Constant Craving

Chubby Billiard by Alex Florov, Image © 2010 Neill Archer RoanSome pipes are better smokers than others. Any experienced pipe smoker knows this, but I haven’t met anyone yet who can explain why this is true. It is a source of constant inquiry for me since every smoking experience seems to act as a reminder of the truth of this observation.

There is a discussion thread over in the Smokers Forums’ Common Sewers right now that is focused on the idiosyncratic impact of briar quality on how a pipe tastes when it is smoked. My friends Fred Hanna and Greg Pease have both concluded over the years that it is the briar itself – more than engineering or design – that influences just how good a pipe tastes when smoked. I confess that I’m not sure. Not that they are incorrect in their observation. The briar itself may be the difference that makes a difference. On its surface, it makes sense, but how do you prove it? How do you disprove it?

Yesterday, when I met a friend for our ritual Saturday lunch, he observed, “You don’t like mysteries much, do you?”

“Well, I like them in literature,” I mused, “But I don’t care much for them in life.”

He further opined that most people are content to live with the unexplained, but not me. I am always devising ways to figure out how to understand and explore the wilderness of my own ignorance - a wilderness so vast as to require someone of Stephen Hawking’s genius to begin to comprehend its dimensions.

“You have a Holmesian approach to life,” he quipped.

It’s true. I do have a big need to know. Unfortunately, those pangs of curiosity often lead me to assume that I have learned things that are in fact, unknowable. It is a hard thing for me to swallow, but I will never figure out most of what fascinates me in life.

I am especially fascinated by the surprises I experience in this pipe-smoking hobby. One would think we would know ourselves pretty well, wouldn’t one? Well, my experience is that my relationships to pipes and tobacco is one of constant craving - with apologies to KD Lang - but also one of constant confounding. I should add that it’s not so much craving the smoking experience. Honestly, I feel no craving for tobacco at all. It is more a craving to make sense of why some of my pipes satisfy me so much and others leave me cold.

What bothers me most is that I have no control whatsoever as to which pipes I like most in terms of smoking quality. It seems to me that those pipes that are most beautiful, that are most elegant, that are most exquisitely crafted should be the best smokers. But, as the song goes, “It ain’t necessarily so.”

We humans are programmed to associate beauty with virtue and beauty with functionality. Beauty is supposed to manage the evidence of other desirable traits, but with pipes beauty doesn’t seem to predict squat. I have beautiful pipes with so-so smoking qualities and ugly pipes that make me swoon, they are so flavorful and satisfying. How do we cope with this cognitive dissonance? I’m here to tell you that it seems like some mythic joke that one troll-pipe should possess seductive smoking qualities while another Greta Garbo-pipe should so coldly refuse its favors. This is, however, the pipe-smoking secret that is locked away in some cobweb-bound, cellar-dark place.

This time of year, when I’m thinking about going to the Chicago Show, I start focusing on trying to figure out whose pipes I might be interested in adding to my collection. In previous years, my thoughts focused a lot more on what these candidates looked and felt like, but as of late I am noticing that I am putting a lot more emphasis on how I think these pipes will satisfy me in terms of taste and smoking performance. So, I’m spending a lot of time making performance comparisons.

Yesterday, I sat on the John Boyd memorial blue couch at Old Virginia Tobacco Company comparing pipes from various artisans, smoking a favorite tobacco from the same tin. Same year. Same lighting technique. Same tamping. You get the point. I was trying to control for flavor variation.

Bamboo Apple by Peter Heeschen, Image © 2010 Neill Archer RoanMy prosaic little Heeschen black bamboo apple sang like a lusty Italian coloratura after exquisite caresses. My nosewarmer S. Bang - a pipe that still needs to be smoked a lot more - smoked like a bored secretary listening to some middle manager drone on. My Purdy tadpole made me feel grateful to be alive. My Jack Howell lovat purred like my beloved old Balinese cat, Gobi, when I would rub his tummy. My Adam Davidson bamboo “Chocolate Bar” reminded me why I will never, never, ever let this pipe go: it is the source of all chocolate sweetness. My Eltang saxophone emphasized the latakias in the blend that I smoked, while the Rad Davis zulu underscored the Virginia’s sweetness in the very same tobacco. How, how, how could all these pipes be so different with the same tobacco? Herein lies the rub.

