Interesting Read that may apply to Pipe Tobacco

That is fascinating pilot work they did. Will begin inspecting my stocks under a microscope!

That is there take on it red.  I still cant believe it or maybe I don't want to hah.

Most of those were (to me) something I would suspect as mold. They were not crystalline as they were soft and attached. Crystalline has a little more translucence.

Be informed that for all that fermentation, those precious anaerobes you hear of are possibly aerobic instead. Some molds are dimorphic turning to yeast at some temps. All of this to say that fermentation will not happen without one of these little puppies being present.

I have experienced two molds. One actually rolled a tobacco ball on its own the size of a large gumball. The other, maybe not mold, smelled like grandma's cellar on steroids.

One of my earliest careers was as a Registered Lab Technologist. I ran the bacteriology department and knew enough about mold and yeast to get by.

The very top picture might have fooled me, but I have a lighted magnifying glass that I think would help me decide.

You actually have a point. Blue Cheese has a common human body culture in it.

When I proffer that there is a crystalline substance that may actually feed a mold or yeast, too. Tobacco for a pipe is not the same as a cigar. We are probably all getting a little something here and there. We're burning it, anyway.

Anthony Bourdain (think it was he) went to a resto in Britain where the coffee was made from bird pooped coffee beans. The beans did not digest, but soaked up some of that good old bird poop. Somebody cleaned it off, we hope, then ground it.

When Jimmy Carter had the Marijuana fields sprayed with poisonous Paraquat most of us decided dying a few years earlier was worth it. "Light that mother up!"