now granted, the Crown achievement was a little bit dry because those are not, they let the oxygen leave the container, but it was still very good.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And another, another option if you have some bulk is to buy heat sealable Mylar bags on Amazon and you want to get at least 5,5 mil thickness and you want to get the ones that are opaque, but if you have small amounts you can put them in a Mylar bag and heat seal them.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Why don't you talk a little bit about the little storage containers?
[00:19:09] Speaker A: The lock and lock.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Or the pocket jars.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Pocket jars?
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Sorry, we're having some weird issues with something.
Sorry, hold on one second guys.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Is your phone talking to you?
[00:19:31] Speaker A: No, my phone's all. Do not disturb. I don't know what to. Anyway, so what Tobacco age the best.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: John, it's generally accepted that Virginia's age the best, they may peak out about 10 years of age.
However, there are different methods. For example, if you buy.
I'm going to talk about tin stoving.
So what some of us done over the years, and my friend Homer is an expert in this, is what they call tin stuffing. That's where you take a tin, you just take off the plastic top and then what you do is you put it in the oven, for example, at 180 degrees for like three hours.
And of course the top will kind of blow up a little bit. But then what you do is you then after your three hour period, you let it cool down naturally and then you put it away for about a month and before you actually try to smoke it. And what that does is it's an artificial Way to enhance the sweetness of the Virginias that are in the mix.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: And it's said to add, what, about two to five years of age to a tobacco?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Three to five.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, three to five years of age to tobacco.
And that is, if I remember correctly, 180 degrees Fahrenheit for 360 degrees minutes.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Well, that's just what I used.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: And that's what Homer, I believe, uses as well.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: So, yeah, Homer is our.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: He's our ST expert. But that should get you, get you going. If you want to try it. Do not put the plastic from a tin in the oven and do not go over.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Definitely no higher than 200 degrees. I would go a little less because, you know, the ovens, they heat, they stop down, then they heat again.
So you're not getting a constant heating unless you have a calibrated oven, which Homer does have.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Okay, last thing about cellaring. Where do you want to keep it?
[00:21:46] Speaker B: In a cool, dry place, such as a dark cupboard or something on that
[00:21:52] Speaker A: order or in your cellar as the term came to be.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: But yes, cool, dark, minimize the amount of sunlight exposure. Keep it sealed.
I recommend putting a label with when you cell it on the jar. If you're using a jar or right on the tin, the date you sell it, just so you can keep track of how long and how much age it.
Even if you are anal like me and keep track of everything in software, it'll still help you find tins quickly if you have multiple lots that were solared at different times or different manufacturing dates, things like that.
All right, so that's, that's soaring basis.
We, you know, and then the last question we have, and this is a question for John, because I have not had this make any difference in my life that I have noticed from Ask the Pricks. We have a question from Jesse.
So I heard that smoking certain blends in certain shapes is beneficial. Have you found any truth to this?
And John's going to tell you everything tastes better in a hot bill.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely a Costello hawkbill.
Some people espouse the position that certain tobaccos should only be smoked in small bowl pipes or some in large bowl pipes. I like large bull pipes. I don't necessarily see a difference between the large bowl and the small bowl, but other people do detect a difference in the pipe.
And I'd say a more important thing is that you smoke it any pipe that is well maintained and clean. And what I mean by clean is not that you clean the pipe every time, but at least have run pipe cleaners through it.
You'd let it sit so that whatever moisture has been in the shank of the pipe, what you don't want to have happen is the ghosting, which is where you are detecting not the flavor of the tobacco that you're smoking, but a previous tobacco that you've smoked in the same pipe. For example, I would not smoke a of Virginia in a pipe that I have smoked a heavy Latakia in previously.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Right.
And that comes back to the whole ghosting when you're trying new things. And so. Yeah, but I believe I'm with John.
I do think some things like wall thickness will make a pipe better or worse, but I don't think.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Let me ask you a question.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Go ahead.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: So does. Does a tobacco smoke better in a straight grain pipe as opposed to one with a mixed grain?
[00:25:20] Speaker A: I don't think so.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: There are those people that say it does.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Those people.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: None of them are in this room right now.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Those people have opinions.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah, everybody has opinions.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Opinions are like assholes. Everyone got one.
All right, so I think we're gonna wrap up episode four today.
Nice short episode to get us back in, back in the swing of things.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: So we are now sort of talking with a major, major blender and I'm not going to say any more than that. And hopefully we hope to have him available down the road for a interview and we will make sure there's a lot of advanced knowledge when we.
When and if he agrees to do it.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Yes, this is.
I won't say any names, but he is a legend in the pipe community.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: He's also a legend, legend in his own mind.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: I didn't say that.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: I did.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: So I'd like to thank you all for listening.
Please Visit the fight pricks.com I'm gonna start doing some tobacco reviews just online. I'm trying to convince John to do some, but when I asked him to write me 500 words, he said I don't write 500 words was his exact response. So we encourage you to go to our website, click on Ask the pricks and send us some questions if you have them.
We'll be happy to answer anything and everything.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: We also want to thank Sam at just the Tip for allowing us to use his back room here to record these sessions.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yes. And as always, we thank you for listening. We hope to see you next time. And Matt and John are out of here.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Sayonora.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Have a good day, everybody.
