Dry tobacco from P&C

It was a tin with a sealed bag inside.

The 4'th Gen tobacco, like others that come in that style of tin where the tin is not sealed and the tobacco in a bag all tend to be dryer. Those bags are never that great at making a seal. This is the case no matter where you buy those kinds of tins from.

Your other tins, as long as they are the standard tins that are vacuum sealed, they should be fine. You can easily check to make sure that the vacuum is still intact.

The bulk tobacco is hard to say. P&C, like other sellers, try and open the bag, grab whats needed and close it back up. This still can lead to some drying. Also, many blends come pretty dry right from the start. Without knowing what  was purchased in bulk, one cannot say if its an issue. Then you have what is dry to you, may not be dry to another.

  Mike,
     Follow through will SP customer service, they will surely rectify your issues. Call them in the morning.

Not always the case. More so than not, it has to hang around for a while in a dry state to be passed saving.

As I said before, without knowing the specific blend, its hard to say if it should or shouldnt be dry.

Also, truly dry tobacco will break or near break when you bend a strand. Plenty of blends out their that are quite "dry" but dont break.

I guess I assumed that the 2 oz bags were packed up long ago awaiting sale and since dried out but that may not be true?

How do you guys rehydrate? I have been putting any dry tobacco in a ziplok bag along with a dish of distilled water which has a prescribed amount of Colloidal Silver.

The last time I ordered Pegasus, it was dry when it came. I'm not sure about the other.

The 4th Gen tobacco, as I said, that style of packaging almost always comes dry.

Pegasus and Bright Virginia are both dryer blends as they are and come from the blender.

How dry is too dry? Its hard to talk about online but I did post previously a rough example. Still, what one thinks of as "dry" is not too dry to another. Many even dry out their tobacco below how it comes from the blender and cellar it. Basicly though, if your tobacco is not brittle and bounces back to shape roughly, its fine.

As for packing and the Frank Method, it works fine for sure but not on all blends. You have to find what style of packing works best for different blends.

Bottom line, your tobacco mentioned here sounds just fine and will remain fine provided you store it away properly.

Can you explain the problem you had packing the tobacco?
You posted "there is nothing you could do to make it condense" about tobacco that is too dry. That seems unusual.
Dry tobacco is usually easier to pack (condense). Moisture in the pipe tobacco is what gives it the tendency to expand in the bowl (harder to condense).

Mayne "condense" wasn't the right word.  Maybe compact?  Imagine trying to pack rice before it's cooked.  This tobacco could not be made to hold any shape for any amount of time.  No matter how I compressed it, it simply sprung back immediately.

A little while back, I found an old box of tobacco tins. I'm talking 20 years old. Almost all was junk, but I had an 8oz tin of McClelland's Dark Star in there. I remember thinking it was ok back then (this tin had been popped 20 years ago). It was tinder dry, I mean snap with a powdery dust cloud if you bent it dry. I rehydrated by sealing it in tupperware with a bowl of distilled water.

It's freaking delicious. Has it lost "something"? Sure, probably. I've never had 20 year old Dark Star that was properly stored so I'll never know, but what it might have lost, there's still plenty of "it" remaining to make a fantastic smoke.

So... don't necessarily give up on the dry stuff. It was a good lesson for me, for sure. I *almost* just tossed it with the rest.

I have not encountered a dry bulk from P&C before, except for D&R Rimboche. As noted above, this is typical no matter where one buys it.

Without knowing how dry it was or is, there may or may not be a problem to fix. 

Almost all tobaccos are packed and shipped with a moisture content higher than is optimum for a great smoke, and while many draw from a newly opened tin, some wait and dry time usually gives a better smoke for most folk.