Tin tobacco

C&D Burley Sleepers: Pegasus and Habana Daydream

For many pipe smokers, Cornell and Diehl, despite their 400+ blends, equates to strong burly blends. Haunted Bookshop, Big’N’Burley, Old Joe Krantz, and their Burley Flakes are recognized for being bold, rough and tumble, and unapologetically strong. However with 40 burley blends and counting, there is a wider range of flavors C&D offers. Among these…

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Solani Virginia Flake 633

Growing up my family traveled constantly. We drove from the east coast to the west, from the gulf to Edmonton, up and down the rockies, blue ridge mountains, catskills, and sierras. Invariably we’d pass a truck stop that was bustling and my mom would say “Must be good if they’re that busy”. Solani Virginia Flake…

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Cobblestone Outdoors Hiking

Burley lovers are the redheaded stepchildren of the pipe tobacco family. Do you like English? There are over 250 readily available options for you. Fancy Virginia? Over 300. Just a Virginia Flake? You still have about 100 options. Okay you want a pure Virginia? You still have dozens of tins and handful of widely distributed…

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Cornell and Diehl’s Innismouth

In the last decade HP Lovecraft has had a revival. Once relegated to the black fingernail polish set, now even your mom and maybe your baby is passingly familiar with Cthulhu and the concept of the Eldritch horror. And maybe why the person behind the expansive literary exploration of dread is not to be celebrated….

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Astley’s No. 44 Dark Virginia Flake

Tinkering with your pipe tobacco is something that occurs naturally for pipe smokers. You begin with thinking that two of your tobaccos might taste better together than apart. You build or buy a press to turn your ribbon into cake. Maybe you start burping your  jars of Virginia when you hear it speeds up the…

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Pipe Tobacco Review: Ashton’s Artisan’s Blend

Longtime readers know that this time of year, like many pipe smokers, I’ll dig through my cellar to find the smokiest blend I haven’t yet reviewed, smoke it all winter, and drop a review once the snow starts melting. Ashton Artisan’s blend is a highly regarded heavy Latakia English blend. It gets spoken in the…

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GL Pease Key Largo

Enjoying Cigar Leaf in one’s pipe is more difficult than you would expect. Everyone’s first instinct is to deconstruct a cigar, load it into your pipe, and enjoy the creamy, heavy cigar smoke with all the convenience of pipe smoking. This isn’t going to be pleasant. The burn will be wonky and the taste will…

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Boswell’s Northwood

In the heyday of pipe smoking, around 1830-1970, pipe smoking was a local experience, dominated not by large national or international tobacco conglomerates, but by your local tobacconist. These stores would source single component tobaccos which would be blended in house to serve the customer’s needs. As smoking a pipe became less and less fashionable,…

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Pipe Tobacco Review: Dan Bill Bailey’s Balkan Can’t Be Beat

Though I became a pipe smoker in 2014, it wasn’t until two years later I found myself in a real pipe store, Iwan Ries in the midst of Downtown Chicago. It’s a beautiful store, full of warm wood and delightful aromas. I was served by a dapper gentleman who was a devoted smoker himself. He…

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Samuel Gawith Skiff Mixture

English pipe tobacco has an incredible depth and breadth. There are smoky Latakia-driven monsters like Esoterica’s legendary Penzance, C&D Star of the East Flake, and Hearth & Home  10 to Midnight. There are tamer, more balanced blends like Presbyterian, Peterson 965, Samuel Gawith Squadron Leader, and Peter Stokkebye’s Proper English. The spicy English is a…

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