When fully broken in, I don't notice much difference between smoking meerschaum versus other materials. I do prefer the hand feel of meerschaum though.
Another Meer Coloring Tip/Method
- Thread starter JackofNone
- Start date
I also don't notice any difference on broken-in pipes.
The cake on my briars is paper thin. A few briars at first had a bit of an added woody taste that went away. My meers made the tobacco a little muted at first. But once all of them were broken in, which took almost no time, now everything tastes the same way in my briars as it does my meers.
One of my meer is real turkish block and the other is composite/pressed. I can't notice any difference in flavor between them or my briars. I also don't notice a difference in taste with my clays either.
The only difference I notice is in complex blends, where in a narrower chamber, the flavors sort of stack a little and certain aspects become more or less pronounced randomly through the bowl. But even that doesn't happen every time, and the inconsistency of flavor is pretty small.
My meers don't even seem to smoke more dry than my briars do. Though my real block meer does seem to warm up (in the hand) more than my others, but it also has the thinnest walls of all my pipes (not counting the clays). Even then, it's only marginally warmer feeling.