Advantage your favorite tobaccos
Tuesday, October 1, 2013 at 8:05AM | Neill Archer Roan | Permalink tagged Geiger, Stonehaven, pipe pairing | in Pipe Shapes, Pipe Tobaccos, Successful Smoking 
I am a nicotine lightweight. Maybe even a bantamweight. Tobaccos with a nic punch can send me ‘round the bend, and that is no pleasant experience. However, it is no uncommon thing that I discover a nicotine-rich tobacco the flavor of which I enjoy.
Stonehaven is such a tobacco. Ever since I was introduced to this blend by Richard Friedman aboard the Alaskan Song, I have loved smoking it on occasion, albeit with no little attention paid to an oncoming visit by “the swirlies.”
To my palate, Stonehaven’s flavors are advantaged by a larger circumference bowl not unlike blends rich with Orientals or Latakia. This posed a real dilemma for me. Pots and princes are my shapes of choice for English and Balkan blends. Their flavor blossoms in their bowl geometries. My experience, however, has been that optimal flavor delivery seems almost always to be accompanied by optimal nicotine delivery. A large distillation zone provides for distillation of nicotine right along with the volatile oils, resins, and sugars entering the smokestream. Obviously, I don’t want to sacrifice flavor if I don’t have to do so. What to do?
