Thread: Worst Pipe Tobacco

Not sure why I put this in "The Finer Things" I guess we seem to discuss pipes and tobacco fairly regularly here so I thought since we're quick to warn noobs off of Chinese and Paki straight razors, why not provide a similar service for aspiring pipe smokers with regard to bad pipe tobacco. So with that, here goes my contribution.

I've smoked a pipe since spring of 1976 and have smoked lots and lots of different pipe tobaccos. Some I liked and even today smoke on a fairly regular basis, some were not bad but just didn't appeal to me so after an intial try, I never smoked them again. Then there's that category that this thread is designed to be about. Those blends that were so vile and so horrendous that not only did I never smoke them again but the memory of having smoked them haunts me to this day. With that, here's my list. Some have mercifully been removed from the market and others are still available.

#5 Greenbrier: Menthol pipe tobacco, Kools on steroids, for a pipe. All the horrible of menthol cigarettes kicked up by a factor of 10. Loading a pipe full of shredded newspaper soaked in Ben Gay would probably be a close simulation. The memory of smoking this stuff fills my mouth with warm soapy water.

#4 Friars 1805: Edward's pipe and tobacco as a general rule produces some great quality and very smokeable pipe tobacco. The store in Tampa is where I completed my undergraduate studies in the gentle art of pipe smoking and at one time or another, I've probably smoked most everything they ever produced and found most of it pretty good. Friars 1805 was the glaring exception to the rule. I struggle to describe the taste of this stuff except to say, you know that smell in a car when someone has vomitted in the back seat and the next day it gets really hot. Well, that smell is how this stuff tasted. Hard to imagine some people smoked this stuff and liked it.

#3 Field and Stream: I suppose I should have loved this one, it's as old school as it gets but other than nostalgic charm pretty vile. It was hot, bitey, and overcased, tasted like black licorice which was never one of my favorites.

#2 Palladin Black Cherry: My Uncle Hank smoked this stuff by the truckload. It was goopy and sickly sweet X 10. At first light, the smell wasn't that bad but 5 minutes later, the room and everyone in it was saturated with that over the top synthetic cherry smell. Imagine a car with the carpets soaked in about 10 gallons of cherry pimp oil. YUCK!

#1 H Sutliff's Mixture 79: Simply put, this stuff is the absolute gold standard for the most vile, disgusting abomination ever to contaminate a pipe. They say, Hugh Hefner was a big fan of this stuff. Why anyone would voluntarily contaminate a high dollar Dunhill pipe with this stuff is beyond me. So here goes, a warning right up front if morbid curiousity compels you to run right out and try some of this make sure that you're smoking it in a pipe you have no problem THROWING AWAY immediately when you are done. This stuff will leave a permanent ghost in your pipe that nothing will remove other than perhaps total decomposition of the pipe (even then I bet the dirt around the decomposed pipe would be contaminated for years. Bitey, hot, ridiculously overcased, offensive, obnoxious and horrible. Everyone has an old aunt or grandmother that sports the "little old lady" cologne, right? My Aunt Marge was the total package of little old lady cliche's, big excessively starched hair/wig, and a cloud of little old lady cologne funk that was soaked into the walls for a week after she had visited. This is the smell and taste of Mixture 79. Horrid stuff that no human being should smoke, ever.

So lets here your picks for worst pipe tobacco. Brits, isn't there something called Condor or something that's supposed to be your vilest tobacco?

It's each in his/her own way.
I do not fancy strongly topped pipe tobaccos as they tend to taste different than they smell. I do not want tobacco where i have to taste pineapple, kumquat, gum arabic, rose garden but not tobacco at all. So probably i could find my worst pipe tobacco from aromatics family (i'm not even going to try to find it).
There are few exceptions but those are mildly scented where the topping rather brings the taste of tobacco to front.

As a 16 yo kid i tried to learn to smoke a pipe (because that used to be what real men were doing), but the local blends were something terrible back then so i pretty soon quit. Waited almost 20 years until i picked up a pipe again and never went back to cigarettes.
For some reason those old poison blends are still widely available here. Luckily we have also a tobacco store in town.