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Pipe of the night
Orange Venturi "The Pipe" filled with Mixture 79
A day of learning about what I smoke (and smoke with).
Apparently, Mixture 79 is the American take on a "Lakeland" style tobacco-that is, an English aromatic blend that uses primarily herbal and floral flavors, as typified by Gawith and Hoggarth's Ennerdale blend.
So while an English Lakeland blend would use Virginia tobacco as a base and then add things like geranium oil and tonquin bean extract, Mixture 79 uses things like anise and licorice over a burley base. It's a very interesting smoke as long as you go slow. Go too fast and it starts tasting like a $5 bar of fancy French soap.
As for The Pipe, it gives a good smoke, but it's got its own snowflakey quirks that must be heeded to get a good result.
First, no packing allowed. Straight gravity fill only and only tamp just enough to keep the embers lit. Packing too tightly restricts the airflow needed for the graphite bowl to work properly, which can cause heat buildup and even the graphite bowl coming unglued from the body (bad times).
Second, like a meerschaum no cake is allowed in the pipe bowl, though for a different reason. The graphite bowl already does an admirable job of conducting heat away from the pipe-5x better than copper, in fact. Cake buildup just keeps the heat away from the graphite, defeating its purpose.
Third, no scraping or reaming the bowl with metal things. Although the graphite lining is wonderful stuff, it is quite soft and can get wrecked very easily by metal things. Venturi used to provide a plastic implement to scrape the bowl down, but washing it with your finger in warm soapy water and wiping it out with a damp paper towel works just as well
Fourth, smoke it slow. Only go fast enough to keep the ember lit. I actually find this makes it an ideal pipe to smoke M79 in, because it will let you know if you're going too fast. When it tastes right, you're smoking it right and can expect a good result.
