@Darmon You put me in a Christmas frame of mind so I did a 50/50 mix of C&D Corn Cob Pipe And Button Nose with Boswell ChristmasCookie - smoked it in my Big Ben Fantasia.
Warmer weather tends to have me wanting milder smokes to start my day. Today it's MacB Mixture from a batch I purchased in June 2014 in a Country Gent.
Had that first bowl of Sutliff's Vanilla Custard this evening (Thanks @ghostsofpompeii). The "custard" part of vanilla really comes through towards the bottom of the bowl. Very nice.
Squadron Leader, however, I'm struggling with my Xikar pipe lighter which refuses to light and the bowl which refuses to stay lit. Story of my life these days.
I'm usually not a morning smoker, but today while my wife went shopping for Easter Dinner I brewed up a cup of extra bold dark roast 'DA BOMB' coffee from Java Factory and loaded up my pipe with one of the few Latakia blends in my cellar ... Captain Black Black Sea. Immediately after the bowl went out before the ghost of the good Captain had time to leave my pipe I repacked it with Sutliff Mixture 79. Now let me preface this by stating that neither of these two blends are favorites ... in fact they may be the least favorite blends in my cellar. So the impulse to smoke back-to-back bowls of my two least favorite blends was borderline bizarre. Even for me. But in that moment in time the planets seemed to be in perfect alignment because it proved to be an enjoyable smoking experience. Not quite Nirvana - but close. And anyone who has followed my posts is aware of my dislike of Latakia, and as for Sutliff Mixture 79 I'm not a fan of Lakeland blends either, and Mixture 79 has a distinct floral potpourri flavor. Yet for some reason this strange combination of 'DA BOMB' coffee combined with a back-to-back bowl of smoky Latakia Black Sea and the floral note of Mixture 79 tobacco blends made this the start of a great morning. Go figure?!
@motie2 The pouch note is licorice or anise - which was quite promising when I first opened the pouch thinking that's the way it was going to taste. But I don't detect a bit of licorice in the flavor or room note. All I get is that floral potpourri - or perfume flavor associated with Lakeland blends. In some ways it's pleasant enough, but it takes getting used to. There was a point in time when I tried smoking it several times because I heard the more often you smoke it the better it gets ... and I did begin to tolerate it more, and could understand why so many codgers swear by it. And had I continued smoking it or a regular basis I might have become a fan of the blend ... but right around the same time I was trying to develop a taste for Mixture 79 a large order from Pipes & Cigars came in with several delicious aromatic blends I'd been waiting for. So I scrapped the Mixture 79 experiment and started in on the aromatics from P&C and never got back around to Mixture 79 until today.
Well, c'mon, how many OTC tobaccos have a taste even remotely resembling the pouch note? I don't believe I've ever smoked a Lakeland, even back in the day, but all I hear about them is the word "floral." Ecccchh.
@motie2 - I don't remember if it was Mixture 79 or Middleton's or some other OTC, but back in the mid-70s it almost put me off pipe smoking forever. It wasn't so much the aroma as it was the feeling that I had just been sucking on a bar of floral soap. Fortunately I discovered better tobacco at pipe shops like The Tinderbox.
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Christmas Cheer 2015 in my Falcon.
Sounds as if I'd like to drop in around dinner time PappyJoe.
Sutliff Byzantium in a Wally Frank Natural Finish Bull Dog.
Lane Crown Achievement in a Molina 3H Rhodesian.