Pics at some point

I keep meaning to snap pics of my pipes, especially the estates as I work on cleaning and shinying them up ... but I keep loading them with tobaccos and smoking them instead.

Six Boswell flavored tobaccos

I received these flavored aromatic tobaccos from the little shop in Pennsylvania with a huge reputation online:  J.M Boswell and Son.  They arrived late Thursday afternoon, so I have had them on my desk for almost nine days and here is what is left.

Six Boswell flavored aromatic tobaccos

Starting at top left and going around clockwise:

• Maple Leaf and Christmas Cookie - I've only smoked one bowl of each so far, as those initial bowls didn't grab my attention quite the way the other four did.  I will note that both have terrific bag notes, with the Christmas Cookie truly smelling good enough to eat.  With our first frost advisory tonight (already?!?!?) I may get into them more soon.
• Boswell's Best - a pleasant jumble of flavors, with the website noting only a vanilla topping.  There's more going on in it than just vanilla though I am having trouble distinguishing what I am experiencing at present.  The best I can describe it so far is an accumulation of smells similar to what my kitchen smells like as a holiday bake-fest is just finished.
• Chocolate Cream - as if I would miss ordering this one!  In fact, this was the one that led me to Google to find Boswell's as "everyone" says their chocolate topping is one of the best.  Quite a tasty sweet smoky-treat, with a chocolate flavor obvious enough for me to pick on first bowl.  I like the flavor and hubby likes the room note.
• Piper's Pleasure - this one is described as having chocolate, vanilla, coffee, and caramel flavors to it, and I find it changes which one is noticeable depending on which pipe I am smoking it in.  Another pleasant jumble of flavor, and the room note is good enough that hubby was looking for cooling racks upon entering the house while I was smoking it ... he said it smelled like I had baked a cake and he was trying to see which flavor and if it was frosted yet.
• No-Bite Delight - This one was elusive and shy, as it is supposed to be caramel and vanilla.  I tried it in a few of my other sweet pipes and was missing it, only getting the nondescript sweet flavor.  Yesterday I got a new pipe and decided to use NBD as its inaugural bowl ... and WOW!  A burst of caramel once I had it lit, which then quieted it down and only peeked through intermittently through the rest of the bowl.  Those with a more developed and discerning palette will probably be able to coax its subtleties out easier, but a fresh pipe is what revealed this one to me.

So those are my impressions of these six flavored aromatics from Boswell's, after a week of stuffing them in my pipe and smoking them.  Hubby has been a little too enamored with his Balkan and English and Scottish and Navy blends to give much attention to the Rum River I got him, so I can't report anything on that one yet.

My first tongue bite

I have found the first (but I doubt it will be the last) pipe tobacco to give me the chemical reaction known as tongue bite - Sir Walter Raleigh Aromatic.  It's a shame too, because up until I realized it halfway down the bowl, I had been enjoying the aroma and taste.

This wasn't a steam burn ... I did that on my very first bowlful when I puffed on it like a cigarette and basically boiled my tongue like a basket of crawdads.  I think it was Balkan Sobraine, which tasted pretty good on the first puff.  I ought to find the tin and try that one again, since I have no idea what it tasted like from the second puff onward.

Since I am still an unreformed cigarette smoker, I do light up a stick first thing in the morning to get the morning "kick in the chest" and calm the nicotine receptors enough to enjoy the pipe.  If it's a rough morning I'll smoke two cigs before moving on to the good stuff.  Since I still feel a bit clumsy with a pipe, I also smoke cigarettes when I am driving.

Back to the biter, the roguish Sir Walter ... I still have the 1.5 ounce pouch minus one regular bowlful.  I know I will try it again - probably in a much smaller bowl - just because I am hard-headed like that and need confirmation.  How soon I get back into the ring for another swing depends on how fast the Biotene works, and whether or not I find another one that bites.  I have caught myself eyeing the pouch already this morning ...

We gotta stay off evilBay

Not only me, but hubby also.  In fact, he said this exact phrase last week after we made an impulse bid ... and won.  We even did the "pinky-swear" - with each getting one exception - to stay off the evilBay until New Year's.  About an hour later ... hubby starts talking about what he wants to hunt for during the month of October!  Of course, this was before PipesAndCigars.com did their site-wide sale, too ...

Back to this (rare) impulse eBay bid.  Out of the seven pipes in the lot, two caught hubby's eye right away, while three caught my eye (one is on both lists).

seller's pic of 7 pipe lot

7 estate pipe lot

If anyone guessed the black pipe with the stag overlay and attached windcap ... yup!  Hubby's other choice is the Kaywoodie bulldog, while I was intrigued by the stemless JM and the bent JM.  The seller shipped FAST, so we had these pipes in hand Saturday late afternoon!  While the black BBB is still unsmoked despite its age ... the other six greatly benefited from the new pipe reamer.  The Kaywoodie bulldog had a mind-boggling amount of cake in it ... we had to start with the smallest reamer and work up to the biggest.

old Kaywoodie bulldog (seller pic)

seller pic showing discoloration and crooked stem

Given these two close-up pics from the seller, we weren't sure we'd be able to prettify this, even when holding it in our hands.  As I mentioned, this had an amazingly thick cake so we figured it had to smoke good get that much carbon build-up.  Even I was surprised at just how well this pipe cleaned up!

Kaywoodie bulldog pipe cleaned up

Kaywoodie bulldog cleaned, even the discoloration is gone

After he put his rubber teething ring on the bit, hubby loaded it up last night and proclaimed it a nice smoking pipe!  Even with the stinger still on.  An impulse bid that we won (it only had 10 minutes left on it when we found it) has resulted in an unsmoked display-case pipe with its original sock and box, and so far two very nice smoking pipes ... this morning I got two more from the lot to flambe stage so we will have two more to try out this evening.

Hubby's Randy Wiley pipe

As I requested last night, today hubby left his Randy Wiley pipe here at home so I could give it a go.  He also left me the tin of MacBaren's PlumCake ... with the lid loosened enough I can actually open it.

The Wiley pipe ... the beautiful BEAUTIFUL briar Wiley pipe:

Handmade in the USA, graded "55"

A good-sized pipe!

Lovely grain on it all around

Wiley pipe

the Wiley pipe's best side IMO

I bought this pipe for hubby when were visiting Jacksonville, Florida and popped into a local tobacco shop.  The shopkeeper pointed out that he was running a sale on his Wiley pipes.  After I looked through the display case and the rack over the bulk tobacco, the shopkeeper repeated that he had a sale on the Wiley pipes, and pointed to a freestanding display shelf ... so I wandered over to take a peek even though the only ones I saw were rusticated finish, which isn't our style.  As I walked around the display, I saw this beauty behind the sale sign!  I picked it up and realized this fit all the criteria hubby had been saying he was looking for in a pipe.

Within 15 seconds of placing this pipe into hubby's hands and mentioning that I was buying this round, he declared I had "twisted his arm".  He loves smoking this pipe, and I loved cleaning it up and making it look all shiny and new.  Today is the first time since I bought it a couple weeks ago that I have finally been able to smoke it myself ... mainly because I am seriously thinking of getting one for myself.

Now, a pic of hubby enjoying it down at our new house in Florida on a pretty sunny morning:

Hubby enjoying a bowlful in his Randy Wiley pipe