Gurgling Pipe.....Bad Pipe or Wet Tobacco?

Shelby Foote, great man of the South, said it was mostly bent pipes. I have heard and experienced it from too fast puffing and/or wet tobacco.

If a pipe gurgles I take note and sip more slowly the next time.

All of my gurgling pipes were gone years ago. I stick to the classic proven shapes, pipe makers and properly treat my tobacco before it goes in the bowl. No worries now but it was a trying and expensive lesson to work through. Good times.

My limited experience is that when one of my pipes gurgles it's always been my fault. I tend to eat candy and drink water during my smoking sessions and sometimes spit/slobber through the stem. My solution, by degrees of wetness, is: 1) clean the pipe with a pipe cleaner and tissue paper, if still gurgling 2) dab the bowl with alcohol [vodka is less likely to ghost the pipe] and light a few times whilst taking a drag from the stem then load it up with the driest tobacco you've got and light it normally, and if it's still gurgling 3) take the pipe apart and leave it to dry in the sun for a day. I've never had a pipe that was particularly prone to gurgling though.

I have a few pipes that refuse not to gurgle, doesn't matter what I do. I just stick a pipe cleaner down the stem and it makes it all better.

Great thread,Roy. Something I do and Dino brought it up as well is to swab the stem while smoking. This helps me, but it is also a necessity and more akin to a band-aid than a preventative measure. If I were to guess, I'd say the issue is because of damp tobacco and smoking too quicky. If you smoke tobacco hot, it stands to reason that any moisture therein will become water vapor, hence my gurgling pipes... I'm sure some pipes are better for this, especially those with large bowls that allow for the steam to escape more readily, but in my mind, it is tobacco moisture and cadence. I'm finding a more comfortable Ballance between the two as time goes on and I gain some of the wisdom some if you old time smoker's have developed. That's my take on it.

When the issue is damp tobacco, you can run the pick of the Czech tool, straight down the back of the bowl and gently nudge the tobac forward. Just a smidgen and it often eliminates the need to use a pipe cleaner.
Nothing wrong with the pipe cleaner fix either. In fact, I find a single pass of the pc at midbowl improves the taste of most blends, whether their damp or not.

A trick to getting a pipe cleaner to make it to the bowl, is to put a small slight bend on the very end of the pipe cleaner and as you rotate the pipe cleaner gently, you can often get it to make the trip to the bowl.

This technique works reall well on a few bent pipes of mine, resulting in a dryer smoke.

On Peterson system pipes, the military mount makes it easy to dump the septic tank, and a twisted napkin makes a good moisture sop.

Only one gurgler in the herd ... a Moonshine Pipes product that is likely not drilled properly. I'd toss it but it was a gift from a friend.

In my experience gurgling is nearly always attributable to smoking tobacco that is too moist.  Compounding this problem is the fact that water is a natural byproduct of combustion.  Dryer tobaccos will gurgle less, and reduce the possibility of tongue-bite, too.

True this; however, over-dried tobacco loses flavor. 

I thought steam was a by-product of combustion? Tobacco when it burns produces moisture. Moist tobacco produces more steam than drier tobaccos. Some pipes may smoke "wetter" than others but, gurgling is part of pipe smoking. Getting the rank, disgusting, juices into your mouth....isn't. Prevent this from happening, and nip that tongue-bath in the bud....

Run a few pipe cleaners down the stem and into the bottom of the bowl, and soak up the noise-making moisture, saliva, etc. as soon as you begin hear that dreaded, death rattle. Pipe cleaners are cheap, and they do what their name suggests. I use at least 2-3 P-Cs for every bowlful. After a while, it just becomes part of the ritual....and I don't even think about it as I'm smoking.

I buy the extra-long church warden cleaners, cut them in half for use in shorter pipes, and just cut the first 3/4" -1" off the tips of the longer cleaners after swabbing out longer stems. By cutting off just the dirty tips, you'll be able to use each long cleaner at least a minimum of four times for each bowl, even with longer stemmed pipes.

Lose that juice!


Frank
NYC

I have a yellow bowl burley with a bent stem. There is a metal condenser which acts like a filter/cooler, it gets damp and the pipe gurgles. When that happens I let the pipe cool, then I remove the stem and wipe off the condenser and put a pipe cleaner in the pipe to soak up the moisture from the tobacco for a couple minutes.
I never have a problem with my briar or cob pipes.

I like my tobacco dry. I place paper towels on a cookie sheet. Spread the tobacco over that. Cover with more paper towels. Leave it in a warm dry place overnight. But that is because all of the tobacco I have is topped with p.g. long story short, I try to get rid of as much of the moisture from the p.g.