catsup aplenty but where's the beef?

[Wet Dottle]

I've read a post by someone who claims having spoken directly with the McClelland people at some pipe show, and asking them about the ketchup smell. According to the poster, the smell comes from an anti-fungus treatment, or additive, that McClelland uses in their tobacco. Also, McClelland won't consider discontinuing the process in spite of all the criticism, because they would have too much loss to mold.

This is all hearsay and, unfortunately, I couldn't find the post. Probably read it in smokers forums, which is the only pipe forum I read besides BoB. Someone with better Google-fu than I will be able to find it.

I don't have a problem with McClelland blends: open the tin a couple of days before consuming the tobacco and the odor is gone.

 

[BigCasino]

The climate makes a huge difference -- it's why we can't grow perique outside of a small stretch of land in Louisiana and why orientals grown in the U.S. taste like burley.

A point of outstanding interest & relevance. But I'm not sure that just "climate" (average temperature, rainfall, humidity, growing season) accounts for it.
:face:

Your forgetting the most important part of the climate, the soil, you are what you eat and plants eat dirt, sure you can mimic the soil by adding minerals but it is never the same which is why hydroponic tomatoes are never as good as vine ripened tomatoes you grow in your back yard

 

[Richard Burley]

OK, I just popped a tin of Blackwoods, marked 801C11 on the bottom of the can. My initial sniff indicated hay. Funky hay. It reminded me most of all of chewing tobacco. If I use my imagination, I can smell catsup, sort of--but I wouldn't want to eat this catsup on anything, because it seems to be rotting or something. Seriously, there may well be an underlying acidic quality to this tobacco, but catsup it ain't--not on my hotdog. Besides, what's wrong with catsup? This is one of my favorite tobaccos.

Anyone who disagrees with the foregoing is a minion of the Antichrist.

 

[Anonymous]

BC -- sure. But soil is a different category from climate (essentially, weather).

And not only soil chemistry, but there's a telluric aspect (what makes one place different from another place even though all the measurables are identical).

:face:

 

[beetlejazz]

Does that make me NOT a connoisseur of fine tobacco?
No I think not, I think everyone's taste buds are different to some extent and it also depends I feel
on how and what passed over them in the years to form their taste.

There might be more truth to this than we might know. A perfume that smells the same in every bottle might change drastically when it has lingered on the skin of one person or another. Different body chemistry. A bit the same as with different people just smelling different. Different people have slightly different consistency of saliva... wouldn't be surprised if this made the same tobacco taste different to different people - not only the perceived taste (which is also an important issue and not to be belittled) but the actual chemistry of it.

And yes yes yes to the climate and soil mentioned here - I'd like to add the amount of daylight too. We know this very well about wood, and forgive me another tea-metaphor but Chinese "senchas" have a very different taste from Japanese senchas. Then again, one of my favourite senchas is Japanese, but with a distinctly Chinese-style aroma - I'd say it's indeed a bit more acidic (but not ketchupy! ) that the usual J-senchas - and now I can't help wondering if the area it's grown in has some peculiar sort of climate/soil.

And, when the same (complex) taste is experienced many times, some aspects of it might wane to the background (getting used to) and others might get heightened (saturation). I would assume this is the way one aquires a taste. Or doesn't, but the contrary - certain part of the taste that was first neglible becomes nagging and then intolerable with time.

I didn't use to like scotch but I've developed a taste for it (too many generous scotch-loving friends). The more I have drank good scotch, the less I notice what I don't usually like about whisky and the more I notice what's interesting and pleasant. Also explains why with many strongly-tasting delicacies like scotch or tobacco there's "entry level" product that's marked by lack of what's generally found unpleasant, and which becomes boring when one develops the taste further.

(Sorry about writing a novel here )

 

[BigCasino]

The soil, and terrain are a piece of the puzzle to make up a regions "climate"
climate definition

 

[Anonymous]

:cat: : Good Stuff !

Stop the self-deprecation, OK ?

That's Kyle's shtick :lol!:

:face:

 

[Anonymous]

Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods.

:face:

 

[BigCasino]

a region's climate is generated by the climate system, which has five components: atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryospherbiosphere , land surface, and

I see your good at picking out only the points you want read
:suspect:

 

[BigCasino]

Also there are several types of Virginia tobacco different varieties of the same type of tobacco will taste different even if grown on the same farm and go through the exact show curing process

 

[sonarman]

This seems to be up there with the Cellophane on or off for cigars. Maybe for every thread and several pages of posts there is one new piece of information, but for the most part the same thoughts are passed back and forth.

More McClellands for me, I dig it :cheers: :cheers:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

I like myself just fine, but playing the fool keeps me honest. :lol:

Ketchup, it seems, is the abstraction that furthers more abstractions. That's all I know at this point.

8)

 

[Anonymous]

I see your good at picking out only the points you want read

That was a cut-&-paste of the definition you linked to.

:face:

 

[beetlejazz]

Oh, I wouldn't dream of stealing Kyle's specialty.

Kyle, you blabber. :heart:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Oh, I wouldn't dream of stealing Kyle's specialty.

Kyle, you blabber. :heart:

I found a book on baking cookies. :heart:

 

[beetlejazz]

Oh, I wouldn't dream of stealing Kyle's specialty.

Kyle, you blabber. :heart:

I found a book on baking cookies. :heart:

Ouch!!! is that a threat or another of your preferences?

 

[Kyle Weiss]

One man's meat, as they say...

 

[ragged claws]

Since we're on the subject of catsup, I thought I'd share a little experiment I conducted this morning. I know that I smell and taste catsup with Black Woods Flake and I assumed that most people would smell and taste the same thing if only they would admit it! :lol: After I re-opened my tin of BWF this morning I confirmed my catsup experience and in an ah-ha moment decided to see what my wife had to say on the subject. I stuck the tin under her nose and asked "what do you smell?". She said that she smelled tobacco with maybe a very faint licorice note. After gently correcting her by insisting that what she smelled was catsup and not tobacco or licorice, she not-so-gently suggested that I take my tin of tobacco and shove it.

I guess this little experiment points to only one conclusion; anyone who doesn't smell and taste catsup on their BWF is just as delusional as my mean spirited wife! :lol:

 

[somedumbjerk]

... so now that most of the forum has brought the beef, you like the flake yet?

 

[ragged claws]

... so now that most of the forum has brought the beef, you like the flake yet?

I really like this flake when I can coax some flavor out of it. I'm still trying to improve my smoking technique and think this will be a great flake for me once I learn how to smoke it.

Kim