Packing Lighter & Smoking Drier

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Bonanzadriver

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Apr 12, 2017
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As I've mentioned on other sites, and possibly here, although I've been smoking a pipe off and on since 1982 I recently got into piping in a pretty big way.

Voracious for knowledge on restoring/refurbing pipes, tobacco blends & techniques, I've read everything I can get on the matters.

As many of you pros know, for me the absolute difference maker has been to smoke tobacco that is much drier than I had previously thought one should. Along with that, packing the bowl more lightly has made an incredible difference a well.

The combination of these two things, along with "slowing my roll" and no longer "freight training" through a bowl, has helped me not only with things such as tongue bite but has increased my smoking enjoyment exponentially.

This evening for instance, I recently finished a bowl of Carter Hall in an old Bent Dublin I refurbed quite a while back.

It was, by far, the most enjoyable bowl of CH I've ever had. I think the combination of it being much drier than the first time I tried it, as well as loosely packed, culminated in a tobacco nirvana.

I've since moved on to a bowl of drier D&R Rimboche SJ, in a Bent Bulldog. It was the same experience again. Much better than the first bowl of it I tried a couple of weeks ago.

The only downside to packin it more loosely is that the quantity of tobacco in the bowl is less, subsequently, it is over sooner.

The upside, besides being a much better experience, is that it affords me the opportunity to smoke more bowls of various tobaccos throughout the evening.

All in all, a win, win, win scenario.


Cheers.

Dino
 
Sounds like you're well on your way here Dino. I employ those same techniques with great result. Drier 'baccy and a lighter pack yields a better experience IMO. And of course, slow sipping!



Cheers,

RR
 
One thing I forgot to mention was the fact that it also greatly reduces the "hot pipe" issues I'd experienced early on.
 
Wait til you see what a hot July day can do to that hot pipe issue. It took me more years than it should to realize that a July afternoon can start everything out a good 50 degrees higher than my preferred crisp Fall morning. At the top end when that bowl has a nice rosy glow it's like a mini blast furnace. Just a thought.
 
It's always nice to see the looser, drier, slower comment, because it took me years to learn that. Slow learners love company, I guess? Once you're on to it, it seems soo damn obvious . . . Another maybe not so obvious practice -- coarse cut and wide ribbons are best behaved in wide bowls with vertical walls, I'd say.
 
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