Looking for help identifying "salt" in a flavor profile

I have seen salty used as a descriptor of flavor in several blends. I'm not sure I understand this and was hoping for some suggestions to blends with a prominent salt taste so I can look for and understand it.

Often I see it attributed to Latakia blends if that's any help. I'm sure I've tasted it before but didn't grasp what it was.

I've really been noticing the salty flavor in my heavy Lat blends lately. Not sure what that is about......

It's one of the reasons I love plum pudding so much, it has great salty sweet contrasting flavours. GLP Westminster has a nice salty profile too.

From memory, the MacB HH Latakia Flake has the salty/sweet thing going on too, but I haven't smoked any since they upped their prices.

Cheers

Tim

Maybe I should pay more attention to how my tobacco tastes. I've never considered that it may be salty.

AJ

ajn27511 wrote:

Maybe I should pay more attention to how my tobacco tastes. I've never considered that it may be salty.

AJ

I've never really noticed a salty taste either.

I am smoking OJK now - no salt in the flavor to me. I went and checked TR, and there are three reviewers for OJK who say there is a salty taste in it to them. Dunno - I guess we all have different taste buds.

Thanks all. I'm still hunting for it.

Penzance is a good example of knowing a flavor is there but not being able to put my finger on it. Antiseptic would be the word, there is a distinct band-aid-ish aroma in there. I wouldn't have singled it out had another BOTL mentioned it.

latakia having a salty taste would make sense. Creosote, which is basically what latakia is covered with, has a metallic slightly salty taste. Not too surprising that could come through on the flavor. I've noticed that dark fired also has a touch of salt.

I did a little experiment the last couple of days, and increased my sodium intake. It kind of helped. Increased my hydration and the salty taste went away................

Just sayin'

my taste buds must be dead cause I've never found most of what the reviewers find in a blend. Hints of leather, sweet & salty, oak, dark chocolate, oatmeal and citrus all evade me, but that's just me.

mark wrote:

my taste buds must be dead cause I've never found most of what the reviewers find in a blend. Hints of leather, sweet & salty, oak, dark chocolate, oatmeal and citrus all evade me, but that's just me.
   

That's pretty much where I am; chocolate I can pick up in some burley blends, campfire (not barbecue) in latakia blends, etc. It's all I can do to pick up "sweet" in a Virginia blend. Very pedestrian taste buds, I would say. I just like tobacco. Tobacco tastes like tobacco to me. And pipe tobacco is one thing; cigars are even worse. I have no idea what cigar descriptors mean--or, put another way, they mean nothing to me.

But some people have superior powers of scent, taste, and apparently a vivid vocabulary to express what they're tasting. A woman I know does very well at wine tastings, and she's not a "pro." I thought she was putting on airs or b.s.-ing until I saw her performance at blind tastings, where she stunned various people in the trade by her astuteness. I now hang on her every word when judging likker. Wish she smoked tobaccoweed, for her insights.

I've experienced "salty" for the most part with Latakia blends. But none was as striking as when I smoked a 2 YO McConnell's Latakia Flake. It was, at first, the dominant flavour I was getting from it. I didn't really get any salty profile with the new tin I had smoked.

Richard Burley wrote:

mark wrote:

my taste buds must be dead cause I've never found most of what the reviewers find in a blend. Hints of leather, sweet & salty, oak, dark chocolate, oatmeal and citrus all evade me, but that's just me.
   

That's pretty much where I am; chocolate I can pick up in some burley blends, campfire (not barbecue) in latakia blends, etc. It's all I can do to pick up "sweet" in a Virginia blend. Very pedestrian taste buds, I would say. I just like tobacco. Tobacco tastes like tobacco to me. And pipe tobacco is one thing; cigars are even worse. I have no idea what cigar descriptors mean--or, put another way, they mean nothing to me.

But some people have superior powers of scent, taste, and apparently a vivid vocabulary to express what they're tasting. A woman I know does very well at wine tastings, and she's not a "pro." I thought she was putting on airs or b.s.-ing until I saw her performance at blind tastings, where she stunned various people in the trade by her astuteness. I now hang on her every word when judging likker. Wish she smoked tobaccoweed, for her insights.

Agreed. Everyone has different tastebuds and people interpret flavor differently. There isn't really chocolate, leather, grass, coffee, raisins etc in the tobacco, it's just how someone perceives the flavors and compares  them to what they know. Some people are good at this, some aren't (I'm not particularly good at it). Some people lie and exaggerate of course but some people really are good at picking out different flavors and referencing to stuff they know.

Took me awhile to realize this, it's the same with wine, whisky, smoke etc. I read reviews but understand I'm probably not going to get the same out of it as someone else. As long as it tastes/smells good I enjoy myself.

I do think it's fun to try sometimes to pick stuff out, often it's cumbersome and takes the fun out of it. Still though I enjoy something complex and good over something just good. Maybe I can only "identify" 2-3 "notes" but I can appreciate complexity and that is always interesting to me. The best tobacco, whisky etc is probably going to have some degree of complexity... But I'm not gonna be able to list everything I get out of it and that doesn't bother me. Anymore

Esoterica blends have a salt/brine taste to them for me. Perhaps not all, I have only had a few. Margate has it.

I have a theory that the crystal dust we often see on aged tobacco may also be salt, and not sugar. Or perhaps both. Both will inhibit mold growth.

I have been looking for this myself... Found it in one of the Tsuge God series tobacco but can't remember which one... Briny, salty, zesty...not campfire... I get hints of it in London Mixture but can't seem to find a tobacco that hits those notes for me..

Usually when I get the salty taste, it reminds me of olives a bit. Kind of sourish saltiness maybe. I like it either way, it may be orientals inter playing with the Latakia in some mixtures.

I would say I definitely don't get any "salt" flavors out of my tobacco, but one that may come close is dark fired Kentucky. There is something akin to salt in that flavor profile to me, but I think I would call it more [i]briny[i] than salty. I, however, am no expert so I often just like to flush out what flavors I do pick up, and go from there. More for my own self than anything else.