There is no way to look at a piece of briar and predict its smoking qualities. Let’s face it: most pipes, with proper care and attention are going to be sturdy, serviceable smokers that are remarkable for their unremarkableness. Few are going to be disappointments. Fewer still are going to be transcendent.

In this hobby, we hang on to briar country-of-origin myths as if they had been chiseled on stone and handed to Moses. Like most myths, there is some truth to them.  We hear whispers that Algerian briar provides great smokes. Likewise, I have heard that Italian briar is superior. I have heard that Castello gets the best briar and I have heard the same whisperings about the briar that Cavicchi and Moretti have. Karl Joura stamps the place of origin on his pipes: Sardinia or Corsica.

Most leading artisans I know acquire their briar from celebrity-briar-cutter Mimmo Romeo. I have personally heard Mimmo say that they do not know where their briar comes from and that briar quality is determined by how it is boiled, stored, aged, cut, and aged after cutting. The Romeos are people who have been living with briar for generations. Mimmo makes pipes himself and has presumably smoked many pipes made from briar his family provided. It seems to me that if anyone should know, he should. Still, mysteries persist.

My friend, Alex Florov, got ahold of some 50-year-old blocks of Algerian briar some years ago and made me a pipe from that wood. He explained before he started, “Neill, this is not beautiful briar. It will not take a good contrast stain. It is quite red in color and resists stains to make it more beautiful. But it smokes fantastically. I only have a little bit of this briar and I only make pipes for my close friends with it. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”

When I got the nosewarmer billiard he made for me of this briar, I smoked it almost immediately, which is pretty unusual for me. I typically have a need to get used to a pipe before I smoke it. It was a good smoker when I first smoked it, and it has gotten better and better and better. I treasure this pipe for its smoking quality. Taking all of this into consideration, the skeptical part of me wonders if this pipe has become wonderful because I brought expectations and magic to it? Was it the briar or was it me? How can I know?

I don’t think that I can know in a definitive sense. Another part of me doesn’t care; this is a great pipe and I’m grateful. My understanding isn’t going to improve it. As a friend of mine used to say, “Understanding is the booby prize.”

What’s problematic, however, is that the prices of pipes are associated with maker, brand, materials, and demand. The value of pipes is something that we co-create with the artisan. We are a part of the equation, a part of the mystery, a part of the story. For me, knowing what to buy and who to collect requires me to investigate my own experience. It requires me to traverse the territory of my collection, and then reflect on what I value and why. It requires me to satisfy my constant craving.

Comments

[Rick]

Briar is an ideal pipe medium because of its ability to resist burning, absorb heat/moisture, and dissipate heat/moisture. The quality of the briar and its curing will greatly determine the extent of those qualities, but no piece of briar makes up for poor engineering. On the other hand, I expect great engineering can probably make up for poor briar, especially over time.

[Soren]

Having a "Holmesian approach to life" myself (what a great expression) I fully understand your desire to understand things and the continuos effort to learn more and more. On that basis I find your article very interesting and thought provoking - I share the observation which I think most pipe smokers do. Still, I was very surprised that you found that your different pipes offered such positive variation in the taste of the same tobacco. I usually find that the tobacco tastes better in this or that pipe but not that the different taste components are enhanced to such a degree depending on the pipe.

Being a fellow Holmesian this observation of mine therefore leads me to a question regarding your "testing method": What tobacco was smoked in the different pipes prior to this test? I mean if the Eltang was used for a strong english mixture the day before that might explain the enhacement of the latakia in the tobacco. And if the zulu was used with a pure virginia prior to the test that might also explain the positive virginia result from that one etc. etc. I might be a good idea to repeat the test to minimize the influence in the taste from the tobacco variation smoked in those pipes before the test was carried out.

The next test after that could be to smoke the pipes in a different order to establish whether or not a fresh vs. a used palate has any influence on the results.

