Video: Adam on Tobacco, Part I
The first entry in an irregular series featuring Adam and pipe tobacco
Sykes and I have talked over the years about tobacco blending, which is not surprising, and we decided that our blog is a great way to talk about some of the blends we make for our walk-in customers. When I began working for the company, we had a huge variety of bulk tobaccos - and now we have even more. While nearly all of my time is in my second-floor office working on various aspects of our weekly updates, the chance to talk tobaccos with a customer is always great. There have been many pipe smokers in our store, Low Country Pipe & Cigar, and some of them like to taste our various blends to decide what best suits their taste. We encourage this, and always enjoy helping them pin-point what it is they like about a certain blend, and how best to alter it. Back in 2006, a gentleman came into the store looking for a tobacco he could no longer find. As we have come to notice over the years (and I'm sure you have as well), many tobacco shops take a stock tobacco and give it a cooler name. To avoid confusion, we leave the names as the companies do. For example: We have Lane RLP-6, which countless customers have walked in with under such monikers as "Revery", "Captain's Delight", "Lamp Lighter", etc. While these do sound inviting, it's really difficult to figure out what the blend is. The tobacco this particular gentleman was smoking was not this, but there were subtle flavors I could detect. He wanted a blend that was mild, sweet, flavorful, and lacking tongue-bite. After discussing McClelland's Pastry blend, he decided it was good, but just a bit too sweet for him. Taking note of this, I suggested blending in an unflavored tobacco to tone it down a bit - McClelland Eastern Carolina Ribbon (ECR).
After making up a few small samples for him to try over the following weeks, we hit the nail on the head. This customer comes into our store every month or so, and this enjoys smoking a blend made especially for him: 10.5 ounces of Pastry blended with 5.5 ounces of ECR.
To add to this post, I've made a short video explaining how we blend small batches for our walk-in customers, and ourselves. It's really a simple process since no other pressing, stoving, or topping is involved. We hope you enjoy the video, and hope to make more in the future.
This video has to be the single silliest pipe or tobacco related video I have seen to date. Basically, one starts with the fact that a certain customer really likes a blend consisting of x parts of A and y parts of B and then proceeds to focus on weighing out those exact amounts. Wow, that was insightful ;-) The video could have been renamed "Use of a Digital Scale".
At any rate, I would love to see some videos of the effects of different tobaccos and processing methods on the taste of blends. Keep up the (generally) very good work.
Silly is part of the fun for us, but the point of this video was sharing a customer's favorite blend. I'll leave the pressing, stoving, and casing up to the experts ;). Much of home-blending is simply just mixing 2 or more blends together to get the desired effect. In the case of this blend, it was just too sweet for him, so we worked on how to tone it down a bit and it's become his favorite.
I will do some more videos on in-store blending, and will go over a few other recipes/ideas, and even seemingly simple techniques like how to break up a flake. In the future, Brian (our tobacco expert) will go over some of the science involved in blends.
