I've been around tobacco for most of my life. I grew up hanging out on a farm that grew and flue cured Virginia in the Low Country of Southeast Georgia and South Carolina. Before graduating high school I got a job at a local business that produced dip and hookah tobacco. That was an experience that I learned a lot from and it galvanized an already burgeoning fascination with the damned and bitter weed that is our beloved Nicotiana Tabacum.
I have explored nearly every facet of tobacciana that I could reasonably achieve some sort of familiarity with, everything from nasal snuff to loose (lös) swedish snus, premium cigarettes, cigars, you name it.
Once I figured out how to actually enjoy a cigar, the whole journey in tobacco changed. Suddenly I understood burning tobacco. Sounds stupid, but after years of cigarettes, which have no nuance at all, hookah, which doesn't even burn tobacco, chew, which is chewed, and various other forms of tobacco, it occurred to me that there was probably an entire world of technique I was eschewing out of sheer ignorance. Smoking the cigar slowly revealed a world of flavors I never expected to find.
But everything has its downside, cigars have theirs as well and frankly they weren't a good fit. I never wanted to go back to cigarettes ever, but I definitely wanted some form of tobacco in my life that I could enjoy. Enter the pipe.
Several months back I picked up a bargain bin billiard. It was very lightly bent, pretty straightforward pipe. Grain all over the place, definitely nothing special. I got some Stokkebye Bullseye Flake and Blend 21. Couple days later I picked up C&D Mad FIddler Flake, Gawithh and Hogart Ennerdale and Warped Midsommar. Mad Fiddler ended up being my favorite far and away, and the more I smoke the more I seem to lean towards a VaPer and Virginia. I do really love Haunted Bookshop, and Midsommar is definitely an incredible smoke, very repeatable but also extremely satisfying. I like a light english quite a lot but I'm not much for Lat Bombs. I really regret not being able to try the Syrian Lat, I think it would have appealed to me quite a bit based on what I read.
I'm enjoying the hobby a lot. It beats the shit out of feeling like using tobacco is just a chore. I've picked up about 6 pipes, various kinds, never paying over 100$ as a rule. I'm definitely willing to buy a more expensive pipe, I just want to wait until I really know what kinds of pipes I enjoy smoking, so right now, under 100$ only. Right now I'm working on getting more tobacco, figuring out what I really like and what i'll maybe try to revisit at a later date.
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Excellent intro 