The First Pipe-Tobacco Humidor
I'm excited to be chatting with Erik Stokkebye about his latest unique project from the 4th Generation brand: pipe-tobacco humidors, now available on-site. With only 75 pieces made, all featuring two handblown glass jars and two dynamic tobacco blends, this highly limited release is sure to be a coveted resource to use for your tobacco-smoking pleasure.
Note: The following transcription has been edited for clarity and brevity.
[Shane Ireland]: Hey everybody, my good friend Erik Stokkebye and I are here talking about something very special, very unique, and very gorgeous from 4th Generation. Erik, you and I have talked a lot about this over the couple of years that it took to develop the product. Can you give our viewers a rundown of the inception of this idea and the path that you took to get it to be fully realized?
Developing The Humidor and Contents
[Erik Stokkebye]: I had this idea around 18 months ago or something like that, maybe two years ago. I was doing an event with one of my retail friends in Washington D.C. and I saw all these gorgeous cigar humidors. And I thought that I would like to do something for the pipe-tobacco community as well.
I came up with this idea and, as far as I know, it's the first pipe-tobacco humidor that was ever created. The visual that you see on the lid is a painting that is still in our family's possession of my great-grandfather's factory in Odense, Denmark, where it all started. That's a painting of his factory. During that time, he had different productions: nasal snuff, pipe tobacco, cigars, so a little bit of everything.
I knew I wanted this painting to be the visual of this humidor and I wanted to create this humidor for the guy who really needed something to keep their tobacco fresh when making their own blends. Something unique, something different.
[SI]: What I really like about this is that I cannot think of another example of a pipe-tobacco humidor that functions the same way this one does. In the past, you would see a lot of jars, pipe caddies, and pipe racks. The presentation alone is absolutely gorgeous, and the functionality of this is really interesting.
[ES]: Yeah. We went through a lot of stages because I wasn't initially sure of the functionality of this humidor. I started out the box and then I said, well, we need two bowls in there where the guys can keep either their own tobaccos or something that they blend up on their own, and keep it nice and fresh.
[SI]: What you didn't want was a bunch of loose tobacco rolling around in direct contact with the cedarwood.
[ES]: Right. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, so I went to a glass blower in my town and I explained the concept and he came up with these two bowls. They're handblown glass bowls made specifically for this humidor and then I also thought about having something very limited in terms of two tobaccos inside.
[SI]: I love the bowls themselves. It looks like they have the artisan signature on the bottom there as well as the 4th Generation branding that is sandblasted on there. It looks beautiful.
[ES]: Yes, exactly.
I also worked with one of our blenders and I came up with two blends that are only available with this humidor: 1855 and 1882 blends. There's only 75 tins, which matches the number of humidors made, so it's very limited.
The 1855 is a pure Virginia tobacco. It's very mature. It has a nice sugar content, smokes really well, and is pleasant. The 1882 is an English tobacco with a nice portion of Latakia and some Orientals.
Functionality In Design
[SI]: Back to the functionality of this, cedarwood is famously perfect for storage of tobacco products because of the way the wood breathes, the moisture content, and the humidity and how it retains that humidity, and also because of the pleasant and often positive influence that it has on long-term of premium tobacco.
I do think that the addition of the glass here to keep the tobacco from being in direct contact with the wood is key. Otherwise, you're going to get maybe more influence from the cedar than you're looking for. It also makes for an easier presentation too, if you want to pick two different blends out of this. You can actually just remove one of the bowls to be able to work with just one of them instead of having to keep the whole humidor open or fishing the tobacco out of the bottom of it. It's a smarter solution that's akin to what you see when you have a humidor with a cedar tray in it that you can separate your cigars on. I think that's awesome.
[ES]: Speaking to your point, Shane, I really wanted the edge of the lid to come down very close to the edge of the glasses so there's not a lot of air escaping, which I felt was very important, and then there are two chambers back here where you can put humidification pouches. I actually did test it out before we made these in production. It works perfectly.
[SI]: That's amazing. For my own edification here, the good thing about the humidification packs is that technically the consumer can pick whichever moisture level and humidity level that they prefer. They work very well in two ways. Do you have a recommendation for what percentages they might use or a range of what percentages they might use to achieve the optimal humidity level? Is it any different than cigars?
[ES]: I would say it's very similar to cigars, around 70; upper 60s to lower 70s would be the perfect humidity. Obviously, some tobacco requires less, and some require more, so I did test the humidor out with some flakes, which tend to dry out faster than, let's say, an Aromatic, and it worked really perfectly.
Then there's a little space here in front where you can keep pipe cleaners, your pipe tools, those types of things.
[SI]: Yeah, it has a little accessory shelf.
Humidor Seasoning
Conventional wisdom when you have a cigar humidor is that it needs to be seasoned first. Would you recommend that also here before you're keeping pipe tobacco in it?
[ES]: I would probably do the same thing here, yes. Season it with a wet cloth and distilled water.
[SI]: You can also purchase seasoning kits made by Boveda now. You just dump the seasoning kit in there and leave it for the recommended period of time and then come back to it and replace it with the percentage that you actually want to maintain. It's super easy, which is nice. We're a little spoiled these days, I think. I remember the first humidor I ever seasoned many years ago became a days-long project, and that was kind of frustrating.
[ES]: Yes. This humidor seals very well.
[SI]: When you put the lid down, and you see that gradual, nice sink instead of it just slamming down, it's a beautiful fit. I really like that even though you have the benefit of the cedarwood and a very air-tight seal, each bowl individually, because of the way the lid is set up, has its own little ecosystem.
[ES]: Yeah, exactly. You can also use the bowls to make your own little blends if that's what you want to do, or your favorite blends.
[SI]: Amazing. I love the presentation. I think the Easter egg here of the two highly limited blends being included is awesome. We've never seen anything like it.
Multi-Functional Pipe-Tobacco Resource
One other thing I noticed here is that because we talked about how functionally there are basically two different ecosystems here if you do want to have two different tobaccos in here at the same time, the way that this seals and the way that the lid closes, there's also a divider between the areas that you can put humidification.
Technically you could operate with two different levels of humidity, maybe not a stark difference because then you might have them kind of working against each other, but you could go a couple percentage points higher on one side or the other.
[ES]: Particularly if you want to put a blend in there that may be a little bit on the dry side, you'll want to maybe add a few more humidity pouches in there on one side.
[SI]: The application of being able to maybe even rehydrate tobacco using this as a tool is interesting as well. I'll be trying that.
Something else that just occurred to me is that the recommended volume for a single Boveda pack or any humidification pack usually says that it covers somewhere between 25 and 50 cigars, or something like that, depending on how big your humidor is or not.
Given that the amounts of pipe tobacco that are in here by weight are going to be less than if this was just crammed full of cigars, I bet the humidification goes further. I bet that the packs last a little bit longer.
[ES]: I would agree to that, for sure.
[SI]: I love the idea of having two of my favorite blends or two of the things most currently in my rotation readily accessible and ready to go. It's almost like having a built-in tobacco plate here because you can work from these jars directly. It's just such a clever design and it was executed so well.
Thank you so much for sharing, Erik.
[ES]: Thank you.
[SI]: They're available on-site now at Smokingpipes.com. Again, it's a highly limited run, with only 75 pieces worldwide. See you guys next time.
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