All the best from Soren

P.S. I hope you can bear with the lack of commas in my comment - the comma rules in danish are much different from the english and I haven't had the time to fully study this subject. Yet :o)

[Neill Archer Roan]

Hi Soren. In response to your questions:

All the pipes I smoked on Saturday are reserved for English blends. The tobaccos I smoked that morning were McClelland's Frog Morton and G.L. Pease's Chelsea Morning.

The English blends that I smoke all have Virginias in them. I did rotate my smoking of them, having them all lit at the same time. It was quite something to sit and taste the different emphases in the tobacco.

[Soren]

I am truly impressed! :o)

[Ed Anderson]

I loved to read the Sherlock Holmes stories as a young lad and imagined that I could someday replicate his astounding feats of deduction.

Today, much like you, I still have that desire to "figure it out" with facts and logic. This question about what makes a pipe a great tasting pipe really occupies a lot of my thoughts. I think it occupies so much of my time is because I have so much trouble correlating my experiences with those of so many other pipe smokers.

Unlike the wine critics who write detailed descriptions comparing the flavors to all sorts of fruits and nuts, I cannot "define" these various tastes in either wine or tobacco. The good news - for me - is that I do "experience" all the subtle differences in both tobacco and wine! Each one I taste effects me in a different way, even though I'm only able to say, this is the wine I'm in the mood for now and this tobacco tastes just right in this pipe even though it still tastes great in several/many others, all to a different degree.

As a side note, when a non-smoking friend of mine asked me about all my pipes and I told him that for the most part "no two pipes tasted exactly the same, even those of the same brand", he was astounded as he assumed it was only the tobacco that tasted different, That may have been a slight overstatement but for most of my pipes it holds true. I would be at a loss to tell you exactly how each differed. This one is smoother; this one is darker; this one is brighter... etc. Don't know nuthin' about chocolate and walnuts! ;-)

Now I do own some crappy tasting pipes but I can identify them by brand. Maybe not a true sampling but I'm talking about 3 to 4 in each brand and another that I have 7 or 8, maybe 1 or 2 are passable and the rest suck!

I know that most of my latest NAC pipes probably are Mimmo briar and they all taste great but they mostly are slightly different. I smoke a variety of Virginias and VaPers in most of them A variety because I've found a pipe benefits from a change of pace every now and then - crop rotation principle - but most of them sing with one particular blend in the genre. And a few seem to prefer English Mixtures. Is this due to the growing region? Like I said, most/all come from Mimmo and so the briar comes from all over.

My all time best English Mixture pipes are Italian. Castello, Don Carlos and Tonino Jacono. They all three use Italian briar and I find that they smoke different than my NAC pipes.

All this talk about a 'transcendental" smoking experience being a rare experience is a bit puzzling to me at this level of pipe smoking/collecting. Sure, back in the day it was rare but I rarely was smoking a great brand or at least a brand that used great briar. Today I find a less than spectacular smoke a rarity and I'll usually find out a day or two later I was coming down with a cold or flue. I expect a transcendent experience each time I light up and I'm rarely disappointed.

Is it all in my head? I just expect that to happen so it does? Granted, a positive outlook must have some effect on the outcome but my experiences have shown me that it's merely a condimental effect and not the true meat of the experience.

Just one example (of many I've had) to illustrate this. Many years ago I bought a pipe from a local artisan. It was beyond a doubt the best smoking pipe I had ever smoked! bear in mind I had a few Charatans and Castellos on my rack in those days. My next trip to that carvers shop I bought two more from him because I wanted to smoke noting else but these great tasting pipes! I expected greatness but those two pipe are among the worst smoking pipes I ever owned. Years later I learned the first pipe was VERY old Algerian briar and the other two were briar the carver had pilfered from his former employer, Weber.

I have had other experience with expectations both pro and con that bear this out but I doubt many will have read this far anyway. ;-)

I said all that to just say I have no problem knowing that buying a pipe from certain artisans that I have experience with will guarantee me a transcendental experience pipe, ... as long as there's no goat pee involved, :-D

[Matthew Miller]

I think Peter Heeschen knows at least part of the answer,so does SmIo Satou. Just a feeling.................Matt