How long have you smoked a pipe?

I seem to have an affinity for cobs. I acquire more all the time. Probably have a dozen or so and smoke them as often as my briars.

Thanks trailboss,

That is most likely who made it then. Looking at the pipe again, it is simply marked "ISRAEL" and not made in Israel.

 I've been pipe smoking for forty-five years. since the fall of 1976, I think.

No, I don't smoke the first pipe I owned. I lost it somehow. It was no great loss, as it was a bargain bin pipe when I bought it.

I do however, still have the pipe that replaced the bargain bin pipe. I bought it in a pipe & tobacco shop in Wichita, KS which no longer exists. The pipe needs a new stem. I should look into that. It's a good pipe.

Brad, one of my dearest friends is Hmong. Met him when I worked in the oil biz, 25 years ago. Lots of our geotechs were Hmong. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with those guys. Love the food, the culture, the people. I still dove hunt with my friend and his extended family. Man those guys are impressive hunters and fishermen. At least the older guys are. The kids born here are distracted by our foolish pop culture and most are not the outdoorsman their dads are. You probably have some amazing stories.

Started smoking cigarettes at 14 years old and quit them entirely cold turkey (in a sense) when I switched to pipes shortly after turning 23 years old. I started piping in early fall of 2012 and my first pipe that I ever bought was a Missouri Meerschaum cherry hardwood bent pipe. (Their hardwood version of a Legend cob) I started with a pouch of Prince Albert's Cherry Vanilla in that hardwood pipe but quickly headed to my nice B&M in town to discover pipes and tobacco options. I bought my first "basket Italian" briar pipe for $35, a Leonessa Briosa slight bent rusticated apple in early October 2012, and from there it became an absolute obsession. I'd been browsing PipeSmokersForum since around September 2012 and that's what really enabled me to get into pipesmoking and get my feet in the door properly. I had an absolutely driven obsession to master the smoking technique with my first few pipes before buying more. In February 2014 I was given all my grandfather's pipes by him once he knew I'd been pipesmoking. I'd had no clue he had all his pipes, stands, jars and even full tins of 1970's Prince Albert, Velvet, and some old ration Lucky Strikes saved in storage. He had quit smoking altogether just shortly before I was born in 1989 and saved it all in storage. I quickly started meeting industry managers, talking to folks within SmokingPipes company, visiting pipe shows and the rest what's led up to now. I smoke quite a bit less the past couple years than what I was smoking around 2013-2017. Those years working on the road a lot and out in the field I easily smoked 8-15 bowls per day, every single day. Eventually I had to realize I had so much nicotine and caffeine constantly in my bloodstream it was highly affecting my sleep. I'd smoke 12 bowls in a day late into the evening and lie there awake all night long until 4am trying to toss and turn and sleep. These days I smoke a more moderate 2-4 bowls a day throughout the week and often smoke up to 5-6 bowls on weekends and days off work.

I still have my first two pipes, and I still smoke them. By now, I have a couple hundred pipes and a couple hundred pounds+ of tobacco cellared. Pipe smoking and being a pipeman, all the ephemera are deeply and truly ingrained in me. I don't see myself ever stopping or changing that.

Given that tongue bite is so common with aromatics, especially for people just getting started, I sometimes wonder why shop owners recommend them to newbies.  I mean, I know, the flavors and all that, but is that really enough to offset the tongue bite they're likely to have?

Bayou Morning has a lot of fans.  Hope you'll enjoy it, too.

I think it is just good intentions mixed up with overlooking the obvious issue of tongue bite. For me, the rec made even less sense considering I had been going to this B&M for a couple of years prior and always smoked dark, strong cigars. If I liked the taste of leather-couch, why suggest black cavendish? Why not something more forgiving? It is a mystery!

Tongue bite is caused by new smokers that pack the bowl too tightly, causing them to suck it like drinking a malt through a small straw. Aros get the blame because that's what most people start with.

Yeah, I wouldn't agree with it having anything at all to do with a pipe packed too tightly. Tongue bite is from smoking too hot or too wet, and most often both of those. Most tobacco from a tin or moist bulk is too wet until it's had dry time and new smokers almost always think you just smoke it right from the tin for the flavor, not knowing it should be rubbed and dried for 20-60 minutes, or until it cannot be pinched and clump together. It should be starting to get crispy. Only with a slow smoking cadence can you smoke it with more moisture content. That's where a new smoker is both smoking too hot and fast and a too wet tobacco. Hot steaming the tongue.

I believe I started in late 2016

Aromatics need more oxygen to burn due to the toppings. Gravity fill them to better ventilate them in the chamber and they can smoke as cool and dry as any blend.

Not to hijack the thread into one about tongue bite, but as it seems to be more or less hijacked, let me contribute something:

In my experience, I have not noticed that aromatics bite more often, or indeed than any particular type tobacco bites more often than other. I enjoy aromatics frequently enough without any problems.

Maybe the dryness or dampness or how it is cut or how it is packed, and maybe I have subconsciously learned to adjust packing for the condition of the tobacco, but I have rarely rarely had an issue with tongue bite.

Don't overlook another contribution - that of your pipe. The way the bit and the lip are cut can "shotgun" smoke to a particular small area of your tongue, which may be what we experience as tongue bite. The secret there, I am guessing, is to adjust how one puffs, the strength, the aim, the duration. And again, maybe I automatically compensate in this way for the different pipes I smoke.

Some have said that aromatics are more popular among newbies, and so is relative inexperience with tobacco packing and accommodating puffing, so this correlation could help explain things. Maybe.

But I am not sure it is true that aromatics are more popular among newbies. Not sure this isn't just another folk prejudice. Because I know many long time smokers of aromatics. Many.

And don't forget individual mouth chemistry.

The most consistent tongue bite I ever get is not when smoking itself, but when drinking strong whiskey and/or carbonated beverages while smoking. And even then, its is not all the time.

So I conclude that there are many characteristics that could be contributors to tongue bite, and any systematic analysis would have to take these into account, and I believe such an analysis would uncover that the real cause is complicated and the answer is "it depends".

And to bring this back to its original subject - in the very long time I have enjoyed pipe smoking, I seem to have avoided or accommodated most conditions what would cause tongue bite, and without even studying up on it.

I'm not entirely convinced that aro's have any more sugar than non-topped tobaccos. Casings have sugar in them for the purpose of achieving a sort of ph balance which is lost during the tobacco fermentation process. All tobaccos are pretty much subjected to casings. However, flavored toppings do not all have sugar in them as they used concentrated flavorings instead. What this means is that a heavy berry flavor or cocoa flavor does not necessarily derive from sugar. Flavor concentrates are used. Anyway, net net from my experience is that aros do not smoke hotter than other tobaccos. They just have a seriously strong aroma and can come a bit wetter in the tin. I have always associated tongue bite with intensity of packing. The heavier you pack a tobacco, the more you pull on it. The ;more you pull on it, the hotter it gets.That's my experience