Honey/Syrup Caking a pipe.

[str8razor]

Recently bought a couple of basket pipes and decided to put syrup in one while breaking it in and the other im smoking "raw". For those of you who have done the honey/syrup thing how did you go about it.

IE; coating it and smoking then and there, or coating and letting it sit and dry.

 

[LIPIPE]

Place a dab of honey on your pinkey and rub it around the inside of the bowl. Load your tobacco, light up and enjoy. The sugars on the honey will caramelize and aid in the development of a cake.

 

[jacko]

I did this with pure maple syrup. Make sure you don't use too much and a use a very cool burning tobacco. The additional sugars in the bowl will really heat up the pipe so be careful.

 

[NeroWolfe]

As already mentioned, if you do this, use a very THIN coating. Cake that builds up using this method tends to be brittle and crumbly in my experience.

 

[MisterE]

I've broken in pipes both with a honey coating in the bowl and without. I agree with Nero that cake formed with honey tends to break apart as it forms whereas the bowls without form a more solid cake. Lately my breaking-in tactic has been simply "smoke the new out of it"- no coating. Just about all my pipes end up smoking nicely using either method so I can't say which is better really.

 

[Wet Dottle]

I was told by someone to use jam instead of honey, because honey becomes very fluid and runs down the bowl. This info came from the official Dunhil repair person, I forget his name bt he has retired a few years ago. I think he was in Florida.

I've used honey in the past, but the results were very poor, with uneven and unstable cake. I've never tried jam.

 

[Zeno Marx]

They were probably using REAL jam/jelly and not the garbage we now often see made with HFCS.

I use honey or maple syrup. I use barely more than a drop to start and evenly coat the bowl. Then wash off my finger, wipe dry, and go back to the bowl again and spread it with my finger. I do this a couple times to keep pulling off any excess honey. I go for the thinnest coat possible; just enough to make the inside of the bowl look "wet", but that is it.

 

[Brewdude]

Never ever used this method for breaking in a new pipe, although I am aware of it. I also don't use half loads initially either. Just load to the top and smoke. Never had a problem.


Cheers,

RR

 

[thedeep]

I have used honey. In fact, the pipe I am smoking right now, a Rolando calabash had the honey treatment. What I like better, but I'm out, is the vanilla flavoring my coffee shop uses to make flavored coffee drinks. Like others, I advise a very thin layer.

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

When guys start posting that breaking in a pipe in stages—¼, ½, ¾—X 2, then to the next stage, has some massive effect of making it smoke properly for its entire life, I always get vaguely guilty, as I don't do that with my new pipes. And I like it when the bowl is left natural. I never use bowl coatings although I used to early on. I just fill to the top and smoke the pipe repeatedly until I get the "new pipe" taste out of it.

I've never had a problem with a pipe so broken in.